Canada

At the moment, there is no other topic in our nation more important than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s refusal to convene an unbiased public inquiry into the full extent of Chinese government meddling in Canada’s political process.

It’s not about whether the Chinese government or its surrogates “stole” the 2019 or 2021 elections on behalf of the Liberals. I would argue Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole were such ineffectual Conservative leaders, both elections were always going to go to the Liberals anyway.

Sen. Yuen Pau Woo’s claim that people of Chinese descent in Canada face “contemporary forms of exclusion and discrimination” is divisive and deflects from the Beijing regime’s true tactics, says a former ambassador.

“Senator say (sic) many Canadians hold stereotypical views of Chinese,” former Canadian ambassador to China David Mulroney wrote on Twitter on Feb. 16.

“The Senator is setting up a straw man argument that is dangerously divisive and that makes it harder to speak clearly about PRC [People’s Republic of China] tactics.”

There are far more loose ends than there are investigations.

In fact, on leaked information from Canadian Security Intelligence Service alleging Chinese money influenced two Canadian elections, the only official investigation is on the whistleblowers who exposed it.

In recent weeks, Canadian media have released a steady drip of reports, based on leaked intelligence, of detailed claims of Chinese meddling in the country’s last two federal elections in 2019 and 2021 – the latest Western nation to sound the alarm over concerns of foreign election interference.

Chinese officials have denied any interference, calling the allegations “purely baseless and defamatory” in a statement to the BBC.

The efforts are not believed to have altered the outcomes of either general election, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is under pressure to launch a national public inquiry looking into the allegations, which have strained already challenging diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Justin Trudeau looked smug, arrogant and embattled on Friday, when his frustration from the past week bubbled up and landed on Brittany Hobson, the sixth reporter in line at his Winnipeg news conference.

Hobson had asked how Canadians could trust our elections hadn’t been influenced by foreign actors when the information supporting those claims was shrouded in secrecy, and wasn’t an uninformed public distrustful of the democratic process a threat to society?

“I’m pretty sure everything I’ve said over the past 20 minutes answered that question, but I will do it one more time, just for The Canadian Press,” the prime minister said with a smile.

The chances Canadians are ever going to be informed of serious interference in our federal elections by bad actors such as China, Russia and Iran — or domestic supporters acting on their behalf — are somewhere between slim and none and slim just left town.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday again resisted calling a public inquiry into foreign election interference in the wake of multiple media reports on China’s meddling in Canadian politics, saying there are already enough examinations of the matter under way.

Opposition parties teamed up Thursday to pass a parliamentary committee motion calling for an independent probe into foreign interference. Liberal MPs on the procedure and House affairs committee opposed the motion but were outvoted by the Conservatives, New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois. The motion is non-binding.