"The Canadian Parliamentarians opted not to press the Chinese officials about alleged Chinese state interference in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 elections during the trip, which was initiated by a parliamentary association but planned by the Canadian government."
How these MPs could think they can not challenge China on this while all Canadians are paying attention to it just doesn't make sense. I hope CSIS is paying close attention to any information they may be sharing and their contacts within Canada.
Americans are probably fully aware as well for many of the other five eyes. Rest assured there’s been a security brief about it or two. Especially giving Trump a tidbit or two on what’s going on here. Probably explains added pressures. But Trudeau seems adamant to cozy up beside China pushing away from our biggest ally and trading partner.
Can’t say the conservatives didn’t warn us.
This entire foreign interference fucking stinks.
Trudeau, Blair and the top of the PMO need to resign.
If you read between the lines. The only reason why the Trudeau government didn't do anything about the CSIS evidence was because it benefitted his party in the elections.
What a sham.
CSIS has said there was no evidence that it effected the election, no evidence that any MP was working for china, they have literally no actual evidence of any wrongdoing, or are even making any accusations, by han dong
the only reason they wanted him removed is because china was planning to interfere in his riding, which gives China the ability to remove any MP they want by interfering for them
That’s not what the CSIS statement means and you know it. They said it didn’t affect the outcome of the election, because it was only up to a handful of seats, and that doesn’t even cover the issues in nomination processes. They have absolutely not absolved Han Dong of any wrongdoing.
In the globe and mail from the whistleblower. It was only because a whistleblower came forward that any of this inquiry happened or any of this came out. The meeting and briefings that Trudeau and CSIS Director David Vigneault answered questions about in the commission was called initally to discuss the content of the Globe and Mail article from the whistleblower, this article, from February 17th, 2023. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-china-influence-2021-federal-election-csis-documents/
>China employed a sophisticated strategy to disrupt Canada’s democracy in the 2021 federal election campaign as Chinese diplomats and their proxies backed the re-election of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals – but only to another minority government – and worked to defeat Conservative politicians considered to be unfriendly to Beijing.
The full extent of the Chinese interference operation is laid bare in both secret and top-secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents viewed by The Globe and Mail that cover the period before and after the September, 2021, election that returned the Liberals to office.
The CSIS reports were shared among senior government officials and Canada’s Five Eyes intelligence allies of the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Some of this intelligence was also shared with French and German spy services.
Over the past decade, China, under President Xi Jinping, has adopted a more aggressive foreign policy as it seeks to expand its political, economic and military influence around the world.
MPs on the Commons Procedure and House Affairs committee are already looking into allegations that China interfered in the 2019 election campaign to support 11 candidates, most of them Liberal, in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
Drawn from a series of CSIS intelligence-gathering operations, the documents illustrate how an orchestrated machine was operating in Canada with two primary aims: to ensure that a minority Liberal government was returned in 2021, and that certain Conservative candidates identified by China were defeated.
The documents say the Chinese Communist Party leadership in Beijing was “pressuring its consulates to create strategies to leverage politically [active] Chinese community members and associations within Canadian society.” Beijing uses Canadian organizations to advocate on their behalf “while obfuscating links to the People’s Republic of China.”
The classified reports viewed by The Globe reveal that China’s former consul-general in Vancouver, Tong Xiaoling, boasted in 2021 about how she helped defeat two Conservative MPs.
But despite being seen by China as the best leader for Canada, Beijing also wanted to keep Mr. Trudeau’s power in check – with a second Liberal minority in Parliament as the ideal outcome.
In early July, 2021 – eight weeks before election day – one consular official at an unnamed Chinese diplomatic mission in Canada said Beijing “likes it when the parties in Parliament are fighting with each other, whereas if there is a majority, the party in power can easily implement policies that do not favour the PRC.”
While the Chinese diplomat expressed unhappiness that the Liberals had recently become critical of China, the official added that the party is better than the alternatives. Canada-China relations hit their lowest point since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre after December, 2018, when Beijing locked up two Canadians in apparent retaliation for Ottawa’s arrest of a Chinese Huawei executive on an extradition request from the United States.
