Canada’s special rapporteur on foreign interference has hired crisis communications firm Navigator, his office confirmed on Friday.
In an email to CTV News, a spokesperson for special rapporteur David Johnston explained that Navigator was hired at the start of Johnston’s mandate “to provide communications advice and support.”
h/t Mauser
A large majority of Canadians say former governor general David Johnston is unfit to carry out his government-appointed role as special rapporteur on foreign election interference, according to a survey report released May 29.
Back in mid-April, Chinese forces staged one of their biggest-ever war games rehearsing a surprise invasion of Taiwan. It’s not unusual for People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) aircraft to fly into Taiwan’s air-defence identification zone – a kind of unofficial defensive area – as a show of strength, and as practice for an actual attack.
What was unusual was the presence of an aircraft carrier. For the first time ever, a Chinese flattop – the four-year-old Shandong – joined the scores of fighters and bombers probing Taiwan’s defences.
David Johnston’s position is barely tenable. Can his investigation be salvaged?
As always, multiple things can be true at the same time.
David Johnston can be both a flawed choice to investigate the government’s response to intelligence on foreign interference — and the target of unfair treatment since taking on that task. The prime minister could have been better off asking someone else to be special rapporteur — and Johnston’s reception from his critics may have diminished the number of people willing and able to do the job.
Multiple things can be true simultaneously but this isn’t one of them.
Junior and Special Crony are closer than they are pretending to be, proven by their own statements.
Johnson is a sinophile of the first order with a vested interest in minimizing his own activity as a member of the China Class.
Nothing else explains his report’s exclusion of O’Toole’s evidence.
A July 2021 CSIS assessment warning Beijing was targeting a Conservative MP and his relatives in China was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national-security adviser at the time, as well as three deputy ministers, but it’s unclear if anyone read the top-secret document, MPs heard Thursday.
National security adviser Jody Thomas, who was deputy minister of National Defence in 2021, was adamant that Mr. Trudeau was unaware of the threat to the MP, who turned out to be Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, until The Globe and Mail revealed he was a target on May 1. The Globe report cited the Canadian Security Intelligence Service assessment and a national-security source.
“On vacation” is maybe one step above “the dog ate my homework.”
h/t Mauser
The RCMP says it has “shut down illegal police activity in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia” connected to so-called Chinese “police stations” — but it hasn’t said whether it has made any arrests.
In April, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told a parliamentary committee the federal police service had taken decisive action to close down the alleged stations.
Why the hell are they so secret?
Who are they sucking up to?
The community organizations in the Montreal area being investigated by the RMCP for hosting suspected Chinese police stations have had formal ties since at least 2016 to a Chinese regime entity which the Canadian government says is involved in espionage.
The federal police force indicated in March it’s investigating Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud (CSQRS) and its sister organization in Montreal, the Service à la famille chinoise du Grand Montréal (SFCGM), two not-for-profits which have been tending to the needs of Chinese immigrants for decades.
You could fill a newspaper’s obituary page with all the institutions Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have marred, stomped over like defiant toddlers in the throes of a tantrum and ultimately dealt crippling blows it will take years to recover from, if ever.
The latest: governors general, and the once bipartisanly esteemed David Johnston. The special rapporteur could’ve easily retired in relative peace, but instead Trudeau recruited him back to public life to serve as what very much looks like his puppet.
All these years he’s been in China’s pocket.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has said he won’t end his party’s deal with the Liberals and potentially trigger an election, until confidence in the electoral process is restored.
Don’t hold your breath.
A new Léger poll for the National Post suggests Singh’s hope is analogous to the old trope that the beatings will continue until morale improves.
China’s regime is trafficking illegal drugs, protected wildlife, and humans. It is laundering cash and participating in ransomware attacks. It steals intellectual property. The ruling group, as a matter of state policy, murders people for their organs.
The Chinese state is not only a dangerous international actor, it is also a common criminal. Perhaps we should say it is an uncommon or state criminal, the most powerful and insidious kind.
What is the world’s largest transnational criminal organization? At 96.7 million members, it is the Communist Party of China.
OTTAWA — Barely one in four Canadians have faith in former governor general David Johnston’s credibility and impartiality as special rapporteur on foreign interference, a new poll by Léger for National Post shows, while nearly half are unimpressed with the Liberal government’s general handling of the foreign interference issue.
Space entrepreneur, car manufacturer, and social media personality Elon Musk culminated a trip to communist China on Thursday after meeting a parade of China’s most powerful Communist Party officials, including Politburo members, and enjoying a 16-course feast in Beijing that was the toast of the state-controlled Weibo social media site.
I was surprised, saddened and puzzled when former governor general David Johnston, who was clearly in a perceived conflict of interest, accepted the prime minister’s request to become a “special rapporteur.” Surprised he would make such an obvious mistake, saddened he would risk tarnishing his reputation as a dedicated and effective governor general and puzzled about his motivation. Those reactions intensified when his preliminary report rejected a public inquiry called for by a majority vote in Parliament and over 70 per cent of Canadians. I was also disappointed that it defended the government on virtually every issue while criticizing the media, the security services and the Conservative party. It also made clear his conviction he has no conflict of interest, notwithstanding much evidence and a widespread perception to the contrary.
Right through the 2021 federal election campaign, senior Trudeau government officials knew that the Chinese government and its operatives in Canada were running a sophisticated disinformation and voter suppression campaign targeting the Conservative Party and its candidates, former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole told me on Tuesday.
That much was clear from the briefing the Canadian Security Intelligence Service made available to him last Friday, O’Toole told me. But what remains unclear is why none of these officials said anything — and that’s just one key question that remains unresolved following last week’s report on Beijing’s election-interference operations by “independent special rapporteur” David Johnston.
This revelation should result in arrests except we’re ruled by corrupt men.
The Hill Station Club in Freetown was once the beating heart of Britain’s colonial community in Sierra Leone. It was here, in a raised clearing high above the city, that officials would unwind over gin and tonic and marvel at a panoramic view of the lush forest below.
These days, the club stands in disrepair. Its ornate metal railings are rusted and decayed, while the underside of the roof is littered with holes. The building has become just another relic of the British Empire; a symbol of power and influence lost.
Today in Sierra Leone – and much of the rest of Africa – there is a new player in town: the People’s Republic of China.
