Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 7th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Let us now resume.

The interpretation system is working.

Mr. Berthold, please go ahead.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I am pleased to see that you are settling in quickly at the committee.

Mr. Chair, since there appears to have been some discussion between the parties, I will try once again, because I would like us to adjourn debate so we can speak amongst ourselves.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Mr. Berthold, you will have to propose that clearly.

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

That was a comment, Mr. Chair.

I move that debate on Ms. Romanado's motion be now adjourned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you.

Again, we will be voting on whether to adjourn debate on the motion presented by Madam Romanado. This is the same question that was dealt with previously.

I will now ask the clerk to call the vote.

(Motion negatived: nays 7; yeas 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Mr. Berthold, do you wish to continue?

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

I can if you would like me to, but I would rather give my colleagues the chance to speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

That is up to you, Mr. Berthold.

Had you finished?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

All right.

Mr. Calkins, the floor is yours.

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

Yes, Mr. Chair.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I'll just preface my comments by reiterating what I said earlier. I think we have very good options before us as a committee. I don't believe anybody is presenting any motions in bad faith or with bad intent. I believe that we have to make the best decision possible as committee members as to what this very busy, very important committee ought to be studying as a matter of priority, and triage accordingly.

We here on the Conservative side, I think, will continue making that case for as long as it takes. We believe that foreign interference is one of what I would consider to be three matters that are being discussed, notwithstanding the subamendment portion of a debate that we're in.

Two of the three matters that we could proceed with deal with foreign interference. In continuation from what happened in the discussion from last Tuesday, we now have a prima facie case on a question of privilege, which always ends up at this committee. It has now been unanimously adopted by the House by all political parties, yet here we are, unable to agree that it's the matter that we should be discussing based upon the finding in the House.

My colleagues, Mr. Cooper, Mr. Duncan and Mr. Berthold, have all moved motions to adjourn the debate on the current motion so that we can proceed either to a discussion or to pursue discussing another motion to discuss the pressing matter from the House.

I just want to remind colleagues that we have spent a lot of time talking about foreign interference. We have a public inquiry, yet here we are again with new revelations in the media and new information about the PRC's continued interference. Frankly, it's what I would construe to be aggressive behaviour, not only towards the democratic institutions, such as our federal elections process, but now also in the form of what I would consider to be personal attacks against members of the House of Commons and Senate.

I presume that every member here operates in good conscience and in good faith, but to know that my emails, my personal devices, my iPad and my computer have been the target of a cyber-attack, or could have been....

So far, we know of only 18. I'll remind colleagues that when we first started hearing about foreign interference from China, we heard about potentially one or two people who might have been affected in nominations. Then it grew to 11 people who might have been unduly influenced during nomination processes, with funding bankrolled by the PRC for multiple political parties, my party included. Now we're up to 18 parliamentarians, members of the House of Commons and Senate, and anything that we have started to do doesn't appear to be dissuading the People's Republic of China.

We've been talking about this issue for quite some time. We finally have a piece of legislation dealing with what I would consider to be a portion of the broader conversation about Chinese interference in our institutions.

My opinion and advice to colleagues would be, given the fact that it is now May.... We have five more weeks after this week, once we return from the May long weekend break next week. I wish you all safe travels, good health, rest and recuperation. We'll come back for five weeks. It will be, as we all know, a challenging and trying time, because the weather will be good, there will be other things that we'd rather go do, and we'll be feisty.

If the last 18 years are any indication of what's going to happen in the next five weeks, I can predict that this will be the case, and that's fine. I don't take it personally, and I don't think any of us should take these things personally. That's just the adversarial nature of our system. That's why I'm concerned. I'm not just concerned for the sake of my own colleagues, Mr. Genuis and Mr. Chong. I'm concerned for all of you. You're all my fellow citizens.

