Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
What we're seeing this morning is part of what we have seen for the past year and a half on this committee. It is obstruction by the Liberals to thwart the ability of this committee to get to the bottom of the failures of this Liberal government with respect to foreign interference, which has attacked our democracy and our elections, and has targeted our colleagues—whether it be Mr. Chong or the 18 members we now know were the subject of a cyber-attack.
What we see from these Liberals is that they say they're very concerned about this. They even went along with giving unanimous consent to send this over to the procedure and House affairs committee.
All I wanted to do this morning was, in light of that, to have this committee get to work and schedule hearings. What did the Liberals, with the NDP, do when they had an opportunity to do that? Suddenly it's not a priority. Suddenly it's all about them again. They want to make it a priority about them, not about the failure that occurred or the breach of the privileges of other colleagues.
I want to see that there is accountability, because there needs to be accountability. We need to know who was aware of the information that was provided by the FBI to the Communications Security Establishment, and why those members, following that information being provided, were kept in the dark. We need to know why it took a foreign government, an unsealed indictment from the U.S. justice department, and a report in The Globe and Mail for this to come to light.
The Prime Minister famously said that “Sunshine is the best disinfectant”. When it comes to Beijing's interference in our democracy and in our sovereignty, the Prime Minister's record has been anything but transparent. Canadians deserve better, and frankly our colleagues—all of us—deserve better insofar as this could happen to any one of us. For all we know, one or more of us has been the subject of these types of attacks and was kept in the dark. In order to address that broader concern, we need to get to the bottom of what happened in this particular instance involving these 18 MPs.
I will have more to say, Mr. Chair. I'd ask to be put at the bottom of the list. However, I will leave it at that for now as I look forward to the comments of my other colleagues.