Committee report a 'call for action'

Focus on bad-actor MPs misses bigger problem with meddling, security committee chair warns

- STEPHANIE LEVITZ

Liberal MP David McGuinty, chair of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, said foreign states are covertly flexing their muscles inside boardrooms, media companies and many other elements of society, not just the House of Commons.

The head of an all-party committee whose latest review of foreign interference suggested some MPs are working for the benefit of foreign states is arguing the focus on that narrow segment of the report is missing the mark.

National security is not a game and most certainly not a partisan one, said Liberal MP David McGuinty, the chair of the powerful National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), whose report last week assessing six years’ worth of intelligence and government action related to foreign interference included stunning conclusions about alleged complicity by MPs.

But McGuinty urged his fellow parliamentarians — as well as Canadians as a whole — to read the report in its entirety and understand that foreign states are covertly flexing their muscles inside NGOs, boardrooms, media coverage and many other elements of society, not just in the House of Commons.

“The stakes are huge,” McGuinty said Wednesday in a lengthy backand-forth with reporters on Parliament Hill.

“Our democracy is on the line, our rule of law is on the line, transnational repression is on the line, our diaspora communities are on the line and being victimized. All of this is called out. It’s a major clarion call for action.”

Since NSICOP released its public report, references it contains about current and former MPs have raised repeated questions about who those MPs are, what the intelligence specifically says and why the public can’t know in far greater detail what might be going on.