There has been much discussion of late about Chinese interference, both in our democratic processes and directed at specific individuals. In both cases, concern has arisen because that information came from leaked intelligence reports. While no one has seen the leaked material, however, it is clear that Chinese activity has taken place – confirmed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and by testimony before a House committee.
The head of a British Columbia-based group that says it is a “non–political” organization helping Chinese integrate into Canadian society travelled to Beijing to meet President Xi Jinping at a government conference this week.
Chinese state media videos and photos show Canadian Community Service Association president Niu Hua attending the “10th Conference for Friendship of Overseas Chinese Associations,” hosted by the state council’s overseas Chinese affairs office.
All three national security and intelligence advisers who served Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2021 told Global News that they do not recall receiving a top secret intelligence assessment prepared that year about Beijing targeting Conservative MP Michael Chong and his family in Hong Kong.
The development raises yet more questions about how the report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), which was allegedly sent to the desk of the prime minister’s top national security official, somehow fell through the cracks.
“Persona non grata.” In diplomatic circles, those three words are the equivalent of excommunication. Under Article 9 of the 1963 Vienna Convention for Diplomatic Relations, to which Canada is a party, a country can declare any member of another nation’s diplomatic corps persona non grata “at any time and without having to explain its decision.” It is considered “the most damning form of censure a country can bestow on foreign diplomats.”
One would have thought that Zhao Wei, a Chinese diplomat and suspected intelligence officer, would have been sent home by the evening the news broke that he was part of an effort by Beijing to target MP Michael Chong’s family – or better still, two years ago when CSIS first learned about this.
But the expulsion came a week after The Globe and Mail brought the matter to the public’s attention. Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly had said the government was considering what economic, consular and diplomatic retaliation might be visited upon Canada if it went through with the move.
She’s really saying Justin had to look out for the best interests of Canada’s China Class, they after all have money invested with the Communist Slave State.
OTTAWA – The Liberal government is expelling Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei, whom Canada’s spy agency alleged was involved in a plot to intimidate Conservative MP Michael Chong and his relatives in Hong Kong.
Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly wrote in a statement that Canada has declared the Toronto-based diplomat as “persona non grata.”
“We will not tolerate any form of foreign interference in our internal affairs,” she wrote.
The recent controversy involving Conservative MP Michael Chong and his family being targeted by China is an enormous issue. For those who have repeatedly questioned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s commitment to ensuring that safety and security are among Canada’s highest priorities, this may be the biggest red flag of them all.
The Globe and Mail’s Robert Fife and Steven Chase recently published contents of a July 20, 2021, Canadian Security Intelligence Service report that examined China’s interest in Canada. The nine-page document suggested the former viewed the latter as a “high-priority target,” had employed “incentives and punishment” to gain an advantage, and the targeting was “expected to continue and increase over time.”
Jean Chrétien dismisses foreign interference in Liberal convention speech
OTTAWA — Former prime minister Jean Chrétien rallied Liberal troops, told war stories and dismissed recent reports of foreign interference at the party’s Ottawa convention Friday evening.
The current Liberal government has been dogged by questions of foreign interference for most of 2023, with allegations that China interfered in the 2021 election, channelled donations to the Trudeau Foundation and, most recently, allegations that China was threatening a Conservative MP’s family.
The Liberal convention is a case of whistling past the graveyard.
Following a recent media article reporting that Zhao Wei, a Chinese consul in Toronto, was involved in threatening Conservative MP Michael Chong’s family members in Hong Kong, there have been calls to expel Zhao from Canada. Here is what we know about him.
Zhao is a designated consular officer with the Chinese Consulate in Toronto, according to Global Affairs Canada. The consulate’s website and news release archives list him as team leader of the “Consular and Overseas Chinese Affairs Division.” He has held that position as early as November 2018.
The mass murdering, anti-freedom Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has infiltrated almost every country in the world, and America needs to counter the “evil” CCP, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts told EpochTV.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Every day when he arrives at his office in City Hall, Mayor Ken Sim stares at a prominent black-and-white photograph of Chinese railway workers toiling on the tracks in British Columbia in 1884.
Mr. Sim, the son of Hong Kong immigrants, said the workers’ weathered faces are a daily reminder of the symbolic importance of his election as Vancouver’s first Chinese Canadian mayor, and of just how far Chinese Canadians have come.
After decades meting out sanctions and financial coercion, the US may soon feel its grip on world trade beginning to loosen.
Change is good, but dollars are better, a US author of romance novels once wrote. A similarly light-hearted sentiment often inspires discussions about the future role of the US dollar as the world’s leading currency. The consensus view is that the dollar is safe. I think the consensus is wrong.
The dollar is the foundation of US global leadership, and the future of the dollar is therefore intricately linked to the debate about geopolitical fragmentation. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, asked during his recent visit to China: “Why should every country have to be tied to the dollar for trade?… Who decided the dollar would be the [world’s] currency?”
OTTAWA— A friend, a man of honour, a man who “embodies all that is best” about the House of Commons.
That’s how not just party colleagues but even partisan rivals described Conservative MP Michael Chong this week as shock rippled through Parliament with revelations he and his family were targets for Chinese state interference in 2021.
But when Chong himself first heard the news, via a Globe and Mail report last Monday, shock wasn’t what hit him.
In August 2019, two months before the 2019 federal election and two years before the 2021 election, which have both raised major concerns about foreign interference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau received a report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) that he created in 2017 to advise him on security issues.
Government still investigating why threats against Chong not passed up to cabinet
OTTAWA – The government is still investigating why warnings that a Conservative member of Parliament was being threatened by the Chinese government never made it to the desk of any cabinet minister, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said Saturday.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Liberal policy convention in Ottawa, he said the possibility of holding someone accountable for that decision remains “under consideration.”
“It’s important that we unearth their reasons as to why this was not brought directly to the attention of the public safety minister at the time, as well as the prime minister because we take these issues seriously,” he said.
