“When you do something, know that you will have against you those who would like to do the same thing, those who wanted the opposite and the vast majority of those who wanted to do nothing. » – Confucius
It is this thought of the great Chinese philosopher that perhaps best sums up the work of the Committee of Parliamentarians on National Security and Intelligence. To summarize, there are these foreign powers who compete with us, those who seek to undermine our institutions, because they work unlike theirs (the first and second are often the same…), and our leaders who, like the vast majority of Canadians, wash their hands of it.
Last week, the Committee revealed a pure scandal: certain corrupt elected officials whose names it did not mention would have collaborated in all conscience with foreign powers. But what we must especially remember is that this same Committee has already been insisting for some time on the indolence of the Canadian government in matters of foreign affairs: “While the government recognized this shortcoming in 2018, it took four years to develop and obtain approval for its strategy to combat state-sponsored hostile activities,” states the Committee in the conclusion of its March report (article 173).
Canada’s laxity, particularly towards China, has actually been going on for a long time. At the beginning of the 2000s, the multinational Nortel was already the prey of Chinese industrial espionage, the serious misdeeds of which were not unrelated to the fall of the company. Let us also recall the famous saga surrounding Huawei, which resulted in the imprisonment of the “two Michaels” just a few years ago, a perfect illustration of the philosophy of the Middle Kingdom in matters of foreign relations.
China, an old friend of Canada?
The question we must ask ourselves today is of course: “How did we end up allowing countries like China, Russia and India to interfere with so much zeal and so little scruple? in the Canadian economy and politics? » If the answer involves endless research as the subject is so broad, there are still interesting avenues available to us. For example, this old capitalist reflex of “wanting to make money” business at all costs “.
Working for a major financial institution, I remember the poorly suppressed enthusiasm of the bankers who, in the 1990s, increased their visits to Shanghai and other booming Chinese megacities. There was no question of distrusting China’s autocratic management style, which offered extraordinary development opportunities. Furthermore, if the Chinese economy exerted an irresistible attraction for our companies, it could also count on a very favorable ideological welcome on Canadian soil.
Everyone who knows a little about the life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau remembers his famous trip to China in the company of his friend Jacques Hébert in the early 1960s. They returned subjugated by communist China, whose virtues they extolled beneath the surface. silence the famine caused by the great leap forward. A few years later, having become prime minister, he was one of the first Western heads of state to establish links with the same China, links which lasted until very recently. In 2013, then a Liberal MP, Justin made this astonishing declaration: “I have a certain level of admiration for China, because their dictatorship allows them to make a sudden economic shift. »
Does the Trudeaus’ legendary sympathy for China partly explain the exceptional tolerance towards Chinese interference? While it is difficult to answer this question, it must at least be admitted that China, like other governments, has found a very welcoming environment here. A post-national country, an expression born from the imagination of Justin Trudeau, Canada established through its 1988 multiculturalism law the right of everyone to live there almost as in their ancestral land.
It would be nice if, at the same time, this incentive to never really become completely Canadian was not one of the fertile grounds for foreign interference. A citizen imprisoned in a ghetto of any diaspora will be easier to influence than one who really lives in Canada, knows its laws and will have the reflex to call the police in the event of an attempt to manipulate external agents…
The president of the Commission on Foreign Interference, Marie-Josée Hogue, herself highlighted the risks that multicultural philosophy posed by opening the way to disproportionate influence by foreign governments. On such a good path, it could have underlined the other point of support for foreign interference: the emergence in recent years of clientelism in line with this ghettoization of Canada which pushes parties to espouse extranational causes such as those Sikhs or, conversely, Indians, to choose between the State of Israel and Palestine (but more often to solicit both one and the other…), while wisdom would dictate that the best possible choice is that of ‘to be simply Canadian…
The liberal solution: do as little as possible
To prevent foreign interference, the government is proposing a number of soft initiatives, such as some legislative changes and the creation of a registry for “foreign influencers”. In my opinion, this will be as successful as the self-declaration of gangsters and mafiosi to the police in combating organized crime.
After years of laxity, one would hope that the Liberal Party of Canada (PLC) would at least change its internal rules for nominations in order to avoid cases of gross abuse, such as those of Han Dong, who became a Liberal candidate in the suburbs of Toronto thanks to Chinese students (non-citizens) sent as reinforcements by the Chinese government.
But despite the Dong affair, the PLC has barely changed its very low requirements for participation in nominations and becoming a party member. In short, liberal awareness continues to be minimal. As if, on the side of power, we were content to wait for the storm to pass, certain that the majority of poorly informed Canadians will end up forgetting everything anyway…
Ultimately, Confucius may have been right…