Moved second reading of Bill C-70, An Act respecting countering foreign interference.

He said: Honourable senators, today, I am pleased to speak as the sponsor of Bill C-70, An Act respecting countering foreign interference, which has received rare unanimous support of the House of Commons.

We have learned over the past months, and at our National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs Committee last week, that foreign interference poses one of the greatest threats to Canadian society, our economic prosperity and our sovereignty.

Colleagues, this proposed legislation begins the process of providing our law enforcement and intelligence agencies with the enhanced tools and authorities that they need in order to strengthen our ability to detect and disrupt foreign interference threats to our national security while ensuring oversight and transparency.

Colleagues, Canada is not immune to this. Indeed, we are a prime target. We know that a growing number of foreign state actors have built and deployed programs dedicated to deceptive online and offline influence as part of their strategies to harm Canada.

In 2019, before a general election, the government announced the plan to protect Canada’s democracy. Measures introduced as part of the plan included the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol, the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force, the Digital Citizen Initiative, the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism, and the Canada Declaration on Electoral Integrity Online. These measures were in place for the 2019 election with the intention of countering any foreign interference attempts.

Fast-forward to 2022 when the media reported on the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, leaks that alleged that China had engaged in foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections. At this point, it became clear that the measures put in place were not enough to protect us from foreign powers interfering in our elections. This prompted committee studies on foreign interference in the House of Commons.

In March 2023, the Prime Minister announced a number of independent reviews. The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, or NSIRA, was asked to conduct a review of the flow of information from national security agencies to decision makers during the forty-third and forty-fourth general elections. Their review focused on the production and dissemination of intelligence on foreign interference, including how it was communicated across the government.

Key recommendations in this report include the following: to make explicit CSIS’s thresholds and practices for the communication and dissemination of intelligence regarding political interference — this would include the relevant levels of confidence, corroboration, contextualization and characterization necessary for intelligence to be reported; to clearly articulate CSIS’s risk tolerance for taking action against threats of political interference; to make clear any special requirements or procedures that would apply during election and writ periods as necessary, including particular procedures for the timely dissemination of intelligence about political foreign interference; and also to look at best practices from international partners, including the Five Eyes, regarding investigating and reporting on political foreign interference.

The Prime Minister also requested that the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP, “complete a review to assess the state of foreign interference in federal election processes” with respect to:

. . . foreign interference attempts that occurred in the 43rd and 44th federal general elections, including potential effects on Canada’s democracy and institutions . . . .

NSICOP published its report on foreign interference at the beginning of June. Three of our colleagues in this chamber are members of the committee.

Building on its highly informative 2019 report, NSICOP concluded:

Foreign states conduct sophisticated and pervasive foreign interference specifically targeting Canada’s democratic processes and institutions, occurring before, during and after elections and in all orders of government. These activities continue to pose a significant threat to national security, and to the overall integrity of Canada’s democracy. . . .

NSICOP reported that key tactics in foreign interference include the following: covertly influencing the opinions and positions of voters, ethnocultural communities and parliamentarians; leveraging relationships with influential Canadians; exploiting vulnerabilities in political party governance and administration; deploying a variety of cyber tools to attain specific objectives; and using mainstream media, social media and other digital means to conduct interference activities.

These interference activities were conducted by foreign diplomats, intelligence officers, state proxies and co-optees, and directed at all levels of government, civil society groups, ethnocultural communities, business persons and journalists.

In the fall of 2023, the government launched the Foreign Interference Commission to respond to concerns about foreign interference in the last two elections. The commission heard directly from witnesses that foreign state actors are monitoring, intimidating and harassing those in many communities across Canada, particularly in diaspora communities. Members of these communities testified about their experience of that foreign interference, or the experience of others. This includes threats to them or their families back home.

Finally, the government held public consultations to guide the creation of a foreign influence transparency registry in Canada, and separate consultations that focused on potential legislative amendments to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, the Criminal Code, the Security of Information Act, and the Canada Evidence Act.

Colleagues, we have very clear and pressing legal, policy, operational and national security challenges at our doorstep, and this demands action.

This is represented in Bill C-70, which would enhance Canada’s ability to detect and disrupt foreign interference and better protect citizens against threats posed by malign foreign influence.

A centrepiece of this bill is the foreign influence transparency and accountability act, or FITAA, which would mandate the establishment of a new registry. The registry, as outlined in clause 9 of Part 4 of the bill, would be administered and enforced by an independent foreign influence transparency commissioner, who would be appointed by the Governor-in-Council, which, by the way, distinguishes it from its Australian and U.K. counterparts.

Clause 9(2) would require that prior to making the appointment of the commissioner, the government must consult with Senate leaders and facilitators of recognized parties or parliamentary groups, the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, and the leader in the House of Commons of each party having at least 12 members in that house.

These were strengthened during the House of Commons committee study when an NDP amendment was approved unanimously by the committee, which would require that the approval of a commissioner occur by resolution of the Senate and the House of Commons. This amendment strengthens the independence of the commissioner while also ensuring that the commissioner is situated within the machinery of government in the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.

The bill defines foreign influence arrangements in clause 2 of Part 4 of the bill as an activity:

. . . a person undertakes to carry out, under the direction of or in association with a foreign principal, any of the following activities in relation to a political or governmental process in Canada . . . .

(a) communicating with a public office holder;

(b) communicating or disseminating or causing to be communicated or disseminated by any means, including social media, information that is related to the political or governmental process;

(c) distributing money or items of value or providing a service or the use of a facility.

This definition is critical, as certain information related to an “arrangement” would be disclosed on the registry. The classes of information to be disclosed would be set out by way of regulation.

An arrangement would require three elements: for a person to act under the direction of or in association with a foreign principal; the person would have to engage in at least one of the foreign influence activities listed in the definition; and the activity would need to be done in relation to a political or governmental process in Canada.

The bill also defines “foreign principal” as the following:

. . . a foreign economic entity, a foreign entity, a foreign power or a foreign state, as those expressions are defined in subsection 2(1) of the Security of Information Act.

This definition is broad and intended to incorporate the wide and diverse ways in which foreign governments hold power.

As laid out in clause 3 of Part 4, it is designed to bring transparency to efforts by foreign actors to interfere in our political or governmental processes while also increasing public awareness.

Under clause 5(1) of Part 4:

A person who enters into an arrangement with a foreign principal must, within 14 days after the day on which they enter into the arrangement, provide the Commissioner with the information specified in the regulations.

The window to provide information is set at 14 days to allow time for the individual to finalize their arrangement and then undertake to register it in a reasonable period of time.

The proposed act is not intended to prohibit arrangements with foreign principals in Canada; it is only that those activities and certain details surrounding those arrangements should be made transparent.

Amendments were advanced by the government during the House of Commons committee study to introduce additional transition provisions to ensure that pre-existing arrangements are captured by the act and apply between foreign principals and federal, provincial, territorial or Indigenous processes. The information on these arrangements would need to be provided to the commissioner within 60 days after the act comes into force.

The existence of AMPs, or administrative monetary penalties, in the proposed act bolsters the commissioner’s ability to bring individuals into compliance with the law and dissuades actors who may otherwise seek to actively avoid registration obligations.

Clause 23 of Part 4 is concerned with the same violations of clauses 5(1), 5(2) and 7; however, instead of administrative monetary penalties, it provides the commissioner with the ability to pursue these violations as criminal offences, which police of jurisdiction could investigate.

Importantly, Canadians would also be able to examine the registry online to see whether an individual or organization with whom they have come into contact is registered as acting at the direction of or in association with a foreign principal, or if the commissioner has imposed a penalty on any individual or organization for not upholding their registration obligations.

