What is this government doing to protect Canada’s sovereignty against China?
Canadians may well wonder what their government is doing to protect them from China’s schemes. Yet no serious action seems to have been taken by Canadian authorities: no court cases or RCMP investigations appear to have been launched, and no diplomats have been ejected. Indeed, the sheer size of Beijing’s diplomatic corps here should have long ago raised alarms. China has 146 envoys accredited in Canada, compared to 46 from Japan, 36 from India and 23 for the UK.
We also know the CSIS material has been shared with our Five Eyes global partners and other allied intelligence agencies, as well as among senior government officials; Global News has reported that CSIS briefed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on interference efforts in the 2019 election. But significantly, it doesn’t seem to have been transferred to the RCMP – the organization that would undertake an investigation, lay charges and advise the government about diplomats potentially engaging in these activities, which could be cause to send them back to Beijing.
This past weekend, however, Mr. Trudeau unequivocally stated that “the outcomes of the 2019 and the 2021 elections were determined by Canadians, and Canadians alone, at the voting booth.” This was an odd statement to make, however, since Canada is a secret-ballot democracy; we can’t tell exactly why people vote the way they vote, and so it seems impossible to actually know if Chinese influence was instrumental in certain political candidates losing their seats.
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