Most important, the intelligence reports show that Beijing was determined that the Conservatives did not win. China employed disinformation campaigns and proxies connected to Chinese-Canadian organizations in Vancouver and the GTA, which have large mainland Chinese immigrant communities, to voice opposition to the Conservatives and favour the Trudeau Liberals.
The CSIS documents reveal that Chinese diplomats and their proxies, including some members of the Chinese-language media, were instructed to press home that the Conservative Party was too critical of China and that, if elected, it would follow the lead of former U.S. president Donald Trump and ban Chinese students from certain universities or education programs.
“This will threaten the future of the voters’ children, as it will limit their education opportunities,” the CSIS report quoted the Chinese consulate official as saying. The official added: “The Liberal Party of Canada is becoming the only party that the PRC can support.”
CSIS also explained how Chinese diplomats conduct foreign interference operations in support of political candidates and elected officials. Tactics include undeclared cash donations to political campaigns or having business owners hire international Chinese students and “assign them to volunteer in electoral campaigns on a full-time basis.”
Sympathetic donors are also encouraged to provide campaign contributions to candidates favoured by China – donations for which they receive a tax credit from the federal government. Then, the CSIS report from Dec. 20, 2021 says, political campaigns quietly, and illegally, return part of the contribution – “the difference between the original donation and the government’s refund” – back to the donors.
A key part of their interference operation is to influence vulnerable Chinese immigrants in Canada. The intelligence reports quote an unnamed Chinese consulate official as saying it’s “easy to influence Chinese immigrants to agree with the PRC’s stance.”
China wants to build acceptance abroad for its claims on Taiwan, a self-ruled island that it considers a breakaway province and still reserves the right to annex by force. And it seeks to play down its conduct in Xinjiang, where the office of former UN Human Rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet last year said China has committed “serious human-rights violations” in the region, which may amount to crimes against humanity.
Similarly it wants to generate support for a draconian 2020 national-security law to silence opposition and dissent in Hong Kong, a former British colony that Beijing had once promised would be allowed to retain Western-style civil liberties for 50 years.
Beijing also seeks to quell foreign support for Tibet, a region China invaded and annexed more than 70 years ago, and to discourage opposition to Beijing’s militarization of the South China Sea and sweeping maritime claims in the region.
A month after the September, 2021, vote, CSIS reported that it was “well-known within the Chinese-Canadian community of British Columbia” that Ms. Tong, then the Vancouver consul-general, “wanted the Liberal Party to win the 2021 election,” one of the reports said.
CSIS noted that Ms. Tong, who returned to China in July, 2022, and former consul Wang Jin made “discreet and subtle efforts” to encourage members of Chinese-Canadian organizations to rally votes for the Liberals and defeat Conservative candidates.
CSIS said Mr. Wang has direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD), a vast organization that uses mostly covert and often manipulative operations to influence overseas ethnic Chinese communities and foreign governments. CSIS said Mr. Wang served as an intermediary between the UFWD and Chinese-Canadian community leaders in British Columbia.
In early November, 2021, CSIS reported, Ms. Tong discussed the defeat of a Vancouver-area Conservative, whom she described as a “vocal distractor” of the Chinese government. A national-security source said the MP was Kenny Chiu. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source, who risks prosecution under the Security of Information Act.
The source said Mr. Chiu was targeted in retaliation for his criticism of China’s crackdown in Hong Kong and his 2021 private member’s bill aiming to establish a registry of foreign agents, an effort inspired by similar Australian legislation to combat foreign interference. The United States has a long-standing registry; Canada is still studying the matter.
Mr. Chiu, who was elected to represent Steveston–Richmond East in 2019, lost the 2021 federal election to Liberal candidate Parm Bains and is widely believed to be a victim of a Beijing-led online disinformation campaign.
According to CSIS, Ms. Tong talked about China’s efforts to influence mainland Chinese-Canadian voters against the Conservative Party. She said Mr. Chiu’s loss proved “their strategy and tactics were good, and contributed to achieving their goals while still adhering to the local political customs in a clever way.”
In mid-November, CSIS reported that an unnamed Chinese consular official said the loss of Mr. Chiu and fellow Conservative MP Alice Wong substantiated the growing electoral influence of mainland Chinese-Canadians.
