Mr. Speaker, what we do in this place matters. This place is the only place at the federal level that is a democratic institution. This is Canada's democratic institution. The other place is not; it is appointed. The Prime Minister and his cabinet are not; they are appointed.
In Canada, we do not elect governments. We do not elect prime ministers. We elect a legislature, a single national legislature of 338 Canadians to sit here on behalf of Canadians to make decisions. The way we make decisions in this country, under our constitutional order, is not through the tip of a sword but through debate. It is through our words, and the words we use in this place influence the votes, which are votes on motions and bills that lead to decisions taken by Parliament.
Therefore, protecting members of Parliament in their execution of their duties, in the words they are freely allowed to use on the floor of the House and in the actions they take, whether it is in respect of legislation in front of the House, motions in front of the House or administrative matters, is incredibly important. Members should be free from interference, from coercion and from threats. That is why what is in front of us today is so very important, because what we do in this place matters. What we did in this place in 2020 and 2021 mattered.
On November 18, 2020, the House adopted a motion calling on the government to ban Huawei from our national core telecommunications network and also calling on the government to come forward with a robust plan to combat foreign interference. That motion ultimately put enough pressure on the government to make a belated decision to ban Huawei from our national telecommunications network.
Several months later, in early 2021, the House, on February 22, 2021, adopted a motion recognizing that the PRC's repression of some 12 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang province in western China constituted genocide under the 1948 genocide convention. That mattered, because what came out of that was coordinated action between the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada to impose sanctions on a number of individuals and one entity in Xinjiang in response to these gross human rights violations.
What we did mattered back then, and the PRC noticed. The PRC implemented a full-spectrum response against members of this House, some legitimate and some illegitimate. It pursued legitimate diplomatic action. It pursued legitimate counter-sanction action. That is not in question. What is in question is that it illegitimately violated international law and targeted members of this House.
Justice Hogue, as the previous member outlined, has outlined how the PRC interfered in the 2021 election. CSIS concluded clearly that the PRC interfered in the 2021 election, and Justice Hogue found exactly that in her initial report of May 3, last week.
The PRC also illegitimately targeted six members of this place, who have come forward on this point of privilege, and that is the question in front of us today.
These members were cyber-attacked by the PRC. Six members among 18 legislators in Canada were cyber-attacked by the PRC, and some of those 18 are members of the House, six in particular. They were attacked for being members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and simply attacked for doing their job in upholding the international rule of law and criticizing the PRC for its gross violations of international law, whether that is related to the genocide against the Uyghur people, which is a contravention of the 1948 genocide convention; whether it is the PRC's illegitimate and illegal crackdown in Hong Kong, a violation of the 1997 Sino-British Joint Declaration, which guaranteed Hong Kongers their rights and liberties for 50 years from 1997; whether it is the PRC's violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, where it is harassing other states, fishing vessels and other marine vessels in the South China Sea; or whether it is the PRC's violations of the trade system that has been established under WTO rules and the status it obtained in 2000 as a most-favoured nation, which it is obliged to uphold.
As a result of these six members of Parliament being targeted, our counter-intelligence agencies and the Five Eyes alliance started to take action. They started to monitor what was going on with APT31, a hacking group that is an organ of the state of the People's Republic of China, a hacking group that is run out of Hubei's State Security Department, which is an arm of the People's Republic of China's Ministry of State Security. It is a massive secret service state apparatus that is monitoring not only its own citizens in the PRC but citizens of countries abroad.
The FBI discovered this hack by APT31 in 2022, and it immediately passed it along to the Communications Security Establishment, part of the Government of Canada's national security apparatus. CSE, in turn, did its job. It passed the information along to parliamentary officials, and this is where the system broke down. While I have absolutely no doubt that the IT officials and personnel in the House of Commons administration did their job to ensure the integrity of our IT systems, that is not the question in front of us today. The question in front of us today is transparency. The question in front of us today is sunlight and transparency and why six members of this House who were targeted by the PRC through a cyber-attack were not informed at the time the Government of Canada became aware.
The government tells us all the time that we need to be situationally aware. We cannot be situationally aware if we are not armed with information. What the procedure and House affairs committee should be looking at, if this motion is adopted, is why these six members were not informed at the time when the CSE and parliamentary officials were made aware. That, ultimately, is not only the responsibility of the executive branch of government and the CSE, but also the responsibility of the Speaker and officials the Speaker is responsible for.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, elected members of national legislatures are regularly informed about foreign interference threat activities that are directed at them. That is a fact. That has not happened here in this case, and it has not happened in the past. The argument about security clearances in this place, that parliamentary officials knew about these attacks two years ago but could not tell members because they did not have security clearance, does not hold water.
Philippe Dufresne, the former law clerk and parliamentary council, gave a legal opinion to committees of this House on many occasions, indicating that section 18 of the Constitution Act, 1867, makes it clear that in this place, members of Parliament have an unfettered right for documents and information that is not restricted by anything else, not restricted by laws that have been adopted by this place or by whatever views the Government of Canada may hold on classified materials. Therefore, when parliamentary officials became aware of it, they should have informed these members.
I will finish by encouraging members of this House to vote for the motion so that the procedure and House affairs committee can take this matter up and ensure that in the future, when a Five Eyes intelligence agency notifies part of our national security establishment, whether it be the Communications Security Establishment, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Department of National Defence intelligence unit or any other part of the security establishment, that Canadian members of Parliament are being targeted by a foreign state or by non-state actors, those members are informed forthwith so that they can be situationally aware and protect themselves and their families against these hostile threats.