EDITORIAL: If China’s the threat start acting like it

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Liberal Leader Mark Carney said during the leaders’ debate that China poses the greatest security threat to Canada. 

That raises a number of questions. 

Why, for example, didn’t Carney immediately toss Liberal MP Paul Chiang from the party when it was revealed he had told Chinese-language media that Joe Tay — now the Conservative candidate in the Toronto riding of Don Valley North  — could be delivered to the Chinese consulate to claim a bounty of one million Hong Kong dollars? 

Instead, Carney defended Chiang, who was seeking re-election in the Toronto-area riding of Markham-Unionville, saying while he had made a terrible mistake and apologized, he considered him “a person of integrity.” 

Chiang subsequently withdrew from the race but Carney’s support of him was all the more bizarre in light of a report by Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force (SITE) on Monday. 

It described the extent of China’s “transnational repression” operation against Tay and five other pro-democracy advocates in Canada and the U.K. campaigning against the suppression of democratic rights in Hong Kong by China. 

SITE said in addition to advertising the bounty, Hong Kong police issued “wanted posters” disparaging Tay across multiple social media platforms frequented by Chinese-speaking users. 

This disinformation, SITE said, was deliberately spread through multiple accounts, while suppressing content in support of Tay. 

SITE noted other tactics used by China to intimidate human rights advocates in Canada and other countries include violence and intimidation, threats against overseas relatives, legal manipulation, ostracism and malicious digital activities such as hacking, cyberbullying, deepfakes, doxxing and online threats. 

All of this makes the Liberals’ repeated defence of China during their decade in power — including then defence minister Harjit Sajjan saying he didn’t consider China an adversary in 2019 — even after it imprisoned Canada’s two Michaels in the Meng Wanzhou affair — all the more alarming. 

They were led, remember, by a prime minister for almost a decade who, as Liberal leader before he became PM, expressed admiration for China’s “basic dictatorship.” 

If under Carney — whose relationship with China in his years as chair of Brookfield Asset Management has also raised concerns — the Liberals now believe China is the greatest threat to Canada’s security, when are they going to start acting like it?