Well, Mr. Desilets, I'm not trying to impugn anything, but you might disagree with that. While we disagree or have an adversarial system, you're all my fellow citizens, and I want you all to have the same protection and be afforded the same ability to carry out your duties. Whether I agree with what you have to say or not, we all have the right to say it without intimidation and without being put in a vulnerable position because we have not done an adequate job as a Parliament or as a government of addressing what is becoming a clear pattern of a clear threat from a clear source.

We have five weeks left after the break. We'll adjourn, and then we'll come back. At best we'll have one full parliamentary cycle, because, if we do have an election in October 2025, if this Parliament goes to the end, I doubt we'll be returning in September of next year. We'll go right into the writ period.

Basically, as a committee, we have one full calendar year plus five weeks to study, make recommendations and have the government respond to those recommendations, hopefully, if necessary, through any legislative changes that might be required. Then we'll have those laws passed in both chambers and have royal assent prior to the next election for the betterment of the integrity of our elections and for the betterment of the ability of our agencies to protect us, not only as candidates but also as parliamentarians in the interim.

That's not a long timeline. The question, as I see it, is what our priority will be. Is there any bad issue before us? No. All of them are worthy of discussion and consideration—all of them.

Which one could we do the most good with, and which one is most important? I would say that the issue of significant national interest, in this case, is the ruling of the prima facie case of members' privileges, as determined by the Speaker and by the rest of our colleagues in the House. It's seemingly supported, as I didn't see anybody speaking against this notion from any political party in the debates that took place last night or this morning. Frankly, I'm flabbergasted that this doesn't automatically position this issue as a priority for this committee to study and examine. We're going to continue, I believe, to make that case.

On the matter of the motion, the amendment and the subamendment before us, we have many things that I believe we need to revisit in the ongoing foreign interference study and in our electoral systems. Madam Justice Hogue's interim report has given us many things that we could continue to talk about, not the least of which are numerous contradictions of evidence and testimony that this committee heard, which was contradicted by evidence and preliminary findings by Madam Justice Hogue.

We have what I believe is a fairly legitimate allegation. We have a breach in the law when it comes to the secrets that ought to have been kept for those who are entitled to secret briefings from our intelligence officials, who have allegedly passed that secret information on to a candidate for, I believe, Don Valley North.

I think it needs to be fleshed out to determine what exactly happened there. Many members of Parliament of this committee made vehement arguments that we as members of Parliament at this committee ought not to have access to classified or secret information. Numerous attempts for us to request documents to be scrutinized by our parliamentary law clerk and then distributed to members of this committee have been defeated time and again by the Liberal and NDP members of this committee. Now, however, we have an example of somebody who ought not to have had that information, notwithstanding that the media, which seems to still have access to more information and documents than I do as a duly elected member of Parliament in this place.... Now we have a very credible scenario in which, I guess, it's not okay for members of Parliament to request this classified information through the eyes of our parliamentary law clerk, but it's completely okay to pass this information on, if you're the governing party, to one of your candidates in an election.

It seems to be a bit of a double standard, and I think we need to get to the bottom of that. Madam Justice Hogue has written in her report that there seems to be a clear communications issue, not only among the government, the decision-makers and those who work in the bureaucracy, but also among our various departments. There certainly are a lot of questions still surrounding what the bar is, not only for alerting members of Parliament and candidates but also for when the public is notified about foreign interference. Had the government done its job and had we had the right protocols in place, I believe my former colleague Kenny Chiu might still be here as a member of Parliament in this place.

What consequence have we demonstrated to the People's Republic of China as a response? A lot of hemming and hawing, a lot of obfuscation, a lot of blocking, hiding and covering up of information through the foreign interference and matter of privilege for Mr. Chong to date. Here we are, as Conservatives at least, wanting to continue on to discuss now the new outstanding matters in foreign interference. I can tell you that I'm here in good faith to make good recommendations, hopeful recommendations, wise recommendations to a government that I believe should be taking this issue much more seriously than it currently is.

