Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 7th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you for your perspective, Mr. Cooper.

We will continue with Mr. Berthold.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Chair, that is why I wanted to raise this extremely important point, beyond the content that I will discuss a little later. I would like you to add my name to the end of the list so that I can speak to the content of the amendment as such.

I wanted to ask my colleagues to be very aware of tactics currently used by the governing party to yet again avoid at all costs talking about the truly damaging findings of Justice Hogue's report concerning the Liberals' failure to act on foreign interference.

That is why our committee should make it a priority to analyze Justice Hogue's preliminary report and study her findings so that we, too, can be ready for the next election, which could take place in a week or two. An election could be triggered should the NDP decide to withdraw its support for the Liberal government, which is supposedly a minority government. We now know that it is a coalition government, but that coalition may be fragile, and we will see whether it will survive until the election scheduled for 2025.

However, for the time being, I implore committee members not to fall into the trap and to focus on studying the rest of Justice Hogue's preliminary report.

I repeat that we owe it to Canadians, and especially to the voters of this country, to do our job properly and not to let this preliminary report, which is quite detailed, be forgotten over the next six months until the final report.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you.

There has been a bit of time that has elapsed since the speaking list has grown. For the benefit of members, I'm going to quickly reiterate what the order is so members are aware. I have Mr. Duncan, who will go next, followed by Mr. Cooper, Madame Gaudreau and Ms. Mathyssen.

Mr. Berthold has the next turn.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Thank you.

Congratulations, for now, on your role as chair of PROC. You're still in the chair, so that's a good start.

I want to give some context. You're not only a new chair for our committee, but a new member of PROC. I think it's important for you to have a bit of context in your role as chair. You'll be very busy with your finger, because very often when Conservative members speak there will be lots of points of order. I've been a part of that or a witness to that in the last couple of months.

I will perhaps refresh the committee's memory that it was several months ago, but within a reasonable time ago, that we had Liberal members of Parliament on the other side with an exceptional latitude given to them as we worked to get the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Katie Telford, to come to committee. I sat in on those meetings, Mr. Chair: 24 hours of Liberal members talking. We had members coming in. They shared their life stories and backgrounds, including the now Speaker of the House. He actually was at committee and spoke at length about a lot of his Liberal background, partisan background, at that time, which I guess was fine. Nevertheless, they were able to have that latitude to speak about what they felt was the issue at hand. Conservatives were relatively respectful of giving them hours on end to share their views.

I would encourage committee members, before others have points of order about relevance, to consider the leniency the previous chair provided Liberal members when they felt they had things to say and to contribute to the debate. I will try to pre-empt any unnecessary points of order, although they are always allowed and welcome to be taken by you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Mathyssen's subamendment, which we are speaking to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Just to be clear and correct, Mr. Duncan, it's the amendment. There is no subamendment.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

My apologies.

I will be speaking to the last part of the amendment. I'll start with that to give you the context of the comments I'm going to give:

That six meetings be devoted to witness testimony and that witness lists be submitted to the clerk within seven days.... And that the committee report its findings to the House no later than October 31, 2024.

The comments that my colleague made before me and that I will make here as well, some specifically on this, I think allude to asking PROC members to vote on what the priority of this committee is over the next several weeks. What my colleague before me has just said and what we will continue to say is that frankly this is a distraction.

Cynical me, but I think many Canadians tuning in to this today will say that the fact that Mrs. Romanado had this on notice for two years and that today is the day it's brought forward is.... There was full knowledge by Liberal members and all members of this committee that only just recently Justice Hogue provided her initial report—dated May 3, 2024—in the public inquiry into foreign interference, something that this committee has been seized with a lot, and rightfully so. The more information is gathered, and the more information is put out as public information, frankly, the more questions there are that need to be answered, many of which this committee could and should be dealing with as a priority.

We don't know when the next election may be, but candidates are being nominated. The issue of foreign interference.... We talk about the amendment that is here, about the number of meetings. Let's just call a spade a spade. For Canadians who are perhaps not memorizing the parliamentary calendar as much as maybe those of us in this room would, with a recess week next week, by the time the House rises in June, six meetings would likely take us right out to the summer. That is a deliberate attempt to push down any conversations, meetings and further study on the issue of foreign interference and the things that my colleague Mr. Cooper has raised. There is absolute relevance when we talk about what we're talking about today and what we are laying on the floor here.

