The Trudeau Foundation has investments in Chinese companies Baidu and Tencent, a former board member told MPs on a parliamentary committee. Both companies have been subjects of security warnings.
The Trudeau Foundation was created with a $125 million endowment from the federal government in 2001 in memory of former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, to provide grants and academic scholarships.
David Johnston is set to appear at a House of Commons committee investigating claims of foreign interference as calls continue for his resignation as the government’s special rapporteur.
The 81-year-old former governor general will be at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee (PROC) for three hours on Tuesday, beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern.
This will be 3 hours of “How dare you impugn my integrity” mixed with “That information is unable to be released to the public” and “China been berry berry good to me.”
Newly released documents say the intelligence community’s relationship with its key watchdog has been particularly strained over the last year due to a “level of resistance” to scrutiny.
The assessment appears in briefing materials prepared for Canada’s top public servant in advance of a late January meeting with the chair of the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says that despite special rapporteur David Johnston’s personal credibility, the appearance of bias in favour of the Liberal government is undermining the very work that he’s trying to accomplish.
“I believe he’s a person that is very credible and has worked for the country in a way that is really honourable,” Singh said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live Sunday.
“The problem we’re up against, though, is the work he’s supposed to do is restore confidence in our electoral system, and the appearance of bias is so strong now that he can no longer do that work. The trust necessary is eroded because of the appearance of bias,” Singh told CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is defending his party’s decision not to make its motion calling for David Johnston to step down as special rapporteur binding and says an election does not “make sense” if the goal is protecting Canada’s democracy.
Singh told The West Block’s Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday that he wants to get a better understanding of the full extent of allegations of foreign interference.
Thirty-four years ago this weekend, China’s communist dictators sent tanks into Tiananmen Square to end seven weeks of student-led protests pushing for democratic reforms. Secret cables sent at the time from Beijing by the British ambassador put the death toll at “at least 10,000.”
Jagmeet Singh, leader of the federal New Democrats (and Waylon Smithers to Justin Trudeau’s Montgomery Burns), says he will not force a federal election over China’s attempts to subvert Canadian democracy until faith has been restored in our elections.
Footage has emerged showing a Chinese warship almost colliding with a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Taiwan Straits as tensions strain between Washington and Beijing.
The video, published by Canadian outlet Global News and widely shared on social media, shows the Chinese vessel approach the U.S. ship and passing within 150 yards of the destroyer.
📹 China sends 'aggressive' warship to cut across US Navy vessel
Video captured the close call between a Chinese warship and an American destroyer in the Taiwan Strait 👇https://t.co/NyiTIeTpfM pic.twitter.com/IzoFem8J9w
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) June 4, 2023
Senators Yuen Pau Woo and Victor Oh have ramped up efforts against enacting a foreign agent registration act as the Canadian government considers the legislation to combat foreign influence.
Both senators brought up the issue again at a conference that marked the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Immigration Act, held at the Splendid China Mall in Scarborough, Ont., on Saturday, May 27.
The act, introduced on July 1, 1923, is commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, as it resulted from an effort to stop Chinese immigration, stated a May 30 federal government news release recognizing “the national historic significance” of this legislation.
Not trusting these two for some reason.
Let us take a moment to remember what our bought-and-paid-for government would rather we forget with this number here by Sue Medley:
Also, because it feels appropriate:
Longtime B.C. politician Dave Hayer knew his campaign people. And his people included Chinese Canadians. They volunteered for him. They voted for him. And then in his 2021 campaign to become a federal Conservative MP, they vanished.
The former MLA was running to represent the riding of Fleetwood-Port Kells, drawing on the same base of volunteers from past elections in the populous and culturally diverse Metro Vancouver city of Surrey.
By the end of the campaign, most volunteers of Chinese descent had dropped out, fearing for themselves and their families, Hayer said.
In attacking David Johnston, Pierre Poilievre borrows a disgraceful tactic from Donald Trump
The best way to disrupt an investigation is to discredit the investigators.
Pierre Poilievre didn’t write that playbook. He borrowed it from Donald Trump.
No, this isn’t another hyperbolic comparison between American Trumpies and Canadian Tories. The similarities are eerie, but for one significant exception:
In the U.S., most American media called out Trump’s wilful distortions of how democracy works. In Canada, many in the media are repeating the canards from the Conservative leader about democracy, integrity and impartiality — largely uncritically — while dismissing David Johnston’s report on foreign interference in our elections.
When Zhou Fengsuo was looking for a space in New York to display his art collection, he couldn’t believe his luck when he stumbled across 894 6th Avenue in the heart of midtown Manhattan. The numbers of the address – 8946 – were the same as the date he wanted to commemorate: 4 June 1989. It was “unbelievable”, the former student leader marvelled.
That Zhou’s collection, which opened to the public on Friday as part of the June 4th Memorial Museum, ended up in such an uncanny location is the result of a concerted, decades-long campaign by the Chinese Communist party (CCP) to eradicate any remembrance of the 1989 massacre around Tiananmen Square anywhere in the world.
A plot by the Chinese government to intimidate Conservative MP Michael Chong and his family in Hong Kong continues to dominate Parliament Hill, but experts are warning that the Chinese Communist Party’s “elite capture” efforts may be a bigger problem.
While the Chinese government works globally to woo high-ranking people, Canada’s political and economic elites may have been the most enthusiastic and possibly the most willing recipients according to high-profile experts, including a former ambassador to China.
China’s leaders kept Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig in solitary confinement, with lights glaring throughout the day, for much of their 34 months in prison.
… Yet, while many former hostages have made their agonizing stories public, the two Canadian nationals have remained silent.
