After months of resisting the idea, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced a major public inquiry tasked with investigating how China has meddled in Canadian politics.
The reversal, amid miserable domestic polling numbers and intense pressure from the opposition parties and media, comes after more than a year of revelations about Beijing’s efforts to interfere in Canada—largely to the advantage of Trudeau’s Liberal Party.
Records show Canada’s former Governor General David Johnston, who was appointed as “special rapporteur” to lead the investigation into Chinese election interference by family “friend” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier in the year but resigned in disgrace, gave out millions in sweetheart contracts to preferred consultants.
In a world where political games are played in the shadows and where the echelons of power are masked by veils of duplicity, the recent public announcement by Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau about allegations of Indian involvement in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar has rattled many. But, one must ask, why is Canada so vociferous about India while seemingly turning a blind eye to China’s mischief?
India’s media covers Trudeau better than Canadian media.
The Canadian government has so far not responded to Taiwan’s invitation to share its experience battling Beijing’s information and interference activities, Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to Canada, Ho-Jen Tseng, told a House of Commons committee.
The RCMP is investigating the death of a B.C. man who was a target of Operation Fox Hunt, a Chinese government campaign to pressure expatriates and silence opponents.
Wei Hu, a 57-year-old father of three, lived in a gated $2.8-million property on B.C.’s Harrison Lake. According to a friend, he was a critic of Beijing who left China in 2000.
But even in Canada, he could not escape the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which issued a so-called Red Notice through Interpol seeking his arrest and return to China for supposed financial crimes.
Offed in 2021? The RCMP is only just getting round to this?
No stink will be raised about this of course.
The CSIS leaks happened because Justin wanted to normalize relations with his ChiCom friends.
Trudeau is a danger to our nation’s security.
OTTAWA – A joint report into Chinese interference in Canada drawn from an RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service investigation found evidence of foreign agents working in this country to “influence…important leaders” and “neutralize” criticism of China.
The report was written 25 years ago.
“When I look… at the subtle but intense influence of China on Canadian institutions — parliaments, provincial governments, local governments, universities, the intellectual community, the policy community — it makes me deadly worried,” said Australian professor Clive Hamilton, author of Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World (co-authored by Mareike Ohlberg), speaking to Canada’s National Post in 2019. “I’ve met some very well-informed Canadians who aren’t sure Canada will be able to extricate itself from this situation.”
… As Americans we have a duty and obligation to provide our lawmakers with information that may reveal emerging threats and any unlawful activities, both domestic and foreign, against the U.S. government.
Our overall concern is that it appears the Canadian government is enacting policies that are slowing chipping away at the freedoms, liberties, and individual rights of its citizens and therefore can have profound negative impact on our relations with that government.
It is no secret that the Chinese Communist party is making its mark both here in the United States and Canada. But, more-so in Canada because the people of that nation do not have the Constitutional protections, we in America have.
h/t RE
It made for quite the study in contrasts.
Conservative MP Michael Chong was applauded by a bipartisan committee of U.S. lawmakers in Washington, D.C., this week for standing up for China’s persecuted Uyghurs and for shining a light on Beijing’s concerted strategy of harassment, intimidation, influence-peddling and political interference in Canada.
There’s a new revelation in Conservative MP Michael Chong’s ongoing saga with China. Maybe it will finally lead the federal government to take action against this communist regime.
In early May, Globe and Mail investigative journalists Robert Fife and Steven Chase published contents of an eyebrow-raising July 20, 2021, Canadian Security Intelligence Service report. It revealed that Canada was regarded as a “high-priority target” by China, which had used “incentives and punishment” to gain an advantage that was “expected to continue and increase over time.” CSIS also mentioned that a Ministry of State Security officer had attempted to obtain information about an MP’s relatives “who may be located in the PRC, for further potential sanctions.” This strategy was “almost certainly meant to make an example of this MP and deter others from taking anti-PRC positions.”
Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, a repeated target of Chinese government intimidation, told U.S. congressional hearings Tuesday that Ottawa and Washington need a co-ordinated response to Beijing’s concerted efforts to interfere in Western democracies and bullying of diaspora communities.
Mr. Chong received a rare invitation to speak to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, an 18-member panel of Senators and House of Representatives that monitors human abuses in China and is examining Beijing’s global repression campaign.
QUEBEC CITY—Conservative MP Michael Chong, twice the target of alleged Chinese state interference, will make the case to American legislators Tuesday that more international co-operation is urgently required to thwart Beijing’s efforts to meddle in Western democracies.
His top-line message: If influence operations go unchecked, they will threaten economic prosperity, undermine public confidence in democracy and place social cohesion at risk.
China is warning of “consequences” for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government unless it stops spreading “lies and false information” about alleged interference in Canadian affairs.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa issued a stern statement on Friday, a day after Canada announced a public inquiry into meddling by China, Russia and other state and non-state actors in Canadian national elections in 2019 and 2021.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday he will “willingly” testify before the public inquiry into foreign election interference if he’s asked.
“Willingly and with very much enthusiasm,” Trudeau told reporters at a news conference in Singapore.
“I think it’s important for Canadians to know exactly everything this government has been doing in regards to foreign interference and to talk frankly about the challenges that we continue to face in our democracies around the world.”
Just don’t ask him about China.
The former head of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) department responsible for engaging with foreign political parties met with multiple federal cabinet ministers and the national security adviser to the prime minister during a 2018 visit to Canada. This CCP department was recently designated an “intelligence service” by a German federal intelligence agency.
The International Department of the Central Committee of the CCP, also known as the International Liaison Department (ILD), operates “de facto as an intelligence service of the People’s Republic of China and is therefore part of the Chinese intelligence apparatus,” says a “Safety Notice for Politics and Administration” in German.
