Thank you, Madam Chair.
I listened intently to the interventions that have been made by my colleagues here at the table. I'll kindly remind my friend in the NDP, Mr. Julian, who was here when some of the quotes that he just read into the record were put forward, that his former colleague Mr. Siksay moved numerous motions to invite staff to appear before various parliamentary committees. Some of those staff remain here on the Hill today.
I'm not going to get into the hypocrisy of the notion that's before us, but there is one staff member in this motion, Katie Telford, who is the chief of staff to the Prime Minister. There is no minister to whom she is accountable, other than the Prime Minister, who we have not asked to come before this committee in terms of ministerial accountability.
We did not invite any of the other ministers' staff. We invited the ministers directly, Madam Chair.
To compare inviting staff like Dimitri Soudas and others, who were not chiefs of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the previous administration, to inviting Katie Telford is comparing apples to oranges. It's simply not relevant. It's not a relevant comparison to make.
As a matter of fact, the NDP members were so insistent on calling certain staff members forward during the Harper administration that they brought it to Speaker Milliken for a ruling in the House of Commons. They argued that not being able to call staff before a committee was an infringement upon the privileges of parliamentarians.
How convenient for the NDP, now that it is in an agreement-supplying confidence motion literally supporting the government of the day, when the government's under question and under scrutiny from members of the media, when there are leaked documents calling into question the credibility of the government and today, when it comes to handling the foreign interference.
This committee's job, however, is to find out just how in depth the involvement of foreign state actors, and all foreign actors for that matter, is in the electoral process. This is something that's becoming, obviously, a relatively new phenomenon. We didn't hear much about this in the previous administration. I'm not saying it wasn't there. We certainly didn't hear about it the way we're hearing about it now.
The media interest that is generated in this, the fact that there are leaked documents and the fact that there's a Prime Minister who is seemingly more concerned about the fact that these documents are being leaked than what they actually contain.... I think that a Prime Minister who had the best interests of Canada at heart instead of his own best interests at heart would be taking these leaked documents at face value.
For us, as Conservatives, we simply want to know where things went wrong. Yes, we know some of our colleagues were affected. We know that money has flowed from the Communist Party in China through operatives here in Canada to various political actors. These are disturbing things.
These are things that all Canadians ought to be concerned about, because moving the needle in even just a few ridings—as has been mentioned by witnesses who have appeared before this committee before—undermines the integrity and the validity of the institutions that oversee our electoral process.
I'm not calling into question the general results of the last two elections. I don't think anybody here is making that assumption. However, it is certainly evident that a few ridings have been affected. It is completely reasonable for members of this committee to find out just how much a foreign state actor can move a needle, particularly in ridings that have large diasporas, wherever those foreign state actors might be coming from that those diasporas could influence an electoral outcome in a particular riding.
I will remind my colleagues around this table that sometimes elections are very close. Sometimes the difference between a majority government and a minority government is fewer than 10 ridings. There are already 11 that were called into question in the Toronto area alone in one of the past two elections.
The article by Chase and Fife and the leaked memo that Sam Cooper put out a little while ago make it very clear that somewhere along the line, although the Prime Minister and the ministers who have testified before this committee have said that they didn't know anything about these kinds of details.... The leaked memo appears to have gone all the way to Michael Wernick, and it would have gotten there only by going through.... As a matter of fact, the article itself says that Katie Telford personally asked for these documents, asked for these reviews, which means it is only reasonable that we would hear from her to ask her some very pointed questions, and she could point this committee to what could possibly be wrong with the state of the laws in this country.
The professionals from our security establishments who have testified here have said that there are insufficiencies in the current legislative framework. Why wouldn't we have that conversation? Why wouldn't we ask questions of the people and the actors who are directly involved? What advice could they possibly give us so that we could actually do our job as members of Parliament and make meaningful recommendations at this committee, so that we could protect our institutions? If we don't get this right, a problem that seems to be growing and getting worse as it goes along will only continue to get worse and will embolden foreign state actors to continue to interfere in our democratic process. This is very alarming, Madam Chair.
I will just go to the last line in the Global News story. It states:
One official who was not authorized to speak publicly called it “inexcusable” that Trudeau's office has yet to move forward with new laws despite years of “interactive” dialogue with senior intelligence officials regarding China's incursions into Canadian elections.
“The floodgates have been opened in the last five years. There has been ample evidence placed in front of the Liberal Party of Canada, and they have done essentially nothing.”
If the government is not going to do anything, then why doesn't this committee do its job? Why doesn't this committee have a fulsome, open debate to the extent it can and make reasonable recommendations to the government of the day? If it continues to ignore this issue, as is being alleged not by Conservatives but by Global News, Fife and Chase, and Sam Cooper.... These are the people who are making these observations. Just because Conservatives bring them to committee and take these matters seriously, that is not a reason to castigate or chastise or assume political motivation. I would assume that everybody who sits around this table is a patriotic Canadian and wants to see the best thing done for our country, so let's get to the bottom of it and let's invite the people.
Our motion, which my colleague Mr. Cooper has put forward, is reasonable. It brings back to the table people we haven't heard from or people we have heard from previously but haven't heard from since new revelations have been made public, which is a justifiable reason to invite back ministers who have already been here. It's also a justifiable reason to invite people who are former ministers with the same responsibility, to invite national security advisers, both past and present, and to invite the chief of staff for the Prime Minister, who has been here supporting and advising the Prime Minister since he became the Prime Minister.
Canadians deserve to know what their government did or didn't do or is or isn't doing. Members of Parliament certainly should have the right to know whether or not the government is holding up its end of the bargain and whether its actions actually match its words, because, from where I'm sitting, Madam Chair, there are only two possible rationales: the government knows—even though it won't expressly admit what it knows—the level of severity of the interference in our democratic systems, and has chosen not to do anything, or, even worse, Madam Chair, the government knows and has made a calculated decision that it is in its net best interests to ignore the problem for political gain.
That is a very serious thing, Madam Chair, and it's something that Canadians ought to know. The only way we'll find that out is if we do not amend this motion and if we actually summon the people who are there so that we can get to the bottom of why, for the last two elections in Canada, foreign interference has continued to grow.
If we don't do the right thing, if we don't make the recommendations to the government before the next federal election, then one can only assume that these foreign state actors will be even more emboldened and will continue to expand their network of influence and undermine our democratic institutions.
Thank you, Madam Chair.