Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'd like to thank my colleague for bringing forward this motion today. I listened intently while he read the motion and explained the rationale for bringing it forward.
One of the concerns I have is that the focus is not on foreign interference. The focus is on the Prime Minister.
I'm very concerned about foreign interference in elections. The purpose of this study is whether, in fact, we have the proper mechanisms in place in terms of protocol and oversight, and in terms of what happened in the 2019 election and the 2021 election, and perhaps even in previous elections. Part of this motion doesn't refer to any of that.
With respect to the production of documents that was referred to, we just heard Ms. Jody Thomas, who was previously the deputy minister of national defence and is now the national security and intelligence adviser, explain very clearly that as guardians of “protected information”, obviously, the members of PROC do not have the security clearance to be able to see the documents that are classified as top secret. NSICOP, which has the necessary clearance, would be the appropriate place for parliamentarians to review documents in a non-redacted way.
When my colleague mentions blank pages, it's obvious he knows full well that none of us has the security clearance necessary to see unredacted documents of top secret clearance, and that releasing documents of top secret clearance would have major ramifications. While I understand where the member opposite is coming from, there are legislative prohibitions to releasing top secret documents. We have a mechanism in place to look at that, which is NSICOP.
We've just received a report from Mr. Rosenberg, the “Report on the assessment of the 2021 Critical Election Incident Public Protocol”, which has some recommendations in it that would be very worthwhile for this committee to dig into. That is something that I look forward to hearing more about.
With respect to this motion, quite frankly, it doesn't achieve what I thought PROC was looking for in understanding foreign interference and making sure that we have the tools in place. Are the tools in place robust enough to prevent this? There are questions still to be answered.
While I highly respect my colleague across the way, I think that this motion brings us away from the task at hand, which is to look at foreign interference in elections versus a focus on the Prime Minister. If that's his intent, that's his intent. My intent here is to look at foreign interference in elections to make sure that they are as robust as possible, and to make sure that the tools are in place so that we can protect our democracy.
Thank you.