Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak on this.
I want to cover a few areas mentioned by some of the previous speakers. First, I want to read something into the record:
Canada's system of government allows Canadians to elect their representatives and for all members of Canadian society to engage in free and open debate about the direction of the country. However, this system and the sovereignty of Canadian decision-making is under direct threat from interference activities of foreign states and their proxies.
The threat faced by Canada's governance and decision-making institutions is not only a federal problem. Elected and public officials across all orders of government are targeted.... Foreign interference operations target the electoral process at all stages.... Once holding public office, elected and appointed officials, their staff, and employees of the legislative assemblies can also be targeted by foreign states. At the federal level, this includes all three major political parties.
Foreign states will seek to influence deliberations and decision-making, and to curb initiatives deemed contrary to their interests.... In other cases, foreign states may seek to interfere with policy actions by attempting to discredit or attack senior public officials.
Madam Chair, do you want to know what I'm reading from? This is the NSICOP 2019 annual report, tabled in the House in March 2020.
I can go on and read other excerpts. They talk about foreign interference targeting elections, targeting officials and targeting staff, the seriousness of it and the way foreign state actors use this as a way to discredit democratic institutions.
Why I raise this and what's so interesting about this is that this was tabled, as I said, in March 2020, yet the Conservatives sit here today and say they're just waking up to the issue of foreign interference. This was tabled nearly three years ago, and the Conservatives are saying that it's only since recent media reports that they feel that any of this information has come to light.
Foreign interference is persistent. It's serious. It did not just start in 2015. It did not just start after the 2021 election, as Conservatives would like you to believe. That NSICOP report I was reading from.... Interestingly enough, Mr. Chiu won the 2019 election, when foreign interference by the PRC was very active as well. Mr. Chiu also lost in 2015. The Conservatives seem to be very selective about when they care about foreign interference, and that is after they felt an election was lost.
They talk about transparency. Meanwhile, there are the facts of foreign interference hiding in plain sight of the Conservatives. The information that has been reported in the media is extremely serious, but it's something that has never been denied by the fact that these reports have been tabled in the House of Commons.
This is, sadly, not new information. The only thing that's new is that the Conservatives I guess are not happy with the other business that PROC is doing and they simply want to talk only about this because they have one candidate in particular who they feel has been affected by this. However, foreign interference isn't about one candidate or 11 candidates. It's about Canadian institutions, and this is the same Trump-type tactic, to question election results moving forward.
What I'm curious about is where the Conservatives were after 2019. Where were they in 2020 and 2021? They are raising it only now, in 2023.
This information has been tabled time and time again. Making sure our institutions are strong is something that all Canadians should be united about and non-partisan about, but it seems to be topical only when the Conservatives feel it is to their political benefit.
I can't remember now which Conservative asked why, during the election, the Prime Minister didn't say this was happening. This is precisely why the critical election task force was created. Do you really want the issue of foreign interference to be a decision of a partisan member? I know that, as a candidate in 2015, I would not have trusted Mr. Harper to come forward to talk about foreign interference. Oh, wait, he didn't talk about foreign interference, even though this is not a new phenomenon.
This is a phenomenon that we're seeing in several countries. In fact, if you continue to read the NSICOP 2019 annual report, you'll read excerpts from New Zealand about the issue of foreign interference, so while the Conservatives want to blame everything on Justin Trudeau, the fact remains that we have an opportunity to uphold our democracy, uphold our democratic institutions, but it's not going to be done because the Conservatives want to look at documents in a non-secure manner, which is, frankly, absolutely reckless. While the Conservatives want to look at these documents, I'm sure the People's Republic of China would also love to get their hands on secret or top-secret CSIS documents, but the Conservatives just want to continue this in a way that's unhelpful, in a way that doesn't actually strengthen our institutions.
I've spoken before about several of the things that we as a government have done to strengthen democratic institutions, things like having election security, creating the critical election incident public protocol, tightening fundraising loopholes, cracking down on advertising that had been really unchecked and on the integrity of the voters list to make sure those registering to be on the voters list are actually Canadians.
What is interesting is that the Conservatives continuously voted against all of those measures. The Conservatives then say, “If foreign interference is so serious, how come no one is doing anything about it? How come the Liberals aren't doing anything about it?” Meanwhile, I just outlined several different measures we have taken.
In addition to that, the Prime Minister, in the December 2021 mandate letter to the minister of democratic institutions, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Infrastructure and Communities, specifically asked that he: Continue to lead an integrated government response to protect Canada's democratic institutions, including the federal electoral process, against foreign interference and disinformation, working with domestic and international partners. You will also lead efforts to consider the interplay between technology and democracy.
Once again, it's the Conservatives who are just waking up to this issue.
Now, are there ways that we can improve? As has clearly been noted in the minister's mandate letter, there are things we still need to do on this file. That is important work for PROC. It is important work for all parliamentarians. In fact, I would welcome some of those recommendations. I'm sure the minister would as well. We started to talk with some witnesses about a foreign registry. What are the other ideas? The suggestion that nothing has been done, that we've never spoken about foreign interference, that we deny it exists for some partisan benefit is ludicrous.
