Ignoring Chinese spying has made Canada the weak link among Western allies

US v Canada

… This cross-border discrepancy is partly explained by serious flaws in Canada’s legal system. As an intelligence-gathering service, CSIS is best placed to identify crimes of espionage. But it has no actual law enforcement powers. It can share its findings with the RCMP, but this relationship is complicated by the fact CSIS intel is not admissible in court since the agency refuses to disclose its sources and methods.

“If defence lawyers ever get a whiff of the fact the RCMP has relied on CSIS information, they will demand to test that information in court,” warns Phil Gurski, a former strategic analyst at CSIS. For this reason, cases built on CSIS evidence are often not prosecuted. It is possible Qiu and Cheng were allowed to leave the country because the mountain of proof incriminating them was inadmissible in court.

Share

A cartoon cat has been vexing China’s censors – now he says they are on his tail

As anti-lockdown protests flared across China’s cities in November 2022, hundreds of thousands around the world were glued to an unlikely source: a mysterious X account, fronted by a cartoon cat.

Protest footage, details about police movements, news of arrests – Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher posted a torrent of real-time updates sourced from ordinary citizens.

Little of it could be found on China’s tightly-controlled state media or internet. All of it was curated by one person, sitting in a bedroom in Italy – an art school student named Li Ying.

Share

Canada’s democracy ‘under attack,’ ex-China envoy warns after NSICOP report

Canada’s former ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques, says Beijing’s meddling in Canada’s democracy is worse than it has ever been.

Earlier this week, a report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) alleged that sitting federal politicians are “witting” participants in foreign interference schemes.

The report did not name names, and the Liberal government is resisting revealing their identities, citing concerns about sharing intelligence information.

Share

Conservative leader calls on Liberal government to release names of MPs accused of helping foreign states

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says that Canadians have a right to know the names of the MPs accused in an explosive new intelligence report of “wittingly” working on behalf of foreign state actors.

On Monday, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), a cross-party committee of MPs and senators with top security clearances, released a heavily redacted document alleging some parliamentarians have actively helped foreign governments like China and India meddle in Canadian politics.

Share

Canada’s Universities Are a Pipeline for Chinese Military Technology

How hundreds of Chinese researchers across the country were identified as undercover scientists

THROUGH NAÏVETÉ and mindless belief in the universal benefits of academic exchange, some of Canada’s leading universities have contributed to the militarization of the Far East.

From the start of academic exchanges with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the early 1970s, the government of Canada has watched and largely approved of Chinese students focusing almost exclusively on science and technology faculties at Canadian universities. Meanwhile, Canadians going to study in China have engrossed themselves in Chinese language and culture and Maoism. For most of the past fifty years, Canadian universities and authorities were satisfied with this exchange. They saw giving Chinese students the benefits of Canadian knowledge and experience in science and technology as a gift toward the economic and industrial development of China.

Share

‘Witting’ involvement changes the nature of foreign interference

Witting. That’s the word in the latest report on foreign interference that changes things.

In the latest review, we don’t just see cases of messing with political messages in a local election or allegations of interference in a nomination race, such as that of then-Liberal, now-independent MP Han Dong.

Now, a committee of MPs has reported that some of their colleagues in politics have known they were helping a foreign state or being helped by one. It suggests that foreign interference sometimes takes two to tango, through a co-opting of Canadian parliamentarians who might get a political benefit from it.

Share

Trudeau’s government slow response to foreign interference ‘a serious failure’: intelligence watchdog

The Liberal government has known since 2018 that it needed to take foreign interference more seriously but failed to recognize the gravity of the threat, says a damning new report from one of the country’s intelligence oversight bodies.

“The slow response to a known threat was a serious failure and one from which Canada may feel the consequences for years to come,” says a report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), tabled Monday in the House of Commons.

“The implications of this inaction include the undermining of the democratic rights and fundamental freedoms of Canadians, the integrity and credibility of Canada’s parliamentary process, and public trust in the policy decisions made by the government.”