Then, between Tuesday and today, as a matter of fact, in the time that this committee has started, since 11 o'clock this morning, moments after this committee started or continued its deliberations, the House adopted the notion and motion that there is another breach of privilege. A prima facie case has been made. Arguments have been made by members from all parties—all parties—that the People's Republic of China, the communist regime there, is personally going after members of the House of Commons and the Senate.

If you don't think that's serious, well, I know what's on my phone. I'm assuming we all know what's on our phones and what's on our computers, but if they can get to us, they can get to anybody in this country. They can get to our families. They can get to our staff. They can infiltrate our political headquarters. Their prime directive, in my opinion, is to create mistrust in electoral results and to create disunity and disharmony in the social fabric of our country. I think all of us would agree that it's something we would want to prevent and avoid, which is why I believe we should act in unity and unison in addressing this issue at this committee.

This is the committee that deals with these questions of privilege. While we are free to set our own priorities, I think it behooves us to take more seriously and as a higher matter of priority a question of a privilege that's referred to us by the House, and to remind colleagues once again of the timelines. If we're going to properly study this and discuss the witness list on the notice of motion that my colleague Mr. Cooper has put before this committee, I would love to hear about any other witnesses that my colleagues from other political parties would have, to say who ought to be summoned to the committee to testify and to find out why. Again, we're in a scenario where it took two years. It's unthinkable to me that a member of Parliament or a senator, their office staff or their family members would be subject to cyber-attacks and not be told.

I would just implore you, colleagues: This is a matter on which we have to defend each other, defend our institutions and defend our nation, frankly, from a very nefarious, very troublesome and, to this date, apparently, a very effective foreign government that's acting very adversarially and even confrontationally to our nation.

I don't know if this threat is coming right out of Beijing on a daily basis. I don't know if it's asymmetric. I don't know if there are elements of our own society here that are sympathetic. I still, to this day, am not clear, in spite of all the meetings we've had, dealing with the question of privilege for our colleague Mr. Chong and the yet unfinished broader study of foreign interference in our elections and of the depth of interference more broadly from various sources, particularly the People's Republic of China.

We have an opportunity as a committee, in a moment of unity for the sake of our country, for the sake of each other as members of Parliament, because only we—it doesn't matter what political party you get elected under the banner of—truly understand what this job is about. We have an opportunity to do the right thing, in my opinion, and not only defend our nation but defend each other and get to the bottom of how what I would consider to be an egregious scenario has happened. We need to make good and wise recommendations to the government to ensure that these things don't happen again.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll cede my time and ask to be put back on the bottom of the list.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thanks very much, Mr. Calkins.

Ms. Mathyssen, the floor is yours.

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

There's been a lot of conversation from one side alone. I am grateful for this opportunity to try to straighten out some things. There seems to be a great deal of misrepresentation by the Conservatives here at this committee, specifically against the NDP and, yes, the Liberals. I cannot speak for them, but I certainly do speak for myself and for my party, in that we absolutely have every intention of treating the issue of foreign interference seriously.

I don't understand and I am so sorry that the Conservatives on this committee think so little of me in terms of my intentions to bring forward this motion we are discussing here today, despite the fact that the majority of this has been on foreign interference instead of harassment. I am so sorry that they think so little of me in this regard. They have quoted my colleagues, and I am entirely in agreement.

I believe that we have every responsibility to study this issue thoroughly, but I've also seen so much happen within this institution and to this institution and the people who work within it, not just members of Parliament. When Conservatives say that this is only us talking about ourselves, this is not the case. This is about the people who serve this institution. This is about the people who believe in this institution and who are impacted. This is about the future generations, who will also serve this institution and, hopefully, do so better than some of us.

I brought forward this study because I was asked to, not just by members of my party, but by women, so I would like the entirety of the men who have spoken here today to think a bit about that. Maybe take that back.

