The Trudeau-CCP Mysteries
The mysteries may never be solved because the Trudeau government has stonewalled an investigation into the corruption of Canada’s electoral system.
By Patricia Adams and Lawrence Solomon
Originally published on December 5, 2022. Updated with new information on June 20, 2023.
Mysteries abound as to the role the CCP played in influencing Canada’s last two federal elections. Only one known shines through the shroud: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the governing Liberals were the CCP’s beneficiaries.
The Uyghur Genocide Cabinet Vote Mystery
Why did Trudeau and all 36 of his cabinet ministers fail to vote in favour of the February 2021 Uyghur Genocide Motion, in which Canada’s House of Commons accused the Chinese government of carrying out a campaign of genocide against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, as per the definition of genocide set out in the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention?
The vote overwhelmingly repudiated the CCP – 266 voted in favour, 0 against, with two abstentions. MPs from Canada’s opposition parties voted almost unanimously in favour of repudiation, and even half of the Liberals did. Yet not only did the entire Liberal cabinet fail to support the motion; all but one failed to even show up for the vote. The sole cabinet member who did show up – Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau – informed Parliament and the world that he was abstaining “on behalf of the Government of Canada.”
The CSIS Warning Mystery
Shortly after the genocide vote, China placed sanctions on Michael Chong, the Opposition Conservatives’ Foreign Affairs Critic, who initiated the motion. Did CSIS, Canada’s spy agency, have intelligence prior to the vote that China would sanction MPs it considered hostile, and did it give the Trudeau cabinet advance warning that the CCP was planning to target any MP who voted to repudiate the CCP?
CSIS likely had that intelligence. It has long monitored Chinese activities in Canada and has accumulated extensive information on Chinese practices and policies. According to CSIS intelligence reports, following the House of Commons’ repudiation Chinese intelligence agents conducted in-depth background research into MPs who voted in favour of the Uyghur Genocide Motion. The Chinese spying activities included analyzing the hostile MPs’ ridings to determine which companies and industries had economic links to China that could be exploited.1
If CSIS’s analysis was correct, as a by-product of failing to vote for the Uyghur Genocide Motion, all Trudeau cabinet members avoided scrutiny by Chinese intelligence, sparing themselves the risk that their re-election campaigns would need to contend with the resources of the CCP.
The Liberal Backbencher Mystery
To be true to Garneau’s vote to abstain “on behalf of the government of Canada,” the Trudeau government could have prevented all of its Liberal members from voting against the CCP on the Uyghur Genocide Motion. Instead, the Liberals decided to play it both ways. By giving many Liberals the go-ahead to vote for the motion and against the CCP, the vote was deemed bipartisan in the media, defusing it as an issue in the coming election. And by having the cabinet silently stand with China by boycotting the vote, Trudeau sent an unmistakable signal that the CCP had a friend in the Liberal government.
In playing this double game, was the Trudeau government also knowingly setting a trap for the Conservatives, in the knowledge that such a vote would energize the CCP to undermine the Conservatives in an election to be called several months hence?
The Mystery Players Behind the CCP’s Election Interference
When Justin Trudeau called the 2021 federal election on August 15, the Liberal Party was polling well, on track to win a strong minority if not a majority government. But the momentum soon changed. By the end of August, the Liberals and the Conservatives were tied and in the first week of September, the Conservatives had surged to a lead in the national polls.
The Chinese government then sprang into action, with a deluge of media that attacked the Conservative Party and its leader, Erin O’Toole, as “anti-Chinese” racists, a message that resonated with Canada’s large Chinese community. To influence Canada’s business community, the Global Times, a CCP mouthpiece, warned about the consequences of the Conservatives’ tough-on-China platform: “If those measures do turn into policies, needless to say, China will pay back with a strong counterstrike, and Canada will be the one to suffer.” 2
China’s attack on the Conservatives proved fruitful. The Conservatives lost their momentum, and with it at least 13 seats that had been in play.
To date, the Trudeau government maintains secrecy over how and why the Chinese interfered. Based on CSIS reports, we know the CCP allegedly funnelled large payments to 11 federal election candidates in the 2019 election and to numerous Beijing operatives who worked as their campaign staffers through intermediaries, but the identity of the candidates and intermediaries remains a mystery. One of those intermediaries, we know, was an Ontario MPP, but which provincial MPP acted in service of the CPP remains a mystery. We know the CCP placed agents into the offices of MPs in order to influence policy, but which MPs’ offices remains a mystery. We know the CCP sought to co-opt and corrupt former Canadian officials to gain leverage in Ottawa, but who those former officials are remains a mystery.
The mysteries may never be solved because the Trudeau government over the last year has stonewalled an investigation into the corruption of Canada’s electoral system, even though CSIS formally warned the government in a report in January that “The Chinese Communist Party … is using all elements of state power to carry out activities that are a direct threat to our national security and sovereignty.”
The number of mysteries, moreover, may continue to grow, because the Trudeau government has repeatedly balked at establishing a registry that would help identify future foreign players in federal elections.
The latest mystery: In October, Trudeau’s entire federal cabinet again refused to endorse a Private Member’s Motion, which would have provided a safe haven in Canada for those fleeing the Uyghur genocide in China. Is Trudeau planning to call another election, as many are speculating, and is he counting on CCP support to again pull the Liberals through?
Update
We now know, based on a May 1, 2023, Globe and Mail report, China views Canada as a ‘high priority’ for interference: CSIS report, that the CCP went further than using economic pressures on MPs who supported the opposition motion to declare China’s treatment of its Uyghur population a genocide. The CCP sought to punish MP Michael Chong, the sponsor of the motion, by threatening his family in Hong Kong. According to a July 20, 2021 CSIS document reviewed by the Globe, China’s intelligence service, the Ministry of State Security sought information on an unnamed Canadian MP’s relatives “who may be located in the PRC, for further potential sanctions.” This effort, the CSIS report said, “is almost certainly meant to make an example of this MP and deter others from taking anti-PRC positions.” An unnamed source identified that MP as Michael Chong. Zhao Wei, a Chinese diplomat in Canada, was working on this matter. Despite initial denials by the Prime Minister that CSIS had not released this information, his National Security and Intelligence Advisor, Jody Thomas, later confirmed to Mr. Chong that the CSIS intelligence assessment of July 20, 2021, was sent by CSIS to the relevant departments and to the national-security adviser in the Privy Council Office. The government took no action. Mr. Chong remained in the dark.
On May 26, 2023, Former Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole was told by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) that China had an “active campaign of voter suppression” against him and his party in the 2021 election. Watch Mr. O’Toole as he rose on a question of privilege in the House of Commons on May 30, 2023, to share the information he learned about threats from Beijing.