Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to take the opportunity to address a few of the points that my Conservative colleagues have made. I am going to do so in a respectful manner, and I'm not going to resort to petty insults.
First of all, I raise this point because, given Monday's revelations, I think it is incredibly important for Canada to show a united front, and right now we're at a stage where the only federal party leader who is refusing to get top security clearance is Mr. Poilievre of the Conservatives. This has gotten to a stage now where his continued refusal to get this clearance is raising far more questions than is necessary.
I don't know what his motives are. I know the Conservatives keep on talking about him being gagged. It certainly hasn't prevented our leader, Jagmeet Singh, from talking openly and frankly about this in a way that does not risk top security information. Perhaps, for Mr. Poilievre, ignorance is bliss. Perhaps it allows him to continue talking on Twitter and to Canadians about things he knows absolutely nothing about, and maybe he simply wants to have that freedom to keep on spouting off nonsense and remain in ignorance. I don't know; that's up to him.
He can still refuse to take the clearance. This is simply asking him to do so. He is not even named in the motion. It simply asks that all federal party leaders get the necessary security clearance levels so that we can take the necessary actions to protect Canadians.
I do want to address some of the points that my Conservative colleagues have been making about how this would prevent a party leader from taking action. I completely disagree with that, and here's why. We know that in political parties, the leader wields an enormous amount of power. The leader is able to determine who in caucus has what parliamentary roles. The leader is able to determine who gets to run under the party's banner in the next election. They have to sign the nomination papers. If Mr. Poilievre were to get this security clearance, and if he were to learn of certain individuals within his own party—I'm not singling out the Conservatives, because we've heard allegations about members in the Liberal Party—what it would allow him to do is to take the necessary internal actions to perhaps isolate those individuals and, if it's very serious, to prevent them from running as members of Parliament under the Conservative Party banner in the next election.
He could do all of that without having to breach the top security rules in place that prevent the divulgence of this information. It is false to claim that he can't take action when, in fact, he could. If there's a compromised member of Parliament or someone who goes over the threshold of suspicious activities on behalf of a foreign power, Mr. Poilievre could prevent that individual from running in the next election, and that would inoculate us against having that person in the House of Commons in the 45th Parliament. That is a direct action that the leader could take.
I also take issue with the way the Conservatives are trying to frame the NDP. There are two members of our caucus for whom this issue is deeply personal and who have been directly impacted by this—Jenny Kwan and Jagmeet Singh—so I take great issue with their saying that we are doing this for politics.
This is a serious and personal issue for our party. It has directly impacted the lives of two of our caucus members, and that needs to be underlined. Both China and India have directly impacted two of my fellow caucus members. This is a very serious issue for us, and it is an issue that our leader takes very seriously. That is why he took the appropriate steps to get his security clearance, which allows him to take actions that I may not be privy to, but I can operate knowing that the leader has the information he needs to govern his own caucus accordingly. That's what we're asking every party leader to do within their respective caucuses.
To show the Conservatives that I do support our in some way releasing these names...because the other thing I want to also put on point is that I've had many conversations with members of the security and intelligence community, both at committee and in private conversations. These are their words, not mine: There is a wide gulf between evidence and intelligence. This needs to be underlined. We can't just go about releasing the names without understanding that key point.
I don't want to repeat what Ms. May said, but there is a very real danger that we could compromise the way we got that information. What the Conservatives are essentially asking us to do with their amendment right now is to potentially put our own intelligence operatives at risk. I think, for anyone who sits on this committee, that is completely unacceptable.
Again, these are not my words. These are words coming directly from the intelligence and security community. Conservatives know this, because they have heard those exact same words from those members at this committee table and in conversations they've had in private with those individuals.
Mr. Chair, I am going to propose a subamendment to Mr. Lloyd's amendment to my motion. His amendment was tacked onto the end. It simply said, “that we release the names of all members of Parliament and all parliamentarians who are alleged to have interfered and knowingly colluded with foreign powers.”
My subamendment to this would read as follows: “that the government release the names of all members of Parliament and all parliamentarians who are alleged to have interfered and knowingly colluded with foreign powers while protecting national security and those who gathered the intelligence.”
Jenny Kwan and our leader has said it very much on the record that we would love for the Canadian public to know these names. I hate the fact that I have to serve in the House of Commons with this cloud of suspicion hanging over us. I think Canadians deserve to know. It caused a huge uproar when that NSICOP report was released in June, but we also have to respect the very real concerns that our intelligence community has repeatedly relayed to this committee and its members. I do believe that, if there is a way of publicly releasing these names, it needs to be done in a very careful fashion. It needs to be done in a way that is fully coordinated with our national security and intelligence partners on this file.
I am not going to support just simply releasing the names with no context, but I will support a non-political, professional way of releasing the names that has the full support of members of the RCMP and CSIS. If Conservative members are willing to publicly say that they support the important work of those agencies, I hope they will support this subamendment to their amendment.
I'll conclude there, Mr. Chair.