Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise today to speak to this government legislation again, Bill C-25, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act. I am a member of the procedure and House affairs committee and have scrutinized this proposed legislation in my capacity there. I also spoke about this bill a couple of months ago, in mid-April. In that speech, I highlighted that this is a much-needed piece of legislation, one that Conservatives have been calling for since before the 2019 election. There are some good things in the bill, some much-needed tools to help handle foreign interference in our elections. However, as I noted not even two months ago, it does not go far enough, especially with how it pertains to third party fundraising and foreign contributions. As we heard clearly from expert witnesses at the procedure and House affairs committee, Bill C-25 would improve the protection that Canadians have with respect to the electoral process, including from dangers posed by hostile foreign actors. However, it would leave some major holes, primarily regarding foreign contributions outside the election period. How do we know this? We know because we as Conservatives are the ones who have been advocating for changes to the Canada Elections Act to deal with this very issue for quite some time now. I will take some of the folks in this room way back with me to May 8, 2019. That is the day that my private member's bill, Bill C-406, was voted down at second reading in this very chamber. The goal of the bill, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act with respect to foreign contributions, was to deal with exactly this problem then, the same problem we are talking about now, seven years ago and three elections before the one that we just had. The bill I proposed, Bill C-406, was a bill that would have amended the Elections Act to prohibit foreign contributions to third parties for election advertising purposes. This is very important to me, because third party funding certainly comes in the form of advocacy and is used by third parties in campaigns to campaign against what I would consider to be the financial interests of the people I represent and of my home province, Alberta. I also understood at that time that, just out of a matter of principle, Canadians and Canadians alone should be the ones funding, debating and voting in a Canadian general election. It does make sense. Foreign entities and countries outside our borders likely should not be able to fundraise or spend money for political purposes here in Canada. That in itself is a breach of public trust and is, I think, by very definition of course, a semblance of foreign interference, whether it is happening covertly or not. If we do not know about it, it is a problem. My private member's bill would have stopped that foreign fundraising that influences our elections here in Canada. It would have addressed the very issues that Bill C-25 claims to address. Here we are, nearly a decade later. Members will never guess what happened. The Liberals voted against the bill, including the Liberal MP for Scarborough—Guildwood—Rouge Park, who is now the public safety minister, the same one who is now overseeing a new foreign agent registry that was recently introduced by the Liberals, despite his having been rabidly opposed to such a registry when it was the Conservatives, my former colleague Kenny Chiu, who proposed it. This is one of those that make a person go, “hmm”. It is almost as if the Liberals will support a good policy only once they have been dragged through the wringer to actually see that it is a good idea. I do not know why that is, but they just genetically oppose every idea we pose to them until their ideas start to miserably fail and afflict Canadians some four to eight years later. Then, all of a sudden, they see the light and do the things we have been telling them they should have been doing all along. It does not exactly breathe confidence into the issue of dealing with foreign interference, does it? We know that this is a theme. The Liberals often chastise Conservatives for big, sweeping policy ideas, but give it half a decade, and once the chickens come home to roost on the cabal of bad ideas across the way, they will eventually adopt Conservative ideas, rebrand them and package them as their own. The Prime Minister did it at Oxford with his thesis and is doing it here as well in the House of Commons. I only wish the Liberals had long ago adopted my idea of banning foreign nationals and entities from donating to and supporting third parties for election advertising purposes. It seems like common sense to me, but that might not be such a common thing across the aisle. We studied the issue at length at committee, where we heard from several witnesses, including, most recently, Gerald Chipeur, that the bill does not go far enough and would need to crack down even harder on foreign monetary contributions. In other words, there would still be a gaping hole that would allow foreign entities to send money to third parties, which could end up influencing, affecting or being spent in our general elections. The bill would crack down, but it would not prohibit. It would not go far enough. There would still be wide open loopholes for foreign funding to pour into Canadian elections. Foreign contributions for political purposes would still be allowed in Canada; Bill C-25 would not change that. Lots of witnesses who came before the procedure and House affairs committee testified that, in their opinion, this is completely unacceptable. I think that most Canadians, if they knew money was coming in to third parties from outside Canada and being spent on elections advertising, would be quite concerned. What also came out of our foreign interference study at committee, perhaps most notably, was our former candidate Joe Tay's testimony. Mr. Tay was our Conservative candidate of record in Don Valley North. Former Liberal MP Paul Chiang put a bounty on him during the 2025 election. Chiang encouraged folks to turn Mr. Tay in to the Chinese consulate in Toronto for a cash reward. There was already an arrest warrant for Mr. Tay, issued by the Communist regime in Beijing for making pro-democracy comments from here in Canada about what is going on in Hong Kong and China. This was a Liberal MP at the time basically encouraging the kidnapping of a political adversary. Goodness knows what would have happened if Mr. Chiang had actually gotten his way. We also know, based on testimonies at the committee from volunteers on Mr. Tay's campaign, that they were stalked, followed, intimidated and harassed by individuals. These were campaign volunteers, for crying out loud. It is hard enough to find people to come out to participate in our elections. The last thing we need is foreign entities and foreign funds coming in to discourage, intimidate and harass campaign volunteers, regardless of the political party they are helping. This is just wrong across the board. It is wrong not just when it happens to Conservatives; it is wrong when it happens to Liberal, NDP or Bloc members, or to anybody. Since these incidents, the Prime Minister has praised Paul Chiang as a person of integrity, and he has also strengthened Canada's ties with the People's Republic of China through trade and security partnerships. Just over a year ago, on the debate stage during the 2025 election, the Prime Minister admitted that the biggest threat to Canada's security was the Communist regime in China. I am not sure, but I would like to know where that Prime Minister went. Across the aisle, the Liberals expect us to believe that they are serious about halting foreign interference. They will have to give me a bit of a break, because I am not buying what they are selling. I try to make it make sense, but it just does not. We are talking about the individuals who are interfering in our elections and meddling in our campaigns. They are targeting our people, and they are spending money on propaganda campaigns that endanger Canadians, especially those in specific diaspora communities. The bill would do nothing to solve these problems. Sure, the bill would crack down on foreign spending during the writ period, but it would leave a massive hole for foreign entities to pour money into political advertising outside the writ period. For folks that are watching at home and wondering what the writ period is, I will explain. There is a writ period, and when we have a fixed election, there is a pre-writ period, and then there are the three years in between. During those three years, third parties will not be required to separate the molecules, per se, so any money that comes in to those third parties from foreign entities during that time frame will not be scrutinized by Elections Canada. They can just bankroll all these things in the pre-writ period and then spend as much as they want during the writ period during a fixed election. Do not take my word for it; this comes directly from constitutional legal experts who gave their testimony at a committee and said that they agreed with the exact interpretation we had when we read the bill. It would still leave that gaping hole. Conservatives have been talking about foreign interference for nearly a decade. After 2021, our leader at the time brought up the issue of foreign interference in our elections. He was supported by our former colleague, Kenny Chiu from Steveston—Richmond East, who warned for years about foreign interference before being a victim of it himself. These are the issues we have had. We have had a public inquiry into foreign interference. The government dragged its feet on that and finally succumbed to the mountains of pressure that were put on it at the time. It seemed to be reluctant the whole time. It is almost as if the foreign interference regime that had been orchestrated in the last couple of elections had a blind eye turned to it, because it obviously benefited somebody in the chamber. I am glad to see that it looks like the government is trying to change its ways and is presenting this bill. Conservatives still have massive concerns with it, but we will be supporting the bill and would make sure the Canada Elections Act is, if not perfect, at least better than it is today.
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