A business coalition is raising concerns about calls from some of Canada’s premiers for Ottawa to strengthen trade ties with China in response to U.S. tariffs, calling the move short-sighted and contrary to Canada’s interests.
The Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses Canada (CCMBC) issued a statement on July 23, warning that the proposal overlooks China’s record of “unfair” trade practices, human rights abuses, and interference in Canadian democracy.
On June 10, B.C. Ferries announced it would buy four new vessels from a Chinese shipyard. Unsurprisingly, the decision was met with disappointment and frustration.
And for good reason.
Despite the massive public investment, there is little benefit for B.C. workers, local shipyards and domestic steel producers.
Canada’s shipbuilding industry has been hollowed out by decades of offshoring.
Say this for the outrage of BC Ferries preparing to spend an estimated $1 billion to buy four ferries from China, a country doing great injury to Prairie farmers and to fishers in Atlantic Canada and B.C. by imposing tariffs on roughly $4 billion of imported Canadian canola, seafood and pork.
It gives the Carney government a bargaining chip to help negotiate an end to our trade dispute with China by suspending the ferry deal at least for now.
Canada provoked the trade war last year when it put tariffs on imported Chinese electric vehicles, steel and aluminum.
OTTAWA/LOS ANGELES — Chris Meyer of Widefountain returns to question The Bureau on findings from The Quiet Invasion—a landmark timeline investigation into how Vancouver became a beachhead for transnational organized crime and Chinese hybrid warfare. What began in the late 1980s as low-profile infiltration by Chinese Triads has evolved into a full-spectrum crisis involving encrypted telecoms, fentanyl superlabs, and political access reaching Canada’s highest offices. In this episode, Meyer and Sam Cooper discuss the range of findings, including Canadian vulnerabilities now believed to be of deep concern to the U.S. government.
Federal infrastructure bank provided $1-billion in financing for BC Ferries purchase of four new Chinese-made ships
The federal government’s Canada Infrastructure Bank provided $1-billion in financing for BC Ferries’ plan to buy four new ships from a Chinese state-owned shipyard, a fact that Transport Minister Chrystia Freeland did not mention last week when she sharply criticized the purchase.
Ms. Freeland sent a strongly worded letter last week to B.C. Transportation Minister Mike Farnworth expressing her “great consternation and disappointment” with the planned purchase.
The letter referenced a previous $75-million loan by the CIB for four other ferries and Ottawa’s annual grant for ferry operations, but did not mention that the bank is also providing $1-billion in low-interest loans for the specific purchase she was criticizing.
B.C. Ferries has drawn the ire of federal Transport Minister Chrystia Freeland for its decision to contract a Chinese state-owned shipyard to build four new vessels for its passenger fleet.
Freeland also expressed concerns about security risks related to the contract.
In a letter to B.C.’s Transportation Minister Mike Farnworth released Friday afternoon, Freeland expressed her “great consternation and disappointment” with the ferry operator.
Guess she didn’t get her cut.
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday criticized CBC News for changing its description of Taiwan from a country to a “self-ruled island.”
On June 14, Canada’s largest news broadcaster posted an article on the alleged ties between Bliss and Wisdom, a Buddhist group with operations on Prince Edward Island, and the CCP. The piece originally described a high-ranking monk from Taiwan as traveling “between his home country, Prince Edward Island, and China” in 2023 at the invitation of a Buddhist group that reports to the United Front Work Department.
h/t HS
As the U.S. trade war drags, calls grow for Canada to cautiously improve ties with China
As Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government works to reshape its economic policies amid an unpredictable administration south of the border, Canadian businesses that trade with China say Ottawa needs to find ways to expand exports there — and fast.
While the Canada-China relationship has been stymied in recent years, there are signals of relations improving.
Policy for profit every time.
British Columbia’s transportation minister claimed Friday that buying new ferries from European shipyards would have cost roughly $1.2 billion more than buying them from a Chinese government-owned shipyard in Weihai, Shandong province, which is a city roughly the size of Montreal that I had never heard of until this week. China knows how to build cities. They burst into existence from nothing, like popcorn. China also knows how to build ships, and highways, and high-speed rail, and just about anything else you would care to name, better and more efficiently than the Canadian public service can realistically comprehend.
Someone’s gettin paid.
Canada’s top doctor Theresa Tam leaving position when term ends June 20
TORONTO — Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam is leaving her position at the end of next week.
Tam has been in the role since June 2017, but became a household name in the last five years as she led the country’s public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tam says her term ends on Friday, June 20 and she doesn’t have another job lined up.
The government’s leader in the House of Commons told the Liberal MP spearheading a drive to grant jailed Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai honorary citizenship to shelve a motion supporting its award, just before she was about to present it on Wednesday.
Judy Sgro, a veteran Liberal MP, had gained the support of MPs from all parties for a unanimous consent motion raising the plight of Mr. Lai, who has been held in solitary confinement for four and a half years.
Mr. Lai, a British citizen and publisher of the now shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, was arrested in Hong Kong on conspiracy and sedition charges in December, 2020.
The former CEO of the Canadian subsidiary of China’s largest bank says he was instructed to “ignore” Canadian law and “circumvent” Canadian regulators, alleging he was fired for not following these directions.
Lubin Wang, 51, former head of ICBK, the Canadian subsidiary of the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China’s largest bank, filed a lawsuit in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for wrongful dismissal earlier this year, alleging he was pressured to scale back or abandon efforts to comply with Canadian regulations.
With Factories on Six Nations Land, Mexican Cartels Are Using Canada to Smuggle Counterfeit Goods Into the U.S. and Mexico
OTTAWA — “Project Panda,” a major Ontario gang taskforce takedown in May targeting a counterfeit tobacco factory on the Six Nations Reserve near Hamilton and Buffalo, exposes a long-ignored reality: Mexican cartel networks have deeply embedded themselves in Canadian territory near the U.S. border—and are expanding in tandem with Chinese state-linked crime partners, using Indigenous land for counterfeit production and cross-border smuggling.
This is no longer just a policing matter. It is a national security crisis—one that exploits Indigenous communities, land, and jurisdictional protections that have inadvertently shielded criminal networks now designated as terrorist threats. Worse still, the threat has long been known to Canadian, American, and Mexican authorities. Yet Ottawa has failed to act.
h/t handy n handsome
For Yao Zhang, the news came as a shock.
Sexually explicit, deepfake images of her were circulating widely online — an attack that Ottawa blamed on the Chinese government.
It wasn’t the first time Zhang had been targeted by China. Shortly after the Quebec-based accountant-turned-influencer travelled to Taiwan in January 2024 to support its independence, China’s national police paid a visit to her aunt in Chifeng, in mainland China.
Sigh …
What a sight to behold. Chinese billionaire Ruby Liu celebrates in Mandarin as she picks apart the carcass of Hudson's Bay— Canada’s oldest company.
Canada is COOKED my friends. pic.twitter.com/rzKdYND31o
— Cosmin Dzsurdzsa (@cosminDZS) May 28, 2025
China emerging as top customer for Canadian oil shipped via Trans Mountain Pipeline
China has emerged as the top customer for Canadian oil shipped on the expanded Trans Mountain Pipeline, ship tracking data shows, as a U.S. trade war has shifted crude flows in the year since the pipeline started operating.
China’s new interest in Canadian oil comes as U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war has strained relations between longtime allies Washington and Ottawa. It also reflects the impact of U.S. sanctions on crude from countries like Russia and Venezuela.
