The ascendancy of Beijing’s powerful proxies, agents, dupes and apologists in Canada: Usually overlooked, unreported and otherwise unmentionable. Will the NSICOP hubbub make a difference?
Worth your time. The China scandal runs much deeper than they want you to know.
Premier Doug Ford is calling on the federal government to place a 100 per cent tariff on electric vehicles manufactured in China, warning that failure to do so could put jobs at “risk” in Ontario.
The U.S. announced last month that it planned to place new tariffs of more than 100 per cent on Chinese made electrical vehicles but the Canadian government has not yet indicated whether it plans to follow suit.
In a statement released on Thursday, Ford called on the feds to “immediately match or exceed” the U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports, which will eventually apply to some other goods as well.
In the ordinary course of heated political controversies, Canadians can sort out the issue that’s launching their politicians at one another’s throats. In the “foreign interference” upheaval that has in turns paralyzed, confounded and outraged Canada’s political class in recent days, we’re not even allowed to know what the federal party leaders are arguing about, exactly.
The US has accused a Chinese “underground banking” network of helping Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa drugs cartel with money laundering and other crimes.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) has charged 24 people with offences that also include distributing narcotics.
Law enforcement officers have seized about $5m (£4m) in proceeds, as well as guns and hundreds of pounds of cocaine, methamphetamine and ecstasy pills.
The DoJ touted the close co-operation with Mexican and Chinese law enforcement – a message that has been echoed on the Chinese side.
Trudeau Says Concerns About Collusion Report Relate to Interpretation, Cites Singh and May Disagreement
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government’s concerns with some conclusions of a recent intelligence watchdog report on foreign collusion by parliamentarians are related to interpretation of the information, pointing to differing opinions among other party leaders who have read it in full.
“The government has already highlighted that there are a number of conclusions in the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians [NSICOP] report that we don’t entirely align with,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters in a June 16 press conference in Switzerland where he was attending the Summit on Peace in Ukraine.
Gaslighting little twerp.
Trudeau says Canadians should be ‘wary’ of leaders who say foreign interference hasn’t touched their teams
In an apparent jab at NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canadians should be wary of political leaders who say their parties haven’t been compromised by foreign interference.
Last week — after reading the classified, unredacted version of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) report — Singh suggested to reporters that he didn’t have to worry about members of his caucus.
In an interview with CBC’s Power & Politics on Monday, Trudeau questioned that assertion.
The Chinese Communist Party seems to have been buying up America. On July 23, 2023, US Rep. Mile Collins (R-GA) said on the floor of the House of Representatives:
“China owns $870 billion in U.S. Treasuries that finance our debt. And they either own or have a huge portion of the Chicago Stock Exchange, AMC movie theaters, General Electric’s appliance division, General Motors, and Smithfield Foods just to name a few.
“On another alarming note, folks. China owns 384,000 acres of American agricultural land. That’s a 30% increase just since 2019. And on top of that, they own land near an air force base in North Dakota. That’s a clear threat to our national security and that’s what the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill is going to address.”
The federal and Saskatchewan governments are stepping in to prevent Canadian rare earth metals from falling into the hands of a Chinese buyer after facing backlash from critics who alleged that allowing the transaction to proceed was anathema to Canada’s critical minerals policy.
Australia-based Vital Metals Ltd. in December announced it was selling its stockpile of rare earths that were mined at the Nechalacho Project in the Northwest Territories to China’s Shenghe Resources Holding Co.,Ltd.
In Justin Trudeau’s paranoid Ottawa, insiders say treason allegations are being carelessly tossed around
By Justin Ling Contributor
Eighty years ago, cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko walked out of the Soviet embassy in Ottawa with a briefcase full of documents and a plan to defect. When he finally got an audience with the RCMP, he revealed the most extensive espionage and influence campaign Canada had ever seen.
Gouzenko’s defection spurred a series of investigations, a public inquiry, and a media frenzy. Revelations of how Moscow sought to steal secrets and infiltrate Ottawa gripped the nation and woke Ottawa up to new realities of the Cold War.
The gall.
After reading an unredacted report from one of Canada’s intelligence oversight bodies, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says he now thinks that Independent MP Han Dong shouldn’t be allowed back into the Liberal caucus.
Last week, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), a cross-party committee of MPs and senators with top security clearances, released a heavily blacked-out document alleging, based on intelligence, that some parliamentarians have been “semi-witting or witting” participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in Canadian politics.
Spy novelist John Le Carré established his reputation with 1963’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Set at the height of the Cold War, it describes washed-up British spy Alec Leamas’ attempt to infiltrate East German intelligence as a double agent. It’s a grim tale of hidden identities, uncertain alliances and spymasters prepared to sacrifice their own men in pursuit of bigger game. According to Le Carré — who worked for Britain’s MI6 in Germany while writing the book — the modern world of espionage is unpleasant, unglamourous and devoid of loyalty. Unhappy endings are inevitable.
It’s been quite the melodrama.
For two weeks, the inferred conclusions of “treason” on Parliament Hill derived from an 84-page-report that none of us is allowed to read have only heaped fuel on a garbage fire that began with the leaked revelations of intelligence agency whistleblowers going back to November 2022.
The stinking reek of it all should not be expected to subside any time soon. All the parties in the House now seem content with having the matter kicked over to Justice Marie-Josée Hogue’s Foreign Interference Commission. In the short term, if any legislative good comes of the international spectacle Canada’s political class has been making of itself, it will be in the outcome of Bill C-70, the Countering Foreign Interference Act, which completed third reading in the House of Commons on Thursday.
Trudeau is a witting accomplice.
US v Canada
… This cross-border discrepancy is partly explained by serious flaws in Canada’s legal system. As an intelligence-gathering service, CSIS is best placed to identify crimes of espionage. But it has no actual law enforcement powers. It can share its findings with the RCMP, but this relationship is complicated by the fact CSIS intel is not admissible in court since the agency refuses to disclose its sources and methods.
“If defence lawyers ever get a whiff of the fact the RCMP has relied on CSIS information, they will demand to test that information in court,” warns Phil Gurski, a former strategic analyst at CSIS. For this reason, cases built on CSIS evidence are often not prosecuted. It is possible Qiu and Cheng were allowed to leave the country because the mountain of proof incriminating them was inadmissible in court.
As anti-lockdown protests flared across China’s cities in November 2022, hundreds of thousands around the world were glued to an unlikely source: a mysterious X account, fronted by a cartoon cat.
Protest footage, details about police movements, news of arrests – Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher posted a torrent of real-time updates sourced from ordinary citizens.
Little of it could be found on China’s tightly-controlled state media or internet. All of it was curated by one person, sitting in a bedroom in Italy – an art school student named Li Ying.
Canada’s former ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques, says Beijing’s meddling in Canada’s democracy is worse than it has ever been.
Earlier this week, a report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) alleged that sitting federal politicians are “witting” participants in foreign interference schemes.
The report did not name names, and the Liberal government is resisting revealing their identities, citing concerns about sharing intelligence information.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says that Canadians have a right to know the names of the MPs accused in an explosive new intelligence report of “wittingly” working on behalf of foreign state actors.
On Monday, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), a cross-party committee of MPs and senators with top security clearances, released a heavily redacted document alleging some parliamentarians have actively helped foreign governments like China and India meddle in Canadian politics.