Finally, one further amendment introduced by the Bloc Québécois changed the five-year statutory parliamentary review provision and received unanimous support from the committee. With this new change, the foreign influence transparency and accountability act, or FITAA, will be reviewed during the first year after a federal general election moving forward. This will ensure that the provisions of FITAA stay up to date with emerging threats and the challenges they produce.

Colleagues, we know that there are established legal and legitimate forms of engagement with foreign actors, including lobbying, advocacy efforts and regular diplomatic activity. This bill is not intended to limit these activities. However, we also know that there are activities undertaken by foreign actors in non-transparent ways that seek to influence our political or governmental processes. This bill would bring us into alignment with international best practices and with our Five Eyes allies, most of whom have introduced registries of their own to counter malign foreign influence.

The registry, colleagues, would be an important first step in addressing the threat of foreign interference, but foreign interference is a complex national security threat that requires a multi-faceted approach. As I mentioned, Bill C-70 also contains amendments to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, or CSIS Act, the Criminal Code, the Security of Information Act, or SOIA, and the Canada Evidence Act, or CEA.

Let’s first turn to the Security of Information Act provisions in Part 2 of the act.

Changes to the SOIA would better address foreign interference risks to Canada and ensure that surreptitious or deceptive hostile activities — including those directed at our democratic processes, such as the nomination of political candidates — are addressed by criminal law. They would also better address transnational threats or violence by foreign states and those who work on their behalf to intimidate people living in Canada and their families, wherever those family members might be.

The bill would amend the SOIA by creating three new offences relating to foreign interference and by amending the existing offences for intimidation, threats and violence to make them more responsive to modern-day threats. The three new offences include a general foreign interference offence committed for a foreign entity, an indictable offence committed for a foreign entity and political interference for a foreign entity.

The first new offence is a general foreign interference offence where a person knowingly engages in surreptitious or deceptive conduct, or omits to do anything, at the direction of, for the benefit of or in association with a foreign entity. An example of this offence could be knowingly facilitating the entry into Canada of agents of a foreign entity who are posing as tourists.

Second, the bill would make it a distinct offence to commit an indictable offence at the direction of, for the benefit of or in association with a foreign entity. An example of this offence could be if an individual who commits bribery, which is an existing offence under the Criminal Code, bribes a Canadian official for the benefit of the foreign state that they support.

Third, the bill would make it an offence to engage in surreptitious or deceptive conduct at the direction of or in association with a foreign entity with the intent to influence a Canadian political or governmental process, or to influence the exercise of a democratic right in Canada. An example of this offence would be someone who, acting at the direction of a foreign entity, creates large numbers of counterfeit party memberships in order to influence the result of a party leadership vote.

Finally, as I mentioned, the bill would amend the existing section 20 offence in the SOIA to focus on the intimidation, threat of violence done on behalf of or in association with a foreign state. It removes the need to prove that the act was for the purpose of harming Canadian interests or increasing foreign capacity to do so. An example of a section 20 offence could be an individual in Canada who is working on behalf of a foreign state and threatening to harm relatives of a Canadian citizen who live in that foreign state if the citizen does not stop their criticism of the foreign state.

The bill also creates a new offence in the SOIA that captures threats or violence on behalf of a foreign entity that take place outside of Canada in limited circumstances.

All of these proposed offences would be punishable by a maximum penalty of imprisonment for life.

The bill would also increase the penalty for preparatory acts — actions taken to prepare to commit the most serious SOIA offences — from two years’ imprisonment to five years. Sentencing judges will still be bound by the principle of proportionality, but these changes are reflective of the serious nature of the criminality associated with foreign interference.

I now turn to the Criminal Code amendments. The bill would modernize the existing sabotage offence in the Criminal Code and add two new companion offences concerning essential infrastructure and the making, possession or distribution of devices that are designed to be used for sabotage, such as bots and malware. This modernization will ensure the offence is responsive to today’s threat environment and includes acts that are taken in preparation to commit economic espionage.

Colleagues, this provision was further amended during the House of Commons committee consideration to extend the scope of the provision to essential infrastructure that is in the construction phase and not yet operational.

This extension of the provisions found in clause 61 is important, as interference with the construction or installation of essential infrastructure could be done with the intent of causing harms to Canada. For example, impeding the installation of an emergency water supply might constitute such an act.

The bill would also clarify that activities undertaken in the context of advocacy, protest or dissent would not constitute sabotage where the person did not intend to commit sabotage. To quote from the Charter statement tabled by the government:

Because these proposed offences give rise to the possibility of imprisonment, they engage the section 7 right to liberty and so must respect the principles of fundamental justice. To the extent that these offences have the potential to impact individuals engaged in advocacy or protest, they may also engage the freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly under sections 2(b) and 2(c) of the Charter. The following considerations support the consistency of the proposed sabotage offences with the Charter.

The scope of the proposed sabotage offences is tailored to the legislative objective of protecting important Canadian interests and essential infrastructure against serious harms. The main sabotage offence and the essential infrastructure sabotage offence both incorporate a stringent guilty mind component, requiring an intent to cause specified and serious harms. Legitimate protest, advocacy and dissent, in circumstances where there is no intention to cause the specified harms, is not captured by the offences. The companion offence of making, possessing, selling or distributing a device for the commission of a sabotage offence is limited to devices that have been specifically designed for the harmful purpose of facilitating a sabotage offence. All three offences preserve the discretion of the trial judge to craft a fit and appropriate sentence.

Colleagues, on top of Charter protections that exist for protests and freedom of expression, there is a specific “For greater certainty” clause included in the bill, which states that the sabotage offence does not capture any person who is engaged in advocacy, protest or dissent and did not intend to cause harm to critical infrastructure. Additionally, for this offence to be charged, there must be an Attorney General’s consent provided, adding an additional layer of accountability.

Colleagues, I now move on to amendments to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, or CSIS Act.

Under this legislation, targeted amendments to the CSIS Act would better equip the government to build resilience and counter modern threats that Canada faces today.

While it has been amended before, the CSIS Act was first enacted in 1984, a time when the prolific use and expansion of digital technology was still nascent. Today, as you know, digital technologies are a part of every aspect of our lives.

Technological innovations make it more difficult to detect and identify threat actors, including those engaged in foreign interference activities. These innovations have created new avenues for threat actors to interfere in Canadian society and institutions, especially in the online space.

CSIS must therefore be able to operate in a digital world that is constantly and rapidly changing. To that end, there are a few key changes to the CSIS Act, including giving CSIS the power to collect, from within Canada, foreign intelligence that resides outside Canada. This is an important new addition to CSIS’s powers. Also, new warrant and order provisions will allow CSIS to better carry out investigations. Another change regards the use and sharing of datasets, which are certainly clarified in ways that are responsive to the March 27, 2024, report of the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, or NSIRA. Importantly, new powers would also enable CSIS to share sensitive information with non-federal partners at all levels of government, in academia and in the private sector, something that for a long time people have been calling for.

First, court decisions have made it clear that CSIS can’t collect foreign intelligence from within Canada when the information is outside Canada. But this geographic limitation restricts foreign intelligence collection in ways that could not have been foreseen in 1984, given how information today is largely digital and borderless. Electronic information that was previously collected in support of Canada’s foreign affairs or national defence is now frequently located outside our borders. Amendments seek to clarify CSIS’s authority to collect from within Canada foreign intelligence that is located outside Canada while still maintaining other limitations originally intended by Parliament.

Second, the bill introduces several new powers to assist CSIS in its investigation of foreign interference. Clause 37 introduces preservation and production orders. While they would be new to the CSIS Act, preservation and production orders are not in themselves new tools. The proposed amendments are modelled on orders routinely relied upon by Canadian law enforcement and intelligence agencies and in other democracies.

