Former Canadian ambassador and cabinet minister John McCallum’s work for a Chinese immigration company should be investigated by the federal Ethics Commissioner, opposition MPs and a watchdog group say.
As The Globe and Mail reported earlier this week, Mr. McCallum has been working as a speaker for Wailian Group, a Shanghai-based immigration agency that helps people immigrate to Canada, among other countries.
Mr. McCallum served in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet as immigration minister before he was appointed Canada’s ambassador to China in 2017. He was fired in 2019 after repeatedly speaking in support of the release of Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei executive accused of fraud in the U.S. and arrested in Canada, where she is in the midst of extradition hearings.
Last fall, Wailian paid to have Mr. McCallum speak to clients in five Chinese cities, according to a person familiar with the arrangement. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the person because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
In July, Mr. McCallum delivered remarks to another event organized by Wailian, this one online, in which he pitched Canada as a worthwhile destination for people from China, and cited his friends in the current cabinet.
Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, said he thinks Mr. McCallum should be investigated for a possible breach of Section 33 of the Conflict of Interest Act, where the law says: “No former public office holder shall act in such a manner as to take improper advantage of his or her previous public office.”
Added Mr. Conacher: “Being paid by the Wailian Group to speak to their clients in China who may want to immigrate to Canada and would be dealing with Canadian government institutions through that process is, in my opinion, unsuitable and wrongful because it essentially amounts to McCallum cashing in on his public service as the former Canadian government ambassador to China and former immigration minister.”
NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus said anyone using “incredible insider access” gained during public office to “set up a shingle and sell themselves” would merit investigation.
The Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner declined to answer whether it’s already looking into Mr. McCallum’s work for Wailian, citing confidentiality rules. It also declined to say whether the ex-envoy consulted with the office before taking on this work.
Mr. Angus said he thinks the government shouldn’t be appointing politicians or people with major political party ties to ambassadorial posts but should instead limit the pool of candidates to career diplomats.
In June, The Globe reported that the Ethics Commissioner is investigating whether David MacNaughton, former Canadian ambassador to the United States, broke conflict-of-interest rules in his subsequent work for American data-analytics company Palantir Technologies. As a past co-chair of the Liberal Party of Canada’s 2015 federal election campaign, Mr. MacNaughton has extensive ties to the governing party.
Conservative immigration critic Peter Kent said he is concerned that Mr. McCallum’s work with Wailian “does not pass the smell test.” He said “it would seem to be a legitimate cause for the Ethics Commissioner to at least investigate the information that is publicly available now and perhaps to consider a [formal] investigation.”
Mr. Kent said there should also be a review of the conflict-of-interest rules for political appointees to ambassadorial posts.
Less than six months after he left his ambassador’s job in 2019, Mr. McCallum became a senior strategic adviser for McMillan LLP, a Canadian law firm.
The Globe reached out to Mr. McCallum Friday for comment by e-mail, by telephone and through an assistant at McMillan, but he did not immediately respond.
Mr. McCallum first made public appearances for Wailian last October and November, when he went to China to deliver remarks and pose for photographs. Over two weeks, he appeared at Wailian events in Qingdao, Beijing, Suzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
In each city, he spoke to a room with dozens – in some cases more than 100 – prospective clients for Wailian. The company paid for his attendance through an agreement with McMillan, according to the person familiar with the events.
Mr. McCallum’s July presentation, he told listeners at the Wailian event last month, was based in part on a conversation with Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino. The minister’s office later said that Mr. Mendicino himself reached out to Mr. McCallum in June to discuss immigration and refugee issues and that Mr. McCallum never mentioned Wailian.
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Documents from lawyers for Canada’s attorney general say a series of witnesses will prove Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou lied to HSBC bank about the company’s relationship’s with Skycom in Iran.
The documents released Friday are the government’s arguments to be used during a hearing next April and they say there’s enough to prove fraud in support of Meng’s extradition to the United States.
(Sidebar: why are we waiting until next April to send this b!#ch to the US?)
We don't need American special-interest groups telling us what to do with our resources:
For many years, millions of dollars from the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation have poured into Canada. The Tides Foundation’s website claims, “Since 1976, Tides has scaled more than 1,400 social ventures, fueled social change in 120+ countries, and mobilized over $3B for impact.”1 Some of these have been in Canada.
Hussein Sobhe Borhot must post $30,000 in bail, wear an ankle monitor and remain in Alberta. He is not permitted to apply for a passport or posses firearms or explosives.
The 34-year-old was charged July 22 with four counts of terrorism over his alleged role in ISIS, which he is accused of joining in 2013 until returning to Canada in 2014.
He faces a possible life sentence if convicted on all counts, but the Alberta court ruled he could be released to await his trial. A bail hearing was held in Calgary on Friday.
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On Jan. 21, 2019, a 16-year-old Kingston resident disclosed to a contact that he secretly supported the so-called Islamic State.
He also hinted he was about to take action, saying he “may carry out a solo operation in the next few days.”
Three days later, police arrested him for terrorism, but while they had been investigating him for two months, even they were likely surprised by what they found in his bedroom.
Detonators, containers filled with white powders that turned out to be explosives, and diagrams of improvised explosive devices were among the 95 exhibits they seized. It was a bomb lab.
His cellphone listed “churches, night club, public places, sports courts, gardens and parks, crowded places filled with crucifix believers” as possible targets.
The youth, who is originally from Syria and cannot be named because he is a minor, pleaded guilty to four counts of terrorism on Tuesday.
A redacted version of the 37-page statement of facts the accused admitted to was released on Friday, providing a detailed account of the youth’s involvement in ISIS terrorism in the months leading to his arrest.
A federal appeals court Friday threw out Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, saying the judge who oversaw the case did not adequately screen jurors for potential biases.
The growing wealth gap between homeowners and renters is an issue that the Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation (CMHC) is striving to solve, especially with the economic impacts from COVID-19 widening the divide. For the organization, that means tackling the country’s obsession with homeownership and promoting alternatives.
Even before the pandemic, Canada’s compulsion towards homeownership worsened housing affordability for young renters and kept values high for owners.
“The problem is promoting home ownership for its own sake, is just inflationary to pricing,” Evan Siddall, the CEO of the CMHC told Yahoo Finance Canada. “We spend a lot of time as a group trying to figure out with our legislation how we could reconcile these things and that was the core idea behind CMHC.”
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