Far-left Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party continued to reject calls this weekend for a public investigation into concerns, initially raised in a February report, that the Communist Party of China has been actively meddling in Canadian elections to aid sympathetic candidates.
The Globe and Mail reported last month that it had viewed documents in which the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), in top-secret exchanges, documented the Chinese government “pressuring its consulates to create strategies to leverage politically [active] Chinese community members and associations within Canadian society.”
Beijing, it asserted, was working against Conservative Party candidates and aiding Trudeau’s Liberal Party in the 2021 national elections by spreading rumors that Conservative candidates opposed the education of Chinese immigrant children. More egregiously, the report claimed China was engaging in “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.’”
Foreign nationals cannot legally donate to political campaigns in Canada unless they are permanent residents or dual citizens. Canadian law also provides a blanket ban on foreigners working to “unduly influence” voters.
The documents reportedly did not indicate that Trudeau or his party was involved in the conspiracy, though Trudeau has faced accusations of “pay-for-play” schemes with Chinese businessmen since at least 2016. Trudeau’s father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, famously enjoyed a decades-strong friendship with top Chinese Communist Party officials; his younger brother Alexandre has served as a propagandist for the Chinese government.
Global News, another Canadian outlet, accused member of Parliament (MP) Han Dong of being a “witting affiliate in China’s election interference networks.” Global News claimed that national security officials warmed Trudeau in 2019 that Dong was in frequent communication with the Chinese government. “Chinese international students with fake addresses were allegedly bussed into the riding and coerced to vote in Dong’s favour” in the 2019 election,” it additionally claimed, citing anonymous sources.
Global News similarly reported in November that CSIS warned Trudeau of at least 11 legislative candidates in the 2019 election with ties to communist China.
Canada Elections Commissioner Caroline Simard confirmed on Thursday that she had launched an investigation into the 2021 elections and potential Chinese communist meddling.
“I am seized with the importance of this issue … as well as the need to reassure Canadians under these exceptional circumstances,” Simard said, according to Canada’s CBC broadcaster. “We have conducted a rigorous and thorough review of every complaint and every piece of information that has been brought to our attention concerning allegations of foreign interference. This review is ongoing as I speak, to see if there’s tangible evidence of wrongdoing under the Canada Elections Act.”
According to the CBC, Simard said she had received 158 complaints regarding the 2019 elections and 16 complaints at the time about 2021.
Simard’s investigation will take place outside of the public eye, as her agency works independent of the Trudeau government. Trudeau is now facing growing calls from Parliament for a public inquiry from both sides of the aisle.
“The way to stop alleged secret Chinese interference is to refuse to keep their secrets for them. A fully independent and non-partisan public inquiry is the way to shine a light into the shadows,” Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the radical leftist New Democrat Party (NDP), asserted last week. His party moved in the House of Congress to demand Trudeau open such an investigation, with Conservative support.
Another Canadian official voicing support for the inquiry is Morris Rosenberg, a former senior official who drafted a report finding that the 2019 and 2021 elections were not tarnished by foreign interference. A public inquiry is “an option that I think needs to be on the table.”
“I would also say that it’s important to think through what is the scope of the public inquiry,” he said in remarks on Sunday during CTV’s Question Period. “Whether there’s a public inquiry or not, it ought not to take away from the sense of urgency that the government should have about continuing to work on this.”
“Canadians can take tremendous reassurance in the fact that it was found that our election integrity held absolutely in 2019 and 2021,” Trudeau said on Friday, refusing calls for a public inquiry and insisting a Liberal Party-created entity would secretly investigate the matter.
“We don’t question the overall results of the last election,” a frustrated NDP House Leader Peter Julian lamented following Trudeau’s refusal. “But the best way to stop foreign governments from continuing to operate in the shadows of our elections is to shine a light into those shadows with a full, transparent independent public inquiry. Why is Mr. Trudeau avoiding that?”
Kenny Chiu, a Conservative former lawmaker who lost his seat in the 2021 elections, told CBC on Friday that he believes Chinese election meddling affected his voters.
“We’re continuously allowing and permitting foreign countries that are aggressive and predatorial to penetrate our systems, our institutions and jeopardizing their integrity,” Chiu said, “without our government doing anything to protect and safeguard it.”
Chiu said that his Chinese immigrant voters received a flood of “disinformation” on their accounts on WeChat, a messaging application controlled by the Chinese government.
The Trudeau government, through Foreign Minister Melanie Joly, addressed the controversy last week in a meeting with her counterpart, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang. Joly reportedly insisted that “Canada will never tolerate any form of foreign interference in its internal affairs and democracy.” In response, the Chinese Foreign Ministry published a screed expressing “firm opposition” to her request.
“Voicing China’s firm opposition, Qin Gang said the accusation of so-called ‘China’s interference’ in Canada is utterly groundless and is nothing but unfounded denigration,” the Foreign Ministry insisted in a statement. “China has never meddled in other countries’ internal affairs, and opposes any interference in other countries’ internal affairs.”
“The Canadian side should take concrete measures to ensure the normal operation of Chinese diplomatic missions in Canada and prevent rumors and hype from disrupting bilateral relations,” Qin reportedly scolded.
Trudeau, and his family, have been facing years of allegations of inappropriate ties to China. In 2016, the Globe and Mail set off a scandal with the revelation that the prime minister had attended a Liberal Party fundraiser and hobnobbed with Chinese businessmen before one of them, Zhang Bin, donated one million Canadian dollars, in part to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, creating the appearance of a “pay-for-play” scheme – access to the head of government in exchange for Foundation funding and paying for seats at Liberal Party fundraisers.
“Mr. Zhang is a political adviser to the Chinese government in Beijing and a senior apparatchik in the network of Chinese state promotional activities around the world,” the Globe and Mail observed.
Trudeau did not deny his presence at the fundraiser at the time but claimed, bizarrely, that he was there to “create jobs.”
The Trudeau Foundation announced it would return Zhang’s nearly seven-year-old donation specifically allocated to the Foundation, about $200,000 in Canadian currency, this week.
Pierre Trudeau traveled China as a youth and met with Mao Zedong in 1960. As Breitbart News senior contributor and Government Accountability Institute president Peter Schweizer explained in his 2022 book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, Pierre Trudeau’s relationship with China has been deeply influential in Canadian politics for decades. the elder Trudeau sought business opportunities in Beijing through partnerships such as that with the Power Corporation, a group that specialized in aiding Canadian business dealings in China.
“In 1978, the Power Corporation formed the Canada-China Business Council with Prime Minister Trudeau’s support,” Schweizer wrote, noting that Trudeau and Power Corporation leader Paul Desmarais “guided Canada’s relationship with Beijing, with Trudeau as prime minister pushing closer relations with the regime while Desmarais cashed in on significant deals with Beijing’s elite.”