We have been listening about how apparently only the Conservatives think this is such a huge issue. That is not the case. The degradations of this institution from outside and from inside are equally disturbing. Why can't we talk about both? We have 10 meetings left before the end of this session, before we rise for the summer. Why can't we do both at the same time? Why can't we show Canadians that we are capable of doing that for the sake of this institution? I would ask that we in fact study both at the same time, because I think that both impact each other in very many ways.

There have been conversations about maybe, potentially, the extension of meetings, so that we hear more before we have to break, but the issue of foreign interference isn't just going to take us the 10 meetings or so that we have left.

It's 10 meetings now, because there has been so much filibustering—it's not 11. I would like to point that out.

I came to this committee with the best of intentions to make this a mature, adult conversation that we could have to make my workplace—and the workplace for many others—better. I ask you to make it better. I would hope that the Conservatives aren't just trying to avoid the conversation on harassment. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they have not given me. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they do in fact want to make this institution better, both internally and externally.

I truly believe that we can do that, but we're going to have to do it together. Yes, we work in a minority parliament: Deal with it. Yes, we're going to have to get past...and I'm going to have to get past the anger that has been seething within me for the last couple of days in listening to the constant attacks. I'm going to have to deal with that. I'm going to have to go into the House and hear it yet again and try to deal with it and come to a better place on how we deal with it.

That was the purpose and point of this study. It's supposed to be the start of that conversation and what many members of Parliament, many people within the institution and many of those who support us on a daily basis, whether we see it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, are dealing with. We have that impact on them.

That's what I wanted to accomplish today. I am so sad that we can't get past some of the partisanship to do that for the health of this institution, for our democracy, which has been railed about for the last few days over two committee meetings. I'm so sorry, but that is the case right now. I hope that whether we come back after question period or not and continue to discuss it or not, or whether we go back to our constituencies and think about what we really want to see from our institution, we can actually have both conversations at the same time so that we are truly getting to a place that we all agree upon.

I would like to remind this committee that the motion that will come to us and has been referred to PROC about foreign interference was adopted unanimously in the House. All parties spoke as to the severity and seriousness of it in the House. We all agree. Instead of this partisanship, gamesmanship and consistent rage farming attitude that we seem to have, let's get past it. Please, let's just get past it. Let's figure out a way that we can do that together. I implore you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thanks very much, Madam Mathyssen.

Mr. Genuis, welcome to committee. You are next on our list. The floor is yours.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I do want to start by congratulating you on becoming the chair of the procedure and House affairs committee. I wonder if it's one of those things where, when you're the new guy, you have to do the job that nobody else wants, but no, in all seriousness, congratulations.

There's some irony in where I am sitting in the room. Because we have a large number of members here, I am sitting in a seat that is normally where witnesses sit. I had anticipated that the next time I would be back at this committee might be in the role of witness, because it was my question of privilege, the prima facie case of privilege granted by the Speaker, that led to the referral to this committee on the matter of foreign interference.

I want to just briefly share with committee members what happened to provoke this case. Hopefully, it helps members to understand the importance of proceeding in the fashion proposed by my Conservative colleagues.

In 2021, 18 Canadian parliamentarians, we now know, members of Parliament and senators, faced a cyber-attack from what's known as APT31, a China-based PRC-affiliated hacking outfit that was targeting specific legislators around the world because of their affiliation with an organization called the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, or IPAC.

IPAC does incredible and effective work in bringing together legislators from across the world and from different political traditions to work together on issues related to China. The IPAC model is that in every country where legislators are members, they have co-chairs from two different parties. In this case, for instance, John McKay and I serve as co-chairs, and we have been able to work very collaboratively together, including in the context of raising this issue in the House.

Mr. McKay and I, as well as 16 other parliamentarians, were subject to this cyber-attack in 2021. We were not told about it. The cyber-attack came to our attention because, a few weeks ago, an unsealed indictment in the United States revealed that there had been this global attempt by APT31 to target IPAC legislators. This was the first time that IPAC found out about it, so they followed up with the U.S. government, saying, hey, it sure would have been nice if you had told us that our members and our organization were targeted by APT31.

