Mr. Speaker, I join this debate tonight with a bit of a heavy heart. I look back at being elected in 2019 and wanting the full opportunity to represent the people of Regina—Lewvan. This is the second debate where we are talking about the foundation of our democracy and what the people of Canada sent us here to do.
The first debate was around the Emergencies Act in February of 2022. The second one is this evening, where we are talking about the fact that a member of Parliament and his family, because of a vote in this place, have been harassed by a foreign diplomat, who tried to create foreign interference by the Communist Party in Beijing. We need to look back to see how we got here, first of all.
I was always told as a young kid growing up is that if one does not learn from one's history, one is bound to repeat it. On the very important debate we had on the Emergencies Act, the NDP supported it and the Liberals invoked it on Canadians. On this one, it is about an MP being harassed, but it is not just about an MP. Throughout the Chinese diaspora in Canada, lots of people have faced the same things the member of Parliament for Wellington—Halton Hills has. He is not just standing up for himself, he is standing up for all Canadians who have gone through harassment.
I started to talk about learning from our history. My friend from Perth—Wellington started down this path a little. I also brought up some of the debate from the House of Commons when the War Measures Act was invoked on October 16, 1970.
There are some words by the Right Honourable John Diefenbaker I would like to put on the record that run parallel to the discussion we are having this evening.
Mr. Diefenbaker said:
All over the world, Canada has a black eye. And now what is the government doing? It has recognized Communist China. Well, I can just imagine the deluge of communist spies who will come in here attached to the Chinese embassy, when it opens. They will all masquerade as diplomatic representatives. With the United States alongside us, we have not yet seen anything of what will happen when this group comes to Canada and begins its active responsibility which is to destroy Canada from within and, as well, undermine the United States.
Mr. Diefenbaker goes on to say:
The minister said yesterday that what Canada has done will have great influence in the United Nations. Well, and I think this expression is to be ascribed to Mao, for anyone to suggest that communism and the western world can coexist side by side is as ridiculous as endeavouring to fry an iceberg. And that is the situation. They are coming and we have seen happening up to now will be as nothing.
This was a speech given in this very chamber in 1970. The discussion we are having now as parliamentarians is how we can expel foreign influence not only on our elections but on our government as well. It is something every Canadian should be taking very seriously because it is affecting our lives on a daily basis.
This particular motion, which my colleagues have been talking about all evening, is part and parcel of our opposition day motion delivered a few days ago. This House voted to pass our opposition day motion and had support from the other opposition parties.
The motion talked about four things:
(a) create a foreign agent registry similar to Australia and the United States of America;
(b) establish a national public inquiry on the matter of foreign election interference;
(c) close down the People's Republic of China run police stations operating in Canada; and
(d) expel all of the People's Republic of China diplomats responsible for and involved in these affronts to Canadian democracy.
Lord only knows what the reason was, but it took until this afternoon after question period for the government to finally make the Chinese diplomat from Beijing persona non grata for the harassment of a member of Parliament because of a vote he made in this House.
That vote was on the motion that we brought forward on the Uyghurs in China and the genocide happening to the Uyghurs in that country. All of us voted in favour of that motion to make sure that that was recognized, and that those human atrocities could be talked about on the floor of the House of Commons, where they should be talked about.
The disappointing thing about that was that the Liberal front benches did not even pick a side or even get in the game. They abstained from the vote, which is shameful. We should always be on the side of right when it comes to human rights. That is something Conservatives have always been proud supporters of. It is one of the principles we extol across the country and around the world, making sure that we support people in their time of need.
Another thing I would like to put on the record is the fact that this is not just about the MP for Wellington—Halton Hills. This is about so many people in the 2019 and 2021 campaigns who felt bullied into not being able to vote for the person they wanted to vote for, which is fundamental to our Westminster system of democracy. It is one person, one vote, and the freedom to chose who governs them. That is something we should all stand up for and continue to push for. When we ask for a foreign agent registry, it is so that we can have a free and open democratic process. As a member of Parliament and as a former MLA, it is something that is close to my heart. That is what we do; we try to earn support.
I remember our leader talking to a lady at one of his rallies. She was just amazed, because in the country she came from, people never got that close to a politician. People never got close to the people who were elected. In other countries, politicians are insulated from the people they represent. A great thing about Canada is that we are not insulated from the people we represent. It is a point of pride for us. We do not need a big security detail to go out in our riding. We do not need to have security systems installed in all of our homes, because this is the House of Commons. It is for the common people to come and make decisions on behalf of everyone else in our country. It is a point of pride for us to not be seen as above everyone else.
On our side of the House, Conservatives take this to heart each and every day. We make sure we stay grounded, not out of touch. We believe the Liberal government has fallen out of touch with everyday, hard-working Canadians, whether it be in the oil and gas sector or the agricultural sector. It is because we stay in touch with the people we represent that we are able to bring their concerns to the chamber.
So many different times today, I heard the member for Kingston and the Islands say that people take it for granted that every person in this place is going to be telling the truth. We said that people should take the member for Wellington—Halton Hills at his word when he said that he was never briefed on the specifics of what was happening to him through the Beijing diplomat who was harassing him and his family. The member for Kingston and the Islands said that if we take the member for Wellington—Halton Hills at his word, we should expect the truth from the member for Papineau.
I served with a lovely lady in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan. Her name is Doreen Eagles, and she was a long-serving member for Estevan. She had one of the best quotes I have ever heard, either here or in the Saskatchewan chamber. She said, to the Speaker in the Saskatchewan legislature, that the best indication of future behaviour is past behaviour.
