The video lasts less than 30 seconds, time enough for a pair of disembodied hands to deftly slice an entire English cucumber into wafer-thin discs.
As entertainment it was certainly minimalist, but the world was impressed. The clip by Canadian culinary star Wallace Wong — aka The Six Pack Chef — garnered 144 million views on TikTok this year.
An unredacted 2020 national security document alleges that Beijing used an extensive network of community groups to conceal the flow of funds between Chinese officials and Canadian members of an election interference network, all in an effort to advance its own political agenda in the 2019 federal contest.
I’m getting awfully sick of all the diversity Justin has unleashed upon us.
For the past five and a half years, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has been using communications equipment and technology from the controversial Chinese firm Hytera Communications — a company the United States government has blacklisted as a national security threat.
In response to CBC’s questions about CBSA’s use of Hytera equipment and technology, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said he’s asked all departments across his portfolio to review any procurement contracts linked to Hytera or its subsidiaries in the wake of a controversy over a similar RCMP contract with one of Hytera’s subsidiaries.
“I have instructed my department to do a portfolio-wide scan and review of any other potential similar contracts which may have been awarded, so that we can take whatever steps are necessary to mitigate any against any risks that may exist,” Mendicino said Monday.
Has anyone looked into the possibility of connections between these suppliers and the Liberal Party? That should include individual and corporate donations.
“My efforts fell short of my own high personal standard for transparency and accountability.” — International Trade Minister Mary Ng.
This is an interesting phrase. The standard was personal. And it was high.
Many of the thousands of demonstrators who lined Lions Gate Bridge last month to oppose Iran’s brutal regime expressed anxiety in the presence of photographers and videographers.
Some Iranian Canadians in Vancouver’s Human Life Chain, who were joining worldwide protests against the death of teenager Mahsa Amini after she was detained by Iran’s morality police, pointed fingers at strangers recording their public defiance.
Government documents released earlier this week confirm that the Privy Council Office, the nerve centre of the federal bureaucracy which supports Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, had signs of Beijing’s alleged attempts to interfere with the 2019 general election.
Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair acknowledged having seen the 2020 memo while he was public safety minister to reporters on Friday, adding that its determinations “certainly” played a role in shaping increased government focus on electoral interference.
Senator @YuenPauWoo claims anti-China witch hunt, demands feds counter “irresponsible speculation” by #cdnmedia over Communist interference in elections. https://t.co/nVTDcQ4uXS #cdnpoli @ScooperCooper pic.twitter.com/mH8D28FrwY
— Blacklock’s Reporter (@mindingottawa) December 16, 2022
h/t OntarioJohn
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded today to questions about a 2020 briefing document from the Privy Council Office (PCO) that mentioned an “active foreign interference network,” which was linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during Canada’s 2019 federal election.
Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa that the federal government has been aware of foreign interference attempts in Canadian society “for a long time.”
“Foreign interference is a real thing, against our institutions, against communities, against Canadians,” he said on Dec. 14.
He would know, his handlers placed them there.
Canada’s electronic spy agency is watching out for security threats from the popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday.
Responding to questions from reporters in a pre-cabinet scrum on Parliament Hill, Trudeau said the Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s foreign signals intelligence agency, is keeping an eye on TikTok as Republican lawmakers move to ban the app in the U.S.
The issue of foreign interference in elections was examined in a Commons committee on Dec. 13, with Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic Leblanc addressing China’s role in Canadian society at large.
“The Chinese government regularly attempts to interfere in various aspects of Canadian society, elections would not be excluded from some of their efforts to interfere,” Leblanc told the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
A friendship society in Richmond, B.C., has become a focus in an RCMP investigation into allegations of secret Chinese “police” stations operating in Canada.
Officers visited the Canada Wenzhou Friendship Society on Saturday and conducted interviews with people who live nearby in the suburb south of Vancouver.
CBC spoke with neighbours who confirmed RCMP officers spoke with them, asking if they’d seen anything suspicious, and a marked cruiser was still parked outside the building on Tuesday.
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly testified during a Monday afternoon committee meeting that she has no idea about the names of the 11 Liberal MPs allegedly targeted by an election interference attempt by the Chinese government during the 2019 election.
Last week, Ottawa was united in shock over revelations that the RCMP entrusted its critical radio communications systems to Sinclair Technologies, a subsidiary of China’s Hytera Communications Corp. A Chinese state-backed firm, Hytera’s record includes everything from lying to U.S. regulators about its Chinese Communist Party ties to criminal corporate espionage charges. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the other party leaders all agreed: The decision was baffling.
But nobody should be surprised. This is not the first time that Canada has found itself with unwanted Chinese surveillance technology. Without a major status quo shift, it won’t be the last.
It’s of course good news that the federal Liberal government has put the brakes on a contract that a firm partially owned by the Chinese government had scored to work on sensitive RCMP technology. But we also need to ask what mindset allowed it to happen in the first place.
Last year, Sinclair Technologies won a contract to provide radio frequency equipment for Canada’s federal police service. Sinclair’s parent company is Norsat International, which is in turn owned by Chinese telecommunications firm Hytera.
According to popular wisdom, Sir Robert Peel created the first modern municipal police force in London in 1829. Yes, there were other law enforcement-type bodies well before that, but the idea of having an organized body of men (they were all men at first) to patrol the streets and investigate/prevent crime was new for the era.
The notion of the “bobby on the beat”—”bobby” is a take-off on Peel’s first name—is well established. For decades in the Western world the sight of a uniformed officer walking through a community, getting to know the inhabitants, and making a very visible sign of law and order (and hence deterrence) was commonplace. That seems to have changed of late, and I’m not so sure it’s for the better.
