Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House among my colleagues and talk about this critical issue facing Canadians. I know many Canadians have been hearing about this over the past week; certainly, for this kind of news to break on a Thanksgiving Monday was quite unprecedented, so I am honoured to put some words on the record. Certainly, we are hearing about very serious allegations from the RCMP out of what has been tied to Indian government officials allegedly plotting to work with criminal entities in Canada to extort, coerce and murder people. They are connected to criminal entities in India. In fact, it has been alleged that a number of individuals have been murdered in Canada as a result of some of these outrageous affronts to our sovereignty.
As a result of these criminal activities, we have really had our whole system of government rocked, and a relationship that we thought was quite strong is now an issue of concern. That should concern everyone in this place because we need strong allies, friends and relationships internationally. It was disappointing to hear of these allegations. It was odd and very surprising to see the RCMP have this unprecedented press conference out of the blue on a Thanksgiving Monday. The RCMP officials, remarkably, said that about 13 individuals are currently in peril and that they did not feel that they could protect them with their own resources; therefore, they had to go public. It is quite unprecedented that we have come to such a point with foreign interference that the RCMP had to hold an emergency press conference to see if they could protect 13 individuals residing in Canada. It is really unbelievable, and it was quite shocking to be eating turkey dinner while learning about some of these details.
Interestingly, about a year ago, the Prime Minister got up in the House of Commons and also did something quite unprecedented: He made these ties, saying that there were some very serious allegations that an individual was murdered in Canada in connection to the Government of India. I do not believe any government, at least in recent history, has ever gotten up and done something like that: accuse a foreign government in that way. It was quite shocking.
What is really interesting is that this was about 13 months ago. We had the Prime Minister, the leader of the Liberal Party, taking this quite unprecedented action in the House of Commons. By calling out a country that is supposed to be our friend in such a way, he was in essence accusing it of murder. However, nothing really happened. Then, 13 months later, we have an unprecedented emergency RCMP announcement, and six diplomats from India are kicked out of Canada in quite a dramatic fashion. This is done because 13 individuals are in peril and many more have been intimidated or coerced.
I mention this to say that the Prime Minister's unprecedented action did not seem to deliver any real results to stop foreign interference. It did nothing to fix the problem; in fact, it got worse. That really speaks to his lack of ability to ensure foreign interference in this country is brought to a stop. Certainly, anyone in this country who is connected to these illegal, criminal and murderous actions needs to be held fully accountable, full stop. We cannot, as a country, allow anybody or any foreign country to come in and murder, coerce or extort our citizens or threaten to take visas away. We have heard a lot of this going on with China as well, with election interference. We also see Russian disinformation, as well as intimidation of Iranian Canadians from the IRGC.
It took the Liberal government about six years, I believe, of our calling for the Liberal government to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization. It took six years to ensure that standard in Canada to say that we would no longer engage and that this kind of foreign interference from Iran, for example, would no longer be allowed. It took many years for the Liberals to act on that.
However, we have heard more and more about foreign interference in the last number of years, while in fact what we have seen from the Prime Minister are his repeated denials that there has been an issue. We saw this almost every day, beginning when there was a CSIS leak to The Globe and Mail regarding Chinese election interference in Canadian elections. “Nothing to see here” was really the message of the day from the Liberal government. In fact, they were more concerned about the leaks.
It was very much the case that Conservatives had to drag this government kicking and screaming to an authentic, professional, robust public inquiry into foreign interference, which we are finally seeing now, run by Justice Hogue, but it took a very long time to get there, and a lot of effort from us, to hold the government accountable and have that type of inquiry.
Members will remember that there was a sort of “in between” period when the Prime Minister finally relented and decided to sort of do something about foreign interference. The Liberals had the David Johnston report, although it was found that he was quite close to Mr. Trudeau and was possibly not applying the most critical eye on what he may or may not have done on foreign interference, so that was in essence scrapped. Mr. Johnston quit midway through.
Then, finally, we got an authentic, professional, robust inquiry into foreign interference, but it took so long and so many leaks from CSIS to sound the alarm. In fact, if there had not been leaks from CSIS to The Globe and Mail, we would probably not even be here talking about foreign interference. They were the ones who blew the whistle because no one was listening to them. In fact, we have a lot of accounts of national security reports just not making it to the Prime Minister's desk. He was not reading them. This was not something that he was interested in.
In fact, I would draw members' attention to a number of the quite concerning comments in the official report from the NSICOP committee about how seriously our Prime Minister takes foreign interference and perhaps why we got here. For example, the NSICOP report said that:
Given the risks posed by foreign interference to Canada’s national security, the Committee expected the government to act. It was slow to do so.
It further stated that:
[The government] has yet to implement an effective response to foreign interference in democratic processes and institutions. This is despite a significant body of intelligence reporting, the completion of foundational policy work, public consultations and having been called to do so by this Committee.
I think Canadians should be concerned and I think that they are waking up to this. How did we get to a place where China, India, Iran, Russia and Pakistan are all just bullying Canada and intimidating our citizens and are allegedly connected to murder in some cases? This is very serious. How did we get here? Well, we have had the same Prime Minister for nine years, and it has never been worse. What does that say about his leadership?
As Canadians, we should be calling on our government. In fact, the Privy Council Office, when the Liberal Prime Minister first got elected in 2015, had a very official report called “Open and Accountable Government”. It explicitly says that national security and international affairs are explicitly the special responsibility of the Prime Minister.
What I have seen from this Prime Minister are excuses. I have seen him not wanting to talk about it and dragging his feet, whether it is on China, India, Russia, Iran, Pakistan or others, yet it is solely his “special responsibility” according to his own “Open and Accountable Government” report from 2015, the governing document that was going to be the one document that this government would turn to to show Canadians what the responsibilities of ministers and the Prime Minister are.
National security is his special responsibility and his special responsibility alone, yet here we are, so I would say that he has failed in fulfilling his special responsibility to ensure that foreign interference is stopped and that our citizens are protected.
It has come to a point where there are allegations that foreign countries are literally murdering people in this country. Mr. Nijjar was a citizen. What is happening is incredibly serious, and I appreciate that we have the opportunity to talk about it in this debate.
In my last minute, I want to say that what would be real leadership in this regard is this: We know there is this list of names that the Prime Minister seems to have weaponized at this foreign interference inquiry, which is very disappointing. He has turned it into a circus. Other countries hold members of Parliament and others accountable by releasing the names of those individuals who have been in connection with foreign governments and working to undermine them. We have seen this in the United Kingdom with Christine Lee named and shamed by the U.K. government. Why is it we cannot know the names of the individuals who have been candidates and former parliamentarians or current ones? What is the Liberal government trying to hide when it will not release them?
Things like that shed a real light and send a message to anyone looking to undermine Canada that we are going to find out what they are up to and who they are and that we will hold them accountable for it. That is what the government should be doing and what it failed to do for nine years. We are going to hold the government accountable for that.