Debates of May 9th, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that Canada is being targeted, and the government is not doing the things it needs to do to be transparent about it.

One of the things that all of us should be concerned about is the fact that so many members learned about that foreign interference through the media. That is not the way anyone should learn that he or she is being targeted.

Could the member talk a little about solutions? With respect to the foreign registry, there is a lot of concern from ethnic communities that feel they are going to be specifically targeted, and they want safety. What are the solutions moving forward? What does the government actually need to take action on?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, first, on the legislation that was tabled, it needs to come into law before the next election and be implemented. That is a key piece of what needs to be done.

Of course, there are many elements within that legislation that will be in regulation. We do not even know what the mandate for the commission looks like. Let us also keep in mind that this is not the be all and end all. That is only one tool to address foreign interference activities.

I would also say this for PROC. The work that PROC needs to do is not done, because what came out in the inquiry was that there was contradictory information. On the one hand, Katie Telford told the committee that of course the Prime Minister read all the confidential documents. Then, at the hearing, the Prime Minister said that he did not read any of them.

Who is not telling the truth? We need to get to the bottom of this. They do not get to sweep this under the rug. We need to get to the bottom of it, to hold people to account and, most important, to actually take the real actions that are necessary to address foreign interference.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are fortunate to have debate in this place like we just heard from the member for Vancouver East. We are lucky that we can reflect on the words she shared with us this morning.

I am deeply concerned to hear about the double standard that exists for members in this place when it comes to foreign interference, and I would really appreciate hearing more from her. I understand that she wants to see Bill C-70 move ahead quickly. However, my concern is that the government is going to say that it is no problem at all, that it will all be solved, that Bill C-70 will fix the issues we have shared when it comes to foreign interference.

Could the member share with us the extent to which she feels that is or is not the case? Could she also share more, elaborating on the question from our colleague, the member for North Island—Powell River, on the extent to which she would like to see the government do more, and do it faster, to address the deep concerns she shared with respect to foreign interference?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on the issues around the bill itself, of course, it needs to go through the House and it needs to go to committee, to have it invite the diaspora community, in particular, to share its comments around it. In talking with the people in the broader public, most of them are just so relieved that, finally, we have this legislation before us.

It is going to be really important to ensure that there is not going to be some disinformation campaign out there, trying to say what the bill is and what it is not. That is critical as well. However, much work needs to be done to get this through the system.

I also want to emphasize that the bill, in and of itself, is not the answer to all the foreign interference activities. We already know, on investigation, that, yes, the bill would create some offenses that would allow for potential prosecution, but a lot of the aspects hinge on other actions that the government can take, for example, nominations.

On the question around nominations, and I have already highlighted the potential impact for the nomination that took place in Don Valley North, what action will the government take with respect to nominations? On the question around independence of these matters, it is also all the different agencies within government that, frankly, are not exactly independent and need to follow up on foreign interference activities.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

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.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I would encourage those individuals who are following the debate on this issue to give serious consideration to actually reading the entire context in which the Speaker made his presentation, and I would assure individuals following the debate that the government has taken and continues to take foreign interference very seriously. One will see that in the actions that we have taken virtually from 2016 all the way up to this past week.

Having said that, I would look to my friend across the way and ultimately argue that I think Canada is in a relatively good position to be able to demonstrate leadership on the issue.

We want to see the issue go to PROC. PROC has the capabilities and the abilities to come forward, hopefully, with a report that has the support of all political entities in the chamber. I am wondering if my colleague across the way could provide his thoughts in regard to how good it would be if we are able to have a report come back from PROC where we have the support of all political entities inside the chamber.

Does he not believe that this would give a much stronger impression, collectively, of us working together to deal with foreign interference?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think opposition parties in the House have been highly responsible in how we have handled the information on foreign interference threat activities that have come to our attention over the last two years.

When these stories broke, they did not break because the government informed members of the House or the House's committees about these foreign interference threat activities. They broke because they were printed on the front page of newspapers like The Globe and Mail.

