The Trudeau Foundation has investments in Chinese companies Baidu and Tencent, a former board member told MPs on a parliamentary committee. Both companies have been subjects of security warnings.
The Trudeau Foundation was created with a $125 million endowment from the federal government in 2001 in memory of former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, to provide grants and academic scholarships.
David Johnston is set to appear at a House of Commons committee investigating claims of foreign interference as calls continue for his resignation as the government’s special rapporteur.
The 81-year-old former governor general will be at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee (PROC) for three hours on Tuesday, beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern.
This will be 3 hours of “How dare you impugn my integrity” mixed with “That information is unable to be released to the public” and “China been berry berry good to me.”
Newly released documents say the intelligence community’s relationship with its key watchdog has been particularly strained over the last year due to a “level of resistance” to scrutiny.
The assessment appears in briefing materials prepared for Canada’s top public servant in advance of a late January meeting with the chair of the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says that despite special rapporteur David Johnston’s personal credibility, the appearance of bias in favour of the Liberal government is undermining the very work that he’s trying to accomplish.
“I believe he’s a person that is very credible and has worked for the country in a way that is really honourable,” Singh said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live Sunday.
“The problem we’re up against, though, is the work he’s supposed to do is restore confidence in our electoral system, and the appearance of bias is so strong now that he can no longer do that work. The trust necessary is eroded because of the appearance of bias,” Singh told CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is defending his party’s decision not to make its motion calling for David Johnston to step down as special rapporteur binding and says an election does not “make sense” if the goal is protecting Canada’s democracy.
Singh told The West Block’s Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday that he wants to get a better understanding of the full extent of allegations of foreign interference.
Jagmeet Singh, leader of the federal New Democrats (and Waylon Smithers to Justin Trudeau’s Montgomery Burns), says he will not force a federal election over China’s attempts to subvert Canadian democracy until faith has been restored in our elections.
Senators Yuen Pau Woo and Victor Oh have ramped up efforts against enacting a foreign agent registration act as the Canadian government considers the legislation to combat foreign influence.
Both senators brought up the issue again at a conference that marked the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Immigration Act, held at the Splendid China Mall in Scarborough, Ont., on Saturday, May 27.
The act, introduced on July 1, 1923, is commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, as it resulted from an effort to stop Chinese immigration, stated a May 30 federal government news release recognizing “the national historic significance” of this legislation.
Not trusting these two for some reason.
Longtime B.C. politician Dave Hayer knew his campaign people. And his people included Chinese Canadians. They volunteered for him. They voted for him. And then in his 2021 campaign to become a federal Conservative MP, they vanished.
The former MLA was running to represent the riding of Fleetwood-Port Kells, drawing on the same base of volunteers from past elections in the populous and culturally diverse Metro Vancouver city of Surrey.
By the end of the campaign, most volunteers of Chinese descent had dropped out, fearing for themselves and their families, Hayer said.
In attacking David Johnston, Pierre Poilievre borrows a disgraceful tactic from Donald Trump
The best way to disrupt an investigation is to discredit the investigators.
Pierre Poilievre didn’t write that playbook. He borrowed it from Donald Trump.
No, this isn’t another hyperbolic comparison between American Trumpies and Canadian Tories. The similarities are eerie, but for one significant exception:
In the U.S., most American media called out Trump’s wilful distortions of how democracy works. In Canada, many in the media are repeating the canards from the Conservative leader about democracy, integrity and impartiality — largely uncritically — while dismissing David Johnston’s report on foreign interference in our elections.
A plot by the Chinese government to intimidate Conservative MP Michael Chong and his family in Hong Kong continues to dominate Parliament Hill, but experts are warning that the Chinese Communist Party’s “elite capture” efforts may be a bigger problem.
While the Chinese government works globally to woo high-ranking people, Canada’s political and economic elites may have been the most enthusiastic and possibly the most willing recipients according to high-profile experts, including a former ambassador to China.
China’s leaders kept Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig in solitary confinement, with lights glaring throughout the day, for much of their 34 months in prison.
… Yet, while many former hostages have made their agonizing stories public, the two Canadian nationals have remained silent.
Canada’s special rapporteur on foreign interference has hired crisis communications firm Navigator, his office confirmed on Friday.
In an email to CTV News, a spokesperson for special rapporteur David Johnston explained that Navigator was hired at the start of Johnston’s mandate “to provide communications advice and support.”
h/t Mauser
A large majority of Canadians say former governor general David Johnston is unfit to carry out his government-appointed role as special rapporteur on foreign election interference, according to a survey report released May 29.
David Johnston’s position is barely tenable. Can his investigation be salvaged?
As always, multiple things can be true at the same time.
David Johnston can be both a flawed choice to investigate the government’s response to intelligence on foreign interference — and the target of unfair treatment since taking on that task. The prime minister could have been better off asking someone else to be special rapporteur — and Johnston’s reception from his critics may have diminished the number of people willing and able to do the job.
Multiple things can be true simultaneously but this isn’t one of them.
Junior and Special Crony are closer than they are pretending to be, proven by their own statements.
Johnson is a sinophile of the first order with a vested interest in minimizing his own activity as a member of the China Class.
Nothing else explains his report’s exclusion of O’Toole’s evidence.
A July 2021 CSIS assessment warning Beijing was targeting a Conservative MP and his relatives in China was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national-security adviser at the time, as well as three deputy ministers, but it’s unclear if anyone read the top-secret document, MPs heard Thursday.
National security adviser Jody Thomas, who was deputy minister of National Defence in 2021, was adamant that Mr. Trudeau was unaware of the threat to the MP, who turned out to be Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, until The Globe and Mail revealed he was a target on May 1. The Globe report cited the Canadian Security Intelligence Service assessment and a national-security source.
“On vacation” is maybe one step above “the dog ate my homework.”
h/t Mauser