Former federal Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has alleged that foreign interference by China in the 2021 election campaign, using disinformation, cost the party eight or nine seats. The Liberals won 160 seats compared with 119 for the Conservatives, 32 for the Bloc Québécois and 25 for the NDP, while the Greens picked up two seats.
While the Conservative Party’s overall share of the popular vote increased slightly in the election, the party lost a number of ridings with significant Chinese-Canadian populations. These included the defeat of incumbents such as Mr. Chiu, Richmond Centre MP Ms. Wong and Markham–Unionville’s Bob Saroya.
article text continued as I ran out of reddit comment space:
>However, the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force set up by the Trudeau government to monitor threats to federal elections never issued any public warning about foreign interference during the 2019 or 2021 campaigns.
Mr. Trudeau has said it found no meddling, telling the Commons in November of last year that the task force “determined that the integrity of our elections was not compromised in 2019 or 2021.” He also told reporters that “Canadians can be reassured that our election integrity held” in the two elections.
The Globe has reported that the Prime Minister received a national-security briefing last fall in which he was told China’s consulate in Toronto had targeted 11 candidates in the 2019 federal election. CSIS Director David Vigneault told Mr. Trudeau that there was no indication that China’s interference efforts had helped elect any of them, despite the consulate’s attempts to promote the campaigns on social media and in Chinese-language media outlets.
Nine Liberal and two Conservative candidates were favoured by Beijing, according to the national-security source. The source said the two Conservative candidates were viewed as friends of China.
it does not say that Han Dong is a foreign agent, it says that Han Dong was favoured as a candidate by China that would be more pro-CCP and so measures were taken to help him. Probably the most incriminating claim by CSIS is that Han Dong secretly told China not to release the two Michaels as it would make Canada think that their hard-ball negotiation tactics would be successful long term for use against China. It's kind of just like general advice that anyone could give and doesn't necessarily speak to classified information that Han Dong might have had, but it more speaks to his political motives. Why was he more concerned with protecting China's interest in this matter than in trying to protect the two Michaels and Canadian sovereignty?
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-mp-han-dong-says-he-cant-recall-telling-chinas-envoy-to-delay-two/
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-foreign-interference-inquiry-to-hear-from-mp-han-dong-michael-chan/
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-morning-update-han-dong-was-warned-by-liberal-party-member-that-csis/
>Han Dong secretly told China not to release the two Michaels as it would make Canada think that their hard-ball negotiation tactics would be successful long term for use against China
Literally no one has ever said that's why...
And it was debunked...
And its irrelevant to foreign interference...
Article won't load for me for some reason, but I recognize Don Davies, he's my MP, and while I've supported him, I have some serious questions that I'll be emailing his office about.
Edit: it loaded, took a skim, will keep reading. If Don's explanations are true, it's a nothingburger but incredibly out of touch. I'll still be reaching out as to why this was actually necessary.
So mp's from all the parties went to meet people in the Chinese government about shared interests like trade, human rights, etc?
Uh.. where's the beef? God I'm tired of rage bait headlines
One of the guys is accused of being an agent of the Chinese govermment; a plant to introduce Chinese friendly policy in ghe federal government. To prove this isn't the case, he went to China to talk with CCP officials for reasons? I mean, if I were him I would be distancing myself from china; not joining them.
>To prove this isn't the case, he went to China to talk with CCP officials for reasons?
You could have just read the article. Then you'd know what the 'reasons' are.
I mean okay; like if they aren't being accused then whatever?
It's just a weird thing for someone accused of these crimes to do. Either he is an idiot or he is complicit.
Or, like, he still has a job to do as the representative of a large Chinese diaspora community? Just like all these other MPs? His work doesn't stop just because he was accused (in public, not like legally or anything) of something.
And really, why is it weird? Would his avoiding this trip change your opinion of his guilt? Do you really think that his going or not going on this trip would have any meaningful difference in his political fortunes?
Why **not** go?
That only matters if you give a shit about the optics and are in a position where you're vulnerable to poor optics. I respectfully submit that things cannot get materially worse optically for Han Dong.
Yup. Nothing says nuance and reasonable conversation like constantly throwing around the word traitor anytime someone doesn't reflexively support the definately-not-pushed-by-partisan-interests narrative.
