“Canada’s China Class”

The interim commissioner of the RCMP says he would support additional laws that allow police to further crack down on foreign interference in Canada, as well as ways to further collaborate with intelligence officials on the issue.

But Mike Duheme adds multiple investigations remain underway that he’s confident will lead to criminal charges, though he did not give specifics.

A lawyer for Han Dong has served Global News and its parent company Corus Entertainment with a libel notice after the media outlet published an allegation the Toronto MP spoke to a Chinese diplomat about delaying the release of two Canadians.

Lawyer Mark Polley says he is demanding that Global News make a “full apology and retraction” for publishing what he describes as “false, malicious, irresponsible and defamatory statements” about Dong, now an Independent MP for Don Valley North.

Liberal MP Parm Bains said he won his B.C. riding in the last election “fair and square” after his former opponent told a parliamentary committee foreign interference by Beijing played a role in his victory.

Bains sits on the Commons ethics committee and was sitting across the table when former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu told MPs on the committee Friday he believed Bains was the “beneficiary” of a disinformation campaign he suspects was tied to the Chinese Communist Party during the 2021 election campaign.

The threat from foreign interference, with Beijing as the main culprit, has evolved to become more dangerous to the state than traditional espionage, a former executive with Canada’s spy agency told MPs.

“What we’ve seen, in the last 30 years, is that foreign interference has eclipsed classic espionage as a national security threat, both in terms of its scope and its speed,” said Dan Stanton, a 32-year veteran of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

Among the various types of outlandish and sinister responses to the recent revelations about Beijing’s emissaries interfering in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections to the purpose of re-electing a Liberal government, the conjuring of bogeymen has been especially destructive to any clear public consensus about what’s at stake here, and what’s really going on.

Two former intelligence officials called for a complete transformation of Canada’s security apparatus to counter expanding foreign interference operations that they say have been essentially ignored by Ottawa since the 1990s.

On Friday the House of Commons standing committee on access to information, privacy and ethics heard recommendations for a new national and independent office with powers to investigate and prosecute acts of foreign interference, and also rapid adoption of counter-interference laws that have already been implemented by Canadian allies such as Australia.

Chinese state media outlets should not be granted broadcasting licences in Canada because their content is meant to feed “misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda” to overseas Chinese, an expert witness told a House committee on March 30.

The Chinese regime has made it clear it wishes to use overseas Chinese to exert influence abroad, and “this becomes interference instead of simple influence,” said Katherine Leung, policy advisor for the non-governmental organization Hong Kong Watch.

Han Dong has made his position very clear: the former Liberal MP says he never told a Chinese diplomat to put off releasing two imprisoned Canadians to avoid helping the Conservatives. And he announced Monday he’s already hired a lawyer to sue the news outlet that reported the alleged conversation.

Chinese Canadians in public office and academia are warning the recent claims China interfered in Canadian politics could stigmatize an entire community and dissuade them from running for public office or taking on public-facing roles.

“There is a lot of fear,” said Keren Tang, a city councillor in Edmonton.

Tang and others in the Chinese community are worried racism resulting from the federal investigations into the alleged Chinese government interference could roll back years of progress of getting more diverse voices in all levels of government.

Just the CBC running interference for Trudeau and his ChiCom allies.

Most Canadians have no idea where the country’s spy agency is located, nor do they know much about its daily operations. This is not because the Canadian Security Intelligence Service operates in a particularly clandestine fashion, it’s because most Canadians don’t care.

The CSIS, a civilian-run organisation based in a triangular structure of concrete and glass on the outskirts of Ottawa, lacks the intrigue of Britain’s MI5 and the notoriety of America’s Central Intelligence Agency.

“I look nothing like Daniel Craig, and I did not arrive here in an Aston Martin. I’m just as disappointed as you are – on both fronts,” its director, David Vigneault, said in a speech in 2018, poking fun at the service’s largely uncharismatic reputation. “Most of you remember the movie Fight Club. And you will know that the first rule of Fight Club is ‘don’t talk about Fight Club’. Well, the first rule of CSIS has always been ‘don’t talk’. Period.”

During the SNC Lavalin Scandal Katie Telford is said to have told Jody Wilson-Raybould’s chief of staff that she could arrange for her connections to ‘Write op-eds saying that what she is doing is proper.’ This piece fits the bill for narrative control.

I don’t know of anyone who thinks ill of CSIS for these leaks, other than the CCP compromised Liberal Party. In fact most of us are grateful for having this criminal chicanery exposed.