Following last Friday’s announcement of the Chinese government’s intervention in the 2021 Canadian federal election in favor of Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister is trying to distract from Beijing’s partisan preferences.

“It’s not one party against another,” said Trudeau, who accused the Conservative Party of trying to politicize allegations of Chinese interference in the election.

A Trudeau ally echoed the prime minister’s position, citing a US parallel to lingering questions about election integrity.

“It’s the same tactic as the line [Donald] Trump to question future election results,” said Jennifer O’Connell, parliamentary secretary at the Department of Intergovernmental Affairs.

Canadian intelligence agencies have learned that Chinese diplomats made undeclared donations to political campaigns in Canada and recruited local businessmen to hire foreign students to “assign them as full-time campaign volunteers. election,” the Globe & Mail reported last week. .

“Most importantly, intelligence reports show that Beijing was determined to prevent the conservatives from winning. China has used disinformation campaigns and third parties linked to Chinese-Canadian organizations in Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area, which have large Chinese immigrant communities, to oppose the Conservatives and favor Trudeau’s Liberals.” noted journalists Robert Fife and Steven Chase.

The government in Beijing has broadcast messages in Chinese media, such as: “The Liberal Party of Canada becomes the only party that the PRC (People’s Republic of China) can support.

Documents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the national equivalent of the CIA, obtained by reporters revealed that the Chinese Communist Party “pressured its consulates to create strategies to politically mobilize members and associations”. [ativas] of the Chinese community within Canadian society.

The purpose of China’s interference in the elections was to gain support for Chinese plans to annex Taiwan, as well as to downplay ongoing human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

CSIS sources also discovered that former Vancouver Consul General Tong Xiaoling and his successor Wang Jin had explicitly tried to influence Chinese-Canadian organizations to vote for the Liberal Party.

Last Friday, another Canadian agency also revealed that three unnamed CSIS sources had discovered that Han Dong, a newly elected Liberal Party lawmaker, was likely a member of a wider Chinese “foreign interference network”. Dong was chosen to succeed parliamentarian Geng Tan, who reportedly left the Chinese consulate in Toronto unhappy.

Although he was alerted in September 2022 to the allegations, Trudeau did nothing about it.

Trudeau’s former allies are now demanding that the prime minister open an investigation into the matter.

“The sweeping changes in geopolitics and technological advances in recent years show that we are in a different and more dangerous world, where many foreign actors have an interest in and ability to undermine democratic institutions,” said one. Trudeau’s former secretary. at the Globe & Mail on Sunday (26).

However, Trudeau was apparently satisfied with an investigation by the House of Commons Internal Affairs and Procedure Committee and refuted calls for a public inquiry.

In a potentially related move, the Trudeau government announced that TikTok, the Chinese social media app, would be removed from all federal government devices on Tuesday.

©2023 National Review. Published with permission. originally in English.