We Don't Have to Trade With China

The very country we all know is so embedded in this country that we have to water it every other day:

Opposition MPs are asking why the Chinese diplomat recently expelled for being involved in threatening an MP’s family wasn’t removed sooner after it emerged that Canada’s intelligence agency knew for several years that he was spying on Falun Gong adherents and Uyghurs in Canada.

As of the time of this writing, there are 177 Chinese diplomats in Canada, including their representatives to the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal. This is second only to the United States, Canada’s closest ally and neighbour to the south, with 291 diplomats. The country with the third-highest number of diplomats in Canada is Japan, with 80 diplomats.

The Chinese regime surpassed the United States in 2019 on having the highest number of diplomatic posts abroad. As of 2021, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had 275 embassies, consulates, and other representations around the world, according to the latest data from the Lowy Institute‘s Global Diplomacy Index. The United States had 267, and Canada 143.

Dan Stanton, a former executive manager with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), says it’s not unusual to have such a high representation of Chinese diplomats if the level of engagement such as trade warrants a massive establishment.

“My concern would be what percentage are involved in foreign interference activity, or even espionage,” Stanton said.

Chen Yonglin, a former high-ranking official at the Chinese Consulate in Sydney, Australia, who defected in 2005, says he knows first-hand that a major function of Chinese consulates is to harass the diaspora and carry out interference activities in the host country.

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Here the Liberals were hit by a Globe and Mail story bluntly saying “Michael Chan … has for years been a national-security target of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service because of alleged links to China’s Toronto consulate and association with proxies of Beijing” and “CSIS regarded Mr. Chan as a national-security target and sought a section 21 warrant under the CSIS Act in early 2021.” But Blair waited four months to sign off, too late to monitor “the long-time Liberal Party kingpin” in the 2021 election.

The Globe reported back in 2015 that CSIS was giving security briefings on Chan in Ontario. That Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne both happily included him in their cabinets anyway shows how complacently Canadian Liberal politicians wink at Beijing’s subversion. As did Blair’s pompous statement that this latest story was nonsense, and it was beneath his dignity to say why but he was marvellous so we should all just move along.

Specifically, lest you think I paraphrase unfairly, “the reporting by The Globe and Mail is factually incorrect. I will not and cannot comment on specific cases, however, during my time as Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, all warrant applications were reviewed with due diligence. They were signed expeditiously. No warrant application ever took as long as four months for approval. The signing of a warrant under the CSIS Act is a very serious matter and further operational questions should be directed to CSIS.”

Apparently Winston Churchill did not actually say, “I know of no case where a man added to his dignity by standing on it.” And rightly not, because if you are accused of something most people are convinced you would never stoop to, you can glare it away. But what happens if you once enjoyed the benefit of the doubt but have squandered it and don’t realize it? OODA dear. You’re in a world of hurt.

The Liberals are. With problems erupting on many fronts, I wrote in The Epoch Times two weeks ago, their early May national convention theme should have been “Still progressive, but older and wiser,” not “Only enemies could criticize our brilliant leader.” But they still don’t get it. It’s “inside the loop” for them.

Thus Blair tried the Canadian Jedi mind trick that has worked well in Laurentian circles for years: You citizens don’t need to see that information. But we do, and we know it. As my Postmedia colleague Brian Lilley retorted acidly, and rapidly, “I seem to recall standing feet from @JustinTrudeau a few years ago when he said, ‘The allegations in the Globe story this morning are false.’”

If Blair had said I’m sorry, this story was substantially true and part of our fumbling this whole file badly, he could credibly have claimed they were now taking serious action. Instead he went nyah nyah go whistle at CSIS for details, not grasping that CSIS has been reduced to leaking this stuff to the press for months because they can’t get the Liberals to take it seriously, and that his response guarantees they’ll feed us more jaw-dropping details, still inside the Liberals’ OODA loop.

(Sidebar: more here.)

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That organization is Service à la Famille Chinoise du Grand Montréal (SFCGM), a Montreal-based charity that advertises itself as resource for Chinese immigrants to Canada that also promotes initiatives for the community’s well-being.