What ensued was some dialogue between the various organs of the U.S. government and the IPAC secretariat, in which they identified that they did become aware of this attack and they did disseminate information, but because of sovereignty concerns, it is not the policy of the FBI, for better or worse, to contact directly individuals in other countries who are subject to these kinds of attacks. Instead, it is their policy to disseminate this information through notifications to governments, and then the governments respond accordingly. In some cases, legislators were informed at the time this information was received from the U.S. government, and in some cases they were not informed.

In Canada, we were not informed. On this information, the details of which were subsequently shared with the IPAC secretariat, Mr. McKay and I were jointly briefed. This was followed by a briefing to other members of the IPAC membership who were affected. We subsequently both raised a question of privilege a week and a half ago now, which was the first Monday back from a break week during which we had received this briefing. The question of privilege was raised. There were a number of other interventions, and the Speaker granted in a ruling last night that this did constitute a prima facie case of privilege.

I presume and hope that there is an appreciation here of the seriousness of the events I've just described. What matters is the mechanism, the action and the fact that it was a cyber-attack, but what matters more, I think, is the intention, the objective, of the attack.

This was a pixel reconnaissance attack. What that means is that it's a kind of introductory attack, a reconnaissance attack aimed at gathering initial information, which will then be used subsequently for further attacks. Those further attacks could take the form of attempted surveillance, disruption, identifying things that were involved and perhaps identifying individuals we are corresponding with and putting some pressure on them or applying additional pressure or surveillance to those individuals.

We don't really know what all the follow-up of these initial reconnaissance attacks was. Although the House of Commons has said that the attack was unsuccessful, they can't know that, because it was not only parliamentary accounts that were targeted. In my case, my personal account was targeted, a personal email account that is not publicly available anywhere. I still don't know how APT31 hackers got this information. I was targeted in a personal, private place or context because of my parliamentary work.

The other issue is one that an MP raised in debate on this privilege motion yesterday in the House: the fact that his staff had actually been able to find in their email account that these emails were fake news emails. I'm not making an editorial comment when I say “fake news”. They were actually from someone pretending to be part of a news organization when they were not. This was not in the way that we often see it happening, but in a more uncommon way, where they were identified as.... These fake news articles had pictures in them. Each of those pictures may have had one or two pixels in them that kind of opened up an access point into someone's computer and allowed them to gather more information.

The point I'm making is just that one of the members during debate yesterday pointed out that his staff had been able to find these emails still in his account, which indicated that at least the emails did get through. That raises some questions about whether or not we can be certain that there was an effective protection in the case of parliamentary accounts. In any event, that doesn't apply to personal accounts, and that doesn't change the fact that people were targeted.

This is the context. I hope members appreciate the seriousness, not only because of the nature of the attack but also because of the motivation that informs it, which is to disrupt our parliamentary work. This is why it's not just an unfortunate event but a question of parliamentary privilege, because our constitutional framework recognizes that we have critical jobs to do as members of Parliament, as part of our democracy, and those jobs were interfered with through a foreign actor. In any case where there is some interference with our ability to do our jobs, that constitutes a matter of privilege, and Parliament prioritizes dealing with that, as certainly we have.

That brings us up to where we were last night with the Speaker's ruling and the subsequent debate that occurred, in which many members made the point that it is an attack on our privilege that there was this foreign interference in our democracy happening again, and that, for the second time, the government failed to inform members of the fact that there was a threat to them or an attack on them by a foreign actor.

Members will recall that this committee studied the issue of the threats against Michael Chong's family in detail. What happened in that case was found to be a prima facie breach of privilege by the Speaker. In the context of some of the conversation around that, the government issued a ministerial directive aimed at ensuring that members would more likely be informed of threats against them, but still, in this case, that did not happen.