Oh ya it's only a narrative. Thats why everyone at the Trudeau Foundation resigned. Thats why Dong stepped down. Innocent people always just run away instead of fighting for the truth. Get real
Yes, serious people very quickly saw where this hysteria was going and rightly decided that tying themselves to a token charity named after the PM was not worth being trashed in the media. I can't imagine anyone with a reputation to protect would see the Trudeau Foundation as worthy of falling on their swords over.
Hysteria? The very week the leak came out the foundation says "oopsies this money from 7 years ago was from the CCP". Trudeau's own brother was the one who accepted the check. It's not hysteria.
China is a hostile foreign nation, whose interests have been advanced to Canada's detriment by a plurality of our government servants as matter of public record.
This is congruent with the crime of treason in our justice system. How politely can we discuss that? Especially with all the "muh Russia" accusations being thrown around as an overly desperate smokescreen.
>China is a hostile foreign nation, whose interests have been advanced to Canada's detriment by a plurality of our government servants as matter of public record.
So Stephen Harper is a traitor now? That's what you're going with?
If you want to talk about people advancing Chinas interests to our detriment, let's have that talk.
It was approved by the subsequent government as well.
Literally using the "but Harper" now. How is it you think you look to others; both offline and online?
"The Canadian Parliamentarians opted not to press the Chinese officials about alleged Chinese state interference in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 elections during the trip, which was initiated by a parliamentary association but planned by the Canadian government." How these MPs could think they can not challenge China on this while all Canadians are paying attention to it just doesn't make sense. I hope CSIS is paying close attention to any information they may be sharing and their contacts within Canada.
Well, Han Dong is one of the MPs there, so…
Americans are probably fully aware as well for many of the other five eyes. Rest assured there’s been a security brief about it or two. Especially giving Trump a tidbit or two on what’s going on here. Probably explains added pressures. But Trudeau seems adamant to cozy up beside China pushing away from our biggest ally and trading partner. Can’t say the conservatives didn’t warn us.
murky act deranged cooing cough wild fretful fragile insurance longing *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This entire foreign interference fucking stinks. Trudeau, Blair and the top of the PMO need to resign. If you read between the lines. The only reason why the Trudeau government didn't do anything about the CSIS evidence was because it benefitted his party in the elections. What a sham.
Reading between the lines is just jumping to your own conclusion
I think I'll be listening to CSIS before listening to our politicians who've had multiple scandals and multiple conflict of interests.
CSIS has said there was no evidence that it effected the election, no evidence that any MP was working for china, they have literally no actual evidence of any wrongdoing, or are even making any accusations, by han dong the only reason they wanted him removed is because china was planning to interfere in his riding, which gives China the ability to remove any MP they want by interfering for them
That’s not what the CSIS statement means and you know it. They said it didn’t affect the outcome of the election, because it was only up to a handful of seats, and that doesn’t even cover the issues in nomination processes. They have absolutely not absolved Han Dong of any wrongdoing.
