Justin Trudeau is strangely complacent about China’s attack on Canadian democracy
Ian Cooper
China brazenly interfered in Canada’s last two elections, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems oddly unconcerned.
Over the past week, the Globe and Mail revealed details of a coordinated effort by Chinese consular officials to put a thumb on the scale in favor of Trudeau’s Liberal Party during the 2021 election. Its source was leaked top-secret reports from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
If the allegations are true, there’s little question that charges ought to follow. Candidates allegedly received undeclared cash donations, an offense under the Canada Elections Act. If the funds weren’t paid by those making the donation, that would be yet another offense.
Canadian tax laws provide a refund for a portion of every political donation. Campaign offices refunded the rest of the money from China-linked donors so that they would have no out-of-pocket cost. That appears to be tax fraud.
Sympathetic businesses were instructed by consular officials to hire Chinese students and loan them out as full-time campaign volunteers. It’s unclear whether payments to these “volunteers” were reported as campaign expenses. If not, that would constitute yet another offense. If those undeclared expenses put candidates over spending limits, then you can add that to the rap sheet.
China also activated its large diaspora, foreign student population, and Chinese language press to generate support for favored candidates. While some of these efforts are permitted under Canadian law, many of them are alarming.
For example, Chinese diplomats and their proxies were instructed to claim that the Conservatives planned to ban Chinese students from certain universities. No such proposal ever existed.
More troubling was the campaign against Kenny Chiu, a Vancouver-area Conservative MP. Chiu committed two sins against the regime: He criticized its crackdown in Hong Kong, and he introduced a private member’s bill that sought to establish a foreign agent registry — the kind of thing that would have kept China’s shenanigans in check.
The United States has had such a registry since 1938, and Australia established one in 2018.
Tong Xiaoling, then Vancouver’s consul general, described Chiu as a “vocal distractor” to China’s interests. After the election, Tong bragged about helping defeat Chiu and another Conservative MP.
Although China didn’t want a Conservative government, it didn’t want Trudeau’s Liberals to win a majority, either. Its preferred outcome was a Liberal minority government on the theory that it would be best for China if the parties in Parliament were fighting each other. When the votes were tallied, the regime got what it wanted.
A separate investigation by Global News revealed that the prime minister’s office was warned that Han Dong, a former Ontario Liberal Member of Provincial Parliament, was part of a Chinese foreign interference network. Dong had allegedly been selected by Beijing to replace Liberal MP Geng Tan in the 2019 federal election because the Chinese regime was not pleased with Tan’s performance.
According to the CSIS report, Dong secured his party’s nomination in a reliably Liberal riding with the help of Chinese foreign students who were bused into the riding using fake addresses. The students were allegedly told to vote for Dong in the nomination contest or else their visas would be revoked.
The CSIS also had concerns about Dong’s ties to Michael Chan, a former Ontario Liberal Cabinet minister, fundraiser, and now a Toronto-area deputy mayor who has been under investigation as a possible Chinese agent for more than a decade.
The CSIS urged Trudeau’s office to rescind Dong’s nomination before the 2019 election. The prime minister’s office ignored the advice. Dong won his seat and remains in Parliament. He is the only one to be named among at least 11 known Toronto-area candidates, nine of them Liberals, who are alleged to have benefited from Beijing’s interference in the 2019 election.
Faced with misconduct that strikes at the heart of Canada’s democracy, in which several of his MPs are alleged to have knowingly participated, Trudeau perceived a personal attack. He initially claimed that none of this mattered because he would have won the election and everyone knew China was trying to meddle in Canadian elections anyway.
Although both of these things may be true, they’re also irrelevant. Neither exonerates Chinese officials who remain in Canada, the Canadians who conspired with them, and the MPs who are in Parliament because of their efforts.
Trudeau also said he expects CSIS to find its leaker, meaning “lock him up.”
If any of this sounds Trumpian, that didn’t stop Trudeau from accusing the opposition of engaging in a Trump-style campaign to overturn the election’s result. Never mind that nobody did anything like that.
After taking a drubbing in the press, Trudeau decided to change tack, claiming the leaked reports were dangerous because of unidentified “inaccuracies.” Meanwhile, his government continues to study the merits of a foreign agent registry, but it is making no promises. He has also refused to conduct a public inquiry into China’s interference in Canada’s elections, despite a request from the country’s former chief electoral officer.
If Trudeau is concerned about protecting Canadian democracy, he has a strange way of showing it.
Ian Cooper is a media, technology, sports, and entertainment lawyer based in Toronto.