The government of China has been accused of funding the campaigns of 11 candidates in Canada's 2021 federal election.
Trudeau still inexplicably blasé about China's interference in Canada's elections | Ottawa Citizen - Terry Glavin:
Nov. 9, 2022 - "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.... For his trouble, Fadden was traduced and roundly denounced as a fear-monger.... 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.
"For several months, the Trudeau government has been sitting on briefing notes from CSIS setting out how Beijing quietly funded 11 candidates in the 2019 federal election and placed operatives on campaign staff. The $250,000 operation was run from China’s Toronto consulate. The effort went on to place operatives in the offices of several members of Parliament....
"Everything’s under control, Trudeau said Monday. 'There are already significant laws and measures that our intelligence and security officials have to go against foreign actors operating on Canadian soil.' But that’s not what Canada’s national security and intelligence agencies say.... Only last week, the House Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs heard that Canada’s intelligence agencies don’t even have 'the tools to understand the threat'.... CSIS director general for Intelligence Assessments Adam Fisher told the committee: 'Our act was designed in 1984 and it has not had significant changes or amendments.' What’s necessary is a total 'rethink' about how these threats are dealt with.
"Beijing doesn’t behave like Moscow in the Cold War days, and its bench strength and impact far exceeds the Kremlin’s contemporary disinformation operations. In Canada, the Chinese Communist Party focuses on 'working within the system to corrupt it, compromising officials, elected officials and individuals at all levels of government, within industry, within civil society, using our open and free society for their nefarious purposes.' And Beijing has ... been so successful that even a modest foreign agents’ registry law remains hung up in the Senate, thanks mainly to Trudeau-appointed senators led by the effusively Beijing-friendly Sen. Yuen Pau Woo.
"It was owing mainly to sponsorship of that same foreign-agents registry law in the House of Commons that Metro Vancouver Conservative MP Kenny Chiu was targeted in an elaborate disinformation campaign during last year’s federal election. Chiu ended up losing the riding of Steveston—Richmond East, home to a large population of Chinese-diaspora voters, to the Liberal candidate.... An investigation by the Atlantic Council’s Forensic Research Lab found that ... 'China-linked actors took an active role in seeking to influence the September 20, 2021 parliamentary election in Canada, displaying signs of a coordinated campaign to influence behaviour among the Chinese diaspora voting in the election.' The Atlantic Council’s findings confirmed the results of a study by Canada’s own DisinfoWatch organization.
"By 2019, Beijing’s influences had become so normalized in Canada that John McCallum, the Chrétien-era cabinet minister and disgraced ambassador to China (he’d been forced to resign for taking Beijing’s side in the detention of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant) openly admitted to the South China Morning Post that he’d been inviting Chinese officials to influence the outcome of the 2019 federal election to the Liberals’ advantage. "The Conservative Party sought a CSIS investigation into McCallum’s conduct, but there was the small problem of the inadequacy of Canada’s foreign-influence laws....
"The CSIS briefings revealed by Cooper at Global News this week were made available to the Prime Minister’s Office in January. Among the briefings’ more disturbing contents was evidence that Beijing sought economic data from the ridings of MPs who voted to adopt a motion in February last year declaring that China’s brutal persecution of the minority Muslim populations of Xinjiang amounted to genocide. Trudeau and his ministers absented themselves from the vote, which passed 266-0....
"The Conservatives were targeted by Beijing-aligned forces in the 2021 elections because party leader Erin O’Toole had authorized the development of a robust China policy, founded on the advancement of human rights and securing Canada’s interests against Xi Jinping’s strong-arm and blackmail tactics.... 'It’s clear that Beijing spread disinformation in the 2021 federal election campaign through proxies that negatively affected Conservative campaigns in several ridings.… We now find out that CSIS has concluded that Beijing corrupted political financing laws and interfered in the 2019 election,' Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong said Tuesday. 'The biggest victim of these PRC intimidation and interference operations is the Chinese community themselves."
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