Among the many circumlocutions and outright non-answers to straightforward questions about what the federal government announced Thursday, in relation to restraints Canada might place on the ability of China’s multinational telecommunications giants to hack, spy and hold Canada’s critical telecommunications infrastructure to ransom, it isn’t easy to pick one that stands out in its absurdity. That’s because there were so many of them.
They finally did it. Nearly three years after they promised a decision on Huawei ahead of the 2019 election, the federal Liberals grew a backbone and officially banned the Chinese telecommunications firm from Canada’s 5G network.
As the saying goes, better late than never, but the Trudeau government’s painfully slow march toward making an obvious choice –– one made much quicker by many peer nations — raises some serious questions.
As U.S. baby formula shortage spills into Canada, questions arise over why our biggest producer doesn’t sell to Canadians
… Canada Royal Milk is a Kingston-based plant owned by a Chinese multinational company, which has received government funding through Ontario’s jobs and prosperity fund for the food and beverage sector. The plant, construction for which began in 2017, makes formula with Canadian cow and goat milk, and ships its products to China, said Charlebois.
Canadians essentially subsidize the dairy industry through the supply-management system, argued Charlebois. He thinks that if the company isn’t making products to be sold in Canada, it should have to buy its milk from outside the supply-management chain.
“That would be acceptable because it would no longer be supply-managed, it would no longer be subsidized,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Canadian Dairy Commission said it is very common for processing companies in Canada to buy Canadian supply-managed dairy and use it for products that are then exported.
Our China class at work.
A Chinese firm that specializes in industrial explosives is planning to acquire a more than 10 percent stake in a Canadian lithium company for $5 million.
On April 17, China-based company Sichuan Yahua Industrial Group Co. Ltd. (Yahua Group) announced its plan to acquire 13.2 percent of Ultra Lithium Inc., a Vancouver-based lithium and gold exploration firm, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Yahua International Investment and Development Co. Ltd.
The deal signed between the two companies will also see Yahua International acquiring a 60 percent stake in a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ultra Lithium that has two lithium mining projects in Ontario, at Forgan Lake and Georgia Lake.
This ought to go over well with the Biden admin and their secure sourcing initiatives.
Providing services to Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou. Guiding Xi Jinping’s “national champion” telecom through Canada’s national-security roadblocks. Supplying megaphone services for Beijing’s disinfo ops. . .
It’s official. After a long hiatus from the internecine comings and goings at the jet-setting apex of Canada’s political class, Jean Charest is already being touted as the frontrunner in the race for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada.
It was only on Thursday evening that Charest officially launched his candidacy for Erin O’Toole’s old job, and straight away he demonstrated something rather less than forthrightness, you could say, about what he’s been up to all this time.
Canada’s spy agency sent multiple warnings to the Canadian Space Agency about Wanping Zheng, a former engineer now accused of negotiating on behalf of a Chinese aerospace company — and even refused to give a presentation at the CSA because it knew Zheng would be there, according to new court documents.
The RCMP charged 61-year-old Zheng last December with breach of trust in a case police say is tied to foreign interference.
A drab, bluish-green glass office tower just north of Toronto, 50 Minthorn Blvd. is unassuming save for a “Bank of China” sign that sits atop the eight-storey building.
But inside, on the first and second floors, is the footprint of companies tied to one of China’s most high-flying oligarchs, Xiao Jianhua. Beijing security agents whisked the Chinese-Canadian billionaire from the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong in a wheelchair five years ago. He hasn’t been heard from since.
A trio of U.S. lawmakers are blasting Canada’s “complicit approval” that allowed the sale of a Toronto-listed lithium mining company to a Chinese state-owned firm, and are urging Biden administration officials to investigate the acquisition.
The outfit has worked with a top Canadian scientist, a member of the Ontario legislature and children in the Toronto area.
Its name sounds more bureaucratic than menacing.
But the Chinese government’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO) is involved in espionage that harms Canada’s interests, a Federal Court judge has affirmed in what appears to be a precedent-setting new ruling.
“… Schwab and the WEF had help in setting up their Canadian infiltration mission, including from Trudeau’s former chief of staff, Gerald Butts, a participant in the WEF’s Davos conferences and a leading backroom organizer of the Trudeau government’s ideological gambits. When it comes to subversive plans to overthrow the free-world economy, few are larger in scope than the WEF’s global scheme to remake the world and install a new form of “capitalism” based on the recruitment of corporate leaders into the role of government.
The WEF infiltration of Ottawa has never been a secret, nor has Butts’ involvement. But it is far from being common knowledge among voters that the ideological model behind the Liberal policy machine, the steering mechanism that guides decisions and policies, is subversive and authoritarian. It also covers a massive policy territory, from climate to COVID-19.
While researching how Americans having been getting rich by helping the Chinese Communist Party achieve its outspoken aim of replacing the US as the “world’s No.1 power,” I came across the phrase “elite capture” — their term to describe the actions of influential people in the US towards China.
“Elite capture” can refer to different things, but to the Chinese Communist Party, China’s intelligence apparatus, or those involved in quasi-private business ventures, it is a crucial tool of their success. The idea is simple enough: by tempting another country’s elite with money, access and favors, you move them to see their interests and China’s interests as intertwined or even the same.
The Chinese are not subtle about this, and they barely try to hide it. They practice it around the world, most notably in Africa in pursuit of their Belt and Road Initiative. But elites in Western democracies have proved to be a soft touch, particularly among non-governmental elites.
… Basically, the car and the boy’s apartment — worth millions of dollars — is simply an example of money laundering taking place in the open in Vancouver. It’s such a prevalent tactic, particularly for the ruling governing elite in China, it’s got a name — the “Vancouver Model.”
Canadian ambivalence over Beijing 2022 seems to be playing out in TV viewership for the Games, with CBC posting initial ratings that are down sharply from previous Winter Olympics and even last summer’s Tokyo Games.
Primetime viewership on CBC for the first six days of events in Beijing is down 22 per cent from Tokyo, and off a whopping 48 per cent from the Pyeongchang Winter Games, according to figures provided Friday to The Globe and Mail by CBC.
… One advertising buyer told The Globe the ratings were about 25-per-cent lower than projections the CBC’s sales department had provided to the industry in advance of the Games, raising the possibility the public broadcaster may have to compensate marketers for failing to reach its expected audience.
Go Incognito
OTTAWA — An intelligence expert said the federal government’s decision not to conduct a formal national security review on the takeover of a Canadian lithium mining company by a Chinese state-owned company was a “mistake.”
The government misjudged the takeover’s significance to Canada’s economic and national security both in the present and future, said Wesley Wark, a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in international affairs and intelligence gathering.
“The kinds of explanations that have been offered by the government to date I find wholly unsatisfactory and very narrowly focused,” he told a House of Commons committee Wednesday.
CanSino-McMaster deal may turn out to be ‘case study of what not to do in partnerships with China’: expert
The federal government has trumpeted previous vaccine partnerships with a China-based company as one of the reasons why Canada was pinning its hopes on a COVID-19 vaccine candidate from China early in the pandemic.
But The Fifth Estate has reviewed those partnerships and found that a collaboration with McMaster University in Hamilton stalled years ago and never resulted in an approved vaccine anywhere in the world.
… After the deal fell apart, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that the reason Canada partnered with CanSino was because of the “well-established partnership” between scientists in Canada and China “that has been effective in the past.”
