Who will fall on his sword after the public inquiry into election interference?
Probably everyone has heard of the Japanese samurai practice of “harakiri,” also called seppuku, or “falling on one’s sword.” This action, which apparently dates back to Roman times, refers to a ritual suicide by a soldier for something done wrong. The phrase is now used to describe anyone, most notably a high-level government official, who resigns after having taken responsibility for a mistake.
No one.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has defended his “partnership” with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) environmental board.
In August 2023, the federal Conservative Party demanded Guilbeault cut ties with the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), which is chaired by Ding Xuexiang, the former chief of staff to President Xi Jinping.
Chinese candidates applying for a Canadian taxpayer-funded exchange program need to declare allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership and the Party’s “socialist system,” The Epoch Times has learned.
Philippine’s navy announced that, during the afternoon of April 15, it had observed 55 Chinese vessels in the West Philippine Sea, Manila’s designation for the South China Sea.
China is swarming the waters of the Philippines, hoping to intimidate Manila into surrendering territory. US President Joe Biden and the State Department keep on issuing warnings, but Chinese President Xi Jinping continues to ignore them, suggesting deterrence is failing and an incident leading to war could occur at any time.
The reclining armchairs and plush leather sofas coming off the production line at Man Wah Furniture’s factory in Monterrey are 100% “Made in Mexico”.
They’re destined for large retailers in the US, like Costco and Walmart. But the company is from China, its Mexican manufacturing plant built with Chinese capital.
The triangular relationship between the US, China and Mexico is behind the buzzword in Mexican business: nearshoring.
MARKHAM, Ont.—The Toronto-area private school whose name came up prominently during the foreign interference inquiry for busing international students to the Liberal nomination vote of MP Han Dong in 2019 was invited to celebrate the Chinese New Year with the prime minister two years later.
The invitation was issued even as the prime minister and Liberal party organizers had been made aware of “irregularities” at the nomination vote by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in 2019. The cited issues included international students being told to support Mr. Dong under “veiled threats” by the Chinese consulate.
After learning that samples of deadly Ebola and Nipah viruses had been sent from Canada’s top-security lab in Winnipeg to China, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said his reaction was similar to that of an MP who expressed incredulity upon learning of the move.
“I’m really concerned about the March 2019 incident where [Winnipeg lab scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng] were implicated in a shipment of live Ebola in Hanipah [Nipah] viruses on a commercial Air Canada flight. How the hell did that happen?” NDP MP Charlie Angus asked during a House of Commons Canada-China committee meeting on April 15.
The foreign interference inquiry concluded its core public hearings phase on April 12 and a clearer picture has emerged of the threat Canada faces and what the government is doing about it.
The Liberal government had initially resisted holding the inquiry but eventually folded amid political pressure following a steady stream of intelligence leaks in the media about interference from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
“I literally worked on a project that gave U.S. data to China,” former TikTok senior data scientist Evan Turner revealed on Monday in a Fortune report. According to Turner, his efforts went far beyond what social media apps usually do, which is to upload every scrap of data they can get hold of to the parent company’s servers.
There is much to take away from all the recent analysis and counter-analysis of foreign interference in Canada’s elections — and none of it is good.
In summary, our government minimized the threat to our electoral process, admitting that while there “may” have been “some minor” efforts to sway voter intention, when all was said and done the results were not affected. (I am waiting for someone to explain how this conclusion was drawn: does the government know the reasons individual Canadians voted and the reasons for their choice of party/candidate?)
If it benefits the LPC then Justin approves.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national security adviser sent him a briefing in 2017, warning about unwarranted investigations by Chinese police in Canada, according to a declassified document.
The warning came at a time when Ottawa was pursuing closer relations with the communist regime, including a potential free trade agreement. A year earlier, as part of preliminary talks toward a free trade agreement, Canada had also agreed to negotiate a possible extradition treaty with Beijing.
Earlier this week in Ottawa, I sat in the beautiful Bambrick Room of the Library and Archives Canada building and witnessed the Prime Minister of Canada along with his key ministers give sworn evidence to the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions (PIFI).
When Russian President Vladimir Putin was reelected in 2018, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rushed to the nearest microphone to express his worry that foreign actors might disrupt his nation’s future elections.
“We have been very much focused over the past years on strengthening our democratic institutions,” Trudeau said. “We need to make sure that they are kept up to date in holding off foreign meddling and interference.”
If one thing from the public inquiry into foreign interference is clear, it’s that China attempted to meddle in the 2019 and 2021 elections.
But the evidence is hazy on whether or not it succeeded. Here’s what we learned over the past 10 days of fact-finding hearings, which ended Friday and included testimony from politicians, bureaucrats and representatives from several intelligence and security agencies …
British authorities have accused China of attempting to flood the country with fake postage stamps, a form of industrial sabotage and “economic warfare” often associated with the days of the Second World War.