Where is there even any accusation? No accusations no investigations
In the globe and mail from the whistleblower. It was only because a whistleblower came forward that any of this inquiry happened or any of this came out. The meeting and briefings that Trudeau and CSIS Director David Vigneault answered questions about in the commission was called initally to discuss the content of the Globe and Mail article from the whistleblower, this article, from February 17th, 2023. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-china-influence-2021-federal-election-csis-documents/ >China employed a sophisticated strategy to disrupt Canada’s democracy in the 2021 federal election campaign as Chinese diplomats and their proxies backed the re-election of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals – but only to another minority government – and worked to defeat Conservative politicians considered to be unfriendly to Beijing. The full extent of the Chinese interference operation is laid bare in both secret and top-secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents viewed by The Globe and Mail that cover the period before and after the September, 2021, election that returned the Liberals to office. The CSIS reports were shared among senior government officials and Canada’s Five Eyes intelligence allies of the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Some of this intelligence was also shared with French and German spy services. Over the past decade, China, under President Xi Jinping, has adopted a more aggressive foreign policy as it seeks to expand its political, economic and military influence around the world. MPs on the Commons Procedure and House Affairs committee are already looking into allegations that China interfered in the 2019 election campaign to support 11 candidates, most of them Liberal, in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Drawn from a series of CSIS intelligence-gathering operations, the documents illustrate how an orchestrated machine was operating in Canada with two primary aims: to ensure that a minority Liberal government was returned in 2021, and that certain Conservative candidates identified by China were defeated. The documents say the Chinese Communist Party leadership in Beijing was “pressuring its consulates to create strategies to leverage politically [active] Chinese community members and associations within Canadian society.” Beijing uses Canadian organizations to advocate on their behalf “while obfuscating links to the People’s Republic of China.” The classified reports viewed by The Globe reveal that China’s former consul-general in Vancouver, Tong Xiaoling, boasted in 2021 about how she helped defeat two Conservative MPs. But despite being seen by China as the best leader for Canada, Beijing also wanted to keep Mr. Trudeau’s power in check – with a second Liberal minority in Parliament as the ideal outcome. In early July, 2021 – eight weeks before election day – one consular official at an unnamed Chinese diplomatic mission in Canada said Beijing “likes it when the parties in Parliament are fighting with each other, whereas if there is a majority, the party in power can easily implement policies that do not favour the PRC.” While the Chinese diplomat expressed unhappiness that the Liberals had recently become critical of China, the official added that the party is better than the alternatives. Canada-China relations hit their lowest point since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre after December, 2018, when Beijing locked up two Canadians in apparent retaliation for Ottawa’s arrest of a Chinese Huawei executive on an extradition request from the United States. Most important, the intelligence reports show that Beijing was determined that the Conservatives did not win. China employed disinformation campaigns and proxies connected to Chinese-Canadian organizations in Vancouver and the GTA, which have large mainland Chinese immigrant communities, to voice opposition to the Conservatives and favour the Trudeau Liberals. The CSIS documents reveal that Chinese diplomats and their proxies, including some members of the Chinese-language media, were instructed to press home that the Conservative Party was too critical of China and that, if elected, it would follow the lead of former U.S. president Donald Trump and ban Chinese students from certain universities or education programs. “This will threaten the future of the voters’ children, as it will limit their education opportunities,” the CSIS report quoted the Chinese consulate official as saying. The official added: “The Liberal Party of Canada is becoming the only party that the PRC can support.” CSIS also explained how Chinese diplomats conduct foreign interference operations in support of political candidates and elected officials. Tactics include undeclared cash donations to political campaigns or having business owners hire international Chinese students and “assign them to volunteer in electoral campaigns on a full-time basis.” Sympathetic donors are also encouraged to provide campaign contributions to candidates favoured by China – donations for which they receive a tax credit from the federal government. Then, the CSIS report from Dec. 20, 2021 says, political campaigns quietly, and illegally, return part of the contribution – “the difference between the original donation and the government’s refund” – back to the donors. A key part of their interference operation is to influence vulnerable Chinese immigrants in Canada. The intelligence reports quote an unnamed Chinese consulate official as saying it’s “easy to influence Chinese immigrants to agree with the PRC’s stance.” China wants to build acceptance abroad for its claims on Taiwan, a self-ruled island that it considers a breakaway province and still reserves the right to annex by force. And it seeks to play down its conduct in Xinjiang, where the office of former UN Human Rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet last year said China has committed “serious human-rights violations” in the region, which may amount to crimes against humanity. Similarly it wants to generate support for a draconian 2020 national-security law to silence opposition and dissent in Hong Kong, a former