Oh no. It's been a while since I've done this by Zoom. If I'm too loud for the interpreters, please interrupt me. If I need to adjust that, I'm happy to accommodate them.
I have a lot of notes here and a lot that I would like to talk about, but before I do that, I think I would like to reflect on the comments of my colleague Mr. Fergus, who spoke just before me and has raised a very good point.
Mr. Fergus, towards the conclusion of his speech—and actually at the beginning as well—spoke at length about the need for this type of work to be done in a non-partisan way, and I couldn't agree more. I think that at the heart of this we should all be very concerned about any foreign interference in our democracy. We all should look at ways to further enhance and protect our democracy, very much like this government, in my opinion, has done since 2015.
A number of things have been brought into play, some of which the Conservatives actually voted against. I will get to those in a bit, but I am specifically concerned about the partisanship in this issue.
The first thing that comes to mind is how deeply concerned I am with the comments made by a member of this committee. Mr. Calkins, a member of this committee who is sitting in the room right now, when he was in an airport on his way to this meeting, said in a video as he was talking about what he was coming to Ottawa to do and about going after the Prime Minister, “what the Liberals did about...one of their candidates being an agent for Beijing.” Mr. Calkins said that in a video and posted it on social media. He made that comment about a duly elected member of Parliament. I find that deeply troubling.
I mean, if I were Mr. Dong and I heard that, the first thing I would be doing is contacting a pretty high-profile lawyer to take on this case, because I think there is an incredible opportunity to go after Mr. Calkins for defamation in this regard. I think what we are witnessing coming from the Conservative Party and Mr. Calkins specifically in this regard is the story, in my opinion. That's the story of what's going on here. It's about Conservatives not genuinely caring about how we look at this in a non-partisan way and how we go about ensuring that our democracy is kept safe. Instead, it's about how we can turn this into a “gotcha, Liberal” issue. It's about how we can fundraise and how we can defame duly elected members of Parliament by calling them—and I quote—“an agent for Beijing”.
To the NDP and Bloc members of this committee, I ask you if this is what you want to be going along with. Do you want to be associating yourselves with those comments Mr. Calkins made on his way to this very meeting? I think you have to really stop and think about that, because I am fairly certain that the NDP and the Bloc are genuinely concerned about election interference, as they should be, and as all democracies throughout the world should be.
Going along with the Conservative approach on this issue and the comments by Mr. Calkins I find to be so incredibly troubling. To associate yourselves with them by standing and supporting motions that they bring forward.... I think the NDP and the Bloc either should reconsider their position or should go and talk to their friends in the Conservative Party about allowing comments like that from a sitting member of PROC and letting them stand.
I would really like to hear from Mr. Julian and Madame Gill whether they believe that Han Dong is an agent of Beijing. I'd like to hear from other Conservative members on this committee whether they think he is an agent of Beijing.
I'd like to talk about some of the stuff that this government has done and why I believe that Mr. Turnbull's approach is the right approach in attempting to make this as non-partisan as possible.
One of the things this government did very early on, which the Conservatives were actually against, was to introduce Bill C-76. Bill C-76 repealed a number of the initiatives brought forward in the so-called Fair Elections Act, which was introduced by no less than the member for Carleton, now the leader of the official opposition now. Another thing Bill C-76 did was to give and enhance the tools to combat foreign interference in elections. Conservatives voted against that. Conservatives voted against Bill C-76 despite the fact that they are using an opportunity now to grandstand on the issue.
I think it's important to look at what people are saying now versus how they were voting in the past and what actions they actually took. These Conservative members who are sitting on the committee weren't interested in putting resources into combatting foreign interference when it came to Bill C-76 in 2018; they actually voted against it.
