We Don't Have to Trade With China

This is where greed has gotten us:

China’s consulate in Vancouver conducts political screening on the potential leadership at influential community organizations that promote candidates for Canadian political office, according to a recording obtained by The Globe and Mail of remarks by a former executive of one of those groups.

Based in Richmond, B.C., the Canadian Community Service Association, or CCSA, regularly attracts Canadian political leaders and Chinese diplomats to its events, calling itself “the Chinese community’s spiritual home,” and a hub for trade and cultural exchange between the two countries.

The Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations (CACA), meanwhile, is made up of 130 groups, and similarly dedicates itself to “encouraging mutual communications and interactions.”

Neither organization discloses formal ties with the Chinese government. The CCSA describes itself as a non-government organization that is apolitical.

But there are requirements for the associations’ leadership, and the Chinese consulate plays a role, according to comments made by Wang Yan in a recorded conversation in 2020. Ms. Wang previously served as the CCSA’s executive president, but resigned several years ago. She had been asked to consider a leadership role in CACA, she said in the recording.

“If you want to be the chairperson, you must not be a person with a Red Notice, or a supporter of Falun Gong, or Taiwan and Hong Kong independence,” she said. People who match that description “can never sit in the chairperson’s chair,” she said.

And, she said in the recording of a conversation that was made in 2020, “if we want to reach the chairman level, we must go through a political review.”

“We have to provide things to the Chinese consulate – everything must go through this political review process,” said Ms. Wang, who resigned from the CCSA several years ago.

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Members of a parliamentary committee say they continue to wait for information about when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was briefed about Beijing's alleged interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

MPs from the procedure and House affairs committee have sent a letter to Canada's top civil servant, the clerk of the Privy Council, following up on their previous request for answers.

The letter obtained by The Canadian Press was signed by Conservative, Bloc Quebecois and New Democrat MPs.

 

The above keep Justin in power. 

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Both of the federal agencies tasked with reviewing what the Liberal government and security agencies knew about allegations of foreign interference in the last two Canadian elections — and when they knew it — do not have an automatic right to review cabinet records.

The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) and the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) are not allowed to review cabinet documents.

The agency that safeguards those records — the Privy Council Office (PCO) — will not guarantee that either agency will get an exemption from that rule for the foreign interference probe.

NSICOP wrote to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last fall to complain that its previous investigations into intelligence matters were hamstrung by the lack of access to cabinet documents.

 

There is a reason for that.

 

 

Why, it's like Canada:

Years before Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a "no-limits" partnership and the Kremlin launched a wide-ranging censorship campaign following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Beijing and Moscow were sharing methods and tactics for monitoring dissent and controlling the Internet.

That growing cooperation between the two countries is shown in documents and recordings from closed door meetings in 2017 and 2019 between officials from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), its chief Internet regulator, and Roskomnadzor, the government agency charged with policing Russia's Internet, that were obtained by RFE/RL's Russian Investigative Unit (known as Systema) from a source who had access to the materials. DDoSecrets, a group that publishes leaked and hacked documents, provided software to search the files.