David Johnston given broad powers to probe foreign interference in Canada’s elections

Former governor-general David Johnston will be given broad powers to investigate foreign interference in Canada and paid around $1,500 a day over the course of his probe, which follows Globe and Mail reporting on Chinese government meddling in this country’s elections.

Mr. Johnston will be empowered to “review any classified or unclassified records and documents, including, where necessary in their estimation, records protected by cabinet confidence,” the government said in a statement on Thursday detailing his role as special rapporteur.

Johnston is a member in good standing of Canada’s China Class, he’s already a sell-out like Justin.

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China’s Race to Dominate the Military and Emerging Technologies

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) openly says it wants to establish dominance in emerging critical technologies as part of its strategy to supplant the United States as the world’s dominant power, establish a new world order and replace the US-led international system established after WWII.

The US has only a little time left in this race. Reports indicate that deep cuts to the military made by several administrations have severely impaired its ability to catch up. Remaining talent and resources will possibly be reallocated in a new administration, if it is not too late by then. China has been supercharging its military for years while the U.S. has sat back, watched, and argued about unrelated social issues.

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Iran, Saudi Arabia make diplomatic breakthrough in China

The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran held their first official meeting in Beijing in over seven years on Thursday.

During the meeting, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan discussed reopening embassies and consulates of the two countries, Iran’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

I think we’ll see Israel acting against Iran soon.

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How Convenient! Agencies reviewing foreign election interference face a wall of cabinet secrecy

Both of the federal agencies tasked with reviewing what the Liberal government and security agencies knew about allegations of foreign interference in the last two Canadian elections — and when they knew it — do not have an automatic right to review cabinet records.

The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) and the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) are not allowed to review cabinet documents.

The agency that safeguards those records — the Privy Council Office (PCO) — will not guarantee that either agency will get an exemption from that rule for the foreign interference probe.

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Leaked Files Show China And Russia Sharing Tactics On Internet Control, Censorship

Secret handshake?

Years before Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “no-limits” partnership and the Kremlin launched a wide-ranging censorship campaign following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Beijing and Moscow were sharing methods and tactics for monitoring dissent and controlling the Internet.

That growing cooperation between the two countries is shown in documents and recordings from closed door meetings in 2017 and 2019 between officials from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), its chief Internet regulator, and Roskomnadzor, the government agency charged with policing Russia’s Internet, that were obtained by RFE/RL’s Russian Investigative Unit (known as Systema) from a source who had access to the materials. DDoSecrets, a group that publishes leaked and hacked documents, provided software to search the files.

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China Installs New Bishop in Defiance of Pact With Vatican

This is what happens when you make a deal with the devil.

Media sources report that the Vatican is accusing the Chinese government of unilaterally appointing a new bishop to Shanghai in violation of a “secret pact” that Pope Francis and Chinese officials renewed last October. Shanghai is the largest Roman Catholic diocese in China. Four months ago, the Vatican claimed that China violated the pact by installing a bishop in a diocese that is not recognized by the Holy See. This is what happens when you make a deal with the devil.

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China accuses Canadian MPs of foreign interference after report saying Taiwan should decide its own future

The Chinese government is accusing Canada of foreign interference, after a high-profile parliamentary committee released a report that says the Taiwanese people, rather than Beijing, should decide the fate of the self-ruled island.

The report on Taiwan by the House of Commons special committee on the Canada-People’s Republic of China relationship also urges the Canadian government to make efforts to join AUKUS, a United States-Britiain-Australia defence pact that has been condemned by Beijing as an “Asia-Pacific version of NATO.”

I’m sure Justin is conveying his deepest regrets via diplomatic backchannels.

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Biden hands the Middle East to China

While the United States has been hypnotized by our domestic battle of Biden versus Trump, China has made a major move in the Middle East.

It has negotiated an alliance of convenience between those thousand-year enemies, the Saudis and Iranians, whose theological feud goes back to the generation after Mohammed.

China has thereby effectively countered the Abraham Accords negotiated by the US, the Arab states (with Saudis in the background) and Israel.

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Why Chinese interference is an everyday problem for many Canadians: ‘They brainwash people’

Dan Hao was once a wealthy entrepreneur in China. Now, he’s in self-imposed exile in Vancouver working as a contractor — with an international warrant out for his arrest.

Hao fled to Vancouver in 2019 after, he says, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forcibly took over the securities brokerage firm he was running. In the years since, Hao has become a vocal protester of the CCP and is now the leader of the Vancouver branch of the Democratic Party of China — activities, he says, that have made him and his group the target of harassment campaigns.

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Trudeau government continues using Communist Chinese steel in new navy patrol ships

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

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Ottawa bends to U.S. push to purchase strategic hangar in Arctic sought by Chinese buyer

They made Justin cry.

The U.S. military has been prodding Ottawa to buy a privately owned hangar adjacent to a NORAD airbase in the Arctic community of Inuvik, after a Chinese buyer expressed interest in taking over the facility.

For nearly a year, Ottawa resisted American pressure over the property, located near a strategic piece of the continent’s air-defence infrastructure that would make a prime target for foreign surveillance. The Canadian government had previously leased the hangar to shelter military aircraft, but argued it no longer had need of it.

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Sincere effort or ‘cover-up?’ Canadians split on interference probe intentions: poll

Canadians are split on whether the federal government’s recently-announced probes into allegations of foreign election interference are a sincere effort to get to the truth or an attempt to cover up what is alleged to have happened, a new poll suggests.

The Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News and released Tuesday found 52 per cent of those surveyed think the probes, and the appointment of a special rapporteur to oversee them, are genuine. Forty-eight per cent, meanwhile, think “the investigation is a cover-up.”

An on-line poll with an oversized sample of Beijing Fifth Columnists conducted  by a Liberal friendly pollster. That’s my story and I’m stickin to it.

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The Questions Biden Still Hasn’t Answered about the Chinese Spy Balloon

A new report provides some answers to the nagging questions that linger from early February, but it raises others.

According to the “two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official” with whom NBC News reporters Courtney Kube and Carol Lee spoke, the Chinese spy balloon that traversed the continental United States in February was, in fact, “able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites”:

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RCMP ‘will be successful’ in laying more interference charges: interim chief

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.

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