We can be forgiven, on this side, if we sometimes do not take the member for Papineau at his word, because we have heard, time and time again, that a reporter experienced it differently, that he did not mean to elbow the NDP member during a ruckus in the House of Commons, that there was nothing to see with SNC-Lavalin, that Jody Wilson-Raybould got it wrong, or that Celina Caesar-Chavannes did not understand the conversation they had together. There are so many situations that we could put forward from the member for Papineau's past behaviour that would perhaps indicate that his future behaviour may not be on par with what we think likely happened in this situation.
Over the last week, we have seen the government change its story several times. First of all, we had a couple of members say that the member for Wellington—Halton Hills knew what happened and should have brought it forward sooner, over the last two years, which we know is categorically false. Second of all, at the Liberal convention this past weekend, we saw the current Minister of Public Safety say that CSIS should have brought it forward, and it is not the government's fault that CSIS did not bring it forward to them. I say “current” because I think he is in some trouble. That, once again, came to be categorically false; the security adviser to the PMO said that they got the briefing. I wonder if the Minister of Public Safety thinks it is actually CSIS's job to go and read the briefing to the Prime Minister or to him.
Yes, it is story time. We know because we have experienced this. We saw that the government hired storytellers a couple of years ago to actually tell Canadians a story about how well they are doing. Perhaps the Liberals thought CSIS was supposed to tell them the story of what happened with the national security breach, because they did not have time to read their briefings.
The Toronto Sun, which I do not quote often, has an article that brings up some questions. Every Canadian should think about this over the next couple of days when we are discussing the foundation of democracy and whether people can make free choices without harassment from foreign governments. The reporter ends with this:
The report was sent to the government as they were gearing up for the 2021 election, making this issue public at that time could have created sympathy for the Conservatives. It’s easy to imagine Canadians being outraged at China targeting a Canadian MP for voting to condemn China’s genocide of the Uighurs, a clear stand for human rights.
Did the Liberals opt not to deal with this report for partisan reasons? Were they so focused on beating the Conservatives that they ignored attacks by a foreign government on our democracy?
These questions should be unthinkable. We should expect that all politicians would put country over party.
It’s not clear, given what we’ve learned over the last week, that we can assume that anymore. Asking whether the lack of action was partisan in nature is entirely acceptable given the circumstances.
Canadians should take that and mull it over for a bit. What if a government had a harassment claim with respect to a member of Parliament because of a position he took on the side of human rights, and it sat on that for another couple of years for partisan reasons? I hope that would never happen in this country. However, it is an interesting question that the reporter from the Toronto Sun puts forward in his article today. For this, we really have to understand how far we have come in the divisiveness of politics in this country.
I started by saying that there are two times when I stood in this chamber thinking about what our democracy would look like not 10 or 15 years from now but in two or three years. We have had people come to Ottawa asking for their voices to be heard only to have the other side actually create a division, where it treated them as second-class citizens and then invoked the Emergencies Act to make sure it could deal with them swiftly. Is that the right word? I am not quite sure.
I remember standing in this House giving a speech about Tommy Douglas. I know the NDP supported invoking the Emergencies Act, and I remembered something Tommy Douglas said in 1960. When the elder Trudeau invoked the act in 1960, Tommy Douglas said it was like using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut. I would suggest that many New Democrats would have felt the same way, but the group that they have in the chamber today decided to support it. Then the government went on to freeze people's bank accounts as well, which is something I never thought I would see in this country.
If we fast forward to now, I do not think we have learned many lessons on how to perhaps cradle democracy and keep it a bit safer. We are talking about a ruling by the Speaker that a prima facie case was found that a member of Parliament was harassed to the point that his family overseas was threatened because he was doing his job. Many Canadians have gone through this, from B.C. and across the country, in Toronto and Quebec. What has happened in 2023 in this country is really unimaginable.
Another item in the Conservative motion that was passed by the opposition parties talks about Beijing-run police stations in Canada. I remember when the Liberal member for Scarborough—Guildwood stood up to talk about there being one close to his riding as well. We asked him if he had brought that forward to the minister. Obviously, he said yes.
The minister stood up and said that these Beijing-run Communist police stations in Canada were going to be closed immediately. The member for Kingston and the Islands stood up and said that the government was going to close them immediately. I asked him if he knew what the definition of “immediately” was, because the government seems to move a bit slower than some Canadians would like. The fact there is a foreign country running police stations in Canada is unacceptable, full stop. They should be shut down immediately. Not one person should be detained in these police stations because they should have no authority in our country.
I remember one of the first emails I got on this was a couple of years ago. At first, I thought people were joking because, from my standpoint, being a provincial politician, policing is a big part of provincial jurisdiction. Then, when moving into the public service federally, I did not understand how a foreign country could even, first of all, start and then operate a police station on Canadian soil. What kind of jurisdiction would it even have? Then we learned more about certain people with origins in different countries being targeted and harassed to make sure they are doing what their home country thinks they should be doing.
What I would say to people now is that we need to stand up for democracy in our country. We need to make sure that the things that happened to the member for Wellington—Halton Hills never happen again. That starts with going forward with our motion, having a public inquiry to get to the bottom of everything that happened over the last couple of years, and making sure that we have this motion go to PROC, which I hope the Liberals will vote for. If the Speaker has found a prima facie case, it would be unheard of for the government to vote against it and, quite frankly, ridiculous. We need to make sure this goes to PROC so it can be fully studied. We especially need a public inquiry into foreign interference in our elections so Canadians can have faith in our democratic system.
