Members of the Canadian secret service are subjecting Justin Trudeau to the ordeal of the gout. They leak new information every day about the embarrassing enthusiasm with which Beijing has wished the Liberal Party of Canada success in recent years. Summary of previous episodes.
In May 2016, the Prime Minister was the star of a fundraising cocktail party held at the residence of the President of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Toronto for some thirty business people from the Chinese community. The price of entry was $1,500 a cover. Attendees included Zhang Bin, a Chinese government aide, who along with a partner the day after the event donated $200,000 to the Trudeau Foundation, named in honor of Pierre Trudeau, and $50,000 to erect a statue of him. Zhang Bin is portrayed by the Globe and Mail as “a political adviser to the Chinese government in Beijing and a senior apparatchik in the Chinese state’s promotional activities network”, who allegedly repaid Bin for his generosity.
In July 2016, the Liberal association of Papineau, riding of Justin Trudeau, receives nearly $70,000 from donors from the Chinese community in Vancouver, or 68% of all contributions for the year. These contributions are divided into 45 individual donations not exceeding the maximum amount of $1,500 then permitted by law and disbursed within 48 hours.
Immediately after, the chartered bank Wealth One, aimed at the Chinese community and owned by many of those present at the Toronto cocktail, was licensed by the federal government. The Ministry of Finance swears that there is no connection between these events. In February this year, Chrystia Freeland wrote to three of its founding shareholders warning them that they were likely to come under pressure from the Chinese government and informing them that other financial institutions were accusing them of money laundering, according to the Globe and Mail.
In July 2019, according to intelligence sources cited by the Global Network, the Chinese Consulate in Toronto was instrumental in Han Dong’s victory in the Liberal nomination in the Don Valley North. In particular, he mobilized Chinese students, with false addresses, to vote in favor of Han. Liberal Party rules do not require members, whose cards are free, to be Canadian citizens. Global reports that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) notified the Prime Minister’s Office that it suspected Han of being part of the Chinese influence network. CSIS tried unsuccessfully to convince the Prime Minister to withdraw his candidacy. One of Han’s allies is former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister Michael Chan, a ” kingmaker politician and a key Liberal fundraiser,” says Global, and currently Vice Mayor of the Town of Markham. Global reports that CSIS suspects him of “covertly providing political information to the Toronto consulate and also vowing to attack critics of the Chinese Communist Party.” Chan, like Deputy Han, denies everything.
The Chinese influence operation for the 2019 election reportedly targeted 11 ridings in the Toronto area.
For the September 2021 election, the Chinese consulate in Vancouver helped defeat Conservative MP Kenny Chiu, who was highly critical of China’s repression in his native Hong Kong. According to CSIS documents seen by the Globe and Mail, the consulate asked Chinese-controlled companies to hire students and loan them to Liberal Party of Canada organizations. These students, and others, were also responsible for raising funds and illegally reimbursing donors for the part of the donation that does not qualify for a federal tax credit. Canadian spies report that the consulate was extremely pleased with the growing impact of its influence operations, which they say also helped defeat conservative Alice Wong. Examination of the election results in ridings with a high concentration of Chinese Canadians indicates that a reversal of the trend has cost the positions of two other Conservatives, in Richmond Center in Vancouver and Markham-Unionville in Toronto. After the election, then-Conservative leader Erin O’Toole estimated that China’s disinformation campaign had cost his party eight or nine seats.
The Liberal Party certainly did not need Chinese help to win the election, and the overall result was not affected, as the Prime Minister likes to repeat. However, his party is the great beneficiary of Chinese influence, and it appears that illegal acts have been committed in the financing of his party in Vancouver and that the Liberal internal rules lend themselves to these manipulations.
Pierre Poilievre accuses Justin Trudeau of not wanting to act against Chinese influence, because it serves his interests. The most charitable explanation is as follows. Like his father, who recognized China diplomatically and was treated as a hero there, and like Jean Chrétien, who was the first to break Chinese diplomatic isolation after the Tian’anmen massacre, Justin Trudeau was obsessed with the prospects of Canadian success in China and no doubt felt that there were more petals than thorns in this relationship.
He would not be the first of his line to have been fooled. In their 1961 book Two Innocents in Red China (Éditions de l’Homme), Pierre Trudeau and Jacques Hébert celebrate “with what success the Chinese government is working to pull its people out of misery several thousand years old”. Their trip took place in September 1960, when Mao’s senseless Great Leap Forward had caused what is now called the “Great Chinese Famine” (1959-1961). Considered the worst famine in the history of mankind, it led to the grave, through sheer incompetence and delusions of grandeur, between 15 and 55 million Chinese. It is undoubtedly to celebrate this beautiful innocence that the Chinese State wanted to finance a statue in honor of Pierre Elliott, who, under the influence, had seen nothing, understood nothing.
Father, columnist and author, Jean-François Lisée led the PQ from 2016 to 2018.
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