Peter Kent

[Privacy, November 6th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, every Canadian chartered bank promises that personal financial information will only be shared with client consent, but the Liberals are defending an exception in law, allowing Statistics Canada to harvest deeply personal financial data without asking. Europeans this year have new privacy laws that prohibit this sort of privacy exposure without specific client consent.

Why will the Liberal government not defend the privacy of Canadians and require Statistics Canada to ask permission before it pries into Canadians' most private financial dealings?

[Ethics, November 1st, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the chair of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. It is a crime to destroy government documents under the Access to Information Act. That crime is much more egregious if those documents have been requested in a legal proceeding.

Could the chair of the committee advise the House and all Canadians if the future agenda of the committee will include the destruction of government-held documents.

[Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, October 29th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

The science and technology accomplishments in Israel at the great universities, like the Technion, Haifa University, Tel Aviv University, the Bar-Ilan University and the co-operation with Canadian universities in Toronto and Montreal in the development of artificial intelligence is spectacular, and there is great opportunity. There are incubator companies operating in Thornhill today that were born of technological advance brought from Israel and its universities to be commercialized, developed and shared with the world.

There is also a negative side to artificial intelligence, which we are looking at with respect to the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the dangers of social media. However, there are also great and wonderful benefits to be developed and shared with the world.

[Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, October 29th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's shared concern and disgust at the events in the synagogue in Pittsburgh, the continuing threats to our holy places of all faiths in Canada and the amount of time, effort, security and money that needs to be expended to guarantee the security of these vulnerable holy meeting places.

On the member's point about the benefits of trade, it is indeed with trade agreements like the agreement originally signed with Israel in 1997, which we are building upon with Bill C-85 today, that enable the growth of trade between countries and opportunities in either partner country with regard to developing trade relationships.

When Prime Minister Netanyahu visited Canada a few years ago in talks with our government, both he and Prime Minister Harper, and I am sure the Prime Minister today, recognized that there was a great deal more opportunity to be taken advantage of with respect to growth and mutual benefit than we had seen, even today, with the growth in the last two decades. Certainly—

[Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, October 29th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to speak to Bill C-85, an act that would amend and strengthen a free trade agreement between Canada and the only democracy in the Middle East. I speak with particularly passionate solidarity with Jews in Israel, around the world and in my riding of Thornhill tonight because this debate is taking place in the shadow of the hate-driven outrage in Pittsburgh on the weekend. I will speak more directly of that in a few moments.

First, I will speak to Bill C-85. Canada's original formal free trade agreement with Israel came into force in 1997. Negotiations to update it began under Prime Minister Harper in 2014. The legislation we have before us today is the culmination of that work. It has taken a little longer perhaps than necessary under the Liberal government, and it does contain predictable elements of Liberal virtue signalling, but overall it is a good, strong agreement agreement that contains the chapters our Conservative government considered essential to bringing the original free trade agreement to address the realities of the 21st century.

Unlike the most recent updated but diminished trade agreement with another democratic ally clumsily achieved in desperation at the 11th hour with great give and little get, this free trade agreement would truly be a win-win for both Canada and Israel. This updated deal would expand market access for both Canada and Israel. It would include new chapters related to intellectual property, e-commerce and labour, and would preserve and protect a provision that recognizes Israel's customs laws, the one that accepts that all merchandise from the West Bank—manufactured goods, produce, and wine—can be sold in Canada marked with the label “Product of Israel”.

Now, the Liberals defer responsibility for this determination to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, but it is clearly a matter of international trade law.

As we did while in government, the Conservatives are pleased to enthusiastically endorse this reality, which not only provides quality products to the Canadian marketplace but also provides good jobs, fair wages and broader opportunities for Palestinians, opportunities that should improve the economic and social environment for an eventual negotiated peace agreement, which would see Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in a peaceful co-existence that has, for most of the past century, been obstructed by tyrants and terrorists who would rather continue the futile, tragic, hateful obsession with eliminating the State of Israel and the Jewish population with it.

I have been to Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and the neighbouring countries of the Levant many times over the years. My first visit was to have been in June 1967, as a journalist assigned to cover the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. However, that conflict was so short, six days, and Israel so decisively defeated the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian forces, and in the process liberated the Old City of Jerusalem that our crew's assignment was cancelled before we could get to the region.

Therefore, my first visit to Israel did not occur until October 1973, during the fourth Arab-Israeli war, launched by Syria and Egypt on the holiest day of the Jewish year, the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. That was when I first really understood the vulnerability of this tiny democratic country.

