Madam Speaker, we are at a pivotal moment in our democracy, because the threats we talk about, the threats to our core institutions, our members of Parliament and this very institution, are real. They are playing themselves out on a daily basis and there is no greater priority, or should be no greater priority, from a national government than our national sovereignty, than the safety and security of all our citizens.
It really does not matter when one became a citizen and whether one is a citizen by birthright or if one came here later on in life, maybe as a child with one's family and became a citizen or if one became a citizen as an adult. Having made the difficult decision to either leave or flee from one's country of origin, one became a citizen of Canada. As a citizen, this should mean something. What it should primarily mean is the government of one's new country, of the country one is now proud to say one is a citizen of, is there to protect one's interests, whatever they may be. This could be safe streets in communities at a very local level or on the macro level we find ourselves debating tonight, with threats from foreign governments or foreign entities, those who are adverse in interest to Canada.
I still am a lawyer, I confess, but in my active law practice days, we often would say that it was very important in any form of litigation, negotiation or mediation to understand who is adverse in interest to someone, or if one is a representative, adverse in interest to one's client. It is only with understanding that can one look to motivation, intent and how this may play itself out. We find ourselves in these kinds of moments here.
There are a couple of arguments I keep hearing put forward by government members. One is that the earlier government, the government of former prime minister Stephen Harper, the Conservative government, has known all about this. They say that it knew this was going on and did not do enough. We certainly did not know, and how could we know, there were specific threats against the families of members of Parliament or that there were members of Parliament who CSIS, which is charged with our international security, at the time was concerned about being so compromised by a foreign country that they really should not be running as a candidate in an election or should be somehow more thoroughly vetted.
We did not have those kinds of situations brought before us at the time. Did we know there were foreign actors out there often adverse in interest to Canada who might play out their extraterritorial ambitions through proxies, money or through compromising Canadian citizens? Yes, we knew those general things.
Just before the 2021 election, I was one of the members of Parliament who had a general defensive briefing from CSIS. I received a call one day and someone said they wanted to meet me in my office. I asked if this was a secret meeting. They said no but that it was an important meeting and they wanted me to make myself available, which I did right away. That briefing, frankly, was not that detailed. It was a briefing about foreign governments attempting to influence our elections and our governments, and how they might go about doing that.
It might be something that seems like just a social invitation to go have dinner with a new friend. It might be through one's staff who they might befriend, and then that person might volunteer in one's campaign or have a paid position in one's campaign and then seek to have a position in one's constituency office or maybe one's Hill office, where they might have access to sensitive information.
Of course, depending on our role here in this Parliament or any other, the information one has coming into one's office may be more or less sensitive. I assumed at the time that they were speaking to me because we have in my area a large diaspora that came from or has the ethnicity of India and China. Those were two of the countries mentioned, as was Iran. These are places that may seek to influence what happens here in Canada because they are not our natural allies.
With that information, they asked me to speak to my staff to inform them about and give them these broad parameters. I did that. I understand now, from disclosures in this House, that approximately 49 MPs had these same kinds of briefings, but certainly on nothing specific at all.
What I saw play out in the 2021 election, and was aware of in the 2019 election but not to the same degree, was that citizens of Canada of Chinese ancestry in my riding and in neighbouring ridings around mine, where I was helping on campaigns, felt very much under threat from their country of origin. It was not even necessarily those born outside of Canada. Some had parents who were born outside of Canada but were of ancestry from China in particular.
They are very proud Canadians. I have often said that some of the proudest Canadians are those who have come here and become Canadians. They are very proud of the country they have come to, and they are very proud to say, “I am a Canadian.” That is how they see themselves. They do not see themselves as dual citizens and they do not see themselves as citizens of other countries. They see themselves as citizens of Canada, with all that that should entail.
It was an event that happened to me in my riding in particular that brought this home to me. In fact, our leader alluded to it in his speech earlier. We were asked to turn off our phones and go outside into the backyard of one of my constituents. With tears in his eyes he said he could not talk to me inside his home because he believed his home was being monitored. That was very upsetting because I could see the pain this man felt. He said he had voted for the Conservatives in the past, but he simply could not in that election because his family was under threat and he believed they would know if he voted Conservative.
I was also sent translated screenshots from WeChat where it was made very clear that even the idea of a foreign lobby registry was being painted as an attempt to register everyone of Chinese ethnicity in Canada, because it was our intent to round them up, just as Japanese citizens were rounded up in World War II, and confiscate their assets. That was the long-term plan.
I am also aware from other campaigns that there were people of Chinese ethnicity standing outside polling booth areas watching and even taking pictures of people of Chinese ancestry who were in line to vote. Some of those people turned around and went home. It is hard to brave that kind of intimidation.
A foreign government does not even actually have to do all those things. It just needs to make people believe that it can or it will. That is enough to make people afraid, enough to bring a grown man to tears in his backyard and enough to get to citizens of Chinese ancestry who are trying very hard to fit in here in Canada and become part of our life here. It is easy to have them think this is possible.
I have another example. We have a group in my riding, an educational group that is actually an incorporated society, made up of people of Chinese ancestry. They invite speakers from all parties. They have heard from all federal, municipal and provincial parties about how government in Canada works, what our various jurisdictions are and how we go about our business, that sort of thing. I was told, first, that they have disbanded their WeChat group because they felt it was being monitored, and they now communicate in another way. Second, two of their board of directors stepped away because they felt families were under threat simply because they were engaging in educational activities to learn more about their new country.
I had a volunteer on my 2021 campaign who was Uyghur. Just before the campaign, his mother went back to China because her father was ill. She felt it was her familial duty to go back, even though there were some dangers involved, in order to tend to her ailing father, who passed away at some point. When she got there, everything was taken away from her: her ID, her documents and everything that showed her citizenship status in Canada.
When she went there, she had permanent resident status but had not yet had her citizenship ceremony. As we know, during COVID, a lot of them were suspended. She was waiting to hear the date of her citizenship ceremony, but when she arrived in China, all her documentation was taken away. She had no way to appear for her citizenship ceremony in Canada. She had no way to leave China. It was very difficult to even communicate with her family back in Canada, who were all waiting for her return. What was supposed to be a six-month trip turned out to be an almost three-year trip by the time she was able to find a way to get some place where she could be communicated with in order to get the documents to get back to Canada.
These are real examples of how the Chinese government in particular is affecting what we do here.
When a threat is made against a member of Parliament, as chief opposition whip, it is my heightened duty to stand up for all members of Parliament, but particularly those in His Majesty's loyal opposition. I stand up for their privilege in this House and their right to vote and to exercise all the requirements of their duties as members of Parliament. The member for Wellington—Halton Hills is suffering through this, but then added to that is government members suggesting that his general briefing two years ago, which was the same as mine, should have somehow put him on specific alert about his family members. That is a false narrative. It is impossible to put those two things together. That is victim-blaming in the classic sense, or gaslighting, as we often hear the term used now.
The very person who is under threat and told that the exercise of his franchise in this House is somehow compromised is being told that he should have done something about it, he should have brought it to the attention of the House and he should have done more. Well, we can only do more if we actually know that we have something to deal with, and he did not know that until last week through a news article.
I am not surprised CSIS is frustrated and talking to the press, and I know the government has had a strong reaction to that. Its reaction was to try to figure out who the whistle-blowers were in CSIS and go after them. Instead of praising the whistle-blowers and saying there is a problem here and that it needs to get on it as a government to protect our citizens and do more to protect members of Parliament, it was upset that the stories were getting out.
I go back to a report by Liberal member David McGuinty—