When we received that information, which the rest of the general public received at the same time, we treated it in a highly non-partisan and responsible manner. In fact, I do not recall many questions in this House about Don Valley North or about Steveston—Richmond East over the course of the last year and a half, because we were not certain what the facts were. It was not until May 3, last week, when Justice Hogue released her initial report, Justice Hogue having found certain things in those ridings, that we began to raise questions, because she received the evidence and made findings based on her judicial judgment.

I think, in this whole matter, opposition parties have been highly responsible in how we have treated this information. I expect that we will be highly responsible going forward if this matter goes to the procedure and House affairs committee.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I too want to express my full support for the member, who has first-hand experience with interference and threats to his own family. I think all our colleagues here feel the same way. Having said that, we now need to turn those feelings into action. I think the member will agree with me.

Last week, a report on foreign interference was released. I would like to know whether my colleague is satisfied with the report. If I am not mistaken, he sits on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

I think everyone is familiar with cyber-attacks, actually. All we have to do is log on to social media to see there is a large number of bots and fake accounts flooding social networks. We suspect it is coming from abroad.

Given that we often learn through the media, and at the last minute, that there has been interference, can my colleague, who sits on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, tell us where we need to start looking and what we should be focusing on in order to anticipate future hits?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I believe that Justice Hogue's initial report is a good start. She will present a second report in December of this year. I will continue working with the commission to ensure that the second report is very strong and contains solid recommendations for building a national security system that will protect our democratic institutions.

I also agree that the government must act. The director of CSIS sounded the alarm in 2018 when he publicly announced that there was a national security problem here in Canada, specifically in relation to the People's Republic of China. That was six or seven years ago. The government dragged its feet over proposing a measure or taking action. As my hon. NDP colleague said, they took too long introducing a bill aimed at creating a registry of foreign agents.

A lot more needs to be done, and I think that the government needs to do these things.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is exactly right. Throughout the entire hearing with the commissioner, all the parties that participated were working in a non-partisan fashion. We were being as helpful as we could in working in collaboration with the commission so that we could find the truth.

The commissioner noted there is a real risk of politicians modifying their positions or messages as a result of foreign interference activities. Can the member comment on that?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for all the work she has done on countering PRC foreign interference. It has been very constructive.

The member rightfully points out that Justice Hogue found that the PRC interfered in the 2019 and 2021 elections. That is incontrovertible. That is a finding of fact by Justice Hogue. She also concluded that the intelligence relating to the member for Don Valley North led to well-grounded suspicions that the PRC's interference could have impacted the individual who was elected in Don Valley North to this place. She said, “This is significant.”

She also concluded, with respect to the riding of Steveston—Richmond East, it is a reasonable possibility to conclude that the PRC's disinformation operations in Steveston—Richmond East “could have impacted the result in this riding.” Again, these are Justice Hogue's findings. They could have impacted the results in certain ridings. Much of it centres around disinformation operations.

As my hon. colleague stated earlier, we found out that the government did nothing about these disinformation operations in Steveston—Richmond East, but it jumped to attention when a Facebook post was made by the Buffalo Chronicle. A PCO official immediately called up Facebook, using the full weight and threat of the Government of Canada, to tell Facebook to take it down during the election. That shows us how uneven the playing field is with respect to the government's handling of foreign interference during the writ period.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we know the Liberals kept silent and knew about the foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections because it was electorally advantageous to do so. We had a number of opposition members hacked by the PRC, which was potentially politically advantageous to the government.

Would that be why the government kept silent?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think that we need a full range of tools, which is what experts have been telling the government.

The government needs to implement a full range of tools to counter these foreign interference threat operations, and one of the tools that it needs to start using, which it is not very good at, is sunlight and transparency. The government needs to tell us and the public about foreign interference threats that it has derived from intelligence so that we are equipped with information to ensure that we become more resilient as a Parliament and more resilient as a society to counter the threats coming from authoritarian states.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

The question is on the motion.