Very early each morning during the war, our crew would go to Beit Sokolov, the journalists' house in central Tel Aviv, to be assigned a military officer to accompany us to either the northern front on the Golan Heights, or on other days, to the Egyptian front, across the Gaza Strip through the Mitla or Gidi passes on to the Sinai desert battlefield. For a young Canadian journalist accustomed to vast spaces between provincial, let alone national, borders, it came as a shocking realization that in covering war in tiny Israel, it was only a matter of hours to either front.

The Yom Kippur War was, as all conflicts are, a costly and deadly war for all parties. It was the closest that Israel's enemies in the Arab world came to achieving their obsessive, destructive objective. In fact, only last minute emergency resupply of aircraft and ammunition from the United States turned the tide.

I still have powerful memories of the dogfights over the Golan; being strafed near Quneitra; crossing the Suez Canal on a Bailey bridge with General Sharon's tank column, part of the encirclement and capture of the Egyptian Sixth Army; the truce negotiations at kilometre 101 between the Israeli and Egyptian generals; and of sitting on Mount Hermon on the night of October 25, 1973, waiting to see whether the truce between Syria and Israel would hold and the fighting stop.

It did, although over the decades since, we have seen lesser conflicts: the Lebanon wars, the Palestinian intifadas, the Gaza war and, until today, Iran's proxy-sponsoring of continued terrorist rocketing and attempted terrorist infiltration from Gaza. In fact, this past weekend, we saw dozens of rockets fired from Gaza by Islamic Jihad on orders from Iran's Quds Force, coincidentally only hours before the hate-driven, deadliest attack on a Jewish community in North America at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue. Most of the rockets from Gaza were intercepted, shot down by Israel's Iron Dome defence system. Israel responded with air strikes against 80 sites across Gaza.

In North America, in my home riding of Thornhill and across Canada, as across the United States, there have been heartfelt condolences offered to victims of the weekend atrocity, and today, to the victims of the Pittsburgh murder, declarations of unity against hate and plans for multi-faith vigils. Nonetheless, this weekend's events are a terrible reminder that Israel and Jewish communities in the diaspora remain under constant threat from individuals and organizations that would destroy it and destroy them.

This brings me to happier recollections of visits to Israel as a member of Parliament and as a minister, as a member of Prime Minister Harper's historic visit to Israel and his powerful restatement of Canada's commitment to Israel, through fire and water. As Prime Minister Harper said in his speech in the Knesset, “to [really] understand the special relationship between Israel and Canada, [we] must look beyond trade...to the personal ties of friendship and [of] kinship”. He paid tribute to the people of Israel, saying and applauding, their “courage in war”, their “generosity in peace, and the bloom that the desert has yielded”. Stephen Harper is still a champion of Israel today, if from a different dimension.

The Conservatives, under a new leader, are equally committed to this deep relationship and still hold to the pledge to stand with Israel through fire and water. Our leader, the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, has vowed to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel when we regain government in 2019. He has clearly restated, without equivocation or ambiguity, that Canada's Conservatives have been and always will be a strong voice for Israel and the Canadian Jewish community; that Israel is one of Canada's strongest allies, a beacon of pluralism and democratic principles in a turbulent part of the world; and that Canada's Conservatives recognize the obvious fact that Israel, like every other sovereign nation, has a right to determine where its capital is located, and that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

Let me close by restating my enthusiastic support for Bill C-85, an act to amend and to strengthen a free trade agreement between Canada and the only democracy in the Middle East.

[Ethics, October 26th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, the Conflict of Interest Act says, “a public office holder is in a conflict of interest when he or she exercises an official power, duty or function that provides an opportunity...to improperly further another person’s private interests.”

We know ministers often hire journalists for their communications skills to promote government policies. This seems to be the first time a journalist has been hired to block his communications skills to shut him up.

Therefore, the date is important. When did the minister hire Mr. Cudmore and give him a job?

[Ethics, October 26th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, on November 20, 2015, James Cudmore, the CBC's military affairs reporter, broke a story. The first sentence read, “The new Liberal government is delaying approval of a deal to convert a civilian cargo ship into a badly needed military supply vessel.”

On December 21, Mr. Cudmore wrote his last story about controversial problems in the navy's procurement program.

His last official day at the CBC was January 8. He started work for the defence minister four days later. However, on what day did the minister offer Mr. Cudmore a job?

