OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s brother says he is prepared to appear in front of a parliamentary committee to tell MPs everything he knows about the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation in an effort to protect its reputation.
“I want to testify in front of the committee that is taking care of this. I’m prepared to say everything I know about the foundation. It’s urgent!” Alexandre (Sacha) Trudeau said in a rare interview with Quebec-based newspaper Le Devoir.
China and Russia have signed an agreement to strengthen their co-operation on maritime law enforcement in the latest example of partnership.
The memorandum follows a two-day meeting in Murmansk, northwest Russia, and comes as Beijing seeks a bigger role in Arctic affairs and Moscow builds up military outposts in the region, including deep-water ports and airfields.
… In a testy exchange, Cooper pressed Mendicino to explain why Canada hasn’t arrested any officials or expelled any diplomats tied to the handful of police stations China is believed to have operated in Canada.
Human rights groups have accused the Chinese government of using the stations to threaten and monitor members of the diaspora abroad.
“Not a single Beijing diplomat expelled. Why not, minister?” asked Cooper. “You’ve taken no meaningful action.”
Electric vehicles are taking over from German diesel
The European automotive sector — above all the German car industry — is a bulwark of the EU’s economic might. But for how much longer? It’s becoming increasingly clear that Chinese exports pose an existential threat.
This week, Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted out two charts that illustrate the astonishing speed and scale of recent developments.
So is Justin’s VW horse already on its way to the Glue Factory?
In 2018, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) celebrated “Michigan-China Week” to highlight the growing economic ties between Michigan and China. At the time, Michigan already had more than 300 Chinese companies located in the state, with more than $4 billion in investment, supporting roughly 6,000 jobs. MEDC wanted to publicize this story in its bureaucratic hopes that more Chinese businesses would follow.
Last week, my son announced at the dinner table that his school had turned off the lights for a time to “celebrate” Earth Day. To my mind, it seemed more of a lesson in why we need electricity to power our modern civilization, yet the kids were apparently allowed to spend the time playing computer games, which makes the overall point of the exercise hard to decipher.
A senior adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told MPs that he was the one who briefed Trudeau during the 2019 election campaign after Canada’s spy agency reportedly warned the Liberal campaign about a candidate working in cahoots with the Chinese regime.
Jeremy Broadhurst, who works in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), was asked about the Sept. 28, 2019, briefing as he testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC) on April 25.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and China’s Xi Jinping spoke by phone Wednesday — their first conversation since Russia invaded Ukraine 14 months ago and a signal that Beijing may be angling to play a mediating role.
China will send a special representative to Ukraine and other countries to hold talks with all parties on resolving the “crisis,” Xi told Zelensky, according to a Chinese readout of the call.
“Amid the current rise of reasonable thinking and voices from all sides, we should seize the opportunity to build up favorable conditions for a political settlement of the crisis,” Xi told Zelensky, according to the Chinese summary.
OTTAWA — Liberal party officials said Tuesday that recently reported claims that security agencies told them to drop MP Han Dong as a candidate before the 2019 election were not accurate.
Global News reported earlier this year that national security officials warned the party that Dong was part of a foreign interference network directed from Beijing. Dong, the current MP for Don Valley North in Toronto, left the Liberal caucus after the allegations were reported and has since launched a defamation suit against Global.
Military journals report that the United States is preparing to make the Pacific island of Guam a veritable “fortress.”
One suspects no one has used that phrase since the days just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor when the United States finally woke up to the fact that the Land of the Rising Sun had every intention of owning the Pacific. History would go on to record that our decision to fortify Guam would come too late as our isolated defenders would eventually be forced to surrender to overwhelming enemy forces. Few would survive their imprisonment.
The message: there is trouble at CSIS, and if the government doesn’t wake up, it could leave Canada vulnerable to threats from hostile foreign interests – or, conceivably, from domestic terrorism
… The message sender(s) – one or more disgruntled, or genuinely alarmed, CSIS officers – were not whistleblowers in the customary sense. Their mission was not to expose malfeasance, corruption, or some ghastly mistake that the agency had made.
Their message was political, its delivery staged to embarrass the government without revealing any truly damaging information. It conveyed a sense of festering antipathy in the relationship between CSIS and the Trudeau Liberal government.
Delays caused by the RCMP’s work-from-home directives in the early days of the pandemic are the reason for the collapse of a criminal case against a former Agriculture Canada scientist who was accused of illegally taking payments from China.
The Saskatchewan RCMP arrested the scientist, Yantai Gan, in November, 2019, and he stopped working for the federal government shortly afterward. He was charged with breach of trust by a public official, as well as fraud.
Now this is so stupid you have to wonder if the fix was in.
h/t OJ
Alexandre Trudeau reportedly negotiated and signed a deal for a $200,000 donation from a Chinese billionaire in 2016
OTTAWA – The prime minister’s brother, Alexandre (Sacha) Trudeau, will not have to testify before a parliamentary committee probing the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and allegations of foreign interference in federal elections.
On Monday, MPs who are on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts unanimously agreed to launch a brief study composed of two hearings into the “situation” at the Trudeau Foundation, on the condition that the witnesses not include any elected officials or Trudeau family members.
Poilievre wanted Junior’s bro to testify but Conservatives voted to give him a pass. Okey Dokey, nothin to see here.
Tesla has begun producing in Shanghai a version of the Model Y to be sold in Canada this year, the first time it will ship cars to North America from China, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plan and a production memo seen by Reuters.
The move would connect Tesla’s biggest and most cost-efficient factory in the world to North America, its largest market. The Model Y is the electric vehicle (EV) maker’s best-selling model globally.
Manufacture in China will hurt Tesla’s brand.
… Much of the analysis of the Belt and Road Initiative has focused on its impacts in sub-Saharan Africa, where several countries have faced debt crises as a result of the infrastructure projects. But an underappreciated impact of the Belt and Road Initiative and significant economic ties with China is the potential for Chinese government influence in the human rights realm, including in regards to religious freedom.
