I would hope that he would continue to debate that when he gets the floor.
I would let Mr. Lloyd know that when Mr. Poilievre was at university he was involved in the Reform Party, which I did reference clearly, and for Mr. Harper in 1989, you may want to reference how old he was in 1989 and confirm—when you do have the floor, Mr. Lloyd—his role in targeting the Sikh community by bringing this motion forward. That's a question I ask you to note and to clearly take responsibility for now, for Mr. Harper's actions and Mr. Poilievre's silence on this issue. I'm waiting for an apology, as a member of the Sikh community, as a Canadian, from Mr. Harper and leaders of the Conservative Party.
I could move forward if they gave a sincere apology to Mr. Dhillon and to members of the Sikh community for their actions of that day. He may have been misinformed. He was misinformed. He may have been misguided, but a politically motivated attack to win a few extra votes at the expense of targeting Sikh community members and, in 2015, targeting Muslim community members...? That's something we need to continue to think about as we move forward.
Now, how does that tie into anti-Sikh hate? Well, I talked about the 40 years since 1984. I've talked about incidents, particular incidents over the years, that contribute to hate towards community members, but continued misinformation and disinformation campaigns, as this committee has been studying, target—influence—Canadians across this country. That also brings out the bots, the global bots from various nations.
I don't know if they're real or not, but those bots are real because they flood our social media accounts with misinformation and disinformation in calling people terrorists, calling people hate-mongers and calling people lots of things that are very inappropriate, but that's a tactic that's used. That is a tactic that's been identified, I believe, in this study of Russian disinformation. It might be a tactic used in the study that we're studying right now. Now, I'm not pointing fingers to any...with the government, members of the Government of India, I don't know, but we do need to study this to see what's actually happening.
I had the opportunity over a number of years to travel to India and I did not see.... In my travels, I saw peace and harmony amongst members of our community when I travelled to India. People treated me with lots of kindness, love and respect as I went to the Akshardham in Delhi, a beautiful place. If you have not gone, it's a place you may want to visit in the heart of Delhi.
I'm proud that members of my community here recommended that I go there to see and to get insights on the history and to learn more about the Hindu religion. I spent a number of hours and had a lovely meal with community members there. I went to the Jama Masjid in New Delhi, a very special place in the heart of Delhi, with beautiful views over the skylines of New Delhi and many worshippers coming to see a historic site of hundreds of years in the city of Delhi, in the old city of Delhi, and to see worshippers from the Muslim community come and worship, and, of course, as a member of the Sikh community, I went to the Golden Temple.
When I went to the Golden Temple, members of the community raised concerns with me, legitimate concerns of making sure that I do my duty in Canada as a parliamentarian to bring forward important issues that affect the Sikh faith, and not just the Sikh faith, but all faiths, concerns of having the ability to practise the religion, the language that's so important to protect—their faith and religion—in countries abroad without fear. That's something I heard, whether I was at the Hindu mandir, the Akshardham in New Delhi or the masjid in Delhi, or whether I was at the Golden Temple, the Harmandir Sahib.
When I was there, I saw remnants of the targeted attack on the Golden Temple. That brought forward some memories for me, because, as a child, I did go in the early 1980s to India and Pakistan. I went to Nankana Sahib in Pakistan. I had the opportunity to go to the beautiful city of Lahore. Folks may not know that the city of Lahore is the traditional capital of Punjab. Before Punjab was partitioned by the British, Lahore had been the cultural and traditional capital of Punjab historically.
On that long history, if you want a real understanding of how we got to where we are today, we need to understand how our nations were formed: when India's democracy, which is the world's largest democracy, was formed and how Pakistan was formed and the trauma that occurred for members on both sides of this border the British drew across that land. Much of that history brings us forward into the challenges we face today.
We do need to understand that history. I'm not looking to do a study on history of India and Pakistan. It might be an important study to have at the foreign affairs committee. It may be something that I and my colleague, MP Zahid, can think about and work on, but I think that we do need to study this study that the Conservatives are avoiding: electoral interference in criminal activities in Canada by the agents of the Government of India.
Was there interference? If so, where? Who was involved? How were community members targeted? Are they still being targeted? I hope not. When I saw Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered, I was really hoping that this was not what I thought it was going to be and that other members of the community also wouldn't be targeted and attacked. Unfortunately, the RCMP has brought forward evidence to show that this was a targeted attack.
Now members of the community feel unsafe, Members of the Sikh community, members of the Muslim community, members of the Hindu community and members of the Christian community, all these faith groups are concerned if they have ties to India. Should they be concerned? Yes, they should be concerned, because we've seen an individual get murdered. Should they be concerned moving forward? Well, if we don't continue this study, we won't know. We are on meeting two of a study that the Conservatives are trying to avoid.