We Don't Have to Trade With China

 But $ome people have their rea$on$ for doing $o:

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has a significant counterintelligence file on Chinese consulate official Zhao Wei, and since 2020 has shared that information with Global Affairs Canada, the department with the authority to expel foreign representatives for engaging in non-diplomatic activities, according to two national security sources.

Mr. Zhao, who was ordered to leave the country earlier this week for interfering in Canadian politics, became a target of CSIS physical surveillance in 2019, according to one national security source, to whom The Globe and Mail has granted confidentiality because they risk prosecution under the Security of Information Act.

The source said Mr. Zhao was responsible for keeping track of known opponents of the Chinese Communist Party in the Greater Toronto Area, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghur human rights activists, Hong Kong pro-democracy activists and supporters of Tibetan and Taiwanese independence.

Mr. Zhao and his proxies took pictures of dissidents, monitored events held by them, documented their identities and sent the information back to China’s secret police, the Ministry of State Security, the source said. The source previously described Mr. Zhao to The Globe as “a suspected intelligence actor.”

The source said Mr. Zhao had also been observed meeting in Toronto with a number of constituency staffers for Liberal MPs, including an assistant for International Trade Minister Mary Ng. Mr. Zhao asked some of those aides to keep their MPs away from pro-Taiwan events, according to the source.

A person who is close to Ms. Ng said the minister’s assistant likely met Mr. Zhao at Chinese-Canadian community events, which are frequented by China’s consular officials. The Globe is not naming the person, who was not permitted to discuss the matter publicly.

CSIS already had a file on Mr. Zhao when he arrived in Canada in 2018. The information had come from U.S. intelligence agencies and the Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s signals and cyberintelligence service, according to a former national security official, who can’t be named because they risk prosecution.

CSIS began sharing sensitive information on Mr. Zhao with Global Affairs Canada in 2020, the two national security sources said. They added that the department has a list of diplomats that could be considered for expulsion because of their involvement in foreign interference and “threat” activities outside of their regular diplomatic duties.

Dan Stanton, a former manager in counterintelligence at CSIS who is now the director of the national security program at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute, said CSIS would have reported the information on Mr. Zhao’s activities not only to Global Affairs, but also the Privy Council Office and possibly others.

 

So, why did no one stop him? 

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A real country would have closed these stations down:

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino concedes there may be new so-called “Chinese police stations” in Canada after saying last month they’d all been shut down, but he insists the RCMP will close any new sites if they do exist.

 

Liar.

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Conservative MPs yesterday asked to summon Chinese Ambassador Cong Peiwu for questioning over clandestine operations by his Embassy. One Chinese diplomat has been expelled to date for harassing an MP’s family: “It is about as low as it gets.”

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Intelligence officials told MPs Thursday that foreign interference is a longstanding problem, crossing governments and decades and only growing in nature.

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former senior official with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said China has been asserting influence in Canada since at least the 1980s.

“I want to be very clear. We can prove that every federal government from Mr. Mulroney to Mr. Trudeau (has) been compromised by agents of Communist China. Every government was informed at one point or another. Every government chose to ignore CSIS warnings,” he said.

He said that at least 70 per cent of China’s diplomats in Canada are part of intelligence gathering work and should be sent home.

Juneau-Katsuya was testifying Thursday before the House of Commons standing committee on procedure and house affairs, which has been studying foreign interference for months.

 

Because treason.

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Despite concerns of Chinese interference in federal elections and targeting of Canadian politicians, efforts to create a foreign agent registry in Canada remain stagnant. The potential involvement of many Canadian elites with the registry has contributed to the resistance, a House committee heard.

(Sidebar: this foreign agency, one that people want.)

Christian Leuprecht, professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, told MPs that “elite capture,” particularly by China, is a “significant challenge” for Canada.

“Elite capture by China, both by pecuniary interests, as well as companies and law firms that are related to elite capture … I believe this is the major reason for significant resistance and active lobbying against a foreign agent registry that has been proposed,” he testified at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC) on May 11.

Leuprecht was responding to a question from Liberal MP Sherry Romanado on whether former Prime Minister Stephen Harper had been soft on China, citing a remark from Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former chief of the Asia-Pacific Unit within the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, who also testified at the PROC on May 11.