For a preservation order, CSIS may seek a warrant to order a third party to preserve any information, record, document or thing. The proposed threshold for obtaining a preservation order is reasonable grounds to suspect. Making such an application does not require the prior approval of the minister because CSIS would not be able to collect any information, record, document or thing. However, the minister would have to be notified once a preservation order application has been filed.

In the event that the Federal Court grants the preservation order, CSIS would still be required under the new provisions to return to the court, having obtained the minister’s approval, and demonstrate reasonable grounds to believe that a production order or warrant is required to obtain the preserved information, record, document or thing.

As such, the threshold for CSIS to collect information would remain high, with additional safeguards and oversight from the minister, the court, NSIRA and the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP.

For example, if CSIS were to receive information that a foreign interference threat is linked to an individual’s phone number, it could quickly obtain a preservation order from the Federal Court to ensure that call logs and text messages implicated in the foreign interference activities are not destroyed. They could then seek a production order from the court to obtain the messages along with the identity of the subscriber.

This, colleagues, would help CSIS to more effectively identify and investigate foreign interference threat actors and activities and, if necessary, take action to disrupt those threats.

Second, in clause 39, the bill introduces a new single-use warrant which is much like a search warrant for law enforcement. Unlike a normal warrant, this would be a tool available to CSIS without exhausting other investigative methods, such as recruiting sources or conducting interviews. This would enable the service to obtain important information earlier in an investigation. These amendments would continue to respect Canadian fundamental rights and freedoms, with strong review, oversight and transparency measures still in place and unchanged.

To obtain a single collection activity warrant, CSIS would still be required to satisfy all other core requirements of normal warrant applications, including obtaining ministerial approval, as well as demonstrating to the Federal Court that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the warrant is required and will assist in the investigation. The court must also be informed of all previous warrant applications against the same subject of investigation.

This requirement would ensure that the court would be aware of how many times this new warrant authority had been previously granted against the same subject of investigation.

These proposals reflect the high expectation of privacy that people in Canada have, including the protections provided by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Third is the ability to use and share datasets. A dataset is defined in the act as a collection of information stored as an electronic record and characterized by a common subject matter and that does not directly and immediately relate to a threat to the security of Canada. CSIS may collect the dataset if it can demonstrate that the dataset is, however, relevant to the performance of its functions.

There is a higher threshold for the retention of foreign Canadian datasets, where CSIS must establish a “likely to assist” threshold. Proposed changes to the dataset regime are designed to clarify the application of the dataset and to allow more flexibility in the evaluation and retention of datasets, extending the initial evaluation period from 90 to 100 days, which recognizes, for example, requirements for decryption, translation and evaluation.

Fourth, the new authorized disclosure provisions found in clause 34 of the bill will help build resiliency against threats.

At the time of enacting the CSIS Act, national security was primarily the purview of the federal government, where espionage and foreign interference targeted military technology and federal government institutions. For that reason, CSIS is authorized to collect, retain and provide necessary intelligence to the federal government to make decisions to protect Canada’s national security.

Today, threats to the security of Canada, including foreign interference, impact every order of government and all sectors of society, including Canadian communities, provincial and municipal governments, academia, the media and private enterprises.

CSIS’s expertise and information are increasingly relevant to those outside of the federal government, and these partners are increasingly turning to CSIS for more information that can help them better understand, recognize and build resilience against threats. This is a very important change to the CSIS regime.

This provision was amended during the House of Commons study to add an exception to ensure CSIS could disclose an individual’s personal information to that individual. This amendment, which received all-party support, would allow CSIS to be more candid and transparent with Canadians by disclosing information around specific threats and vulnerabilities affecting them.

For example, colleagues, without this amendment, CSIS would not be able to tell a senator that their personal email address was found in a forum on the dark web known to be used by hostile state actors. That has now been rectified.

A report-stage amendment in the other place has ensured that these new exceptions are also mirrored for corporations and entities.

This new disclosure authority would require that the information CSIS seeks to disclose also be provided to the federal department or agency that performs duties and functions to which the information is relevant where one exists. The information disclosed under this provision cannot include any personal information pertaining to a Canadian citizen, permanent resident or any individual in Canada, or contain the name of a Canadian entity or a corporation incorporated under federal or provincial law.

CSIS can, however, disclose information it holds about foreign states or non-Canadian entities who pose threats to Canada’s national security.

In cases where disclosing personal information or naming the name of a Canadian entity would be essential to the public interest, the minister would decide whether disclosure outweighs the potential privacy intrusion.

Finally, the government has included an ongoing five-year parliamentary review of the CSIS Act. Currently, there is no statutory requirement for Parliament to review the CSIS Act on a regular basis. Clause 44 would set out a mechanism for parliamentary review of the act every five years to ensure that it keeps pace with new technologies and evolving national security threats and to provide additional oversight of the service’s powers.

In conclusion, colleagues, Canadians have been very clear about what they need to feel safe and better protected from foreign interference threats. They have said that our country needs a foreign interference registry. They’ve said that they need information that will help them understand and address this threat. In particular, scientists, universities, enterprises, municipalities and other entities that frequently deal with foreign principals need guidance on how to do this transparently. Importantly, Canadians have said that we need to move quickly on this to have it in place by the next election.

During our Senate pre-study, former director of CSIS Richard Fadden stated:

To delay Bill C-70 to the point that it will not be in place before the next election would be a gift to our adversaries.

Katherine Leung, Policy Advisor at Hong Kong Watch, said:

This bill would give Canada a much stronger framework to combat foreign interference than we currently have in place and should be in place before the next election.

Honourable senators, foreign interference undermines public confidence in governments, public servants and democratic institutions and processes. Canadians need and must be equipped with tools to be able to recognize when foreign powers are attempting to influence them or to intimidate them or their families in their homes.

Colleagues, it’s my recommendation that this chamber deal with this proposed legislation expeditiously, but that, as always, lies in your experienced hands. Thank you.

Senator Dean, will you take a question?

Yes.

I can’t at this point indicate my own inclination on this. I don’t know what the government’s is, but there have been concerns raised in this respect. I’m confident, senator, that the checks and balances that we find in this legislation and the oversight that will be attached to these new provisions will find the right balance between protecting Canadians from foreign interference and, at the same time, ensuring that Canadians are not inadvertently negatively affected by it in a way that is not intended.

I don’t believe that’s the case, Senator Ataullahjan, no.

We talked about pharmacare the other day. The issue that bothered me was that two thirds of Canadians don’t have a doctor, which sets things back, and I’m thinking of the same thing with this bill. The problem might be that we do not really have the resources in the RCMP, CSIS or any other Canadian organization to be able to implement these procedures effectively. Was that discussed? I know it was discussed because I was there. What is your opinion on that?

Senator Richards, resources are always important in making legislative interventions and changes successful. We know that, and it does come up periodically.

I believe that representatives of the RCMP at the National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs Committee received this question directly, and my recollection is that they told committee members that they felt adequately resourced to police and assist with the provisions in this bill. I have no doubt that if more resources are needed, given the priority that the government places on this legislation, that those resources will be found in order to make the very important provisions of this bill successful.

Thank you very much, Senator Dean, for sponsoring this very important piece of legislation, as well as for hosting the very well-attended and thorough briefing that we received just before coming to the chamber.

As I understand it, this is a modernization of our tool kit. That is how it has been described. I’ve heard that understanding all the parts of this is complicated.

My question is not so much what is in the bill. My question is more to your final point, which is: Canadians are asking us to pass this bill quickly. Let’s assume we do pass the bill. What has to happen between that point and actually implementing the various provisions of the bill that is making us move so very quickly at this time this week?

We want it in place before the next election. Well, hopefully, that’s not until the fall of 2025. So what has to happen between now and then, and is it really going to take all that time? It would be important for us to understand that.