The other thing this government put in place, which has been talked about a number of times—it was in place for the 2019 election and for the 2021 election—was the work to put in the critical election incident public protocol. This is a special committee of non-partisan experts, experts in the field of foreign interference, experts who come from our departments, public servants. They get together during the writ period and make sure they are ready to respond and have the authority to respond if any election interference is identified. They're also required to share that information with relevant parties when required. It's a tool that has been utilized in two elections, as I mentioned. Then, based on the information, reports are generated by a third party afterward. One of those reports regarding the 2021 election was tabled just yesterday. Those reports, both in 2019 and in 2021, indicated that the elections occurred in a transparent way and that there was no foreign interference, despite the fact that Mr. Calkins refers to the member for Don Valley North as an agent of Beijing. I think that's a very important tool. It's a tool that gives us the ability to have confidence in our democratic process and allows us to ensure there is accountability by non-partisan individuals and that a report can be generated after the fact, which we've seen.
The other thing, of course, that we have in place is NSICOP. I don't need to spell it out for you, because everybody on this committee knows what that committee is or what the acronym stands for. It is a committee made up of parliamentarians who have access to their heart's content to unredacted documents about these issues, what they need to look at, with the understanding that they have the classifications required to view these documents. The Conservatives have members on that committee when they decide to show up. Let's not forget that Conservatives used NSICOP as another political opportunity.
A number of times, Conservatives used NSICOP as an opportunity to politicize once again whatever their objective of the day was or whatever they were looking to fundraise off. The Conservatives did that.
The reality is that NSICOP is there for a reason. It's there to ensure that the members who are on that committee and have been appointed by the respective parties have access to that information. They have the ability to look at those completely unredacted documents.
Mr. Cooper, Mr. Calkins and the other Conservatives on PROC want to have a public inquiry. As we heard today from Jody Thomas, the national security and intelligence advisor for the PCO, a public inquiry isn't going to be able to have any more access to classified information than this committee. We know that.
It sounds good: “Public inquiry” sounds really good. I can understand why Mr. Julian and the Bloc would be tempted into wanting to do that, because it's sensational, but it's not going to do anything that this committee can't already do. We heard that from the experts. They are those who are in control of that very important and sensitive information.
What she said today at this committee is that the best place for that information was in NSICOP. What's going to happen? I can already tell you what's going to happen. We're going to have a public inquiry, or this committee will look into this stuff, and Mr. Cooper and Mr. Calkins will be throwing their hands up in the air and screaming bloody murder because there are redactions on the documents. Mr. Poilievre will walk out into a press conference and hold up and wave a bunch of papers that have blacked-out information and say, “Oh, look, they're hiding all this information from us.”
That's how you make it partisan. It's by doing things like that, and that's what you will do. That's what they will do, Madam Chair, if we get to the point of allowing this circus that Mr. Calkins and Mr. Cooper want to have. Quite frankly, that's where we're going.
It raises a question: Do we really want to get to the bottom of this so that we can protect our democracy and do it in a way that respects the classification of documents?
Why are these documents classified? It's because we don't want those foreign agents to know what's in them. That's why they're protected. That would never deter the opposition from taking an opportunity to exploit redacted papers with redacted information in them, saying someone's trying to hide something.
Mr. Cooper said it himself on a CBC panel just two nights ago. He said, “The Liberals will redact the documents. We don't trust them with them.” He knows full well the documents are not redacted by the Liberals. He makes it sound like it's happening in a political party's headquarters, with people sitting there redacting documents, but he knows full well the way that it really happens. It's done by the law clerk. That's not to say that they wouldn't jump on the opportunity to politicize the clerk's office either, from time to time, as we've seen, and those institutions that we hold to give us that information, because they've done that in the past.
If it's not about playing a political game and it's genuinely about protecting our democracy, why won't we listen to the experts who came to the committee today? They are the people who are in control of holding this information, I might add. Why wouldn't we listen to them when they say, “You discuss this stuff in public. We won't be able to give you all the information, because of the nature of it”? They're literally guarding our.... They're the ones who seem to want to protect our democracy more than Conservatives right now, so why on earth would we not listen to them? I mean, the NDP has representatives on NSICOP. Conservatives have representatives on NSICOP.
Madam Chair, I think I will leave it there for now, although I do have a lot more to add. I have a lot more notes here. Maybe I will get back on the list later.
I would really like to hear at some point soon, hopefully, comments from Mr. Julian and Madame Gill about whether or not they agree with Mr. Calkins that Mr. Han Dong, a duly elected MP for Don Valley North, is indeed an agent of Beijing. I would like to hear their comments on that.