![]() There is a credible allegation that Chinese spies bugged the offices of former telecommunications giant Nortel, using the ill-gotten technology to launch Huawei. There were accusations that Chinese state news agency Xinhua was trying to spy on the Dalai Lama’s trip to Ottawa and a suggestion it directed the seduction of one member of parliament. In the years that followed, evidence of Chinese operations mounted. (The government of the day, itself skeptical of China, kept him on.) A committee of parliamentarians accused him of xenophobia and demanded he be fired. Years later, in 2010, the head of CSIS tried to raise those concerns again, teasing that there were sitting politicians “who we think are under at least the general influence of a foreign government.” For that, he was excoriated. ![]() A final version of that 1997 report was sanitized, and the direct allegations against Beijing were removed. Chinese operatives tried to use the diaspora to advance its foreign policy, both overtly and covertly, sometimes threatening people with consequences for family back home if they didn’t cooperate.īut Ottawa didn’t want to hear it. (That percentage would more than double by the 2000s.) Beijing saw the diaspora as owing loyalty to the Chinese state. By the 1990s, about two percent of Canadians were either Chinese-born or descended from Chinese immigrants. China and Canada have been friendly since then-Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau established relations with Beijing in 1970-two years before then-U.S. It should not have been a great surprise. There was a 1997 report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS)-responsible for espionage and counterespionage efforts in the country-and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, warning that a confluence of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, organized crime bosses, and business tycoons were cooperating to infiltrate Canadian businesses and steal intellectual property and “interfere in the management of the country.” And, for just as long, there has been a dogged rejection of those warnings from politicians who see China as key to Canada’s economic future-or who fear alienating ethnically Chinese voters. And the best place is to start is by understanding how it got here.Ĭanada’s intelligence agencies have been warning for decades that China is running covert affairs inside Canada. ![]() Now it must figure out how to assert its sovereignty again. Just as it was beginning to tackle these questions in earnest, Ottawa made the stunning accusation that New Delhi was also meddling in its affairs in a far more severe manner - by, allegedly, murdering a prominent activist. How was such a brazen interference campaign allowed to continue uninterrupted for so long? Why was the public kept in the dark about it? And did Trudeau’s own policies encourage these covert operations? Now, like Australia and the United States before it, Canada is grappling with tough questions. Trudeau has styled himself as a global crusader against foreign meddling-at least when it carried Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fingerprints. Since he first came into office, Trudeau-like his predecessors-has attempted a tricky balancing act with the Chinese regime, promoting trade and diplomacy with Beijing whilst trying to find some recourse for human rights abuses, illiberal trade practices, and foreign meddling. The forthcoming report promises to be deeply uncomfortable for the Canadian government in Ottawa. The reversal, amid miserable domestic polling numbers and intense pressure from the opposition parties and media, comes after more than a year of revelations about Beijing’s efforts to interfere in Canada-largely to the advantage of Trudeau’s Liberal Party. After months of resisting the idea, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced a major public inquiry tasked with investigating how China has meddled in Canadian politics.
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