First, I would say that my knowledge of government process is such that I have seen far less complicated, far less consequential and impactful bills that required longer than the time available for this one.

Let me put it this way to you: The government would like to see this in place, and Canadians would like to see this in place before the next election. Our officials in various departments are going to have to work very hard to develop the mechanisms and to build the architecture. There will need to be the appointment of personnel and the commissioner for the foreign interference act, and that search will have to be under way. This will be a priority for the government, I assume.

Furthermore, I’d say that the government has to do its work in developing regulations, and I’m sure there will be consultations on those regulations. I’m not sure about the notion that once, if approved, this bill is passed, everything goes into a closed box that we don’t hear any more until it’s all announced in one go.

I think what we have here, in some cases, are new provisions and, in many cases, existing ones that we’re relying on. It’s not all brand new. There are some new powers in this legislation. They’re important ones, but they rest on the foundation of our current legal system and the foundation of our national Security Intelligence Review Committee that I would suspect would want to have some input into this as well.

This is going to be work that engages many. I believe that consultations will continue as regulations are developed. I assume that we in this chamber will want to keep an eye on that process as well and see how it’s developed and perhaps want to be briefed on where the government is in the stages of putting in place the various elements of this architecture.

It’s a big job, yes, but this is what governments do, and I have every confidence that the mechanisms here, many of which are pre-existing, can be put in place for the next election, but that would require us to act with haste.

There are only 30 seconds left. Senator Quinn, if it’s a short question, you may ask it.

Would the senator take a quick question? Just to build on what Senator Coyle asked, I understand this was introduced in the other place on June 4. There’s a process there. How many days was it in committee being examined?

In the Senate committee?

The briefing made it sound complicated to me. How much examination did the House committee have?

Senator Dean, you will have to ask leave for more time to answer the question. Are you asking for more time?

Yes, Your Honour.

Is leave granted, honourable senators?

I don’t have the House of Commons information in front of me. I can tell you that the Security and Defence Committee heard 36 witnesses from 26 organizations at several hearings and that, generally speaking, many witnesses were supportive of rapid passage of the bill.

Barely two hours ago, 20 of our colleagues were at 1 Wellington to receive a technical briefing on Bill C-70. That’s less than a quarter of our complement of senators. I’m now standing before you, rushed to make a speech after receiving this briefing on short notice, with inadequate preparation, but, nevertheless, I would like to put some things on the record.

The first thing, which should be obvious from my preamble, is that we are rushing this bill. There is no question that we are pushing this through with a kind of haste that is not becoming of the upper chamber. I think it is correct to say that at the technical briefing there were many questions that were not asked because of a lack of time, and there were many answers given that were, to some of us, unsatisfactory.

Colleagues, the purpose of second reading, typically, is to talk about the principle of the bill. Let me say, first off, that I support the principle of the bill, but the idea of discussing the principle is in anticipation of the bill being sent to a committee where the details of the bill can be studied carefully and possible flaws in that bill can be scrutinized and possibly fixed. What we have instead, as you all know, is a pre-study that took place last week, also rushed, and when the National Security and Defence Committee meets tomorrow — starting 8 a.m., by the way, for those of you who are interested — it will go directly into clause‑by-clause consideration. We are essentially skipping — leapfrogging — from second reading to clause by clause, and then, presumably, a third reading vote by Thursday.

Colleagues, we are taking less time to review this consequential bill than we did with anti-terrorism bills in the last three decades — in 2001, 2012, 2015 and 2019 — all of which were passed quickly enough in the heat of the moment and were flawed. Some of them had to be fixed a few years later.

You may remember, for example, the 2019 amendments to what was previously Bill C-51, the anti-terrorism bill.

The likelihood of Bill C-70 is that it will go through to a third reading vote and pass before we rise for the summer — flaws and all. And perhaps we will have a chance down the years to fix some of those flaws, but in the meantime, the price to be paid by the flaws in the bill will be the individuals and organizations who will be trapped or caught by what I think is an overly wide and overly sticky spider’s web that is Bill C-70.

Before I get to just a very small number of the flaws that I see in this bill, allow me to demonstrate my bona fides in this area. Almost from the time that I joined the Senate in late 2016, I have been working on countering foreign interference in Canada and on Parliament Hill.

In 2018, well before the hullabaloo, well before the media leaks, well before the febrile discussion about foreign interference being widespread, I organized in Centre Block a workshop for parliamentarians to talk about Chinese foreign interference in Canada. I did that because I could see — even back then — that this was going to be a very difficult topic, one that was already being weaponized, first of all, in the United States, where we saw a lot of anti-foreign interference activities directed at China and Chinese people in the United States that was stigmatizing, discriminatory and justified by the imperatives of national security.

I hoped at the time that we could have a grown-up conversation about foreign interference so that we can avoid the excesses that I think we’re beginning to enter into. I failed because today we are in a fevered environment where there is, it would seem, overwhelming support — indeed, unanimous approval — for a bill on countering foreign interference that has manifest flaws in it that have been raised to all of us through a variety of sources in civil society, academia and from ordinary Canadians.

I’ve also, as some of you know, participated in the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference. I am a formal intervener, and I had the opportunity to witness and partake of the information that was made available. I also participated in the public consultation that led to Bill C-70 on developing a foreign interference transparency registry, which we have now in this bill, and I’ve made formal submissions to the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference, expressing my concern about the quality of intelligence and about the failure to consider the consequences of foreign interference zealotry, which is causing harm to the freedom of expression of diaspora communities including during an election.

Let me now get to a number of the flaws that I see in the bill that I hope others will pick up and that we can perhaps put some thought into ameliorating. These are only a few examples.

The first has to do with the Security of Information Act where there’s a new offence related to political interference. I agree with the need to stop political interference from foreign principals, but there’s a special provision where there is an offence of preparing the act of political interference. It says that this offence is when someone does anything that is directed towards or done in preparation of the commission of the offence, “the offence” being political interference.

In this provision, we are copying from the Australian example, where they also have a provision against the preparation and planning of an act of foreign interference, and they had their first conviction last year. Let me tell you that story.

A Vietnamese Australian has been sentenced to two years in jail for the act of preparing or planning an act of foreign interference. What was that act? He organized a fundraiser during COVID, raising money from Vietnamese and Indo‑Chinese‑Australian communities to buy personal protective equipment and other medical supplies, and he donated that money to a hospital. At the ceremony where the donation was made, he invited a politician — I think he was a sitting minister at the time — to stand with him on the stage holding one of these fake cheques for $25,000 Australian. That was used as evidence that this Vietnamese Australian person was cultivating the minister for a future act of foreign interference.

Just think about that. The Australian system is the Australian system, and they have the right to conduct themselves in the way that they want to. But are we going down the road where someone who develops a relationship with a politician or a public official who may have the potential to rise up the ladder sometime in the near or distant future, that that act in itself is a crime of planning or preparing an act of foreign interference? It drives shivers down the spine.

Let me move now to Part 4 of the bill, which is the proposed “Foreign Influence Transparency Accountability Act.” Let me start by telling you what I like about the bill. I commented during the consultation phase and participated vigorously in the public debate. There are many things I like about it. In fact, some of the suggestions that I and many others offered were taken up.

The first is that it’s country agnostic — it does not require a gazetting or a focus on one country or another.

Secondly, it doesn’t try to use the registry to deal with the very real problem of transnational repression. In the private member’s versions of the bill of a foreign influence registry that we have seen previously in the House of Commons and in this chamber, the notion is that a registry can somehow stop bad acts of foreign interference — particularly the most vile kinds of acts, which is the repression of Canadians by foreign governments through threats and intimidation.

This bill doesn’t try to do that. Instead, it creates a separate new category of criminal offences that have to do with the actual commission of repression and intimidation. I have concerns about the word “intimidation,” but I think that is the correct way to deal with criminal acts rather than to use the registry as a proxy.

