Madam Speaker, I want to thank everybody who participated in this important debate because it actually achieved one of my aims, which I talked about in my initial speech when I introduced this bill, and that is education. I will get into the reasons why that is so important.

I am not shocked by this, but after listening to members, there seems to still be a level of misunderstanding of what exactly this bill is. I am going to talk about what it is, what it is not, and why it is so important. I will read the crux of what this bill is into the record one more time because then it will be easy to break down. It is subclause 13.1(1) of this need to know legislation, which reads, “A member of the Senate or the House of Commons who applies for a secret security clearance from the Government of Canada is, for the purposes of the consideration of their application, deemed to need access to the information in respect of which the application is made.” That is the important clause.

My point is that the only thing this bill would do would be to allow parliamentarians to apply for a secret security clearance. The government would not be able to deny, regardless of who is in government, a parliamentarian from applying. That is all that it would do. It would allow them to apply. I would dare say that every speaker who spoke to this during the debate on my PMB highlighted two key examples: the Winnipeg labs, most recently, and the Afghan detainee file.

A colleague just spoke to what this bill does not do. This does not guarantee a parliamentarian will pass, should they apply. They still have to go through the same security vetting and clearance process that we have been doing for decades. I have had a secret level clearance for likely 25 to 30 years now. I have been at the top secret level for 15-plus years. The clearance does not guarantee one has a need to know or that one gets access to the information because that is how the system protects it. One still has to demonstrate that to the government.

Why is this so important? We have heard a little bit about this. The world is more complicated. We have listed a couple of historical examples. The most important one, which has been highlighted numerous times, is foreign interference. When we look at foreign interference, there are lots of cases. I do applaud the government about Bill C-70. It is going to come and address some of that because it allows changes to the CSIS Act, which then allows CSIS to actually share information beyond just the federal government, not just to potential parliamentarians. Again, if they are not cleared, they still cannot get that information, but it will potentially allow CSIS to share information to other levels of government, to industry and stakeholders, but they have to have the clearance.

We have heard testimony and speeches here, so we know that parliamentarians are being targeted. We have seen the original NSICOP annual report of 2019. What was one of the key takeaways? Parliamentarians need to be briefed on the threats that they face from foreign interference. We have seen Madam Hogue's public inquiry into foreign interference. Just recently we saw the NSIRA report that came out. We are only a few days away from seeing NSICOP's latest report. However, it is not just from those agencies. I would like to read again from the recommendations that came out of PROC, with unanimous consent, just a few weeks ago. Recommendation 3 reads:

That the government work with recognized parties’ whips to facilitate security clearances, at Secret level or higher, of caucus members who are not Privy Councillors (particularly those who sit on committees with mandates concerning foreign affairs, national defence and national security), who shall be taken as satisfying requirements for a “need to know,” to ensure that they may be adequately briefed about important national security matters, including foreign intelligence threat activity directed toward Parliament, or their party or its caucus members.

The point is that this has already unanimously passed at PROC to basically implement what my bill is trying to achieve.

In conclusion, I have not heard a single criticism of the bill that is based on what the bill would do and what is contained within it. I know members from all parties who I have talked to are going to support this bill. I am hoping that, when it does come up for a vote, it will pass unanimously.

Alex Ruff

$379,682.00