Allegations of interference in the nomination of a Chinese Canadian Liberal candidate in Toronto, by the Chinese Government, before the 2019 election have surfaced.
On the face the allegations are hard to believe. First they are all based on anonymous sources, quoting documents that have not been released to the public and those anonymous sources are from CSIS. That is an organization where leaking operational data to the media carries heavy jail time if someone from that organization is caught doing so. Hell, people from CSIS are even forbidden from actually admitting they work for CSIS. Second, the meat of the allegations is a CSIS official briefed a senior member of the Liberal Party about suspicions of the candidate being supported by the Chinese government. It should be noted that a CSIS official would not brief anybody until it went through a rather comprehensive approval process and the particulars of that meeting would be recorded by both CSIS and the officials in the Party. Judging by the details in the news story it would not take long for both CSIS and the Party to figure out who was involved in that meeting, which means the journalist outed his source by publishing those details. I am no journalist but I am pretty certain that journalists are not supposed to do that and I am pretty certain that he would not do that. That sort of brings into question the verity of the whole scenario described by the journalist but he need not worry because neither CSIS nor the Party will produce any evidence to confirm or deny his allegations on national security grounds. Pretty convenient if you ask me.
That has not stopped Conservative supporters in a couple of media outlets from calling for a public inquiry into the whole thing. Such an inquiry would be pointless because the MP involved in the allegations would have the right to see the evidence against him, which is held by CSIS, and they will not release that evidence to a public inquiry. Of course, any inquiry could legally compel CSIS to release the information but that would severely damage CSIS's relationship in the Five Eyes, the partnership between the intelligence agencies of Canada, the US, Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand. That in turn would actually compromise Canadian security much more than what was described in the news story because it would cripple the ability of CSIS to gather intelligence but who cares if it would be an opportunity to own the Libs.
On the other hand some sort of public inquiry on the broader issue of foreign interference, all interference not just this one allegation, would be an eye opening exercise. After all I would bet my house that such interference has been going on for decades. That will not happen either because it would also be pointless.
This story has been circulating social media for a couple of days but so far we have not heard a peep out of the CPC. You would think they would be all over this. The reason for this is they are probably aware that they have been receiving assistance from foreign actors for years. They did not invite it and there is really nothing they can do to stop it but with the state of Canadian politics right now people would assume the worst, which they do not need because many already assume the worst. That has not been helped by revelations that several CPC MPs, including a senior member of the Shadow Cabinet had dinner with an avowed fascist member of the European Parliament. (More on that in another post)
So here we are. Who knows where this will go but I am certain that a public inquiry will not be called and those very same Conservative commentators will scream cover-up, with the rubes eating it up.
A word about Chinese interference in our politics. One of the issues exposed by this leak and the reaction to it is how petty and provincial is our politics. The Chinese do not care who is leading Canada because they consider the Canadian government to be largely irrelevant in the international community. There goal is not to influence Canadian policy. China is the second largest economy in the world, they are endeavouring to make it the largest and they are spending alot of money and effort to increase their military might. In short they are trying to become a superpower, if not the superpower, and the biggest obstacle to that is the Western democracies. They still set the agenda for international relations and China wants to change that. One way to do that is to undermine the political and democratic institutions of the Western democracies.
So the petty details of how they might have interfered in the nomination process in a single Federal riding are not relevant except in the context of their overarching goal. It is piecing together that bigger picture using these individual instances that we should be focusing on, or more precisely the Canadian intelligence community should be focusing on, and not going down a rabbit hole of a single instance.
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