I also like this registry in that it doesn’t use the concept of related entity, which is such a broad and vague term that it can capture just about anyone who is associated with an organization that is in some way connected to a foreign power. Instead, it uses the term “arrangements.” I recommended the idea of using the word “arrangements,” but I would have preferred that it focus on material arrangements because that’s concrete — a contract, a quid pro quo, a trip to Taiwan, for example, to Israel, to China or to Mexico. That’s a material arrangement. Instead, what we have is “. . . arrangements . . .” or “. . . in association with . . .” Here, I have grave concerns. What does “. . . in association with . . .” mean? The best clue is found in the consultation paper that was issued by Public Safety in preparation for this bill, which gave us a case study of what I think they mean. Here is the case study.

An academic has a meeting with a foreign principal. It could be a diplomat; it is somebody who represents another government. They have a conversation or maybe multiple conversations. Shortly after, the academic writes an op-ed that is in favour of that country’s position on a given issue. Maybe the academic also gives some lectures on campus in favour of or aligned — shall we say — with that government’s position. That example is described in the consultation paper as an act of malign foreign interference, and it is my interpretation that the intent of this bill and the use of the term “. . . in association with . . .” would capture the acts of that academic.

But, colleagues, if an academic has a meeting with a foreign official and that academic later expresses a view which is closely aligned with the foreign government, how do we know that the foreign official —

Your Honour, may I have another five minutes?

Is leave granted?

Thank you, colleagues.

How do we know that the academic did not share the view in the first place?

Let me give you an example of why this is so problematic. An issue that will come before us very soon is the question of whether we should impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, or EVs. Some of you know that the Americans have imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. The Europeans have imposed a tariff on them as well, though at a lower level. There is already a debate in this country as to whether we should follow suit. The automotive manufacturers and other lobbying groups are in conversation with American interests, including state interests, to suggest that we should impose a similar tariff for a good reason: to protect our industry.

At the same time, there are voices in this country saying we should not impose a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs because it is against our interests in the fight against climate change. I won’t get into which side is correct here, but do you think that someone arguing in favour of a 100% tariff under the influence of, say, an American state-linked entity would get the same treatment as someone arguing against a 100% tariff who may have had a connection with a Chinese or Asian entity? I’m suspicious. I don’t know. This is the kind of question we should be asking.

Colleagues, there is a lot more to say, but this bill has major blind spots. One other major blind spot is that it does not include non-state actors. You may know that the bill includes interference in governance of educational institutions as one of the no-go areas. However, most foreign interference in educational institutions is not from states, but from religious groups and lobbying groups interested in gender rights, reproductive rights, firearms and so on. Again, you can take whatever position you want on these issues, but these are the groups that will be the most active in trying to affect the governance of our educational institutions, and they are not covered in this bill.

There is so much more to talk about, but let me say that foreign interference is a serious issue. We should not stand for foreign interference. I understand the febrile nature of this debate and that no one wants to be seen as being on the wrong side of it. However, a bad bill will not help us in our fight against foreign interference, especially if it is cast so widely that fundamental rights are threatened and it leads to the stigmatization of individuals and groups who are seen as holding the wrong views.

We have not given this bill the scrutiny it deserves, and I fear we will come to regret rushing it through our chamber. I will have more to say at third reading. I thank you for your attention.

Honourable senators, where do I even begin? This legislation before us is — for unnecessary, unreasonable and cynical reasons — long overdue.

While I support this bill and its quick passage, many of you won’t like what I have to say about this government’s and this chamber’s track records on dealing with foreign interference.

I don’t doubt that I’ll be accused of partisanship in my remarks, but there’s no greater partisanship than that which has been displayed by the Trudeau government — and by many of you — when it comes to Conservative efforts to fight foreign interference and transnational repression, through the creation of a foreign agent registry in particular.

Let’s start there, colleagues. Let’s start with, if you check the scroll, Bill S-237.

I tabled this bill in February of 2022. That’s more than two years ago, and it has sat in this place collecting dust. With one exception, none of you found foreign interference to be interesting or pressing enough to stand in this place and utter one word about it in relation to this bill. Is it good, positive or neutral? Should it be amended? Should we take it and run with it?

I didn’t hear from Senator Woo, who earlier espoused his great concern about foreign interference. He didn’t rise to speak about Bill S-237. Could that be because many of you received calls from the PMO or from a minister telling you not to? Probably not, but I know one thing for certain: None of you received calls from the government or the Leader of the Government asking you to deal with the bill because it was of such importance to national security and foreign interference wouldn’t be tolerated.

There are two possible reasons why there was no interest on that bill. Perhaps the government thought there was no problem with foreign interference and carried on. Or perhaps there were partisan considerations and they didn’t want to debate a serious issue put forward by the official opposition. Whatever the reason, colleagues, your silence and the silence of the government on this bill speak volumes.

The only one who showed true independence on this issue, true concern over foreign interference and transnational repression and chose to speak from a principled position was the Honourable David Adams Richards. I thank him for it.

With that said, I would be remiss if I didn’t also acknowledge that this bill was resurrected from a private member’s bill tabled during the previous Parliament by former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu. All credit must go to him, even if the government currently refuses to acknowledge that. Kenny became a victim of the very foreign interference he was trying to expose and fight.

During the subsequent election after he tabled his bill, Mr. Chiu was the target of an aggressive campaign of disinformation spearheaded by the Communist regime in Beijing and propagated by those acting on their behalf here on Canadian soil. This campaign was largely conducted through Beijing‑controlled social media apps and Beijing-infiltrated Chinese‑language media, right here in places like British Columbia.

Disinformation was used to create fear amongst Chinese Canadians by invoking a very dark chapter in Canadian history — disinformation in which Mr. Chiu’s Liberal opponent and now MP Parm Bains was all too happy to engage.

In the dying days of the 2021 election, Mr. Bains, a former Liberal staffer, was quoted by a media platform believed to have close ties with the Communist regime in China, saying he believed Chiu’s bill to be a discriminatory policy. That same day, the magazine publicly endorsed Mr. Bains, urging readers in the largely Chinese-Canadian riding to vote for him and for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

It didn’t stop there, according to investigative journalist Sam Cooper in “The Bureau,” who wrote:

. . . one Chinese community leader campaigning for Bains with CCGV has so much power in Vancouver’s diaspora that he was later personally recognized in a meeting with President Xi Jinping and Beijing’s United Front Work Department cadres, after the RCMP opened investigations into his group’s alleged involvement in Chinese police stations in Canada.

Mr. Cooper’s piece also reports that Mr. Bains was seen in a video echoing Beijing’s allegations of racism and Sinophobia against Mr. Chiu and former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole.

Does that sound familiar, colleagues? It should because it’s the exact same regurgitation of Beijing’s talking points that have been levelled against me in interviews, private and public events and right here in this very chamber. It’s nothing new. Beijing’s talking points were also repeated here in this chamber when we were scolded and told that Canada had no place to speak on the genocide being carried out against the Uighurs because of our own history with residential schools. If you’re noticing a pattern, it’s because there is one.

We have so many human rights advocates in this chamber and so many who are concerned about the rise of Islamophobia but collectively not concerned enough about the Muslims being eradicated by Beijing to condemn it as a genocide. How many of you met with Uighurs here in Canada in recent years, colleagues? How many of you listened to their heart-wrenching stories about their loved ones being rounded up and forced into detention camps in the Xinjiang region? How many of you have heard their stories about the phone calls they receive here in Canada from authorities in the People’s Republic of China, or PRC, or people here in Canada acting on behalf of the PRC, telling them their mother is dead, their brothers are all dead, and threatening them to stop talking about the genocide or more of their family members will die? We heard testimony right here in a Senate committee.