If a member participating in person wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that this pass unanimously.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

(Motion agreed to)

Opposition Motion—Legalization of Hard Drugs

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

moved:

That, given that since the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister took office, opioid overdose deaths across Canada have increased by 166% according to the most recent data available, the House call on the Prime Minister to:

(a) proactively reject the City of Toronto's request to the federal government to make deadly hard drugs like crack, cocaine, heroin, and meth legal;

(b) reject the City of Montreal's vote calling on the federal government to make deadly hard drugs legal;

(c) deny any active or future requests from provinces, territories and municipalities seeking federal approval to make deadly hard drugs legal in their jurisdiction; and

(d) end taxpayer funded narcotics and redirect this money into treatment and recovery programs for drug addiction.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon.

A couple of years ago, I paid a visit to the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, and I was both shocked and surprised. The shock is self-evident. Anyone who has been there would have seen the carnage of our fellow citizens lying face-first on the pavement in overdoses, the many more who stand on two feet with their heads between their legs, bent over in a spine-twisting posture that is common among those who are maxed out on fentanyl. These are spine-twisting postures that leave them bent forward, often for the rest of their lives. Those lives are often shortened, as the game of Russian roulette of using fentanyl risks ending their breathing every time they do it.

There is an unmistakable smell of too many people and too few bathrooms, with tents that go block after block after block. The police pointed to one tent, identifying it as the headquarters of the “United Nations”, a self-described gang that supplies the guns and other deadly weapons for the street. There are people screaming at the top of their lungs, having lost control of themselves while in a static state of near overdose. These things are all stunning to witness, even though one might have expected, knowing the stats, that they were all there.

We know that the Downtown Eastside was an experiment brought in by NDP municipal and provincial governments, but it was an experiment that the Prime Minister saw and said needed to be expanded right across the country. He has succeeded as, now, these tent encampments are regular in every part of the country. In your home province, Mr. Speaker, Halifax has 35 homeless encampments. That is 35 encampments in quaint, beautiful, peaceful Halifax. Every Canadian knows of such an encampment in their community, even though nine years ago it was unthinkable.

The unmistakable link between this policy and the results that I just described play out now in the rare but courageous journalism that has begun, finally, to expose the cause. I point to an article in the National Post that reads, “Miller says that her daughter Madison told her that they 'could go up to a drug addict and ask for dillies and they’d have bottles of them, because they would go into pharmacies, get them filled up and sell them to the kids.'” “Dillies” is slang for the hydromorphone that is funded by government.

A National Post article from March 11 reads:

“I had several patients who were drug-free for a long time and just couldn't resist the temptation of this very cheap hydromorphone that was now on the street,” said Dr. Michael Lester, a Toronto-based addiction physician. “Every addiction medicine doctor I have spoken to has told me that, on a daily basis in their offices, they're dealing with diverted hydromorphone, either from new clients coming in who are addicted to it, or patients of theirs that are using it as a drug of abuse.”

Global News provided rare, courageous journalism on this as well, showing that the price for a hydromorphone pill on the streets of Vancouver has dropped from $10 to 25¢ since the government began subsidizing and spreading the drug far and wide. There are reports of dealers standing outside of pharmacies waiting for those who have the prescription to get the so-called safe supply to immediately deliver it to the dealers who can then sell it to finance other terrible drugs. Then, of course, we have the overdoses that result as people graduate from those drugs.

The Prime Minister has all of this evidence. He has the evidence that, since he took office, overdose deaths are up 166% nationwide. They are up the most in the places where his and the NDP's radical policies have been most enthusiastically embraced. That is in British Columbia, where it has grown by 380%. Only with an election on the horizon did the B.C. government admit its failing and try to reverse the policy, just in time to go to the polls. However, still, Toronto and Montreal are applying for the same decriminalization of hard, illicit, unregulated drugs that caused such carnage in British Columbia, a request that the Prime Minister steadfastly refuses to rule out.

I said that I was shocked and surprised. What surprised me when I went to the Downtown Eastside were the people who greeted me there. They were not the addicts. They were not the police. They were a small platoon of activists who somehow learned of my arrival, even though it was unannounced and was not posted anywhere for either the media or the social networks. They were there to record and to follow me, and to heckle me, which is fine. I can deal with that. I do it every day.