To the amendment specifically and the main part, I do find it ironic that here we are and Liberal members and NDP members are talking about how hard it is to be a politician these days. There is an irony in this. With everything that's going on in the country, the mood of Canadians right now is, rightfully, one of frustration and despair. We hear about food banks. We hear about housing costs. We hear about crime. We hear about drugs and the disorder that is happening in every part of this country. There is a lot of frustration right now with the current government, their policies and what's going on. To know what those struggles are—the millions of people using food banks, the millions of Canadians struggling to own a home—and to sit here and say that it's a tough time to be a politician, I think most Canadians would shake their head about what the priorities are.

Instead, the procedure and House affairs committee needs to make foreign interference a priority. It should be of no surprise to members, including Liberal and NDP members, that this would be an issue and a notice of motion or a priority of this committee after the initial report came in of what we need to know. Mr. Cooper has done a fantastic job in raising a lot of points and trying to get answers to the many questions that the government has evaded.

We've seen time and time again, particularly on the issue of foreign interference, that the Liberals are never forthcoming with the proper information the first time and proactively: It has been media leaks. Frankly, the whole premise of the seriousness and the magnitude of the issue of foreign interference didn't come because a member like Mrs. Romanado brought a notice of motion to take a look at this. It was only brought forward by leaks that came into media and reporting. I don't know who it was. Obviously, we don't know who made those leaks, but they were obviously frustrated at the Liberal government and ministers withholding information from members of Parliament directly, with Mr. Chong being the major highlight, sadly, of that circumstance.

Many times, again, only in the last couple of weeks, there have been further leaks about how members of Parliament have not been provided proper disclosure in a reasonable time frame, but instead we have read, through media reports and questions from journalists, about foreign interference attempts, attempts to intimidate members of Parliament and so forth. It was time and time again, and I've seen it here at PROC several times as well, how the failure to properly disclose information proactively has led that.

When we talk about what the priorities of this committee should be in the coming weeks, as we have a few more weeks left in the parliamentary calendar before the summer recess, Canadians would expect us not to talk about how tough it is to be a politician these days. Even when we talk about that issue, the fact is that the Speaker threw the Leader of the Opposition out of the chamber last week and created chaos. I'll remind you that the Speaker, in his opening days—since we talk about the operations and the Standing Orders of the House—used to say that his job was to be the referee and never to be the story—oops, that's been the story many times.

Again, I think what we need to focus on and what Canadians are asking us for, particularly with the lens of the procedure and House affairs committee, is not six meetings and a very last-minute amendment that comes in to a motion that's been on notice for two years and suddenly needs to be done and dealt with and heard basically at all the meetings until the summer recess. Canadians are smart enough to know just how cynical this attempt is. It's an attempt to silence the opposition on the topic, I think, and to create a distraction from the real issue—

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

The real opposition.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

That's an excellent point, Mr. Cooper. The real issue is holding the government to account and getting answers. I think what we can do, Mr. Chair, is focus on the issue of foreign interference. Topics have been raised in the public discourse and through the report in the public inquiry by Justice Hogue that we can deal with here and that we can get answers to.

To the point about a real opposition and that being the priority, I would implore my Bloc and NDP colleagues not just to see past this attempt by the Liberals to do this, but instead to focus on these issues and to get answers that really do make Liberal members uncomfortable to have to defend their government's actions—or actually, in many cases, inactions. It would rightly make Liberal members uncomfortable to have to defend and to discuss the topic of foreign interference, because the more we learn, the more questions we ask and the more answers we seek, the more it is actually producing some information that has not been forthcoming from the Liberal side.

I would implore my NDP and Bloc colleagues to understand and to realize what the Liberals are attempting to do here. We argued that there was smoke, and in the initial report, there's a lot of information we can follow up on. There's a refusal.... I will say that Mr. Cooper, the vice-chair of this committee, has done a solid job in his role as the shadow minister for democratic institutions about what we heard through the initial report after its release, which talked about a Liberal Party member tipping off the then Liberal candidate for Don Valley North that CSIS was monitoring him.

In the case where Mr. Chong was being intimidated and threatened by foreign state actors, they did not bother to let Mr. Chong know that. Instead, we have a very serious report that came through The Globe and Mail as part of the conversations, the discussions and the report by Justice Hogue that a Liberal Party member was briefed. Then, instead of doing something about the nefarious activities that were going on in Don Valley North, it was decided to let the candidate know.

It has been several weeks since that information was put out in public light—again, not proactively by the Liberal government, as they avoid, at every turn, any accountability or providing any answers. For Canadians, when they look at this, it is only fair that we should have a focus on foreign interference and on getting to the bottom of that very serious issue.