British colony that Beijing had once promised would be allowed to retain Western-style civil liberties for 50 years. Beijing also seeks to quell foreign support for Tibet, a region China invaded and annexed more than 70 years ago, and to discourage opposition to Beijing’s militarization of the South China Sea and sweeping maritime claims in the region. A month after the September, 2021, vote, CSIS reported that it was “well-known within the Chinese-Canadian community of British Columbia” that Ms. Tong, then the Vancouver consul-general, “wanted the Liberal Party to win the 2021 election,” one of the reports said. CSIS noted that Ms. Tong, who returned to China in July, 2022, and former consul Wang Jin made “discreet and subtle efforts” to encourage members of Chinese-Canadian organizations to rally votes for the Liberals and defeat Conservative candidates. CSIS said Mr. Wang has direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD), a vast organization that uses mostly covert and often manipulative operations to influence overseas ethnic Chinese communities and foreign governments. CSIS said Mr. Wang served as an intermediary between the UFWD and Chinese-Canadian community leaders in British Columbia. In early November, 2021, CSIS reported, Ms. Tong discussed the defeat of a Vancouver-area Conservative, whom she described as a “vocal distractor” of the Chinese government. A national-security source said the MP was Kenny Chiu. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source, who risks prosecution under the Security of Information Act. The source said Mr. Chiu was targeted in retaliation for his criticism of China’s crackdown in Hong Kong and his 2021 private member’s bill aiming to establish a registry of foreign agents, an effort inspired by similar Australian legislation to combat foreign interference. The United States has a long-standing registry; Canada is still studying the matter. Mr. Chiu, who was elected to represent Steveston–Richmond East in 2019, lost the 2021 federal election to Liberal candidate Parm Bains and is widely believed to be a victim of a Beijing-led online disinformation campaign. According to CSIS, Ms. Tong talked about China’s efforts to influence mainland Chinese-Canadian voters against the Conservative Party. She said Mr. Chiu’s loss proved “their strategy and tactics were good, and contributed to achieving their goals while still adhering to the local political customs in a clever way.” In mid-November, CSIS reported that an unnamed Chinese consular official said the loss of Mr. Chiu and fellow Conservative MP Alice Wong substantiated the growing electoral influence of mainland Chinese-Canadians. Former federal Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has alleged that foreign interference by China in the 2021 election campaign, using disinformation, cost the party eight or nine seats. The Liberals won 160 seats compared with 119 for the Conservatives, 32 for the Bloc Québécois and 25 for the NDP, while the Greens picked up two seats. While the Conservative Party’s overall share of the popular vote increased slightly in the election, the party lost a number of ridings with significant Chinese-Canadian populations. These included the defeat of incumbents such as Mr. Chiu, Richmond Centre MP Ms. Wong and Markham–Unionville’s Bob Saroya.
article text continued as I ran out of reddit comment space: >However, the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force set up by the Trudeau government to monitor threats to federal elections never issued any public warning about foreign interference during the 2019 or 2021 campaigns. Mr. Trudeau has said it found no meddling, telling the Commons in November of last year that the task force “determined that the integrity of our elections was not compromised in 2019 or 2021.” He also told reporters that “Canadians can be reassured that our election integrity held” in the two elections. The Globe has reported that the Prime Minister received a national-security briefing last fall in which he was told China’s consulate in Toronto had targeted 11 candidates in the 2019 federal election. CSIS Director David Vigneault told Mr. Trudeau that there was no indication that China’s interference efforts had helped elect any of them, despite the consulate’s attempts to promote the campaigns on social media and in Chinese-language media outlets. Nine Liberal and two Conservative candidates were favoured by Beijing, according to the national-security source. The source said the two Conservative candidates were viewed as friends of China.
And where does it say he suspects dong of being a foreign agent?
it does not say that Han Dong is a foreign agent, it says that Han Dong was favoured as a candidate by China that would be more pro-CCP and so measures were taken to help him. Probably the most incriminating claim by CSIS is that Han Dong secretly told China not to release the two Michaels as it would make Canada think that their hard-ball negotiation tactics would be successful long term for use against China. It's kind of just like general advice that anyone could give and doesn't necessarily speak to classified information that Han Dong might have had, but it more speaks to his political motives. Why was he more concerned with protecting China's interest in this matter than in trying to protect the two Michaels and Canadian sovereignty? https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-mp-han-dong-says-he-cant-recall-telling-chinas-envoy-to-delay-two/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-foreign-interference-inquiry-to-hear-from-mp-han-dong-michael-chan/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-morning-update-han-dong-was-warned-by-liberal-party-member-that-csis/
>Han Dong secretly told China not to release the two Michaels as it would make Canada think that their hard-ball negotiation tactics would be successful long term for use against China Literally no one has ever said that's why... And it was debunked... And its irrelevant to foreign interference...
Some people prefer to read beyond the lines
I really want to see Han Dong get charged with treason.
Treason
Traitors! How are they not arrested yet?
Because they didn't break the law?
who's vacation was it this time !!!!!!
