No matter what Justin's shorter, uglier and less important brother and his imperious tone thinks about China's achievements - including murder, wholesale destruction of Chinese culture and those who promoted it, famine, repression, organ trafficking, forced reparation of North Korean defectors, rape of North Korean women, kidnapping, repeated intimidation of various individuals and MPs on Canadian and international soil, industrial espionage, intellectual theft, currency fixing (possibly election fixing), arming global conflicts, pollution - we're all going to let China do what it wants without question or consequence.
Get that through your skulls, peasants!:
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the claim that the report that a Chinese diplomat posted to the consulate in Toronto was threatening Michael Chong never left CSIS. On Thursday, Chong informed the House of Commons that Trudeau’s own national security advisor said the report had been distributed.
“Mr. Speaker, I’ve just been informed by the national security advisor that the CSIS intelligence assessment of July 20, 2021, was sent by CSIS to the relevant departments into the national security advisor in the PCO (Privy Council Office),” Chong said Thursday.
We know that the PCO, which is Trudeau’s department, had the report and the relevant department would be the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. Standard protocol would be for the report to be sent to the minister and his chief of staff and in some cases an alternate but someone at the highest level in that department received the report.
A report such as this isn’t circulated without accountability, each copy would be tracked with every person receiving it having to sign for a copy. If Trudeau wants us to believe his version of events, then he should release those tracking files, something that is easy to do without compromising national security.
The report was sent to PCO, including then National Security Advisor Vincent Rigby. Who else in the office, or in the PMO, received a copy of this report?
Why didn’t Rigby alert the PMO to the fact that China was making threats against Canadian elected officials and their families? Did Rigby not read the report or not think it was important enough to act upon or even share with others?
If the minister in question, Bill Blair at this time, didn’t receive or read the report, it definitely would have gone to his chief of staff, Zita Astravas. Did she fail to read the report or simply fail to brief up to the minister and to Trudeau’s office that China was threatening multiple MPs?
Remember, we know Michael Chong’s name, but he is not the only MP that CSIS believes was being targeted by China’s diplomat in Toronto, Zhao Wei.
(Sidebar: this Zhao Wei.)
Top officials get regular intelligence and security briefings but briefings mentioning Canadian Members of Parliament are rare and would stand out. This report should have alerted someone in Blair’s office to raise this issue with the PMO.
Trudeau keeps saying it is up to CSIS to decide how to respond to information like this. He’s trying to pin the blame on the intelligence agency by saying it’s not up to elected officials — except it is.
In matters like this it would be entirely appropriate for elected officials, or their staff, to demand more information, to brief the MPs involved, even to take action to expel the diplomat involved.
None of that happened.
CSIS did their job, they collected the intelligence and shared the information. The bureaucrats in PCO, in public safety, and the politicians and political staffers involved would be the ones who failed Parliament and all Canadians.
Was this incompetence? Was this negligence? Was it both?
Did Blair’s office look at the report and think there was no need to say anything because Chong is a Conservative MP? We should all hope that this isn’t the case but there is more to this story than what we have been told.
(Sidebar: the Liberals hope that one believes everything they say about him.)
Trudeau’s version of events has changed multiple times and it still isn’t believable.
The reason why they didn't their job is because they didn't do their job.
Laziness, not a shocking lack of indifference for one's safety, is why they screwed up.
Right ...
**
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino had strong words for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Friday when he claimed the agency failed to brief the prime minister on a Chinese government plan to target Conservative MP Michael Chong's family.
His comments come at the end of a week that saw the government hounded over how it handled intelligence reports detailing a Chinese government plot to target MPs, reported by the Globe and Mail.
"What I would say is that it's a serious problem that in July 2021 that neither the prime minister or the public safety minister at the time were briefed directly by CSIS," Mendicino said Friday afternoon from the Liberal policy convention in Ottawa.
"But we're rectifying that."
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked repeatedly to explain why he told Canadians that information about the Chinese government plot to target MPs was never shared outside of CSIS — despite a report to the contrary.
But the prime minister refused to answer questions about the source of the communication disconnect in his government.
(Sidebar: and Rota refuses to let anyone ask about it.)
One might argue strenuously that China does not have its hooks in Canada but China's demanding sycophants paint another picture entirely:
Independent Sen. Yuen Pau Woo told reporters today that the RCMP must come forward with evidence against these two groups.
Woo made the comments during a news conference with members of Montreal’s Chinese community at the office of one of the groups targeted by the police, Service à la Famille Chinoise du Grand Montreal.