You don't even have to believe me. All you have to do is look at the record. Look at what was tabled in the House before the 2021 election. Look at the minister's mandate letter. We have been talking about foreign interference and the fact that it's a very real threat, and we put in place measures, as I said.
Some can say that it's not enough, or the threat has changed, or it's more pervasive in one way or another. I think that anybody in this space realistically will recognize that foreign interference—even the threat from media disinformation—will continuously change, so I think no government will be able to say, “We did everything we needed to do and everything is secure and we never have to look at it again.” I think that would be naive.
I've sat through this study, and I think many members on this committee have been genuinely trying to get information on the record from witnesses about how we can make improvements in securing our electoral institutions and making sure they remain free and fair, but that's not what this motion talks about. This motion is, once again, a fishing expedition by Conservatives. They weren't successful previously, and that's the irony. They said that we need these people to come and appear.
Well, you had Minister LeBlanc and Minister Joly. You've had CSIS. You've had SITE committee reps. You've even had Mr. Judd, who actually oversees and reviews the critical election process to say whether it is working or not.
Again, some could say there need to be improvements. These are relatively new measures being put in place to monitor foreign interference and how best to handle it in a non-partisan way, so I get that there could be suggestions to make improvements to those mechanisms or those policies. We've heard in terms of the election that the parties have had access to that critical election committee or the SITE committee with top security clearance to allow them this information. Maybe we can make improvements to that, I don't know, but that's not what the Conservatives have been pulling out of witnesses.
By recalling witnesses, we can.... If that's what this committee is going to do, I would love to have a report at the end of all this that says, “Here are some key areas to continue to strengthen democratic institutions. Here is what you need to do. Here are some things the government should seriously consider.” But that's not what we hear.
Time and time again, it's this partisan hack-type stuff being thrown around, that the Prime Minister has closed his eyes. No, he has not. If he had closed his eyes to foreign interference, it wouldn't be in mandate letters. If he had closed his eyes to foreign interference, he wouldn't have spoken about it in the House. If there had been some way to hide this and shove it under the table, you wouldn't see reports tabled in the House.
It's just an issue of the Conservatives actually not really paying much attention to it until they felt that maybe it would benefit them in some way. I think it's dangerous for Canadians to go down this road because, as I said, we've seen our neighbours to the south and what happens when you start demonizing democratic institutions and when you start undermining their legitimacy.
I think what we should also talk about is that if you want to refer to Mr. Fife's recent article, one of the areas that I noticed Mr. Cooper didn't read out was that in his article he also said this:
CSIS Director David Vigneault told Mr. Trudeau that there was no indication that China’s interference efforts had helped elect any of them, despite the consulate’s attempts to promote the campaigns on social media and in Chinese-language media outlets.
The question that is concerning for me is this: Do the Conservatives trust the boasting of a PRC representative, or do they trust the CSIS director? I know whom I trust. I don't think representatives from PRC have Canadians' interests in mind. I don't think they sit around and talk about election outcomes because they believe in holding up Canadians' democratic institutions. They want to rip our institutions apart.
Whom I believe and whom I trust is the non-partisan national security community, who sat before this committee time and time again saying that Canadians determined the 2021 election and Canadians determined the 2019 election. That doesn't mean there isn't a pervasive threat. It means we'd better get to work and deal with how we strengthen democracy.
If we want to hold more meetings to discuss that, I'm all ears, but if we're holding meetings to take partisan jabs at the Prime Minister, I think all we're doing is undermining our democratic institutions. We're doing China's bidding by saying we believe the PRC representatives and their bragging over our CSIS director and over our national security community when they said that although foreign interference exists and is persistent, Canadians decided the election.
I can go on and on, but I know there are other speakers and I don't want to take up all the time. However, the point remains. I hope we get to a place where we can continue this study but do so with a mindset that we all agree that foreign interference happens, that it has been happening continuously, that it's not new to our government, that it's not new to Canada and is around the world, and that if we're going to come together, as Canadians would expect, we are doing so moving forward on recommendations on how to strengthen some of these institutions. How can we make some of the measures we put in place stronger? How do we add additional measures?
What I noticed in the Conservative motion was that there wasn't a request for how other governments around the world are handling this. There wasn't a request for democratic institution experts on how to strengthen our institutions. There wasn't a request for electoral lessons learned from France, which had serious issues. We all remember Russia's foreign interference in the U.S. How come we're not hearing from experts on how they strengthened and moved forward with recommendations?
Why? It's because Conservatives don't care about strengthening democratic institutions. They see this as a partisan issue. They are reckless with national security. You can see it in black and white in their motion, asking for unredacted top-secret documents in a public forum.
If we want to talk—and, as I said, call in some of those witnesses—about how other places are handling this and how Canadians can build strength and build trust in our institutions, I am all for it. However, if this is just going to be some political hatchet job of personal attacks and not actually doing the work that Canadians expect, I think Canadians are going to see through that.
I agree with the Conservatives on one thing. Canadians are not idiots, and they are going to see who is working to uphold institutions and who is looking to work like the American-style politics of building mistrust in our democratic institutions for their own political reasons.
I'll leave it there, Madam Chair. I look forward to finding a way we can continue this study, but a way that delivers some concrete recommendations on how to strengthen and how the government can move forward on strengthening.