The events in the context of this hacking happened before the new ministerial directive was put in place, but you would still expect that the ministerial directive would reasonably be interpreted.... I would hope, if there were threats or attacks made against members that are still relevant to their lives today, that in the context of the new directive members would be informed. I think that perhaps one thing that can be looked at in this study is just getting some clarity around the fact that if there were threats the government became aware of that started prior to that new directive and that are still applicable to members of Parliament, in light of that new directive, members should certainly be informed.

It seems to be the case that in spite of some of the statements that were made, there are still these outstanding issues of threats that have been made that may and likely do have ongoing relevance to members, which members have not been informed about. This is the critical issue going into this discussion: what happened, why it happened, what the motivation was and how we respond.

I hope the response is for this committee to put together robust, detailed recommendations about how to ensure this never happens, to ensure that members of Parliament are informed, and to ensure that in general, when people are subject to foreign interference threats, they are informed—that there's not a hiding of information, but rather that the information is given to those who need it and who can then use that information to take steps to protect themselves.

I hope we also see action, by the way, on holding APT31 accountable. One piece is protecting ourselves and addressing the privilege issues here. Another piece is the response to APT31. I believe in and IPAC legislators across the world have called for the sanctioning of individuals affiliated with APT31 and involved in trying to attack our parliamentary institutions through hacking. We obviously should respond to those kinds of actions with strong sanctions. I speculated last night that one of the reasons the government may not have wanted members of Parliament to be aware of what was happening is that informing members of Parliament would likely have led to calls for a strong response, a strong response in particular of holding accountable those who were perpetrating this hacking.

This morning, there was an agreement in Parliament to move this issue quickly to this committee. There was a unanimous decision by the House of Commons to adopt my motion, which was in the context of the privilege question. My motion was that this matter be referred to this committee. Needless to say, that referral by the House on a matter of privilege is a very serious matter.

There are many other issues that this committee could look at that are issues of great importance, naturally, but there is a limited number of matters that have been referred to this committee by the House unanimously, by members of Parliament from all parties, saying that this is a pressing matter relating to the privileges of parliamentarians and we need PROC to provide an answer in terms of what has happened and what we can and should do going forward in response to that.

Recognizing the electoral timeline, the election.... If certain events remain on the trajectory that they are on, we'll have an election next fall. Of course, in a minority parliament, an election can always happen sooner. I would submit to you that, given the importance of this matter, it's important for our democracy that there are some critical issues of foreign interference that need to be addressed and resolved prior to the next election. One of them is the resolution of this matter of members of Parliament facing cyber-attacks and being able to receive the information related to those attacks and protect themselves in the context of those attacks.

This is why Conservatives have moved an amendment to the existing study motion to emphasize that the other study that has been proposed on an important subject matter begin after the completion of this committee's work on foreign interference. I think that respects the mandate this committee has and, actually, that all parliamentary committees have as creations of the House of Commons. When the House of Commons creates parliamentary committees, their primary responsibility is not to envision themselves as a group of independent members of Parliament doing their own thing, so to speak. They shape their own agendas, generally speaking, but the exception is when they're given direction by the House and their primary responsibility is to report to the House on the matters they study.

The foreign interference issue is one that the Speaker has ruled on, that the House as a whole has unanimously pronounced itself on. Therefore, it is an issue on which the committee should prioritize reporting back to the House.

I hope that, as part of this study, the various members, as well as senators, who are affected by this foreign interference issue are given an opportunity to present. Some have not indicated it publicly, but everyone impacted has been informed. We need to hear about the decision to not inform members. The justification that the government has used for not informing members is to say that it passed information along to certain officials within the House of Commons. Its argument is.... Well, I would say that it admits more than it denies. The government admitted that it received this information from the FBI regarding attacks on members and that it chose to not share it with members. It said, to paraphrase the parliamentary secretary, something to the effect that, well, because of the separation of powers between the executive and the legislative, it decided to tell parliamentary officials instead of members of Parliament.

