Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said his party is waiting on the Liberals to move ahead on a public inquiry on foreign interference, saying the government is to blame for any delays.
Poilievre held a media availability in Vancouver Friday, and said the ball is in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s court.
Reports of possible meddling by Chinese government in Canada’s elections are pressuring Trudeau government
RICHMOND, British Columbia—A series of public revelations about alleged Chinese government meddling in Canadian politics has roiled the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, prompting calls from opposition politicians and China analysts for tighter monitoring of foreign-interference threats within Canada’s borders and a full probe of the alleged activities.
The latest concerns flared when Erin O’Toole, the former Conservative Party leader, said he was told recently by Canadian security officials that Beijing had tried to thwart his path to replace Trudeau as prime minister in the 2021 elections.
BROSSARD—Beijing made an unsolicited donation of Chinese language books to a municipal library in Quebec, which included a piece praising the accomplishments of the Communist Party.
The Chinese consulate in Montreal donated 300 books to a city on the south shore of Montreal in 2017, and attempted another donation in 2019, as first reported by the Journal de Montréal.
Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair says staff in his office and department aren’t to blame for not informing him of Beijing threats to MPs and has repeated that Canada’s spy agency is at fault.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) “had Top Secret information that they felt that I should see, and clearly, the process that they had in place to bring it to my attention was not complete, and did not bring it to my office’s attention and that’s now been remedied,” Mr. Blair said in a press conference in Ottawa on July 11.
OTTAWA – Ottawa’s corporate-ethics watchdog has announced investigations into a gold-mining corporation and the Canadian branch of Nike for possible forced labour in supply chains.
Sheri Meyerhoffer, who is the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise, says the first two investigations her office has launched related to China’s Uyghur minority.
I suspect Canada’s China Class has nothing to fear.
As Olivia Chow campaigned successfully to become Toronto’s new mayor, she received some unsolicited help from controversial sources.
Two prominent community groups aligned with the Chinese government — including one that allegedly hosted a Chinese police station in Ontario — “went all out” to support Chow’s push to be mayor, supplying numerous volunteers to the effort, a letter from one of the groups claims.
This should invalidate the election.
OTTAWA — The Conservatives said all parties agreed Friday on the scope for a public inquiry into foreign interference in Canada.
The agreement appeared to break the impasse between the governing Liberals and the Conservatives about how to proceed with negotiations to establish a probe into efforts of foreign governments to interfere in Canada’s elections and governance.
The smart money is on the spooks. They have the public on their side
The Canada of our allies’ imagination is a peaceable land of winter, hockey and exquisite politeness. The winter and the hockey haven’t changed. But peaceable and polite? Not since the civil war broke out.
This civil war doesn’t pit Quebec nationalists against English Canada, but centres instead on China. The two sides are a political elite that yearns for the days when China was an economic opportunity, and a national security community aware of Beijing’s ambition to deindustrialize the West economically and neuter it geostrategically.
OTTAWA – A million-dollar bounty being offered by Hong Kong police for the capture of exiled democratic activists has supporters renewing calls for Canada’s former chief justice Beverley McLachlin to resign from the region’s highest court, saying her continued presence legitimizes China’s persecution of activists.
One of the directors of an organization that recently held a protest in Ottawa previously met with an official of China’s lead agency in charge of foreign influence, the United Front Work Department (UFWD). Key organizers of the protest have rallied some people in local Chinese Canadian communities to oppose the proposed creation of a foreign agent registry in Canada.
The group behind the June 24 protest on Parliament Hill, the Commission of Marking the 100th Anniversary of Chinese Exclusion Act, is a federally incorporated not-for-profit created on May 1.
Immigrants taking the Canadian citizenship oath at ceremonies are receiving maple leaf pins made in China, federal records show.
According to a House “Inquiry of Ministry” document obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter, the Department of Immigration ordered a quarter-million pins from a Chinese vendor last year.
The 250,000 pins were purchased “for distribution at citizenship ceremonies,” wrote the department, in response to Conservative MP John Brassard’s request for the records.
Justin Trudeau is looking for ‘full buy-in’ from opposition parties to launch ‘any next process’
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government would need “full buy-in” by opposition parties to launch “any next process” to look into foreign interference, but political insiders are suggesting Liberals cannot “play politics” as an excuse to escape a public inquiry.
An ad hoc committee of parliamentarians has begun its probe into previously withheld documents related to the firing of two infectious-disease scientists from Canada’s highest-security lab in Winnipeg, according to a report.
“Work is underway and documents are available to the committee members. They work independently,” said Mark Kennedy, communications director for Government House Leader Mark Holland, according to the Globe and Mail on June 29.
A group of demonstrators marched to the Chinese military anthem on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 24 during a protest that was advertised as marking the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Immigration Act, which restricted virtually all Chinese immigration to Canada.
However, the organizers have used the act and its anniversary to promote opposition to proposed legislation to create a foreign agent registry in Canada, with one calling the bill “Exclusion 2.0,” a reference to the 1923 legislation, which is also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Trudeau says ‘full buy-in’ from opposition needed before launching new foreign interference probe
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the federal government won’t be announcing any next steps on probing foreign interference until the Liberals get “full buy-in” from the opposition parties, to avoid the process devolving as it did under former special rapporteur David Johnston.
“As we put forward proposals to the other parties on how we can move forward to restore Canadians’ confidence in our abilities to fight foreign interference, we will ensure before we launch any next process, that there is full buy-in by the other parties on how it will be done, and who will do it,” Trudeau told reporters on Wednesday.
