A report from Canada's intelligence agency, CSIS, describes Chinese Communist interference in Canadian federal, provincial, and municipal elections,
CSIS report says China infiltrated Provincial and Federal Party leadership races in 2022 | The Bureau | Sam Gooper:
November 24, 2023 - "A senior Canadian politician running to lead a provincial political party clandestinely met officials inside a Chinese Consulate in 2022, subsequently becoming China’s preferred candidate, and winning campaign support from Consulate proxies.... Details of the Consulate meeting are contained in a sweeping CSIS 'Intelligence Assessment' dated October 31, 2022..... But ramifications of the CSIS Intelligence Assessment are much broader....
"The document strongly suggests that People’s Republic proxies financially infiltrated the federal Conservative’s 2022 leadership contest, shortly after leader Erin O’Toole was attacked with Chinese disinformation, during the fall 2021 federal election. The Intelligence Assessment says proxies attempted to elect a federal party’s new leader, purchasing party memberships to support an unidentified candidate, with the objective of tempering the federal party’s perceived 'anti-China' stance.
"This document also refers to a 'CA1' — believed to mean Candidate 1 — and points to a 'meeting and the Consulate’s endorsement.' 'CA1 said they were unconcerned, as CA1 knows "how the underground works" and that "they" (the PRC Consulate) had supported CA1 in various past elections,' the CSIS document reviewed by The Bureau says. It doesn’t explain who Candidate 1 is.
"The October 2022 CSIS document also ,,, cites successive elections in a particular Canadian city, where a Chinese Consulate mobilized three 'co-opted' community groups to clandestinely channel funds and 'material support' to an unidentified mayoral candidate in 2018 and 2022.... Details appear to align with allegations in another Top Secret CSIS report reviewed by The Bureau.
"This previous, January 2022 document, says China’s Consul General in Vancouver 'stated that they needed' to rally Chinese diaspora voters in Vancouver’s 2022 mayoral election 'to come out and elect a specific Chinese-Canadian candidate because 'the candidate will rely on those votes.' The Globe and Mail previously reported some of the details from this January 2022 document, which names Vancouver’s Consul General, Tong Xiaoling. What The Globe didn’t report, is the CSIS record’s summary conclusion, which says: 'This report demonstrates CG Tong’s continued interest in involving herself in Canadian electoral processes to benefit the PRC'....
"The Bureau’s investigation of these new CSIS allegations, illuminates deeper concerns in the Chinese interference story that shocked Canadians over the past year, exposing gaps in Ottawa’s current foreign interference inquiry, which only mandates Justice Marie-Josée Hogue to examine [only] the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. This is shortsighted, according to political experts and the October 2022 Intelligence Assessment, which says 'interference actors and activities can span various levels of government'.... '[I]t's like they are examining their front doors, but they don’t realize the whole back wall of the house is missing,” said former Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart.
"Stewart — a political scientist and former NDP Parliamentarian — defeated [Ken] Sim by 957 votes in Vancouver’s 2018 election, and lost to Sim by over 36,000 votes in 2022. 'I don’t know if this interference, which I am now almost certain occurred, was enough to tip the balance in 2022,' Stewart said. 'But it looks like it almost worked in 2018 too, which is shocking'.... Sim’s office has not responded to questions from The Bureau for this story. In March 2023 Sim reacted furiously to The Globe’s controversial report, saying 'insinuations' that his campaign benefited from Chinese Consulate interference wouldn’t occur 'if I was a Caucasian.'
"In a lengthy interview, commenting on cases from the October 2022 Intelligence Assessment, Kennedy Stewart added: 'I can’t help but think, in any other G7 country, this would be a red-alert that your systems are being compromised, and there would be an immediate cross-party effort to get to the bottom of it. But here,' he said, 'in fact, there’s been cross-party collusion to limit this inquiry, to just the federal level.'”
Read more: https://www.thebureau.news/p/exclusive-csis-report-says-china
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