Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Outremont for splitting her time with me. I appreciated her comments and what she has provided today in terms of the substance of the issue and the report, which is a very important report. She spoke very passionately about why that is and the deep connections the issue has to her community.
I am going to spend my time talking about why I think we are even debating the report today in the House. In order to do that, I have to set the context of what is currently going on at the public safety committee. Members of the committee, except for the Conservatives, are trying to undertake a study on foreign interference by Russia and India. The Conservatives on the committee have been using tactic after tactic, by introducing new motions or by filibustering at times, to prevent any study on foreign interference from occurring. They have been successful at times and unsuccessful at others.
What the Conservatives have done today is really interesting. The report was tabled in the House by the late Jim Carr, who was the chair of the committee at the time, on April 25, 2022, over two and a half years ago. What is even more remarkable is that it was not even a contentious report; the report was adopted by the public safety committee unanimously. Everybody agreed to it.
For those watching at home, I will say that reports are brought to this place and tabled all the time. Very rarely do they get brought into a motion of concurrence like this, but it is happening today. Anyone following the proceedings over the last couple of months would have noticed, quite frankly, that the Conservatives have been doing this a lot lately in order to just interject new ways to slow down Parliament and make it very difficult for it to function, if not bring it to a complete standstill.
What makes the matter interesting is that not only did the Conservatives use the concurrence motion to do this but they also brought a report that was introduced in the House over two and a half years ago and was voted on unanimously. Then they put forward an amendment that clearly they had no interest in when the report was tabled, because they would not have otherwise voted for the report unanimously.
I did challenge the individual who moved the amendment. In the amendment they brought in when they introduced this, they have added a whole list of things. First, they want to send the report back to committee, a unanimous report that was sent to the House two and a half years ago. They say they are not happy with it and they want the committee to look at it again.
The Conservatives want the committee to hold four more meetings, to bring the Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs to committee and invite the Toronto Police Association, the Surrey police union, the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and John Howard Society of Canada to attend. Why this is important is that an order of the House, which would be made through the motion, would direct the committee to do the work. The committee would then have to stop everything it is doing and undertake the direction of the House.
I bring colleagues back to how I set the stage at the beginning of my speech as to what is going on at the committee. The Conservatives cannot get away with what they are trying to do at committee by preventing the study on foreign interference, so they are now using an opportunity to amend a unanimous consent report from two and a half years ago to direct the committee to undertake new work, which would further delay the work it is supposed to be doing on looking into foreign interference.
We must ask this question: Why would the Conservatives dig up a two-and-a-half year-old report and put a huge amendment on it to force the committee to do all this work to avoid talking about foreign interference from India and Russia?
At the same time, the Leader of the Opposition refuses to get a security clearance. Every other leader of a political party of the House has a security clearance. They use the information they obtain when they get that security clearance to make sure they can keep their members safe, their party safe and all Canadians safe. The Leader of the Opposition is the only political party leader who refuses to even apply for a security clearance. Why is that? We also know that there have been reports that the Conservative leadership contest through which he was elected was interfered with by foreign agents.
This is what we know: We know that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to get a security clearance or even apply for it. We know that it is alleged that the Conservative Party was interfered with by foreign actors, and we know that the Conservative members on the public safety committee are willing to dig up a two-and-a half-year-old report that they voted on unanimously and moved massive amendments to, to force the committee to do new work so they can avoid continuing on with the study on foreign interference. I think I do not need to elaborate or to take any kind of liberties in terms of drawing a conclusion; most people can draw the conclusion on their own.
What is the Leader of the Opposition hiding? There is something in his past that he knows would prevent him from being able to get a security clearance, and Canadians have a right to know what that is, so I am very concerned not only with the lengths to which the Leader of the Opposition is going to hide whatever it is in his past, but also with the members of the public safety committee, because they are complicit when they help him do the work to hide it.
We should not be surprised by any of this, because the Conservatives are good soldiers, at least after they get caught, because we know that 18 or 19 of them were sending letters behind their leader's back to the government, looking for help. However, we do know, based on a recent report from November 20, that:
After two years of [the Leader of the Opposition] as their leader, many Conservative MPs say they are much less free now than they were before his arrival.
The man who promised during his leadership run to make Canada “the freest country in the world” maintains tight control over the actions of his caucus members....
Some elected officials feel they come to caucus—
and it is a Conservative MP who said this
— “to be told what to do and what to think”....
That is not freedom; that is the Leader of the Opposition's telling his MPs what to do, and only he gets to say. He is telling the four members who sit on the public safety committee to not let the study go forward on foreign interference as it relates to India and China. He does not want them to study the issue, because he is so afraid of what might come of it.
Conservatives, if they genuinely had nothing to hide and if they genuinely had an interest in protecting this country, would ensure that the study at the public safety committee can proceed so the truth can be found out so all Canadians can know what we are dealing with, especially as we approach an election.