Members of Parliament are reacting differently to the foreign interference report that showed some ministers “wittingly” or “semi-wittingly” took part in helping foreign governments.
New Democratic Leader Jagmeet Singh called the behaviour unethical and illegal,telling reporters on Thursday he is “more alarmed” after reading the unredacted report given by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians.
“It is in some cases against the law and they are indeed traitors to the country,” Singh said.
His comments came right after a vote in the House of Commons that approved a bill to help counter foreign interference.
Green Party Co-Leader Elizabeth May called out Singh on Friday in an interview on The Mike Farwell Show saying she agrees with the interpretation of the report but the tone he used is very different from her own.
“I would not use — for what we know in the unredacted full report — the words ‘traitor’ and ‘treason’ are, I would say, too hot, not justified in law at this point,” May said.
According to May, there was only one case of a former MP that she read in the report that suggested a “truly alarming” situation of foreign interference.
However, she also said the report did detail other elements of interference with levels of government including municipal and provincial. After seeing the full report in detail, May said she feels better about her colleagues in the House of Commons.
“I’ve said publicly, I was good and freaked out about the speculation that was created by the public version of the National Security Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians,” she said. “Seeing the full unredacted version, I was relieved because there weren’t a bunch of names of parliamentarians who had been disloyal to Canada.”