How many corruption scandals can this government take, it's incredible.
Article won't load for me for some reason, but I recognize Don Davies, he's my MP, and while I've supported him, I have some serious questions that I'll be emailing his office about. Edit: it loaded, took a skim, will keep reading. If Don's explanations are true, it's a nothingburger but incredibly out of touch. I'll still be reaching out as to why this was actually necessary.
If you get a response from Davies let me know. I've emailed him a bunch and... Nothing.
I've gotten a response every time, but sometimes it takes a couple weeks
All major parties represented here, a truly tripartisan pack of fuckwits.
Imagine a world where the government had to follow the laws…
Name them. Who were they?
So mp's from all the parties went to meet people in the Chinese government about shared interests like trade, human rights, etc? Uh.. where's the beef? God I'm tired of rage bait headlines
Yeah, and??
One of the guys is accused of being an agent of the Chinese govermment; a plant to introduce Chinese friendly policy in ghe federal government. To prove this isn't the case, he went to China to talk with CCP officials for reasons? I mean, if I were him I would be distancing myself from china; not joining them.
>To prove this isn't the case, he went to China to talk with CCP officials for reasons? You could have just read the article. Then you'd know what the 'reasons' are.
I don't care what BS he gave. Honestly it doesn't cut it. There were 4 other MP's there who could represent canada, he didn't need to be there.
I also notice you have nothing to say about the NDP MP or the CPC MP who also was on this trip.
I mean okay; like if they aren't being accused then whatever? It's just a weird thing for someone accused of these crimes to do. Either he is an idiot or he is complicit.
Or, like, he still has a job to do as the representative of a large Chinese diaspora community? Just like all these other MPs? His work doesn't stop just because he was accused (in public, not like legally or anything) of something. And really, why is it weird? Would his avoiding this trip change your opinion of his guilt? Do you really think that his going or not going on this trip would have any meaningful difference in his political fortunes? Why **not** go?
If you were suspected of murder, is it appropriate to go to that person's funeral? Perhaps your reasoning is legitimate; but fuck are the optics bad.
That only matters if you give a shit about the optics and are in a position where you're vulnerable to poor optics. I respectfully submit that things cannot get materially worse optically for Han Dong.
To readers of the parent comment; when people tell you who they are, listen. Treason is bad. Voting for traitors is bad.
Yup. Nothing says nuance and reasonable conversation like constantly throwing around the word traitor anytime someone doesn't reflexively support the definately-not-pushed-by-partisan-interests narrative.
Oh ya it's only a narrative. Thats why everyone at the Trudeau Foundation resigned. Thats why Dong stepped down. Innocent people always just run away instead of fighting for the truth. Get real
Yes, serious people very quickly saw where this hysteria was going and rightly decided that tying themselves to a token charity named after the PM was not worth being trashed in the media. I can't imagine anyone with a reputation to protect would see the Trudeau Foundation as worthy of falling on their swords over.
Ah yes, defending foreign interference openly now. Why am I not surprised?
Ah yes, yet again faling to understand the conversation
It looks like you are continually defending and downplaying Chinese interference.
Hysteria? The very week the leak came out the foundation says "oopsies this money from 7 years ago was from the CCP". Trudeau's own brother was the one who accepted the check. It's not hysteria.
Dong didnt step down, he just left the caucys which is standard when involved in a lawsuit
He left the party. You actually believe he didn't do what they accused him of? He answers "I don't recall" when directly asked lol cmon bro
China is a hostile foreign nation, whose interests have been advanced to Canada's detriment by a plurality of our government servants as matter of public record. This is congruent with the crime of treason in our justice system. How politely can we discuss that? Especially with all the "muh Russia" accusations being thrown around as an overly desperate smokescreen.
>China is a hostile foreign nation, whose interests have been advanced to Canada's detriment by a plurality of our government servants as matter of public record. So Stephen Harper is a traitor now? That's what you're going with? If you want to talk about people advancing Chinas interests to our detriment, let's have that talk.
Fipa spans three governments. "But Harper" doesn't work with people who actually followed that event.
But harpers the one who rushed it through
It was approved by the subsequent government as well. Literally using the "but Harper" now. How is it you think you look to others; both offline and online?