“Canada’s China Class”

Canadian government doesn’t scale back on Chinese steel in new navy patrol ships

Canada has yet to determine how much Chinese steel and equipment will go into its new naval warships, but it didn’t scale back on such products for its Arctic and offshore patrol vessels even though concerns were raised in 2018.

You have to admit that China and its assets have got very good value for their donations to Trudeau’s foundation and election campaigns.

h/t Mauser

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.