But now the RCMP believes that SFCGM may also be hosting one of two alleged secret Chinese “police stations” in Quebec.

The national police force is investigating the organization as part of a larger probe aiming to “detect and perturb criminal activities supported by a foreign state that can threaten the safety of people living in Canada,” according to spokesperson Cpl. Tasha Adams.

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Financial records filed by SFCGM to the Canada Revenue Agency because of its charitable status reveal that Ottawa sent a total of $200,000 in public funds to SFCGM between 2020 and 2022 (the last reported fiscal year). Specifically, the charity reported receiving $178,450 from the federal government in 2020-2021 and $21,728 in 2021-2022.

A federal government grants and contributions database lists five contributions from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) to SFCGM going back as far as 2018. 

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The Liberal government announced on May 17 that an ad-hoc committee of selected MPs will be able to review documents pertaining to the matter, and a panel of arbiters composed of three former justices will decide what can be released to the public.

Up to now, the government has resisted revealing details about the scientists Qiu Xiangguo and Cheng Keding, who were escorted out of Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Lab (NML) in 2019 amid a police probe and then fired in January 2021.

The new development comes after a long battle that saw the Liberal government file a lawsuit in the previous Parliament against the House of Commons Speaker, Liberal MP Anthony Rota, to prevent the disclosure of documents. The case was dropped when Parliament was dissolved.

After the Liberals secured another minority government in the fall of 2021, they proposed a way forward to provide access to the documents, but opposition parties were initially not in favour.

The Conservatives under then leader Erin O’Toole in the previous Parliament were staunchly opposed to the idea of only providing the documents to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), which reports to the prime minister and not the House. They also refused the new proposal of an ad-hoc committee, saying the government was trying to avoid being accountable to Parliament.

The Bloc Québécois questioned the “good faith” of the government in its offer, due to several previous attempts at stonewalling the production of documents.

“For eight months, the government refused to hand over documents about what could have been espionage on behalf of China,” said Bloc MP Christine Normandin in December 2021.

“Now it has relented and is offering to hand the documents over to the opposition parties, but only under tightly controlled conditions. The government House leader says this is a good faith effort. Does that mean it was acting in bad faith for eight months?”

The House of Commons Canada-China committee had requested the documents without success. And then-president of the Public Health Agency of Canada Iain Stewart was reprimanded by the House Speaker for not being forthcoming on the matter.

Government House Leader Mark Holland told reporters on May 17 that the ad-hoc committee can now begin its work after members and arbiters were selected after a long process.

“The first problem was that we only had one partner at the beginning in the NDP, and we were ready to move with it. Then the Bloc indicated that they wanted to participate, and then the Conservatives,” he said.

Participating MPs had to be identified by parties and also obtain security clearances to be allowed to review the documents.

Those are Liberal Iqra Khalid, Conservative John Williamson, René Villemure from the Bloc, and Heather McPherson from the NDP.

The former magistrates who will sit as arbiters are former Supreme Court justices Ian Binnie and Marshall Rothstein, and former Federal Court of Appeal judge Eleanor Dawson.

(Sidebar: see here.)

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China Central Television, voice of the Communist Party, must be removed from the CRTC’s approved list of programs for distribution in Canada, MPs said yesterday. It follows a 2022 federal ban on state-run Russia Today: “In mainstream society they have no idea what is happening in our Chinese community.” 

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Yeah, I'll say:

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he chose not to meet with former governor general David Johnston, who is investigating allegations of China’s meddling in Canada’s elections and other matters.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named Johnston as a special rapporteur to look into possible gaps in the federal government’s response to foreign interference — and recommend whether a public inquiry is needed.

Poilievre argues Johnston is unable to do that work independently because he used to be a member of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, which is under scrutiny for accepting a donation reportedly linked to the Chinese government.

Poilievre told reporters Thursday that he sent a letter to Johnston asking him how he can investigate the organization independently, but did not receive a response.