Foreign interference by parliamentarians | Commissioner Hogue will be invited to broaden her investigation

(Ottawa) The Liberal government intends to support a Bloc Québécois motion asking the Hogue commission to broaden the scope of its investigation into foreign interference by examining information that parliamentarians are in the pay of Foreign states.

Federal Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc confirmed Monday during question period that the Bloc Québécois approach was favored by the Liberals.

He also specified that senior officials at the Privy Council Office began evaluating options over the weekend.

The motion sponsored by the Bloc René Villemure was tabled a week after the tabling of a report from the Committee of Parliamentarians on National Security and Intelligence (CPSNR) which caused a stir.

According to this document, Canadian parliamentarians knowingly or unwittingly contribute to the interference efforts of foreign states.

MPs allegedly did so by providing confidential information to representatives of the Government of India, it says.

The Bloc motion asks the commission to investigate federal democratic institutions, and the parliamentarians elected during the 43^e and 44^e legislatures as well as members of the Senate.

The Conservative Party, for its part, continues to demand that the names of the alleged culprits be revealed in broad daylight.

Again on Monday, Minister LeBlanc insisted that the law prohibited it, as confirmed to him by the Deputy Deputy Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Mark Flynn.

” I [lui] asked what would happen if I stood up and revealed the names as my colleagues asked me, and he told me that I would expose myself to criminal prosecution,” he said in the House.

“Well guess what, Mr. President, I’m not going to do that,” said Minister LeBlanc.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre refuses to take advantage of the security clearance that would allow him to read the CPSNR report in its uncensored version.

For his part, Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet is now open to this possibility.

Jagmeet Singh promises to take action if necessary

New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh, who has a very high security clearance, pledged Monday to fire any MP who willingly engaged in foreign interference.

“If there is a member of my party named in the report who worked on purpose with a foreign government to interfere in Canada, I will throw him out immediately,” he thundered.

“I challenge other leaders to do the same thing,” he said in the press scrum.

Her party is also demanding that Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue look into the alleged interference by India and China in the Conservative Party leadership races, as mentioned in the report.

Commission spokesperson Hogue has not yet reacted to the requests made by the Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party.