Singh won’t take ‘additional action’ against MPs in NSICOP report | Power Play with Mike Le Couteur

so how could they have read the same report and have two starkly different conclusions and is jugg meet saying willing to use his Supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals to force the government to act I spoke with the NDP leader earlier today welcome back to Power Play Mr Singh thanks so much for being with us pleasure to be here so yesterday your comments were in stark contrast to how Miz May characterize the unredacted report what in that report made you more alarmed than before you read the unredacted version I think part of why uh and I don’t want to debate another MP but I part of the reason why I had the response I did is I came into the reading of the report with the one of the goals was there are some serious conclusions incend conclusions if I might say that came out of the anaco publicly available report I wanted to know if I read the unredacted report would it confirm those conclusions or would it in any way cast some doubt on those conclusions I came out of reading the unred Ed version uh where it provides even more detail about the conclusions that the the committee reached H being more alarmed more Disturbed than ever and and I maintain that so the conclusion and it’s important for the viewers to know the conclusion of the report is a result of a number of members of parliament and senators all working together hearing countless hours of of evidence from Intelligence Officers and other documents compiling that information into a report and what we have publicly is the redactive version of that so they saw a lot of information that got them to this point where they were deeply worried and provided us with this report I can tell you having read the unredacted version it only bolsters that concern it even heightens the worry that people felt when they first read the publicly available you should feel even more alarmed but you went even further than the report because you called inps who wittingly or unwittingly helped foreign agents Traders that’s a very strong word what makes you believe that those people are Traders on uh paragraph 164 of the publicly available report the report goes through and outlines some of the steps that were or some of the the concerns that were raised and they talk about um sensitive Canadian information government information being revealed to foreign foreign Intelligence Officers they talk about uh undermining of of Canada’s interest they talk about people receiving public funds knowingly uh or or in some cases that they’re willfully blind receiving foreign funding for their campaigns all of that uh is clear to me behavior that is of someone who is a Trader to Canada there’s no other way to look at that and so I maintain that and it is deeply concerning and I I maintain my criticism of both the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau having known about this and not taking sufficient action and uh Pierre POV who I believe is disqualified as a leader when there are clear allegations of foreign interference that directly touch on his party and he refuses to even know what’s in that what what are those allegations what are the details to me that disqualifies him as leader no leader that puts the interest of their party beyond the interest of the country has any has any Merit uh leading the country and I’ll get to those leaders in just a moment and what should be done about them but I wanted to ask you what do you think should be done about those members of parliament or former members of members of parliament that are being called Traders what action should be taken against them well I’ve said that there has to be a way that we let the these parliamentarians know that we know what they’re up to there has to be a way that does that that doesn’t undermine National Security and let them know or do you think that there should be something should should there be charges against them if you’re calling them traitors do you just want to call them out or do you want some more action against them well I think the enop report does a good job of saying that some activities are illegal and and should have resulted in in criminal action or criminal uh uh criminal uh charges but uh likely because of changes to the law so we need to make sure the laws are stronger to allow for those charges to be laid uh and then all of the behaviors characterized as unethical and so one of the things that we can do as Party leaders and I’ve said this is a responsibility of every party leader to make sure you look at the information that’s available and then we we vet out people in uh running for our party based on an egregious tweet or an egregious social media post if there is information where they are alleged to be involved in foreign interference that should be grounding for that person to not sit in caucus and certainly not to run under the part’s Banner so I I would call on all Party leaders to do that I can say on my on my behalf nothing that I’ve read and none of the information I’ve received gives cause for me to take any additional action I’m wording at that way very specifically to for National Security interest but I call on every leader to do the same look at the information and make sure that no one is allowed to run in an upcoming election who has allegations of foreign interference at the same time Mr Singh there is action you could take you’ve called out the so-called failure of leadership of Justin Trudeau to not take action sooner but you’re in this unique position as opposition leader with your supply and confidence agreement with this government you have access to the Prime Minister that others don’t so what will you be doing going forward to use that relationship in order for him to take action well we’ve shown uh through a series of events of what we have done so far and we’ll build on that work the fact that we have a public inquir in the first place is because of new Democrats we’re the first party to call for it we consistently push for it now we have it the Liberals said no initially they said no to any action then they agreed to a special raer Tor which we thought was not the best idea from the beginning then we forced the removal of the special rer Tor by having a vote in Parliament asking for him to step down after that vote he did indeed step down uh and then we pushed for a public inquiry and now we have it in that public inquir we’ve expanded the Mandate once it became clear Indian the Indian government’s foreign interference we made sure it was included included and it was included now we’re saying that that public inquir should also include the names of the MPS as well as the conservative leadership race the races that were implicated in the report those are the steps that we’re taking we’re going to continue to use the power we have to push for accountability and transparency I want to be clear on this though if we were not in this minority government and new Democrats weren’t there a majority liberal under Justin Trudeau or a majority conservative under Pierre poet would have never moved forward on this because it’s clear they’re more interested in protecting their own parties than the country but we have shown our action and we’re going to continue to do that and I take that point but at the same time we’re in a minority government and you have this unique ability to be able to push the Liberals to take action and it doesn’t mean that you have to force an election by um having the government fall so why not in that supply and confidence agreement really turn the screws on this government to make them take action now I said we have and we will continue to do so we got the public inquiry and now we’re going to push for more action last question for you based on what you’ve seen in that unredacted report are you worried about Canada’s ability to hold a free and fair election right now at this moment I think that what the report and other other documents have shown is that the outcome of the election uh would not have been changed but I am worried about the impacts on the confidence people have in our Democratic institutions and I want to see steps taken to restore more confidence given these serious allegations of foreign interference the confidence in our electoral system is is very important and so while the outcome may have not been influenced there’s certainly elements of influence that erod public trust and that’s something we got to fix I want people to feel fully confident they can vote the way they want to vote they’re going to get results that are free from interference and right now there’s a lot of doubt I think cast around that and that has to be addressed before the next election but based on what you have seen do you have confidence in this country to be able to hold a free and fair election despite all of the foreign interference that you have seen in that unredacted report I would say in terms of the overall result of the election I’m confident that it’s there’s not enough interference that will undermine the overall result but there are very uh concrete examples of interference uh influencing other elements and that is unresolved in in what other elements are you talking about leadership races and candidacy um nomination races yes yeah so the the concerns that that have been outlined in the public available information are related to leadership races are related to uh the conservative leadership races specifically uh nomination candidacy and those are areas where there’s clearly uh work that’s that needs to be done and so what concretely needs to be done in time for the next election so that everybody can have that faith that the person they’re voting for was put in that place in a free and fair manner that’s a great question I think part of that is the recommendations coming out of the public inquiry I think that’ll go along way uh the recommendations of the enop report called for certain action which is being taken in Bill C70 so those are some of the steps that were required uh we need to see that bill passed we need to see the impact of that bill and we need to see the public inquiry recommendations presented and also implemented okay we’re going to have to leave it there NDP leader jug meet Singh thanks so much for joining us today certainly

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called out MPs linked to foreign inference but says he won’t be engaging in further action against them.

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