Mr. Turnbull.
Evidence of meeting #138 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was conservatives.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #138 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was conservatives.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Mr. Turnbull, the floor certainly is yours, but as you very well know, on a point of order I do need you to respect my intervention so that I can hear the honourable colleague.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
Mr. Chair, I just would seek clarification as to whether it would be in order, since we have officials from the Prime Minister's department, the PCO, to ask questions about the NSICOP report, Han Dong's nomination—
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Mr. Cooper, just as I scorned Mr. Turnbull with a little bit of disappointed dad—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
—on not listening to me when I took the floor, I'm going to have to do the same with you, my friend. I have to intervene. This is not—
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
You are wading into debate. I don't see anything out of order about what I've heard.
Mr. Turnbull, the floor is yours.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
Thank you, Chair. I respect your ruling once again.
I think what's also pertinent for Canadians to be aware of is that when Patrick Brown came for his recent committee appearance, he also indicated that the Poilievre leadership campaign had an “incomprehensible” number of memberships. That's the word he used—“incomprehensible”. I thought that was interesting, especially when some of their members had put out tweets of images of these vast numbers of membership forms that they were collecting. I thought that was kind of interesting too.
When you start to look at this picture holistically, you start to connect the dots here. It's deeply concerning to me. As I said, we spent many, many months on this. I have five binders of material on foreign interference that are about as thick as binders could possibly be. I remember sitting through hundreds and hundreds of witnesses.
Mr. Cooper was there. I remember him adamantly going on and on about how sunlight was the best disinfectant, which is interesting. Again, when it comes to the Conservative Party of Canada, is sunlight still the best disinfectant?
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
Great. Well, that's wonderful. I say we study it and call all the witnesses, then. I'm sure Mr. Cooper and his colleagues on the Conservative benches will support this amendment to the motion.
I also wanted to talk about the fact that there's a difference here. When Han Dong's reputation was in question....
Oh, maybe I'll just remind everybody of this, before we run out of time. When you look at Han Dong's nomination contest, I would say that a leadership candidate race is exponentially greater. It's not that any amount at all of foreign interference is acceptable in this country, and I'm not suggesting otherwise, but it's the severity of the impact and the gravity of the situation that Canadians should be deeply concerned about when it comes to the leadership race of the leader of the official opposition.
The fact that instances of foreign interference have now been confirmed in an NSICOP report should be deeply concerning to all Canadians.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Mr. Turnbull, I'll stop you there.
With that, colleagues, we are at one o'clock. Although we do have the possibility of extra resources, I'm not going to seek them.
We're going to suspend the meeting. When we return, just for clarity, so that there's no disagreement about this, Mr. Turnbull will maintain the floor, followed by Ms. Barron and Mr. Duncan.
[The meeting was adjourned at 4:40 p.m., Monday, January 6, 2025. See Minutes of Proceedings]