However, it confused me. Who is paying for all this? Where is the money coming from for the activists who are pushing this? It turns out that there is a lot of money being made. Let me read a headline. “Prof, former public health officer launch company to produce legal heroin for treatment”.

Martin Schechter, who led the study, called the the North American Opiate Medication Initiative (NAOMI), and Perry Kendall, B.C.'s first public health officer, are moving to change that.

Frustrated by the lack of action from government, the two have launched a company called FPP...short for Fair Price Pharma, with the goal of producing an affordable domestic supply of legal, injectable heroin for use in treatment.

More than 5,500 British Columbians have died from illicit drug and overdoses since 2016, including 170 in May.

Dr. Schechter, who is also a professor of the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, said in an e-mail that the overdose poisoning crisis [was a] failure to expand...legal heroin—a proven...cost-effective treatment—in the face of desperate need for safer supply, [that] drove the two doctors to act.

[They said that he has a company] to set up a dedicated facility to manufacture the product and offer it at a cost to interested health care providers, including those in other provinces.

He and Dr. Kendall are expected to meet this month with Health Canada's therapeutic products directorate, which regulates prescription drugs, to determine the tests and evidence needed to obtain a license.... They estimate they will need about $3-million to launch the product.

Of course, they are making money. Later, they would complain. “B.C. doctors upset their 'safe supply' of heroin going unprescribed during overdose crisis”. They began to lobby for more money.

This is from other news articles. Perry Kendall, the former Provincial Health Officer until 2018 is an advocate for safe supply. He founded Fair Price Pharma to distribute heroin.

Mark Tyndall, who was B.C.'s deputy provincial health officer and was an executive medical director, is the founder of MySafe project.

As I said, Martin Schechter was not with the B.C. government directly, but was responsible for the research that led to the so-called safe supply. He founded Fair Price Pharma.

These are the companies that are actually making the money and are intimidating opponents of their plan. This is turning into a gigantic, self-licking ice cream cone, one that needs to end. It is in the service of money-making and not of the public.

That is why common-sense Conservatives would stop funding hard narcotics, would ban hard drugs and would put the money into treatment and recovery services that would bring our loved ones home, drug-free.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard the words from the member for Carleton today.

I have just one very simple question to him. He has listed a lot of headlines and news stories. He talked about brave people. Why will the Leader of the Opposition not meet with Moms Stop the Harm, an organization of mothers who have lost their children to the overdose crisis and who are brave, in this moment, for their children?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been meeting with families who have suffered as a result of the addiction crisis. We have met with people. What we try to do, though, is to meet with the organizations that are getting people off drugs and are actually saving lives.

Our approach is to meet with recovery centres, all of whom have been unanimous in telling me that the minister's radical policies are actually killing people, not stopping the harm, but perpetuating the harm. That minister and the NDP government in B.C. have perpetuated the harm because the apparatus of corporate, pharmaceutical and activist groups that are profiting off this crisis have kept it going.

She should be ashamed of herself for pumping more money into the hands of those pharmaceutical companies, those so-called public health officials in the bureaucracy, who then move into the profit-making world of selling hard opioids on our streets.

We, in this common-sense Conservative government, will actually stop the harm by bringing our loved ones home drug-free.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition said in his speech that the City of Montreal had voted in favour of decriminalizing drugs. If that is true, why does point (b) of the Conservative motion use the phrase “make...legal” instead? That is my first question.

My second question is as follows: Can the Leader of the Opposition explain to us, using neutral and objective language, the difference between legalization, decriminalization and diversion?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is no real difference. It is just semantics for these extremists because they do not want to defend their record. Every time they introduce a measure that fails, they change its name. First they called it “safe supply”, and now they have changed it to “regulated supply”. They use the words “legalization” and “decriminalization” to make distinctions that do not exist in the real world. That is the reality.

In British Columbia, people were allowed to use methamphetamine, crack, heroin and other hard drugs in hospitals, public transit and children's parks. It was 100% legal. This is legalization, pure and simple, no matter what it is called.

The Bloc Québécois supports it because the Bloc and other lefties support all the radically ideological programs introduced by the government and the New Democrats.