This is the kind of transnational repression, threats and intimidation happening right here on Canadian soil that my bill and Mr. Chiu’s bill were designed to combat. This legislation wasn’t racist. The motivation behind it wasn’t racist. On the contrary, it was Chinese Canadians themselves who came to us begging for help for years.

I also hear it through my work with Hong Kong Watch. That’s why I became involved with them and follow their work. I’ve had meetings with Hong Kongers in Canada who are afraid to show their faces or use their full names for fear of repercussions from Beijing, especially now, with the draconian national security law the Communist regime has enacted in Hong Kong.

It’s not just the Communist thugs in Beijing that are engaging in these activities here on Canadian soil, not by a long shot. I’ve also met with Iranian Canadians who share similar stories of feeling threatened here in Canada by representatives of the malign regime in Iran, including members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. We also have Cuban Canadians who fear for the safety of their loved ones in Cuba every time they speak out for freedom here in Canada. We see the handiwork of Putin’s attempts at disruption, especially through social media accounts and by funding protests like the ones we are seeing now on our university campuses from coast to coast to coast.

Speaking of Putin and Cuba, how must it make Cuban Canadians feel to see Canada send one of our naval vessels to dock alongside a Russian warship as a sign of our “long-standing bilateral relationship” with the Communist regime there? That’s the latest lunacy from this government, who claim to be fighting authoritarianism and taking seriously the threat of foreign interference. Over the weekend, we learned that a Canadian warship had been sent to anchor in Cuba alongside a Russian warship as a token of friendship with the Communist regime of Cuba. Wonderful.

What’s worse is that when our Minister of Foreign Affairs was asked about this during a television interview, she replied this weekend that it was news to her. Doesn’t this sound like something our foreign affairs minister ought to know, especially if it was a well-planned decision, as it has since been described by Minister Blair? Then again, this is the same minister who also supposedly didn’t know that her staff attended a garden party at the Russian embassy shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

This is the same department — Global Affairs — that we now know, thanks to NSICOP’s confirmation of a story in The Globe and Mail, had been warned numerous times about the suspect action of a Chinese diplomat here in Canada. We had to learn that from The Globe and Mail.

They claimed that CSIS didn’t have a proper understanding of what regular diplomacy looks like. I would argue that these officials and the Trudeau government don’t have a proper understanding of what foreign interference looks like. It’s something that’s highlighted in the NSICOP report — don’t take my word for it — the lack of a common intervention threshold.

We talked about this in our Defence Committee right in this chamber. While other nations and Five Eyes partners have legislation in place and have empowered their national security forces to take action, we are still debating the definition of foreign interference in Canada. This is where we are in 2024.

This is the same diplomat who was ultimately expelled from Canada, but only after someone at CSIS anonymously blew the whistle. That is when Global Affairs Canada took action. And yet, Minister Joly had the unmitigated gall to go on television this past weekend and tell Vassy Kapelos that Canada is the most “forward leaning” of the G7 countries in combatting foreign interference. Colleagues, I fell off my chair when I heard that: “forward leaning.”

Canada has become a laughingstock among the Five Eyes allies when it comes to fighting foreign interference. They are ahead of us not only in the implementation of measures included in this legislation pertaining to intelligence sharing but also in establishing foreign agent registries. We are the last to come to this party, and Ms. Joly thinks we are the most forward leaning because we are having a public inquiry right now on foreign interference, which her government was dragged into kicking and screaming. We have the Hogue inquiry in spite of Justin Trudeau’s best efforts not to call one, and this minister wants to point to that as a measure of the government’s success. Like everything else with this government, they say all the right things, then do the very opposite, and then act like something’s being done to them, not by them.

The Trudeau government has been, at best, one abysmal failure after another every time they’ve been faced with the threat of foreign interference, especially in our elections, and in some cases, wittingly turned a blind eye because the foreign interference was politically beneficial to them.

CSIS warnings were ignored not only by Mélanie Joly and Global Affairs but also by the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister’s Office and senior officials within the Liberal Party and the Liberal campaign team. They turned a blind eye, did nothing to guard against the meddling in our democratic institutions, and when the truth started coming out, they lied about having any knowledge of it. Instead, they focused on finding out who leaked the information. Because we want to get the leakers — that’s the real problem, the people telling the truth.

When reports first surfaced that CSIS had briefed Justin Trudeau about Beijing’s interference in the previous two federal elections, he returned to one of his favourite phrases. He claimed that the story in The Globe and Mail was false. He denied repeatedly, including in the House of Commons, knowing anything or even having been briefed by CSIS. It was also news to him. He denied it repeatedly.

In March 2023, he was asked point-blank in a television interview:

Did you know that there was interference in those elections, not prior to but during that campaign? Were you made aware that there was interference?

The Prime Minister’s response to this very simple question was, “We put together a panel so that the question could be looked at.”

He put together a panel to do what? Tell us what was in his own head? He’s the Prime Minister. When it comes to national security, the buck stops with him.

In April of that year, at the public inquiry, the Prime Minister was shamed into finally telling the truth by the commissioner. It was revealed that the Prime Minister’s Office was briefed by CSIS on foreign interference at least 34 times between June 2018 and December 2022 and that the Prime Minister himself was personally briefed on at least three occasions during that time. That’s the public inquiry. I am not making this up. These are the facts, Senator Gold. CSIS drew his attention to foreign meddling in the 2018 and 2019 elections and offered recommendations to guard against it in future elections.

Since then, we have had two bills go through the House. There is a bill collecting dust here, and we needed a public inquiry to get the Prime Minister to come clean. Our Prime Minister ignored all of the recommendations. He did nothing with the information he was provided through those briefings.

Furthermore, he went on to lie about those briefings. He lied to the Canadian people, and he lied to Parliament. Mr. Trudeau tried to claim that the information didn’t reach him. During his testimony at the Hogue inquiry, he claimed that he doesn’t really do much reading — shocking — and the only way to ensure he’s aware of something is to tell him verbally. Yet, during a previous appearance at a House of Commons committee, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Katie Telford testified that Mr. Trudeau reads every document that he’s given. Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

Whichever it was, those were 34 missed opportunities to do something about foreign interference, and Justin Trudeau chose to ignore the warnings instead.

In December 2019, December 2020 and again in February 2022, the Prime Minister was briefed about electoral interference and was asked to sign-off on measures to combat it in future elections. On all three occasions, he refused to do so. He has also received three reports from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP, outlining concerns of foreign interference, and he’s done nothing to respond — hardly what can be described as forward-leaning.

We also now know, thanks to Justice Hogue, that the Prime Minister was made aware of Beijing’s meddling in Liberal member of Parliament, or MP, Han Dong’s nomination in Toronto and that he wittingly chose to do nothing about it because, as he himself admitted to Justice Hogue, he didn’t want to lose that riding. That’s the Prime Minister, colleagues, and not anyone else. The Prime Minister put his own electoral interests ahead of the interests of Canadian democracy. He put his political fortunes and thirst for power above national security and above the fundamental integrity of our elections. That is beyond rich for someone who constantly accuses others of eroding confidence in our democratic institutions.

Mr. Trudeau also failed to act again on information about a Chinese diplomat here in Canada targeting sitting MP Michael Chong, including threats to Mr. Chong’s family in Hong Kong. This is the diplomat I mentioned a moment ago, the one the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, repeatedly warned Global Affairs Canada about, only to get blown off by the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The latest NSICOP report supports what was reported in The Globe and Mail last year about Global Affairs Canada ignoring those repeated warnings. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s own words last fall belie his failure to act on this information when he was first presented the opportunity to do so. The Prime Minister said that he ordered an investigation into the matter as soon as it became public, not that he ordered an investigation into it when he first learned about it two years previous; it was only after it became public.