[Elections Modernization Act, October 26th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, it has indeed been a pleasure to work with my hon. colleague in these recent months on the ethics committee on the study of Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ here in Canada, which revealed the huge vulnerability of the Canadian democratic electoral process through new media.

The member is quite correct that the interim report of our committee in June, before the House rose, recommended to the government, among a number of recommendations, probably a dozen, that electoral activity in Canada, particularly activity by third parties in elections, be brought under the purview of the Privacy Commissioner, not for the Privacy Commissioner to regulate or interfere with political activity by political parties but to protect the privacy of Canadians from third-party interference and attempts to manipulate and contort the election results.

[Elections Modernization Act, October 26th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, that was a deflecting question.

I believe the larger question comes back to the fact that the government, in its mandate letter to the Minister of National Revenue, gave her pretty clear direction on the CRA audit of questionable Canadian charities that were Canadianizing American charitable dollars to be used by third parties. The donors of these original American dollars basically bragged that they were sending them to Canada to be used to defeat the sitting Conservative government.

That is the larger issue we are addressing here today. The fact is that Elections Canada should have been enabled by this deficient legislation, Bill C-76, to allow, and to ask, the Canada Revenue Agency to make clear exactly where the money trail leads, from American dollars through American charitable agencies to Canadian charitable agencies, and then disbursed to third parties. Third parties, as Ms. Krause reminded us, can throw mud in an election campaign while the party, the Liberal Party in this case, can claim to take the high road.

[Elections Modernization Act, October 26th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I will pick up where I left off before the Liberals imposed a legislative guillotine to cut off debate.

My greatest concern about Bill C-76 is the Liberal claim that it would combat and control third-party spending. It would not properly address a problem that could have been easily solved if, and this is a big if, the current Liberal government had actually wanted to solve it.

At first glance, it appears that the legislation might contain foreign financial interference by setting some spending limits and requiring third parties to have a dedicated Canadian bank account. However, Bill C-76 would double the total maximum third-party spending amount allowed during the writ period, and it would still allow unlimited contributions from individual donors and others, unlimited spending by third parties and unlimited foreign donations outside the pre-writ and writ periods.

Some of our Liberal colleagues claim that foreign financial interference has been adequately blocked, but the reality is that a huge loophole, exploited in recent elections with increasingly larger amounts of foreign funding of third parties, still exists. Foreign charities, such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in New York or the American Tides Foundation in San Francisco, can give millions of foreign dollars to Canadian charities such as the Tides Canada organization, Leadnow, the Dogwood Initiative or the Sisu Institute, and those millions can be disbursed as Canadian dollars to third-party groups to support parties and candidates of their choice and to oppose parties and candidates of their choice. Elections Canada can do nothing without new legislation.

Bill C-76 would do nothing to stop these, effectively laundered, American dollars from being used, as they were in 2015, to work to defeat a Conservative government, or next year, to attempt to re-elect the current Liberal government. In fact, the Canada Revenue Agency, before the 2015 federal election, had been working to audit 42 registered Canadian charities for political activity. There is research, accumulated by the skilled investigative journalist and researcher Vivian Krause, that indicates that 41 of the 42 audited charities were not fully compliant with the law and that the CRA would have recommended that at least five of these so-called charities be disqualified and shut down completely. However, in 2016, the CRA shut down those audits without reporting, coincidentally after the revenue minister was issued a mandate letter that directed her to “Allow charities to do their work...free from political harassment".

Ms. Krause testified last week, before the ethics committee, that she spent six months in 2016 writing a report, which she submitted to Elections Canada. Elections Canada sent investigators to Vancouver to meet with Ms. Krause, and she testified that after extensive discussion, it became clear to her that Elections Canada cannot do anything if the Canada Revenue Agency allows charities to Canadianize foreign funds.

The Income Tax Act is very clear that charities are to operate for purposes that are charitable as defined by law. While charities have been able to get away with it by pointing to language that permits a limited amount of political activity, the original intent was that the political activity was intended to further a charitable purpose. If that political activity does not support a charitable purpose, the allowable political activity should be, as Ms. Krause pointed out very clearly before committee, absolutely zero.

In wrapping up, while there are, admittedly, some modest improvements made to Bill C-76, it remains a deeply deficient attempt to restore fairness to the Canadian election process. It is a testament to the current Liberal government's deliberate decision, as with Bill C-50 before it, to leave loopholes the Liberals believe will enhance their efforts to save their political skin in 2019.