Mr. Speaker, the government has taken steps towards a foreign interference registry office. It is already fairly well established that we are moving forward with regard to that.
I am going to go back to this, because whether it is this member or the member who spoke prior to him, the members are very critical on foreign interference, and they make a personal attack on the Prime Minister. Let me reverse it. The foreign interference the member is making reference to is with regard to China. There is a report that came out while Stephen Harper was the prime minister and when, I believe, the current Leader of the Opposition was the minister responsible for democracy. They knew about it. What did they do? Absolutely nothing. They completely ignored the issue.
The issue does not go away, and now it has resurfaced in a different way. The Conservatives are blaming the Prime Minister for not taking action, yet as a government, we have actually improved our democratic system. Do members remember that the current Conservative leader tried to take away the authenticity of the voter identification card as a tool to allow people to vote? That leader and the Conservative Party are trying to say that it is the Liberals who are taking away from democratic institutions.
This member, like the other member, really and truly reflects what the Conservative Party has been attempting to do, as I have been saying for years now. The Conservatives' interest is not in substance but, rather, purely in character assassination. That is what we saw again today. Both members made reference to last Friday and tried to put the blame squarely on the Prime Minister and the PMO, even though the Speaker was very clear.
I was here. Those members were here, listening. The Speaker said he was the one who did the inviting and the introducing. Are Conservatives suggesting that any time a Speaker brings someone into the Speaker's gallery, they would have to be vetted through the Prime Minister's Office or the PCO? What are they suggesting should have happened? Are Conservatives trying to surrender control of the House of Commons and the floor of the House to the government of the day? Is that what they are implying? What role does the Speaker have, being elected by 337 members of the chamber and having a Speaker's gallery? Are we going to start putting limits on that?
We have to be very careful and follow the advice. What took place on Friday does not have to be a political issue. All of us should be united, not trying to set fire to an issue on which we should be trying to build a consensus and demonstrate leadership. However, the Conservatives are again more concerned about character assassination. That is the real reason why they are attempting to manipulate this situation. I find that somewhat sad and pathetic.
We continue to work very closely with the Five Eyes. In fact, we are the government that brought in Canada, in terms of the Five Eyes and having that apolitical, non-partisan standing committee of the House.