By the way, those threats against MP Chong and his family came at the time the House was debating a motion to recognize the Uighur genocide. It was a similar motion to the one that was shamefully defeated here in the Senate. Senators had previously been issued a warning against such motions by China’s then ambassador to Canada. The point of him doing so while in my hometown of Montreal was not lost on me. It was at a public event.

Beijing’s meddling didn’t work in the House — even though I have to remind you that the government did not vote for the motion — but it worked perfectly well in this chamber, the only chamber in the Western democratic world to vote down the recognition of what is happening to the Uighur people. It was a shameful day when it happened in this institution, and I still can’t get my head around it.

Another motion that did pass in the House of Commons, not once but now twice, is a motion calling on the government to declare the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, a terrorist organization. The first motion passed six years ago and a second one during this session of Parliament. The Trudeau Liberals continue to refuse to adhere to either motion. This government doesn’t just refuse to list the IRGC as a terrorist entity, they’ve allowed members of this murderous death cult to come to Canada to do things like lecture at our universities. What could possibly go wrong?

For starters, the malign regime of Iran is the world’s worst sponsor of state terrorism, and you can be sure they are involved with some of the pro-Hamas protests we have been seeing on our university campuses and in our streets for the past several months. Why isn’t our government asking questions about those connections, especially where the funding is coming from?

Speaking of asking questions, remember all the questions we had about the firing of two scientists from the country’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, scientists we now know were intentionally working to benefit the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, not Canada? Was it forward-leaning when the Trudeau government did everything in its power for several years to prevent Canadians from learning the truth about what happened at that lab? We only recently learned the truth because, again, the opposition relentlessly pursued it. The Trudeau government tried for as long as they could to cover it up by, first, invoking privacy and security concerns to avoid four motions of the House and its committees requiring the tabling of relevant documents. That eventually resulted in the House holding the President of the Public Health Agency of Canada in contempt of Parliament, followed by Justin Trudeau taking Parliament to court. Imagine it: The Prime Minister used the federal court to block the parliamentary order.

That cynical move not only underlines how unserious Justin Trudeau has been about foreign interference but is just another example of the contempt he has for the supremacy of Parliament. He wanted the court — the judicial branch — to insert itself into the privilege of the legislative branch. It’s really quite something that could have done untold damage to our parliamentary system and democracy.

That’s how far he’s willing to go, not to fight foreign interference but to cover up his government’s inaction on fighting it.

The court was saved from having to rule when the Prime Minister conveniently dissolved Parliament. It was eventually an ad-hoc committee of four MPs and three former justices who ultimately made the decision to release the pertinent documents on this issue. In doing so, they said that while some amount of secrecy was warranted as it pertained to certain CSIS documents, most of the documents were held back by the government out of concern for protecting the organization from embarrassment more so than any legitimate national security concerns.

The Trudeau government is using the same play even now with the Hogue inquiry on foreign interference. They are either heavily redacting or withholding altogether all relevant cabinet documents that were proposed to the inquiry by Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc last September, regardless of their sensitive nature.

Again, they are saying the right thing one minute but then doing the very opposite.

I’ll remind everyone here that the Prime Minister can and should waive cabinet confidentiality, as he promised he would. He has the power and authority to do so, just as he does with the NSICOP report.

Justin Trudeau is the only one who can release the unredacted report or parts of it, including the names of any parliamentarians believed to have wittingly or unwittingly been implicated in foreign interference. Canadians and Parliament deserve to know, regardless of their political stripes. Instead, we have the fourth- and fifth-place party leaders making public statements that do nothing more than muddy the water on what is or isn’t in the report. Between Elizabeth May and Jagmeet Singh, Canadians can’t make heads or tails of it.

By the way colleagues, there are two things that we heard during our committee study on Bill C-70 that must be on the record here. First, claims that the allegations against parliamentarians can’t be discussed because they are under RCMP investigation are bogus; and second, there likely aren’t mechanisms in the Criminal Code to investigate these allegations because what’s being described doesn’t likely give rise to the very high bar of treason.

This testimony made it all the more clear that these allegations will have to be dealt with by some other measure, such as publicly naming the implicated parliamentarians. Parliamentarians are politicians, and there is political accountability in Parliament. That is where we get to the bottom of political accountability.

However, again, the Trudeau government says one thing and does the opposite. After initially appearing to agree to send the NSICOP report to Justice Hogue to investigate the allegations against parliamentarians — publicly named MPs and senators — that she believes are implicated, Minister LeBlanc balked during his Senate committee appearance when asked if the relevant documents would be turned over. It was a pointed question, I think from Senator Carignan. He just balked; he did not give a clear answer.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, the Minister of Foreign Affairs decided to add some mud of her own. She doesn’t know that we have a warship docked alongside the Russians in Cuba, but she had no problem confidently telling Vassy Kapelos that there are no Liberal caucus members implicated in the report. That’s odd because when the Prime Minister was asked at the G7 this weekend if any Liberals were on the list, he refused to answer one way or the other. Either the Minister of Foreign Affairs is, as usual, confused and the Prime Minister is back to not reading his briefing notes or they’re not being honest. I will give them the benefit of the doubt, of course.

What the Prime Minister did say to Canadians and the media at the G7, though, was to call into question the work of NSICOP. The Prime Minister echoed the words of the Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc in saying that he disagrees with NSICOP’s interpretation of foreign interference and that he made clear to them the problems he has with their work. That is NSICOP, about which we all talk and about which we’re all so confident. He certainly isn’t.

Why is it with this guy that he’s always the ultimate authority on everything and resorts to degrading and dissing the work of anyone who disagrees with him, even if they’re his own hand-picked experts? Here is a reminder of what Mr. Trudeau said about this committee of parliamentarians in March 2023:

. . . NSICOP is well placed to look at foreign interference attempts that occurred in the 43rd and 44th federal general elections, including potential effects on Canada’s democracy and institutions . . . .

It’s one thing today, and another thing tomorrow.

I will remind you about what his Senate leader — our very own Senator Gold — said less than two weeks ago about the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP. In his latest report, he highlighted the value of the work that committee does and said that his government thanks them for their work. Well, send a memo to Prime Minister Trudeau, Senator Gold, because you guys are not on the same page — not at all.

Mr. Trudeau will also call into question the work of Justice Hogue’s inquiry when it concludes. Do you know whose work he didn’t question? He didn’t question the work of his Independent Special Rapporteur on Foreign Interference: family friend and, yes, former governor general David Johnston. The fact that Mr. Harper wasn’t dissuaded from appointing such a close Trudeau family friend shows his lack of partisanship in such matters. It’s too bad Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Johnston don’t have the same lack of partisanship.

At any rate, Minister Joly and Prime Minister Trudeau like to cite the special rapporteur as another example of how Canada is the most forward-leaning G7 country in combatting foreign interference. Remember, appointing the special rapporteur was the initial response by the Trudeau government to Conservative calls for a public inquiry and for a foreign registry. The special rapporteur was going to solve all problems.

It was never about accountability or taking foreign interference seriously, colleagues. It was about ragging the puck. It was about delays. The special rapporteur didn’t even talk to Liberal MP Han Dong, who was at the centre of the electoral interference allegations. On June 6, 2023, the rapporteur admitted before a House committee that he didn’t even have access to the intelligence that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, provided in a briefing to former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole. The rapporteur said, “The evidence we had before us . . . was what was available to us at that time.”

Later that same day, in a CBC interview with David Cochrane, he said, “the amount of information available was an ocean and we saw a very large lake.” Yet, after all that, the rapporteur exclaimed, “Nothing to see here, folks! Carry on. Canada is a picture of national security.”

