Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the perspective from Mr. Motz, given his experience on NSICOP for a time, so it is good to have on the public safety and national security committee an individual who does have a security clearance, and I appreciate his expertise in that regard. I may be wrong and there may be others on this committee who have that security clearance, but not to my knowledge.
Thank you, Mr. Motz, for your expert feedback in that regard.
Mr. Chair, I want to go on a bit more about what we've learned recently. I do feel that this is a concern. The motion that we passed—and just to review, we passed it collectively and unanimously as a committee—said that we would have about six meetings and that we'd have the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Public Safety, the RCMP commissioner and the national security intelligence adviser. We'd have other experts.
There was a little bit of politicking in there from the NDP, but there were certainly a lot of good experts there. We all unanimously agreed, I believe, to have the CSIS director, the deputy minister of public safety, the deputy minister of Global Affairs Canada and other subject matter experts.
If we had a few of those individuals here today, we could ask them, for example, why it was that it was not revealed to Canadians and it was not in the U.S. indictment. It was not in the public domain that other Canadians were allegedly targeted by the Indian government, or through the Indian government through various criminal entities, and that there was an individual in Winnipeg who was killed.
In fact, I remember that because it was two days after the Prime Minister stood in the House and made quite a bombshell statement about the Indian government's alleged connections to the killing of Mr. Nijjar. Two days later, another member of the Sikh community was murdered or killed in Winnipeg, and it's been connected now, allegedly leaked from Canadian security officials to The Washington Post, that the individual was identified to them but not to Canadians as Mr. Gill.
I do find it odd that we're having to, again, learn from American news outlets things that security officials refuse to tell Canadians. Of course, the Liberal government is the head of government and has been for nine years. It's interesting to see the situation they've created. We've heard the Prime Minister repeatedly talk about leaks and how, when the information first leaked to CSIS about Chinese election interference in various recent elections, the Prime Minister was more focused on the leaks than anything else.
When it comes to a number of issues about this issue and others, whether he's on the public inquiry with Justice Hogue or not, he often says that he can't speak about it because of national security, yet we have his own officials who seem to have leaked information to The Washington Post that was not made clear or not made public to the Canadian public.
We certainly have a situation where the Sikh community, in particular, has been...I would imagine and what we've heard from my quite notable colleagues in the Sikh community.... I represent a number of Sikhs, and I've heard from them that this is very unsettling for them.
I do feel that we have the obligation to ensure that we're doing our due diligence in this regard. There are a number of holes to fill. A lot of this doesn't seem to make sense in a timeline. It doesn't seem to add up. We're trying to piece together things that were allegedly leaked to The Washington Post that apparently Canadians aren't entitled to know but a Washington Post journalist is. That may speak to a realm of secrecy and of revealing intelligence when it suits the Prime Minister.
I would like to know why this information was leaked. Did the Prime Ministerknow? Did he authorize it? Was it part of some sort of campaign to get the American officials on board? I would imagine that a lot of American presidential staffers, congressmen and women, senators and others read The Washington Post. Was there some sort of strategy in that regard? Did we need the Americans to come out and help us because we're not able to stand up for ourselves after nine years of the Prime Minister and his lack of strength on foreign interference? Why is it that they knew and we didn't know?
We could be asking officials that today.
If the RCMP commissioner was here—we have invited him—I would ask him why he never acknowledged that, as an example, “Mr. Gill's killing”—I'm just going to read part of The Globe and Mail's reporting—“in Winnipeg was connected to India nor did the RCMP reveal other sensitive information reported by The Post.”
We've also invited Ms. Drouin, who's the national security adviser, and Mr. Morris, whom I believe.... Actually, do we have him on the list? Perhaps we should add him.
They denied any classified information was shared. However, as The Globe and Mail points out—I'll just quote it, actually, because it's better that way—“The U.S. indictment identified the killing of Mr. Nijjar, but never mentioned the names of two other Canadians targeted for assassination, including Mr. Gill from Winnipeg.” It quotes a former senior executive at CSIS, Dan Stanton, who said that the information about Mr. Gill's killing would have been considered classified as would the intelligence links to Mr. Shah since it wasn't in the public domain until reported by The Washington Post.
It's interesting. Everyone was focused on Thanksgiving with their families on Monday. I reviewed what the Prime Minister shared, what the RCMP shared and what Minister Joly and the Minister of Public Safety shared. They shared a bit, but we certainly should have all just gone and read The Washington Post article for real answers.
I mentioned earlier that this isn't the first time we've had to turn to American media to get answers about what Canadian security intelligence knows, yet we have a Prime Minister who goes to the public inquiry and releases classified information as he sees fit. I find it very interesting, Mr. Chair, that it's being weaponized on one side and then used as a shield on the other when they don't want to talk about things that perhaps aren't helpful to them.
Again, what sort of confidence are we supposed to have in the government when, after nine years, we have multiple foreign governments interfering in our democratic processes and our institutions? We have alleged murders, in fact, by foreign governments in Canada. That's after nine years of Liberals running the show. We have a situation now where they don't feel Canadians are entitled to information, but Washington Post journalists are.
We could be getting to the bottom of this today. I would really appreciate the opportunity to question the RCMP commissioner, the CSIS director and others, but instead, we have a situation where a motion has been put forward by the NDP, and this is something they knew we would not be able to support. We've made our position very clear. We do not feel that we will be able to fulfill our opposition duties to hold the government accountable if our leader is silenced.
I know Ms. May is with us. Perhaps she can chime in on this. I'm sure she will. I remember her press conference. I believe it was the one in the spring when she was talking about how she read the unredacted version of the NSICOP report.
Ms. May, I apologize. I'm just going to paraphrase what you said. From memory, you didn't have any worries about anyone in Parliament. You were very confident about that. That was my take-away from what you shared. However, you also mentioned that you had to check with the RCMP on what you wanted to say, and I'm sure you did, because you had classified information.
Imagine a world now where any time our leader wanted to speak, question others, speak to media or whatever it might be to fulfill his duty—he's brought this up in question period a number of times over the last year and a half or two years—he'd have to check with the RCMP to see exactly what words and sentences he would be allowed to share. I feel that would put him in quite in a difficult position, so we won't be able to support this. We've made our position very clear on that.
We'll continue to talk about this, but perhaps my words have moved the NDP, so I'd like to check in again. I move to adjourn the debate on this motion, and I'd like a recorded vote.
(Motion negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)