In mid-March the RCMP said that the organization, along with Centre Sino-Quebec de la Rive-Sud, located on Montreal’s South Shore, hosted Chinese government agents who allegedly harassed members of the city’s Chinese community.
Woo, an Independent senator representing British Columbia, says neither he nor the groups under RCMP investigation know the details of what they are being accused of.
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told a parliamentary committee last week that the RCMP had shut down the so-called police stations in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
The Spanish human rights organization Safeguard Defenders, which has identified more than 100 of the alleged police stations in more than 50 countries, has said the stations serve to “persuade’’ people who Chinese authorities claim are fugitives to return to China to face charges.
Yes, about all of that:
Two Montreal-area community groups under investigation for allegedly hosting secret Chinese government police stations say they continue to operate normally — contradicting claims by the public safety minister that all the clandestine stations in Canada have been shut down.**
The government can expel Zhao at any time — legally, it doesn't even have to offer a reason for the move. It would do so simply by declaring Zhao persona non grata, a Latin phrase meaning "person not welcome."
Canada is a signatory to the 1961 Vienna Convention, a United Nations treaty. Article nine of the convention says that a country "may, at any time and without having to explain its decision, notify the sending State that the head of the mission or any member of the diplomatic staff of the mission is persona non grata."
Canada can also declare a foreign diplomat persona non grata prior to their arrival in this country.
Expulsion is often a country's only option for sanctioning a foreign diplomat. Article 31 of the Vienna Convention grants diplomats immunity from criminal prosecution and in most civil matters while posted to foreign countries.
**
On Thursday, Canada's foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly said that she asked her deputy minister to tell China's ambassador, Cong Peiwu, that Canada will not tolerate interference in its affairs. "What has happened is completely unacceptable," Ms Joly said.
(Sidebar: how about unconscionable, Diplomat Barbie?)
"All options including expulsion of diplomats remain on the table, as we consider the consequences for this behaviour," she said.
Typically, summoning an ambassador is a diplomatic tool used by one country to publicly express anger or discontent against the other.
On Friday, foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said China was "strongly dissatisfied with Canada's groundless slander and defamation of the normal performance of duties by the Chinese embassy and consulates in Canada".
It has "lodged a strong protest" with Canada's ambassador to China, she added.
Canada should do as it's told, right, China?
Let's wall off Toronto from the rest of Canada:
Olivia Chow met with Fu Qing Business Association, seeking their support in this mayoral by-election. The same people that operated police stations in the GTA. So this is someone who wants to defund our own police while cozying up to China's police 🤷 Journalists?#TOpoli https://t.co/Go4mjgMt2M pic.twitter.com/Tjf9CXSzCu
— Karen Woods 林爷 🇺🇦🇨🇦🌻 (@KarenWenLin) May 5, 2023
They're not poor; they want to live that way:
A heartbreaking video of a retiree that showed what groceries she could buy with 100 yuan, or $14.50 — roughly her monthly pension and sole source of income — went viral on the Chinese internet. The video was deleted.
A singer vented the widespread frustration among young, educated Chinese about their dire finances and gloomy job prospects, like gig work. “I wash my face every day, but my pocket is cleaner than my face,” he sings. “I went to college to help rejuvenate China, not to deliver meals.” His song was banned and his social media accounts were suspended.
A migrant worker toiling to support his family gained widespread sympathy and attention last year after he tested positive for Covid, and officials released extensive details of his movements. He became known as the hardest-working person in China. Censors blocked discussions about him, and local authorities were stationed outside his house to prevent journalists from visiting his wife.
China says it is a socialist country that aims to promote common prosperity. In 2021, its top leader, Xi Jinping, declared “a comprehensive victory in the battle against poverty.” Yet many people remain poor or live just above the poverty line. With the country’s economic prospects dimming and the people’s increasing anxiety about their future, poverty has become a taboo subject that can draw ire from the government.
In March, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet regulator, announced that it would crack down on anyone who publishes videos or posts that “deliberately manipulate sadness, incite polarization, create harmful information that damages the image of the Party and the government, and disrupts economic and social development.” It bans sad videos of old people, disabled people and children.
(Sidebar: why does that sound familiar?)
Is this something?:
General Liu Yazhou, a senior officer of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, has recently been purged by Xi Jinping. In addition to being personally detained and processed, a document has been issued throughout the entire military demanding the eradication of his ideological…
— 王丹 (@wangdan1989) May 6, 2023
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