Share

Canadian scientist explains how COVID likely escaped from a Chinese lab in ‘five key points’

As the U.S. Congress continues its investigation into the COVID-19 pandemic, with Dr. Anthony Fauci testifying on Monday, a Canadian scientist has taken to the New York Times to outline her contention that the virus probably escaped from a laboratory.

Alina Chan is a molecular biologist specializing in gene therapy and cell engineering at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she is a post-doctoral fellow. She’s also co-author with science writer Matt Ridley of the 2021 book Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19

Share

Canada raised foreign interference concerns with China, defence minister says

SINGAPORE, June 1 (Reuters) – Canada warned China against meddling in its elections during a rare meeting of the countries’ defence chiefs, its defence minister said on Saturday.

“I raised the concern of foreign interference in all the manifestations that it might take, including interference in our institutions, including our elections, but also actions of collusion against the Chinese diaspora in Canada, our citizens,” Defence Minister Bill Blair told Reuters, referring to his conversation with Chinese counterpart Dong Jun.

I bet he did.

Share

Warnings of Election Meddling by China Never Reached the Prime Minister

It can be a bit difficult to keep tabs on the various inquiries and examinations into foreign interference in Canadian elections, particularly by China.

Ottawa’s latest growth industry was largely created by a series of leaks of highly classified intelligence that first appeared in The Globe and Mail, and then Global News, that described attempts by the Chinese government to meddle in the last two elections with the goal of returning the Liberals to power, if again with a minority government.

Share

China Weaponizing 90%-Fatal Ebola

China’s regime is trying to weaponize Ebola. The disease can have a 90% mortality rate.

Code Enforcement Officer Jesalyn Harper in December 2022 noticed a garden hose connected to a supposedly abandoned building in Reedley, California, near Fresno in the Central Valley. She entered the structure and found what appears to have been a secret biological weapons laboratory.

The facility was run by Jiabei Zhu, a Chinese citizen who was a fugitive from Canadian justice. He was also a top official at one of China’s state-controlled companies that had links to the Chinese military.

Share

China can’t use Canada as trade path for cheap goods, Freeland says

(Bloomberg) — Canada won’t allow itself to become a foothold for oversupplied Chinese goods that could pass through to its democratic allies, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said.

But she did not commit to following the path of U.S. President Joe Biden, who announced massive tariff hikes against Chinese goods earlier this month. For now, Canada is simply reviewing its trade measures toward China, Freeland said.

“Canada absolutely recognizes that China has an intentional, state-directed economic policy which is leading to overcapacity and oversupply in specific sectors,” Freeland told reporters on Tuesday. She said the Asian country isn’t “playing by the rules” when it comes to steel, aluminum, some critical minerals and metals and manufacturing products.

Share

CSIS and Trudeau’s adviser clashed on foreign interference threat in 2021: report

Intelligence regarding foreign interference sometimes didn’t make it to the prime minister’s desk in 2021 because Canada’s spy agency and the prime minister’s national security adviser didn’t always see eye to eye on the nature of the threat, according to a recent report from one of Canada’s intelligence watchdogs.

The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) released a report on Monday evening pointing to several schisms in the flow of information between Canada’s intelligence agencies and the federal government during the last two federal elections.

Share

Hong Kong police make threatening phone call to prodemocracy supporter living in Canada

Hong Kong national-security police recently threatened a man from the city, who is seeking refuge in Canada, after he reneged on a deal to spy for China on prodemocracy activists living in Vancouver, according to an audio recording obtained by The Globe and Mail.

This is one of the rare instances where a recording has surfaced of someone being intimidated in Canada by a Chinese state-security official.

Share

When killers like Putin and Xi hint at nuclear annihilation, take heed

After a recent summit between new partners China and Russia, General Secretary Xi Jinping and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin issued an odd one-sentence communique: “There can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be fought.”

No one would disagree, even though several officials of both hypocritical governments have previously threatened their neighbors with nuclear attacks.

But still, why did the two feel the need to issue such a terse statement — and why now?

Share