Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity to speak to this amendment to Mr. Julian's motion.
Let me say first that I am still undecided about the main motion. I think it has some merits. It is indeed important to understand that foreign interference is not limited to a single country, as the witnesses who appeared yesterday and today have told us. Three or four countries in particular were mentioned. When we asked them to indicate the number of countries interfering in Canada, the witnesses were not prepared to limit it to four countries. So this is a strong feature of Mr. Julian's proposal.
His motion also has certain weaknesses, however. One of them is that a national public inquiry would be subject to the same limitations we are facing today. The issue is what kind of information can be disclosed to the general public without jeopardizing our ties with our allies' intelligence services, without jeopardizing the methods our services use to counter interference by other countries, and without risking the very lives of our agents in the field.
So the motion includes some important features which we can perhaps agree on. We have to find a non-partisan way to investigate this important matter, and I congratulate my colleague in that regard once again. Unfortunately, the MPs from a particular party have not yet shown that they are able to resist the temptation to engage in partisanship. I come to this sad conclusion because this amendment is intended to greatly reduce the scope of Mr. Julian's motion, without taking into account the evidence we have heard. As I said at the outset, this is regrettable.
As to Mr. Cooper's proposal, he is playing political games and targeting Ms. Telford in particular. In my opinion, that does not help matters at all.
Further, it is limited to two elections, when we know very well that this has been going on for longer that those two elections, as the evidence has shown.
Finally, based on what I have seen in more than the past 24 hours that we have been in committee and discussing these matters, I am afraid that the official opposition would exercise a veto in the selection of the person chairing the commission of inquiry. Perhaps the opposition MPs will prove me wrong, and I would be pleased if they do.
So I will definitely vote against your amendment because, for the reasons I have just mentioned, it would completely change the main motion.
I look forward to hearing what my colleagues have to say about the main motion. Perhaps they will make proposals that would improve the main motion.
I will stop here.