GOLDSTEIN: Chiang case raises concerns about Carney and China

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Liberal MP Paul Chiang’s decision to withdraw from his candidacy in a Toronto-area riding after saying a Conservative opponent could be delivered to the Chinese consulate in Toronto to claim a bounty of one million Hong Kong dollars, has reignited the issue of China’s foreign interference in our democracy. 

Particularly so given Liberal leader Mark Carney’s bizarre and alarming support of Chiang, despite his appalling conduct and Carney’s refusal to dump him as a Liberal candidate, before Chiang announced he wouldn’t run. 

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre alleged Carney is beholden to the communist dictatorship. 

He said that includes a $276-million loan by the government-controlled Bank of China to Brookfield Asset Management when Carney was its chairman, as well as meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last year in China, along with other North American business leaders, as part of a charm offensive by Xi to promote trade. 

“Given that China has murdered our people, taken our people hostage, how is he ever going to stand up to foreign interference?” Poilievre asked. 

Carney denied the allegations saying his focus is on increasing trade with Europe as a bulwark against U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade protectionism and that all Poilievre has ever done as a politician is to engage in “slogans, soundbites and slander.” 

He said while trade with China is important — although Canada and China are currently locked in a trade war — any future dealings with it must proceed with caution. 

That said, the view of any Canadian prime minister on China is a matter of public interest and crucially important to the safety and security of Canadians. 

Consider former PM Justin Trudeau’s infamous expression of admiration for China’s “basic dictatorship” in 2013 when he was Liberal leader when, years later, allegations that his government turned a blind eye to foreign interference by China led to the foreign interference inquiry headed by Justice Marie-Josee Hogue. 

It concluded this interference did not undermine the integrity of the last two elections which returned Liberal minority governments. 

But it also identified China as the primary perpetrator of foreign interference in Canada, including the use of “transnational repression.”

That involves silencing Canadian citizens of Chinese origin, as well as human rights dissidents living in Canada protesting Beijing’s dictatorship, through the use of  blackmail, intimidation and threats against them and their families living in China and Hong Kong. 

China denied the allegations. It described what the Hogue inquiry concluded were secret, illegal police stations operating in Canada by China as instruments of transnational repression, as service organizations assisting the Chinese-Canadian community in renewing government documents. 

But in addition to these police stations, the CBC’s Fifth Estate reported in 2023 that the Canadian government through Global Affairs Canada, the RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency knowingly co-operated for decades with China’s campaign to get alleged economic criminals living in Canada to “voluntarily” return to China to face trial, including allowing Chinese agents to operate on Canadian soil. 

While they were purportedly following rules set by the government, critics said Canadian authorities ignored China’s violations of this agreement, turned a blind eye to China’s kangaroo court system and accepted “evidence” against alleged violators extracted by torture in China, in return for Chinese cooperation on issues such as trade and combatting fentanyl smuggling. 

To think China won’t continue to interfere in Canadian democracy — and that the views of Canada’s next prime minister about China aren’t vital to our national security — would be dangerously naive.