Of course, as I always say, if there's nothing to see, if this is a nothing burger, if it's all fine and just a big misunderstanding, as Liberal members so many times try to say—and all of a sudden the opposite is true and they are trying to cover something up—then they should have no problem wanting to have the study into that topic specifically, to have witnesses on that and to get answers in public here at the committee room about that topic.

Mr. Chair, this is nothing more than an attempt from the Liberals to talk about how hard it is to be a politician today, but more than anything, make no mistake, the intent of this motion, which was sitting on the back burner as a notice of motion of which there are many notices of motion at many committees about the same thing.... Today, coincidentally, just after the initial report was made public, when we have information that our committee can follow up on and get further information for Canadians in a parliamentary context, which we're hired here to do, there's no thought about that—none. Let's talk about six meetings that run the calendar out to the summer so that the Liberals can try to avoid all the information and scrutiny here at this committee. I think Canadians rightfully see right through it.

Let's get to the issues at hand, the important issues of foreign interference.

I'll leave that now and ask you to put my name back at the bottom of the list, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Duncan. I will do that.

I'll just note, colleagues, that my understanding is that we have 11 meetings remaining between now and when we are expected, on the calendar, to rise. I just note that for the benefit of all members.

Mr. Cooper, I turn to you.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

I'm sorry, Mr. Cooper. Wait just one moment.

Mr. Lauzon, please go ahead.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC]

Mr. Duncan gave us false information when he said that the report had been tabled.

It is indeed a preliminary report that was tabled, not the report itself.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Mr. Duncan, do you want to respond quickly?

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

With regard to that point of order, I've mentioned many times in my comments that it's the initial report. It is a report that is public. It is substantial and has many pieces of information. I did refer to it as the initial report, not the only report. It's a public document. It has many substantial pieces of information that our committee could study.

I'll also note, just to the point about the calendar and the number of meetings left, that this is not my first year here. Every year, near the end of the year—and I've been a member of PROC several times—we get into many committees trying to pass bills, and meetings also get cancelled. Many times, PROC meetings have been cancelled, and other committees as well. I raise that point for an important historical context, not just a calendar and a piece of paper.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Lauzon, are you satisfied? Okay.

We're going to resume the list.

Mr. Cooper, the floor is yours.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Before I address the motion and the amendment to the motion, let me take this opportunity to congratulate you on your elevation and your election as chair of the committee. I have no doubt that you will serve in that role well, so congratulations.

With respect to the motion by Mrs. Romanado and the amendment brought forward by Ms. Mathyssen, it is not a coincidence that a motion that was put on notice in 2022 is suddenly the business of this committee at the first meeting following the issuance of the damning initial report of Justice Hogue. It confirmed what The Globe and Mail and Global News reported, namely, that Beijing interfered in the 2019 and 2021 elections, that the Prime Minister and his government turned a blind eye to that interference and covered it up, and, even worse, that they were in some respects complicit in Beijing's interference in our elections.

This motion and this amendment speak to what the Liberal priority is. It is to talk about politicians—to talk about us. I'm astounded that there are members in this committee who are more interested in talking about themselves and how tough it is to be a member of Parliament, at a time when our constituents are struggling, at a time when, after nine years of this Prime Minister, housing costs have doubled, rent has doubled and mortgage payments have doubled. Some two million Canadians are resorting to the food bank. The cost of living for everyday Canadians has worsened as a result of this government's punitive carbon tax, which went up with a 23% hike in April.

Canadians are struggling, and these Liberals and New Democrats just want to talk about themselves and how hard done by they are. Yes, I know they're feeling the heat. They're feeling the heat from their constituents, who are damn mad at them for their disastrous policies, which they have presided over for the past nine years and have done untold damage to this country and untold damage to Canadians.

Now, I will be moving a subamendment. I move that the amendment be amended, first, by adding after “the committee” the words “after it has completed its study on foreign election interference”, and second, by deleting all the words after “to the House”.

That's my subamendment.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I'll speak to the subamendment.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

No. I'm speaking to the subamendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Colleagues, give me just one moment.

Mr. Cooper, do you happen to have a written version of this, or could you repeat it? I'm sensing there's some confusion on the part of members as to what the actual wording of the subamendment is.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

I will read it, and then I will help guide members to find where the amendments are within the subamendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Is that a point of order, Ms. Mathyssen?

Mr. Cooper, give me just a moment, please.

I see Ms. Mathyssen on a point of order.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I'm just confused how a member can subamend the amendment on a study we don't have in front of us. We're not actually studying foreign interference, so I find that complicated.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Yes, we are.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

How are we doing that? How are we in the middle of the foreign interference study?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Colleagues, let me just consult with the clerk for a moment.

Thank you.