Juneau-Katsuya said Harper became soft on China at the end of his mandate because “agents of influence were capable to gain access to him and change the course of his decision-making.” He also pointed out that agents of communist China have influenced every Canadian federal government from Brian Mulroney’s to Justin Trudeau’s administrations.

During the hearing, Leuprecht was asked about the issue of a $140,000 donation to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation made by two Chinese businessmen, Zhang Bin and Niu Gensheng, who are reportedly linked to the regime in Beijing. Conservative MP Michael Cooper asked if Leuprecht believes the donation amounts to foreign interference, considering that it came from a Canadian shell company based in Montreal, controlled by the China Cultural Industry Association, which the MP said is part of China’s United Front Work Department (UFWD). The UFWD is China’s “primary foreign interference tool,” according to a number of reports cited by Public Safety Canada.

In response, Leuprecht acknowledged that concerns about the donation have been raised since 2016 and that there needs to be an honest discussion, adding that people are resisting a foreign agent registry because of “the number of Canadian elites that would get in snarled in such a registry.”

Alexandre Trudeau, brother of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and member of the Foundation named after their father, said there has been no foreign interference involved, while testifying at the House of Commons ethics committee on May 3.

The PROC has been investigating China’s interference in the 2019 election after Global News reported last November that Beijing provided illegal funding to at least 11 candidates in the federal race. The committee has also heard testimonies on a number of issues related to the regime’s interference in Canada.

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Why, it's like people got into business with bullies.

Wait - that is exactly what happened:

But with China declaring it “reserves the right to further react,” and many businesses on edge, the lobster and soybean sectors provide a lens to examine how quickly industries can go from winners to losers in global trade fights.

Even before the China-U.S. trade fight, Canada’s lobster industry was on a roll in China, having shrewdly marketed its clawed crustaceans as a middle-class alternative to the pricey, clawless Australian rock lobster served at banquets and luxury hotels. From 2010 to 2017, Canadian lobster exports to China rose from around $1-million to $173-million. American lobster producers had enjoyed a similar boom – until politics got in the way.

“The U.S. absolutely shot themselves in the foot with the trade war with China,” said John Sackton, an industry analyst and founder of SeafoodNews.com. Prior to the trade hostilities, the Chinese market for live lobster was roughly shared evenly by Canada and the United States in volume terms. Once the Chinese tariffs were in place, Canada seized three-quarters of the market.

 

Also:

Canadian industry players complained to the Canada Border Services Agency about the situation in April 2020, urging an investigation into dumping and subsidies for their competitors in China.

"In terms of pricing, Canadian producers are consistently undercut by dumped and subsidized Chinese imports. Lost sales and price reductions have caused significant injury to Canadian producers, and over time, some customers have simply stopped asking Canadian producers to compete with Chinese import pricing," they told the CBSA in a submission.

"Producers must increasingly look to other export markets to sell their products. The primary export market is the United States, which is now protected against dumped and subsidized Chinese imports."

But the agency's investigation didn't go the way Zarate had hoped, and the association appealed in Federal Court about the decision of the president of the CBSA to drop the investigation.

The Federal Court of Appeal upheld the decision in April in another blow to the industry in Canada, Zarate said.

Zarate said the industry has been in contraction, a process that accelerated in the last 15 years when Chinese exporters ramped up their presence in Canada. They now account for more than half the country's market share.

He said Canadian firms find themselves competing in a "disrupted market," where Chinese-made products cost half or even a third of the price of those made in Canada.

"Even before the case, we've seen many Canadian plywood mills and veneer mills disappear throughout the years because they could not compete against the Chinese imports," he said.

 

Because Lithuania is a honey-badger:

The European Union needs to be prepared for the fallout from a potential deterioration in relations with China, such as might happen if conflict were to erupt over Taiwan, Lithuania's Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said on Friday.

Landsbergis said he was not advocating a "de-coupling" from China, but pointed to the break with Moscow over Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 as the type of risk for which the bloc needed to be prepared.

Nobody had called for a decoupling from Russia, yet "here were are", he said.

"Somebody has to devise a possibility that a de-coupling might happen - not because we wished it, like with Russia, not because we willed it but because the situation, for example in the Taiwan Strait, has been changed by force," he told reporters as he arrived for a meeting with EU counterparts in Stockholm.

Europe would have to react to such a development, "and the reaction would lead to some sort of a de-coupling", Landsbergis said.