It is relevant to the motion because it's relevant to the issue of prioritization. That is the heart of the subamendment I put forward to Ms. Mathyssen's amendment.
As I was saying, this government, in this instance, with respect to their failure to inform members of Parliament and to what happened to Mr. Chong.... The response from these Liberals is that they're not responsible, even though they are the government. It's always someone else's fault.
In the case of Mr. Chong, it was asserted that it was CSIS's fault. In fact, the Prime Minister even went so far as to claim he had no idea until he saw it in The Globe and Mail. He first said he learned about it in The Globe and Mail and doubled down on that, saying that CSIS had made a decision not to brief him on it because CSIS deemed it not important enough to bring up to the Prime Minister. That turned out to be false, because it was then revealed that CSIS had provided the warning that MP Chong and his family were being targeted by the Beijing-based Communist regime to the Prime Minister's department, the PCO.
Of course, we later learned that CSIS had sent an earlier IMU, an issues management note, to the Minister of Public Safety, his chief of staff and the deputy minister of public safety, the current Minister of National Defence, Bill Blair. Then the Prime Minister actually tried to blame Michael Chong himself, falsely claiming that Michael Chong had been briefed when he had not been briefed. The briefings Michael Chong received from CSIS were of a general nature.
As far as I know, there has never been an acknowledgement by the Prime Minister or Bill Blair that there was a failure on their part in terms of intelligence warnings from CSIS, which were about as serious as they get and ought to have taken priority. This was supported by the testimony of the director of CSIS, David Vigneault, who said that when CSIS sends an IMU, it's because it is a matter of high importance. They send it because it's a matter they want them to have on their desk. It's something they need to see.
Well, in the case of MP Chong and his family being targeted, I can see why CSIS would have prioritized that—