My colleague Senator Plett asked Senator Gold in Question Period the day after that CBC interview, “. . . who chose the CSIS information that the rapporteur based his report on?” No answer was given, but we all know the answer. We know where the information came from. What an unmitigated disaster and waste of time and taxpayer money, and what a sham. Canadians deserve better.

The bottom line is that Justin Trudeau is the one person holding the power to come clean with Canadians about foreign interference, whether it be in our elections or our Parliament, through security information he’s gathered. The various institutions that we know are porous are being infiltrated by regimes that do not respect democracy, freedom, the rule of law and human rights. He talks about the importance of Canadians having confidence in our ability to defend our democratic institutions. He uses that as an excuse to not disclose the names of parliamentarians implicated in the NSICOP report. In fact, his lack of transparency and lack of forthrightness is having the opposite effect, colleagues. When a cloud of suspicion is left hanging over the head of every parliamentarian, how can Canadians have any faith in us or in our institutions?

I understand the consequences that must be considered when disclosing these names, both when considering the sources who provided information to our intelligence agencies and regarding the principles of due process. Where was that concern for protection of sources and due process when the Prime Minister stood up in the House of Commons last year and, out of nowhere and without offering any evidence, accused the government of India of being involved in the killing of a British Columbia man last June? All he gave Canadians was, “Trust me. I have seen it, and I believe it.”

As for the work of NSICOP, this committee of parliamentarians has provided three reports to the Prime Minister outlining concerns about foreign interference. Similarly, CSIS has provided several reports regarding foreign interference with recommendations to safeguard against similar meddling. Those briefings and reports from NSICOP go back to 2018. That’s six years ago, and only now are we getting around to legislation that deals with it. Like everything else with this government, they do it fast and they do it hastily — because they only had nine years to think about it. That’s not something of which we should be proud, Senator Gold. This is not a valuable use of the skill sets and the goodwill that parliamentarians, and especially senators, have. In the case of this government, that doesn’t sound like someone eager to lead the fight against foreign interference.

Despite Justin Trudeau’s revisionist history — as recently as this weekend, he told the media that he did things the Harper government fought against — the truth is that the first thing this current government did when they took office was to repeal a previous government’s foreign interference legislation, Bill C-51. It was the first step. Red flags were raised in 2013 and 2014. Bill C-51 was that first step in 2015 to start strengthening our national security laws, and it was a precursor of what would eventually become the foreign registry.

I’ll tell you what happened, colleagues. The first thing the government did when they came into power was to repeal the bill. They revamped it, repealed it and took the teeth out of it in a bill called Bill C-59. Go read it for yourself. Go read Bill C-51, and then go read the revamped Bill C-59. Senator Gold was the sponsor of that bill. That was the first thing the government did. Then they spent the next nine years doing everything they could to further fight Conservative attempts to combat foreign interference and transnational repression, including lobbing accusations of racism and bigotry against us and Liberal MPs even taking part gleefully in disinformation and conspiracy theories online.

The only reason we’re here today with this legislation before us is due to the government exhausting every avenue available to avoid getting to this point. They ragged the puck in ways that we have never seen before, basically trying to prevent the foreign registry from coming into place. Now, of course, I’m not even sure we’ll get this foreign registry into place, because the truth of the matter is that I don’t share Senator Dean’s enthusiasm. I’m somewhat skeptical of the bureaucracy being capable enough in 12 months to have it in place before the next election. That is the concern of most parliamentarians who will face the Canadian public in the next general election — those of us who want to have a fair election and an election that isn’t tampered with by foreign entities. I hope, somehow, there’s goodwill on the part of the government and the bureaucrats to have it in place.

I will support this legislation, colleagues, even though it has been put into place hastily and has been facing delay after delay. We all know, at the end of the day, that the government rushed to put this out after Justice Hogue had a scathing preliminary report about the foot dragging of this government when it dealt with foreign interference. Like everything else they do, they rushed quickly to get this out the door to make it look like they’ve done something and put something in place before the next election.

It’s still better than the alternative. I still believe this piece of legislation is just the first step. I’m confident the next government that will come into place will take national security and foreign interference seriously and will add all the subsequent measures this bill requires, including giving tools and resources to the RCMP and to CSIS to make sure there can be cross-communication between our police agencies in this country in order to combat the serious threat to our democracy and, more importantly, the serious threat to the Canadian people.

I became interested in foreign interference many years ago for one simple reason. Canadians of Cuban descent came to my office. I had Hong Kongers and Canadians of Chinese and Persian descent. They came into my office one after another, giving me horrid stories of intimidation and threats from foreign governments toward Canadian citizens. This is what foreign interference is all about: It’s about regimes — like China, Iran, Cuba, Russia and Türkiye — that believe they can intimidate people in their homelands and, unfortunately, they can, and there are limited things we can do. However, when these nations come onto our soil and go after Canadians just because they happen to originate from those countries and intimidate them and their families to the benefit of these rogue dictatorships, then there’s a serious problem.

I don’t care who the Prime Minister is or who the government is. This is not about politics. This is about the essence of our Canadian citizenship and what has brought us all to this country. I’ve said this a thousand times: We’re all immigrants to Canada, and we all come here for freedom, democracy and rule of law. That’s what we hear: It’s for fundamental human rights. We as parliamentarians should fight for that above all else at all costs.

Thank you colleagues. I support this bill, and let’s make it pass as soon as possible.

I wonder if Senator Housakos would take a question.

Absolutely.

Senator Housakos, I am feeling a little confused at this moment, and I’m hoping you can help me understand this better. We had an impressive analysis of all the things that are wrong with this bill, but, at the end of your speech, you indicated that you support its rapid passage. Would that include clause-by-clause consideration potentially occurring tomorrow and then a return to the chamber for a vote almost instantly? Is that what you’re conveying here?

Senator McPhedran, I don’t know where in the world you thought there are a lot of elements wrong with this bill. This bill is a giant step forward from what we have right now, which is absolutely no bill and no mechanism to combat foreign interference. We’ve had two successive elections now. We’ve heard about this from various reports and various intelligence sources. Unfortunately, they report it to the Prime Minister because, when it comes to national security, all roads — because of the flaws in our reporting mechanisms in this Parliament — about national security measures stop in the Prime Minister’s Office.

We’re on the verge of heading into an election in 12 months from now, and we need — in the most credible way — to give some tools to Elections Canada, the RCMP, CSIS and all the agencies. Above all else, this bill is a deterrence because we’re finally amending the Criminal Code to no foreign actors. Let’s face it: We know what foreign interference is; we all do. If you come to Canada and try to engage and interfere in our democracies and our institutions, there’s a price to pay.

Are there elements of the bill that I’d like to see strengthened? Yes, and in due course and in due time, we will do that. Would I have preferred that this bill had been debated two years ago when I tabled my bill? If you look at Bill S-237, it is similar to this bill with a few exceptions. Elements of my bill are stronger than this bill; some elements are weaker. Would I have preferred for the government to have shown interest two years and four months ago, and to have jumped on the bill and amended it, debated it and strengthened it to everybody’s satisfaction in this place so that we’re not rushed — at five minutes to midnight before we adjourn — to pass it? Absolutely, I would. You can take that up with the government leader. You can take that up with individuals and colleagues in this institution who never wanted to discuss this before last week or five minutes ago.

This is an important issue for our democracy and for all the people who have been crying for help over the last decade — Canadians who have been feeling interference from both Beijing and Tehran — in order to show that there’s a seriousness on the part of this legislation to address it. That’s why I believe this bill is perfect in terms of a first step. For all the imperfections that we need to strengthen, we can strengthen them over time. Delaying it, however, would send a terrible message to all the terrible actors that are trying and have infiltrated our Canadian democracy.

Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

(Motion agreed to and bill read second time.)