I am not aware of any tradition of legislative-executive power separation that prohibits the executive from informing individual legislators of information that's relevant to them. Of course, the nature of our system is that we have an executive branch and a legislative branch, and those branches talk to each other. It happens every day in question period. It will happen shortly. It happens in the form of informal conversations or cases in which, if the government is working on pieces of legislation, it will inform members of certain things it's working on, certain intentions, etc.

It doesn't follow for me that somehow the separation of powers that should exist includes a prohibition on members of the executive or organs of the executive communicating with individual members of Parliament. I accept and understand, of course, that the mandate of our security agencies has generally been to report to the government, not to report outside of government. However, that makes the point all the more; it should have been a decision of a directive of government to say that this is information critical to our democracy and sharing this information allows members to protect themselves.

I'll just say that very often, when it comes to foreign interference in general, this government wants to hide information, even in cases where sharing information likely is an effective way of combatting that interference. Someone once said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. In the case of foreign interference, sometimes simply knowing that foreign interference is happening, knowing that particular messages and presentations emanate from foreign interference, and just having that information out there helps to reduce the impact of that foreign interference. However, this government looks for every possible excuse to not share information, even if the national interest would actually be more clearly and directly advanced if that information was shared.

I maintain very strongly that the government should have shared this information with us. It was disappointing to hear, during debate last night, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader again double down on basically saying, in spite of the Speaker's ruling, that he didn't think the government did anything wrong. If the parliamentary secretary's position reflects the government, then the government's position as a whole is that the government did not do anything wrong.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Mr. Genuis, I'm sorry—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

That's a big problem, because it was wrong for them to not inform us.

I cede, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

I'm sorry to interrupt you. You'll certainly maintain your spot in the speaking order should you choose to rejoin us at PROC when we convene again.

Colleagues, we are about to be out of resources, so I am going to suspend this meeting. We will gather again when we gather again.

Thank you.

[The meeting was suspended at 1:58 p.m., Thursday, May 9]

[The meeting resumed at 11:01 a.m., Tuesday, May 21]

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Good morning, everybody. I'm going to call our meeting to order here.

Welcome to meeting number 114 of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

I hope everybody had a wonderful constituency week, reconnecting with folks in their communities and hopefully getting some time with family.

We have some new protocols in place. I have just a friendly reminder to please ensure that when your headsets are not in use, you are using the stickers beside you out of respect to the interpreters, who have a very important job to fulfill on our behalf here.

Colleagues, I have just a couple of housekeeping things. We were anticipating potentially some votes in the chamber. We will keep our eye on that. There was a little bit of business moved that may delay that vote. We'll deal with what we have to do once that moment in time is reached.

I will remind colleagues that today we continue our debate on the subamendment that was put forward to an amendment that was put forward in response to a motion from Mrs. Romanado. The speaking list is as follows: Mr. Genuis, Mr. Cooper, Mr. Duncan and Mr. Calkins. However, my understanding, colleagues, is that there is a desire on the part of members from all sides to engage in some conversation about potentially getting us to a productive place in terms of some of the affairs that are before us.

I'm just quickly glancing around the room, looking for some head nods that, indeed, we feel we have reached a point where we can have some good discussions. With that, I am going to suspend to allow for those conversations to take place. Once colleagues feel that we are in a place to resume or I get the sense that it's time for us to resume, we will officially kick off again. Happy conversations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Colleagues, I call this meeting to order.

We first need to deal with unanimous consent, because the bells are ringing. Do I have unanimous consent to continue this meeting until five minutes prior to the vote?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Okay. We will continue.

We are now back to the debate on the subamendment to Ms. Romanado's motion. Mr. Cooper, the floor is yours.

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

I would seek unanimous consent to withdraw the subamendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

I'm looking for unanimous consent for Mr. Cooper to withdraw his subamendment.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.