The nine-page CSIS report, dated July 20, 2021, notes that a Chinese Ministry of State Security official credentialled as a Chinese diplomat in Canada had sought to put pressure on an unnamed Canadian MP’s relatives “who may be located in the PRC, for further potential sanctions.” The CSIS report said this was “almost certainly meant to make an example of this MP and deter others from taking anti-PRC positions.”
Chong has been sanctioned by Beijing, and Chong has family in Hong Kong, and a national security source confirmed that the unnamed MP in the report is indeed Michael Chong.
If the latest CSIS report in the Globe sounds familiar, here’s a piece I wrote three years ago:
Who do Chinese diplomats think they are, threatening Canadians this way?And here’s Sam Cooper at Global News from 2019:
Why CSIS thinks Canada is a ‘permissive target’ for China’s interference. That was about a report from National Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliamentarians (NISCOP) which found that Canada had become an “attractive and permissive target” for Beijing’s overseas operations, and that those operations target the “foundations of our fundamental institutions, including our system of democracy itself.”
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Why such a “permissive” target? Because the Beijing regime had won the support of influential Canadians with carrots and sticks, and public attention to the crisis was “almost non-existent,” the NSICOP report asserted. The report was just one of several over five years that the Trudeau government totally ignored and didn’t even bother responding to, NSICOP complained last year (See:
Changing the Subject, Burying the Story).
And of course it’s NISCOP Trudeau tells us will look into the recent revelations of Beijing’s election-interference operations. So good luck this time around, NISCOP! He’s handed all questions about the election-interference scandals to
another old China hand, the former Governor-General David Johnston, who has spent a half-century helping Beijing in its efforts to pull Canada into its orbit.
And what of that Chinese Ministry of State Security official masquerading as a diplomat in the latest Globe story? It’s a spy by the name of Zhao Wei. Such friends in high places he has!
A variety of Team Trudeau bigshots have been enjoying Zhao’s company all this time, at all manner of banquets and luncheons and commemorations. As in International Trade Minister Mary Ng, Liberal MPs Geng Tan, Han Dong (now sitting it out as an independent MP while his back-channel liaisons with Beijing’s emissaries are explained away), Majid Jowhari, Shawn Chen, and even the hapless Ontario Conservative MPP Vincent Ke (also sitting it out as an independent for now, having been implicated in the same backstairs election-interference operation that has complicated things for Dong).
Anyway, this is all just gross. Chong is about as upstanding an MP as you’ll meet on the Hill, and he’s furious that the Trudeau government appears to have been sitting on this powder keg for two years and nobody bothered to tell him. The prime minister says he’ll have his “officials” look into it.
It just never ends. Beijing’s bullying and intimidation and strongarming in Canada have been researched and documented ad nauseum, to no noticeable effect. Here’s an exhaustive report, last updated three years ago:
Harassment and Intimidation of Individuals in Canada Working on China-Related Human Rights Concerns. Here’s just one case I wrote about five years ago:
How China's dictatorship reached a student in Vancouver.
Speaking of officials looking into things, Morris Rosenberg was assigned to look into foreign interference in the 2021 federal elections and gave the process a clean bill of health. This is the same Morris Rosenberg, a former Trudeau Foundation luminary, who is appearing before the House Ethics Committee today. Rosenberg will be answering questions about the $140,000 dirty-money donation from a Chinese billionaire and regime operative that was part of an influence operation aimed at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself.
And on Wednesday, the insufferable celebrity documentarist, China enthusiast and vanity memoirist Alexandre Trudeau, Justin’s brother, will appear before the same committee to explain why he arranged the donation. Perhaps he’ll have some insight into why almost everyone on the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation board has resigned in embarrassment and disgust over the foundation’s conduct, which included monkeying around with tax receipts to hide who was really behind the money.