Mr. Speaker, Thomas Mulcair was the leader of the official opposition in the House when Stephen Harper was prime minister. The member can correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe that Thomas Mulcair ever raised the issue, even though we know foreign interference was taking place then.
The Conservative Party has seen the political optics for calling for a public inquiry and tying it to some sort of scandal. The Bloc has bought into it, but hopefully the NDP will not buy into it because, as the member knows, even when Thomas Mulcair, the leader of the NDP, sat in opposition, he never raised the issue of foreign interference, even though it was happening then. Today we have a government that has taken numerous actions to deal with foreign interference. It seems to me today that the opposition is more prepared to deal with the partisan politics of the issue as opposed to dealing with what is in the best interests of Canadians, including protecting our democratic institutions.
If opposition members were concerned about that in the first place and felt a public inquiry was necessary, why would they not have argued it when it was happening years ago? Why did they not raise the issue years ago? I would suggest it is because there is a new, shiny leader of the Conservative Party who has determined that this could be a good political issue. Other opposition members are buying into it or do not want to be seen as being soft on the issue, when there are other ways this issue could be dealt with that would minimize foreign interference. That is what I would recommend members to look at doing.