The Liberal government is facing pushback from Justice Marie-Josée Hogue for citing cabinet confidentiality in redacting records provided to the public inquiry investigating meddling by China and other hostile states in Canadian democracy.
The government is also completely withholding an undisclosed number of cabinet documents, according to the Privy Council Office (PCO), which reports directly to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The release of over 600 pages of classified documents concerning security breaches at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg this past February shed a light on one of this country’s most shocking cases of espionage.
NML scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng essentially used Canada’s highest-security biohazard lab as a lending library for Chinese military interests. During her time as head of Vaccines and Antivirals in the NML’s Zoonotic Diseases and Special Pathogens Division, Qiu repeatedly acted on China’s behalf, including by transferring knowledge and materials from the NML to Chinese institutions. The files led bare Canada’s shocking inability to protect its own secrets.
A former Chinese spy has revealed new information about the Chinese regime’s targeting of a Chinese dissident who died in British Columbia in 2022.
While the RCMP says the death was not suspicious, it was raised as a warning last year to another exiled Chinese activist now living in Toronto. The warning was conveyed in a phone call between the activist and one of his friends in China, whom the activist said was under pressure from Chinese police and described the death as being “under mysterious circumstances.”
Beverley McLachlin has spent the past six years servicing the reputation of Hong Kong’s top court, while destroying the one she spent a lifetime building in Canada.
Had she decided, upon her retirement from the Supreme Court of Canada in 2017, to invest in a nice condo in Boca Raton and take up watercolour portraits or something, her legacy would have been set as one of the most esteemed and accomplished jurists in generations. She was the first woman and longest-serving chief justice of the Supreme Court; she was a professor, an author, and at times, a polarizing figure, but her fidelity to law and order, to democracy and fairness was without question. But Ms. McLachlin has torched that very legacy by renting out her reputation to a sham court operating under the thumb of Beijing’s repressive and authoritarian regime.
In some of his most hawkish comments to date, the head of Canada’s intelligence agency is warning Canadians — including teenagers — against using the wildly popular video app TikTok.
“My answer as director of [the Canadian Security Intelligence Service] is that there is a very clear strategy on the part of the government of China … to be able to acquire … personal information from anyone around the world,” said CSIS director David Vigneault in an interview with CBC’s The House airing Saturday.
“As an individual, I would say that I would absolutely not recommend someone have TikTok.”
Earlier this week, the Biden Administration announced a sweeping set of new tariffs on Chinese imports. The tariffs target strategic sectors from steel and aluminum to green tech. Headline-grabbing among those were the 100-per-cent levies on Chinese electric vehicles. The tariffs are partly political posturing during an election year, as a prior 27.5-per-cent levy and an exclusion from national tax credits have largely kept Chinese EVs off U.S. roads. More important than the tariffs’ immediate impact, though, are the long-term strategic policy considerations underpinning them.
Two Ontario-based Chinese media outlets that had published information aimed at former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu weeks before the 2021 federal election have been identified in the foreign interference inquiry report as having “close links” to the Beijing regime.
“Canadian intelligence holdings identify both 105.9 Yes My Radio and CGCTV as having close links to the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government or PRC state-media,” stated the interim report published by the foreign interference commission on May 3.
An organization tied to the Chinese Communist Party has funded, in part, a radical anti-Israel group since its formation in October 2023, a new report finds.
The report from the Network Contagion Research Institute says that the anti-Israel group Shut It Down for Palestine is funded in part by Chinese programs that promote “alternative anti-establishment media organizations promoting anti-American narratives, as well as seemingly grassroots activist movements.”
A Toronto businessman that reportedly attended a private fundraiser with Prime Minister Trudeau in May 2016 before winning approval to launch a bank catering to Chinese-Canadians has slapped the Globe and Mail and myriad government defendants including CSIS director David Vigneault with an extraordinary $250-million libel suit seeking to expunge a series of articles that suggest Ottawa is concerned Beijing is clandestinely pursuing a range of geopolitical and economic strategies “that are a direct threat to our national security and sovereignty.”
The lawsuit, filed May 9 in Toronto Superior Court, alleges Canada’s leading newspaper has defamed the plaintiff and his bank.
When Canada’s Nortel Networks went bankrupt in 2009, China’s Huawei recruited an entire Nortel team to its Canadian arm to advance its 5G networks development. As Canada banned Huawei in its 5G network in 2022 over security concerns, the former Nortel team leader became a Royal Society of Canada fellow that same year.
Wen Tong, the established engineer who brought his Nortel team with him to join Huawei Canada in 2009, currently leads the Chinese telecom giant’s 5G wireless technologies research.
YRP allegedly captured digital evidence from casino network tied to “Team Trudeau” fundraising and election interference investigations
During the pandemic Canadians were awed by images of heavily armed tactical officers raiding 5 Decourcy Court, a $10-million, 53-room villa in Markham, Ont. stacked with deadly weapons and over a million in cash, the proceeds of an opulent “palace” offering spa and gambling pleasures to wealthy clients, according to York Regional Police (YRP).
“The money moving through these underground casinos leads to huge profits for criminals that fund other ventures such as prostitution and drug trafficking,” YRP stated in September 2020, adding detectives believed patrons received brothel service inside the 20,000-square-foot, marble-floored mansion.
All high school pupils in China will be forced to undergo mandatory military service under a new law on “defence education”.
The law, which will end a nationwide debate over what is already a common practice, also proposes drills for middle school pupils — aged 12 to 15 — and says that defence education should be part of the syllabus even for primary school children.
The Iranian-orchestrated Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 — which resulted in mass rapes, the murders of 1,200 men, women, children and infants; taking more than 250 hostages and firing thousands of rockets at Israeli towns and cities — has shown that China, which Israel might have thought was an ally, turned out to be, sadly, more of an enemy.
China refused to condemn Hamas and its terrorist invasion of Israel, choosing instead to condemn Israel just a week after the massacre and before Israel had even launched its ground operation in the Gaza Strip.
As the dust settles on the landmark findings of the foreign interference inquiry, Canada’s intelligence agency is warning that China likely will back more meddling campaigns and expand its online pressure tactics over the coming year.
In its latest annual report, released Tuesday, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says the People’s Republic of China (PRC) remains “an enduring threat” to Canadian technology, democracy and diaspora communities.
“The PRC’s negative perceptions of select Canadian domestic and foreign policy initiatives may also drive more foreign interference, disinformation efforts and cyber activity in 2024,” said the report.
