Thank you, Madam Chair, for the invitation.

Freedom, democracy and the rule of law are not clichés. In fact, many from around the world have chosen Canada because of our respect for and practice of these ideals. Arguably, those who are from the outside come to treasure them and want to protect them even more, because many of us have seen and lived lives without these rights.

Twenty-first-century Canada is a multicultural society with immigrants and refugees from all continents and all walks of life, who call it their settlement home. It is a beautiful and ideal world that those before us in this generation worked very hard to build—a fair, respectable, multicultural society that honours diversity and yet commits to preserving the uniqueness and the very essence of being Canadian, those much-cherished ideals of equality, universal values and human dignity.

Authoritarian regimes around the world, however, do not subscribe to this same value system we believe in. Not only do they work to undermine us, to turn our country into a subservient state—kowtowing to their direct influence, whether they are the Russian Federation, China, Iran or other less resourceful or ambitious regimes—but they are also willing to sacrifice our trusted institutions, the harmonious society we have carefully built over decades and the people who are in it.

I used to be a partisan politician, but now that I'm back as an ordinary Canadian citizen, I continue to share with millions of fellow Canadians the same deep level of worry and concern for my adopted country, because foreign interference is a national threat. It should have been a pan-partisan issue. Protecting the country and its people is arguably the top job for any sovereign government, yet we are seeing an inexplicably action-free policy exercised by our federal government vis–à–vis interference from the most resourceful and ambitious of all foreign states, the Chinese Communist Party regime.

To be clear, the government is not mute and has not been seen to have done nothing. It loudly verbalized its spontaneous concerns and cited SITE, CSE, NSICOP, NSIRA, CEIPP, CSIS and, recently, a rapporteur as proof of things it has done, but none of that, I would argue, has protected sufficiently the 21st-century Canada that we are in, and my experience has been that my country did not protect me from foreign interference and the attacks I've experienced.

In a thriving, diverse, multicultural country such as ours, it is up to those who are in power to stop the corruption and the deceit, to safeguard the exposed and the vulnerable few, to safeguard Canadians of all mother tongues from predatory states and their coercion, and to safeguard Canada from exploitation and manipulation.

I thank you for giving me this opportunity to answer many of the questions you may have and to share my views. Recently in the Canadian broadcasting world, we have seen more than sufficient coverage on the issues and the challenges that have been presented to us today, and I urge all of you to take some action, to be determined, to stand up and to protect our country, especially the people who are in our country.

Thank you again for this opportunity.

Transcript

Discussions (0)