But it's not like there were never any red flags:
Twelve years ago, the warning came from Richard Fadden, then the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. At least two provincial cabinet ministers and several municipal politicians were more or less puppets of the People’s Republic of China, he said, initially avoiding mentioning China by name, for the sake of discretion. “I’m making this comment because I think it’s a real danger that people be totally oblivious to this kind of issue,” Fadden said at the time.
For his trouble, Fadden was traduced and roundly denounced as a fear-monger.
Ten years ago, Anthony Campbell, the former head of the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat of the Privy Council Office, put it to me this way: “We’re sitting ducks.” He was talking about Ottawa’s inability to get its collective head around foreign activity, specifically directed by Beijing, that was demonstrably and clearly detrimental to Canada’s national security interests.Ever since, intelligence agency officials have routinely shouted into the void about foreign interference in federal elections and public policy, and this week, another bombshell, this time from Global News’ investigative reporter Sam Cooper.
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It was about Global News revealing last week that for 10 months, Trudeau had been sitting on reports from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service disclosing an elaborate plot hatched out of China’s Toronto consulate that funded interference in 11 ridings during the 2019 federal election campaign.
It’s pretty good press, because it was so rich: Trudeau getting points for defending Canadian sovereignty after having invited and encouraged Beijing’s sordid influences in Canada’s economic and political life at every opportunity, ever since he was ushered into the Prime Minister’s Office in 2015 by Peter Harder, the head of the Canada-China Business Council, the guy Trudeau hired to lead his transition team and then elevated to lead the government side in the Senate.
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So Wednesday, and not for the first time, President Xi decided to take Trudeau down a peg or two. At the G20 summit in Bali, after already snubbing him by taking a pass on a proper bilateral meeting of the kind he’d had with other G7 leaders, Xi publicly berated Trudeau for having gone to the news media with all that bravura about giving Xi a piece of his mind about Beijing’s subversion and interference in Canadian elections.
So it didn’t end up as planned, exactly. It was a bit like December 2017, when Trudeau jetted off to Beijing, expecting to be greeted as a long-lost son entering his father’s house, only to be spurned in his proposal for a free-trade agreement with “progressive” flourishes and baubles in it to make it more palatable to the “Canadian values” top of mind among ordinary Canadians. He was sent away empty-handed.
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So again this week, Canada’s prime minister was reduced to having his ears boxed by the object of his unrequited affections, when all he was trying to do, the poor guy, was engage in a bit of grandstanding to mollify public opinion back in Canada. ...
Everyone remembers that dressing-down of the ever-indiscreet and sycophantic Justin by his boss.
It was epic.
Naturally, it showed how weak Justin is and how morally and politically weak Canada is:
An authoritarian despot whose strong arm covid policies were straight out of a dictator's handbook and a gross abuse of international human rights seen here talking with China's Xi Jinping. https://t.co/pZNN6FJzkw
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 17, 2022
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Earlier, Xi accused Trudeau of harming diplomatic relations by sharing details with the media about their meeting on the sidelines of the summit on Tuesday. The Chinese president then warned him in untranslated remarks there could be consequences for a lack of respect.
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Trudeau was duplicitous and got called out. That's not standing up for anything, XI exposed him as an unreliable confident.
— Katewerk (@katewerk) November 17, 2022
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Oh, I'm sure he was quite unaware:
Canada’s top elections officer says he wasn’t aware of allegations of Chinese interference in the 2019 election prior to seeing reports about it on the news.
Yes, about that:
Global News reported that intelligence memos cautioned Trudeau and several unidentified cabinet ministers that China’s consulate in Toronto had organized an election-interference network in 2019.
— Sam Cooper (@scoopercooper) November 20, 2022
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The intelligence said the consulate earmarked a significant sum which was transferred to an unidentified federal campaign staffer, who then sent the sum to an unnamed Ontario MPP.
— Sam Cooper (@scoopercooper) November 20, 2022
Also - how the Trudeau dynasty's disgusting lack of human rights affects us all:
Chinese-Canadians in an internal Privy Council Office poll say cabinet must “stand up” to China’s Communist Party even if it brings worsening relations. “Canada was not currently doing enough to speak out against human rights issues,” citizens of Chinese ethnicity told federal pollsters: “Very few wanted to see the development of stronger ties.”
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There has been no word of Dong Guangping's fate since he was arrested Aug. 24 by Vietnamese police.
His daughter Katherine Dong, who lives in Toronto with her mother, fears he has been handed over to Chinese authorities.
She expressed her concerns at a news conference in Ottawa today alongside representatives of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China and the Federation for a Democratic China.
The association for democracy says Dong Guangping has been accepted for resettlement to Canada as a government-assisted refugee, but Ottawa was not able to persuade Vietnamese officials to allow him to leave Vietnam and travel to Canada.
The association says Dong had been in hiding in Vietnam for 31 months while trying to make it to freedom.
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