Seven Stories for Seven Days: Following up On China
Another big story from Global News, serves up a lot of questions
The usual format is suspended for this week due to illness. Instead, let’s take a more detailed look at the resulting spinoffs of Robert Fife’s big scoop I looked at in last week’s rundown.
The story:
Last Friday, Robert Fife published a huge scoop about how the Chinese influenced the outcome of the 2021 federal election using different means including undeclared cash donations, as well as disinformation campaign against the Conservatives.
February 19: Walied Soliman co-chaired the Conservatives’ campaign, and tweeted about being party’s representative to Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats To Elections Taskforce. His thread revealed they’d met several times with CSIS, and even spoke about how the party saw signs of tampering. Full thread here. This gives more credibility to Erin O’Toole’s claims of Chinese interference
Global News released a scoop from Sam Cooper yesterday. They revealed that CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) was tracking Liberal Party MP Han Dong as far back as 2019. They alleged that he was suspected of being involved with Foreign Interference with the People’s Republic of China. Cooper’s accompanying thread is a thorough read as well. Senior aides in the Prime Minister’s Office allegedly knew of CSIS’s concerns.
Questions All Around Us
There are people calling for an official inquiry into how this was allowed to happen, what the Prime Minister’s Office knew, and when. Even, if the Prime Minister knew is open to question. There is a parliamentary committee looking into China-Canada Relations. Their next meeting is scheduled for March 6. But is this the right forum for such a serious investigation? Would we ever get at the truth at a parliamentary committee?
The political implications are serious as well. There’s someone who is allegedly involved in manipulating Canadian federal election results, sitting in government. How does the Prime Minister react to this? The obvious reaction is to kick Han Dong out of the party; which he could do. Or does he keep him because of the desperate need for seats in the GTA? Do the NDP withdraw from their agreement with the Liberals? If they do, it makes Parliament’s survival beyond the next budget a tricky thing, and that might be for the best. But the NDP don’t really want to, because the don’t have much money.
The Conservatives have their own role in this story too. If the results of the 2021 federal election are being questioned based on alleged Chinese interference, then what about the spinoffs? Pierre Poilievre will be an easier out for the Liberals than Erin O’Toole was- do we look at whether there Chinese interference in that mess? Or it was simply an opportunity to be taken in the midst of the convoy?
Questions all around on this one. The only thing certain right now, is we owe it ourselves, and to the integrity of our institutions to try and find out the answers.