The longer the Chinese election interference story drags on, writes Terry Glavin in the National Post, "the more Canadians will notice that something rotten has spread through this country’s corporate sector, the universities, and the political class."
Pliant Liberals have helped China embed itself in Canada | National Post - Terry Glavin:
March 15, 2023 - "With all their filibustering and obstructionist 'rapporteur' manoeuvres to draw attention away from the interference operations Beijing ran on their behalf during the 2019 and 2021 elections, the Trudeau Liberals might think they’re being clever. But they’re being too clever by half. The longer this drags out, the more light gets shed on the squalid and intimate relationship between the Liberals’ political base in this country’s wealthy and well-connected Mandarin-bloc hierarchy and the Ferrari-driving consiglieri of Beijing’s strong-arming and influence-peddling network in Canada. It’s the same circle of power....
"Canadians are beginning to understand what so many brave Chinese-Canadians have been warning about all these years. Slowly and steadily, the public is waking up to the alarms rung by Chinese political exiles, Hongkongers, Tibetans and Uyghur refugees, and by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. But it is a dispiriting education. It’s the brazenness of it that’s so galling, the flaunting of impunity in a thriving social scene of dodgy casino high-rollers and senators, Chinese diplomats and targets of RCMP money-laundering probes, MPs and mayors at banquets and ribbon-cuttings, weekend barbecues and campaign fundraising parties.
"The drawn-out focus on Beijing’s long reach into Canada’s political life doesn’t just cast doubt on the effectiveness of the Elections Act in keeping dirty foreign money out of local constituency associations, nomination races and federal campaign contests. It could cause even the most reasonable person to wonder whether the political connections that radiate outward from Beijing’s compradors in Canada might explain why this country’s anti-corruption laws seem to be dead letters.
"Only two weeks ago, in what B.C. Premier David Eby called a shocking example of the uselessness of Canada’s money-laundering laws, a special prosecutor was forced to fold up a multi-year investigation that tracked millions of dollars through Chinese bank accounts and B.C. casinos.... From May 2019 until last June, B.C.’s Cullen Commission took testimony that included security-camera footage of duffle bags full of cash — up to $800,000 in each transaction — carried into casinos to be converted into chips, with the chips then cashed in for “clean” money. The inquiry concluded that billions of dollars every year was being laundered into B.C. real estate and luxury goods, mostly from Chinese accounts....
"[A] shadowy figure who kept popping up in the Lottery Corporation investigations that led to the Cullen Commission was Rong Xiang 'Tiger' Yuan, a former People’s Liberation Army officer famous in the Fraser Valley for his opulent five-acre compound where he keeps his fleet of McLarens, Lamborghinis, and allegedly one of the largest private gun collections in Canada. Only two months ago, Yuan was a celebrity guest at the River Rock Casino in Richmond, B.C., for a Lunar New Year banquet along with the notoriously Beijing-friendly Senator Yuen Pau Woo, China’s Vancouver consul-general Yang Shu, Liberal MPs Parm Bains and Wilson Miao, one current and one former provincial NDP cabinet minister, and an additional NDP MLA.
"Yuan and two of his associates also show up in a peculiar injection of money from Metro Vancouver Chinese donors to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Papineau riding association in 2016 totalling more than $60,000 over two days, as reported recently in Le Devoir and Le Journal de Montréal.
"It’s enough to make even the most level-headed observer get a bit paranoid, but you don’t need to construct any elaborate conspiracy theories about what’s been going on here. What’s been going on is a rapid population shift that has changed the ethnic and demographic makeup of Canada’s Chinese communities, and the Liberals’ alliance with the money-men in that new demographic niche.... Only two years ago the dominant non-official language in Metro Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area shifted from Cantonese to Mandarin, reflecting the influx of wealthy Chinese from the People’s Republic, many of whom are closely aligned with the Chinese Communist Party.
"The influence of Beijing’s loyalists in the new 'princeling' caste took off after the Trudeau Liberals came to power in 2015, with their overweening focus on ramping up political, economic and 'people to people' ties with China. The Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department — the superstructure devoted to enforcing compliance with the Politburo’s policies among overseas Chinese — closely aligned itself with Trudeau’s 'win-win' approach to Beijing.
"The United Front is deeply embedded in the Mandarin-bloc hierarchy, and that hierarchy is fabulously wealthy. There’s a lot of money sloshing around in Canadian politics — not just in Liberal coffers — and the United Front’s exertions run in everything from school board elections to municipal politics to provincial and federal politics....
"[A]s long as the Trudeau Liberals keeping dragging things out in hopes of keeping the skeletons well hidden in their closets, the more Canadians will notice that something rotten has spread through this country’s corporate sector, the universities, and the political class. And no Trudeau-appointed 'rapporteur' is going to root it out, because that’s not what the rapporteur is for."
Read more: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/pliant-liberals-have-helped-china-embed-itself-in-canada
"How China Bought Canada’s Elections," China Uncensored, March 4, 2023:
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