If there is one thing we as Canadians have heard an awful lot about of late it is what has been termed “foreign interference.” This refers to efforts by foreign states to identify those in our land and use them to advance their own interests, or stifle any activity deemed not in those interests. And while several nations have been highlighted as behind this kind of effort, of late the number one country by far is the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
OTTAWA – A newly released document shows intelligence officials have been tracking China’s attempts to meddle in Canadian affairs for more than one-third of a century.
The February 1986 intelligence report warned that Beijing was using open political tactics and secret operations to influence and exploit the Chinese diaspora in Canada.
It said China was using new and potentially more potent techniques to accomplish these goals.
In 2014, as Beijing was ramping up Operation Fox Hunt, a sprawling campaign to go after corrupt politicians and economic criminals hiding overseas, a representative of the Chinese government approached William Majcher.
A retired former undercover officer with the RCMP, Mr. Majcher had been living in Hong Kong for seven years, working as a corporate investigator and advising banks on money laundering. According to Mr. Majcher, he was invited to meet someone “very close to senior state security,” who asked him whether he would be able to help track down money stolen by corrupt officials.
A retired RCMP officer has been charged with foreign interference, the Mounties said in a news release Friday.
William Majcher, 60, “allegedly used his knowledge and his extensive network of contacts in Canada to obtain intelligence or services to benefit the People’s Republic of China,” the RCMP in Montreal said in the news release.
The release alleged that Majcher “contributed to the Chinese government’s efforts to identify and intimidate an individual outside the scope of Canadian law.”
If John Kerry has a defining theme to his career, it’s pandering to totalitarian leftist dictatorships and then getting left holding the bag with that usual stupefied expression on his equine features. Everyone from the Viet Cong to the Sandinistas have pulled the trick on Kerry, Communist China is only a little late to the party.
Xi is laying the groundwork while the West looks away
In a sinister reversion to the very worst days of Mao’s rule, Communist Party officials across China are blindly obeying orders to rapidly increase the supply of arable land by any means possible. As with the “Great Leap Forward” that starved tens of millions to death in a futile attempt to produce more steel to industrialise overnight, the official aim is straightforward: to grow more “grain”.
In reality, however, China produces more than enough rice, wheat and maize to feed its human population. So why the sudden rush? Xi Jinping, it seems, is preparing for war.
The federal government was allegedly warned by a Canadian intelligence official that the Beijing-linked video-sharing app TikTok was misleading governments and the general public about its data-harvesting methods nearly half a year before Ottawa banned the app from all federal devices, according to an internal briefing note.
A document prepared for the government in September 2022 by the Privy Council Office’s (PCO) Intelligence Assessment Secretariat said that TikTok was giving “false public and governmental reassurances about data sovereignty and security.”
The plight of the “Two Michaels” might seem a distant memory for most Canadians.
Yet barely two years after China released these two high-profile hostages from prison, Canadians have reason to fear a repetition of Beijing’s strong-arm tactics — through the heavy hand of Hong Kong.
Beijing and other tyrannical regimes exploit gaps in Canadian law to advance their transnational repression in Canada, and a prominent international human rights lawyer says this is a problem that calls for comprehensive legislation to combat their foreign interference.
Winnipeg-based lawyer David Matas, senior legal counsel for B’nai Brith Canada, said repressive states like China, Russia, and Iran have been exploiting organizations such as the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) to harass and intimidate their own nationals even after they’ve fled abroad to escape persecution back home. He said malign state actors are also abusing conventional mechanisms for international cooperation on criminal matters.
As China increases its reach in diaspora communities, Chinese Canadian politicians in Vancouver are the focus of Chinese state interference in Canadian politics.
The polls predicted a re-election victory, maybe even a landslide.
But a couple of weeks before the vote, Kenny Chiu, a member of Canada’s Parliament and a critic of China’s human rights record, was panicking. Something had flipped among the ethnic Chinese voters in his British Columbia district.
“Initially, they were supportive,” he said. “And all of a sudden, they just vanished, vaporized, disappeared.”
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said his party is waiting on the Liberals to move ahead on a public inquiry on foreign interference, saying the government is to blame for any delays.
Poilievre held a media availability in Vancouver Friday, and said the ball is in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s court.
Reports of possible meddling by Chinese government in Canada’s elections are pressuring Trudeau government
RICHMOND, British Columbia—A series of public revelations about alleged Chinese government meddling in Canadian politics has roiled the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, prompting calls from opposition politicians and China analysts for tighter monitoring of foreign-interference threats within Canada’s borders and a full probe of the alleged activities.
The latest concerns flared when Erin O’Toole, the former Conservative Party leader, said he was told recently by Canadian security officials that Beijing had tried to thwart his path to replace Trudeau as prime minister in the 2021 elections.
A renowned scientist who led the condemnation of the Covid lab leak theory privately believed it was ‘high likely’, leaked messages show.
Dr Kristian Andersen, a Danish evolutionary biologist, co-authored a now-notorious research paper published in March 2020 that denounced the origin scenario as a conspiracy theory and xenophobic.
Yet Slack messages obtained by DailyMail.com show how just weeks before the publication of that paper, Dr Anderson told colleagues the idea of a lab leak was ‘not some fringe theory’ and was, in fact, ‘highly likely’ the genesis of the pandemic.
It’s no secret Red China has spent the past several decades heavily investing in its armed forces. In a matter of decades, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has evolved into the largest military in the world, retrofitted with some of the latest and most advanced weapons systems.
Such developments have prompted Beijing to take more aggressive actions throughout the Indo-Pacific region in recent years. Just last month, a U.S. destroyer was abruptly cut off by a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessel during a transit through the Taiwan Strait. The incident occurred a few weeks after a Chinese fighter jet came within 400 feet of a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft while the latter was conducting a patrol of the South China Sea.
BROSSARD—Beijing made an unsolicited donation of Chinese language books to a municipal library in Quebec, which included a piece praising the accomplishments of the Communist Party.
The Chinese consulate in Montreal donated 300 books to a city on the south shore of Montreal in 2017, and attempted another donation in 2019, as first reported by the Journal de Montréal.
