Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has previously noted his admiration for China's "basic dictatorship." According to Canada's top spy agency, that admiration may go both ways.
The Globe and Mail reported that secret and top-secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents have exposed how the genocidal Chinese regime conducted an interference operation throughout the 2021 election cycle in Canada, which saw Trudeau's Liberal Party hold onto power. Trudeau's government went on to declare martial law, freeze peaceful protesters' bank accounts, and exercise some other qualities its leader may have admired in other governments.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has accused Trudeau of ignoring the interference because it managed to benefit his scandal-plagued party.
What are the details?
According to the Globe and Mail, CSIS found that an "orchestrated machine" was operating in Canada with two aims: "to ensure that a minority Liberal government was returned in 2021, and that certain Conservative candidates identified by China were defeated."
The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party was "pressuring its consulates to create strategies to leverage politically [active] Chinese community members and associations within Canadian society," said the report.
TheBlaze previously reported that CCP agents have been conducting extralegal and clandestine policing operations in Canada to intimidate and hunt down persons wanted by Beijing. Safeguard Defenders, a European pan-Asian human rights NGO, revealed that at least three communist police stations were operating in Toronto alone. Those observed by the CSIS appear to be of a higher caliber and scope.
The CSIS documents indicated that Chinese agents were politically weaponized against conservatives and put to work making sure that Trudeau was reelected, albeit with a relatively impotent minority government.
One consular official at an unnamed Chinese diplomatic mission in Canada claimed ahead of the election that China liked "it when the parties in Parliament are fighting with each other, whereas if there is a majority, the party in power can easily implement policies that do not favour the PRC."
While the Liberal Party may have been superficially critical of China, the official suggested that Trudeau's cadre was still preferable to the Conservative Party.
To ensure Trudeau could carry on with his "sunny ways," CCP forces "employed disinformation campaigns and proxies connected to Chinese-Canadian organizations" in populous areas such as the Greater Toronto Area and Vancouver, in an effort to pit Chinese immigrant communities against Conservatives and to support the Trudeau Liberals.
When pitting immigrants against Trudeau's opposition, Chinese operatives claimed that Conservatives were too critical of China and might endeavor to follow former President Donald Trump's lead and take measures to prevent Beijing's agents from stealing intellectual property, spying, and other such international improprieties.
The consular official underscored that "the Liberal Party of Canada is becoming the only party that the PRC can support."
Extra to smearing the Conservatives on behalf of Trudeau's party — and, by extension, a regime running open concentration camps — Chinese agents reportedly employed various tactics to boost Liberals, such as "undeclared cash donations to political campaigns or having business owners hire international Chinese students and 'assign them to volunteer in electoral campaigns on a full-time basis.'"
Those who shelled out money for CCP-designated candidates not only benefitted from tax credits from Trudeau's federal government, but were returned "the difference between the original donation and the government's refund" by CCP forces.
The CSIS noted that China's former consul general in Vancouver, Tong Xialing, was among the operatives adamant that the Liberal Party win the 2021 election.
After allegedly doing the CCP's bidding, Tong, formerly China's ambassador to Brunei, returned to China in 2022.
Charles Burton, a former diplomat in Canada’s Beijing embassy and a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said "The fact that her posting extended for an unusually long period of five years suggests that the Chinese Communist Party felt that her job performance was furthering China's agenda in the Vancouver area very well," reported the Bowen Island Undercurrent.
In addition to helping the CCP and the Trudeau Liberals beat the Conservatives, Tong sought to downplay the possibility that COVID-19 originated in China, demanding that the Province newspaper apologize for using the words "China virus." Tong was also instrumental in getting badly needed personal protective equipment out of Canada and in China at the outset of the pandemic.
Burton noted in August 2022 that Tong had been "exceptionally effective" in advancing China's United Front Work Department foreign influence program, which the Australian Strategic Policy Institute reportedly recognized not only as the "exportation of the CCP's political system," but a calculated means to undermine social cohesion, increase racial acrimony, and facilitate CCP crimes against foreign nations.
While effective, Tong was merely a cog in a vast and comprehensive "machine" geared toward weakening Canada and cementing Trudeau's grasp on power.
This campaign was not limited to 2021, however.
According to the report, members of the Canadian parliament are now looking into allegations that Beijing similarly worked to elect 11 mostly Liberal candidates in 2019.
An unredacted 2020 national security document revealed that the CCP utilized so-called community groups to covertly move money from Chinese officials to Canadian members of an election interference network, reported Global News.
The document underscored that such operations were "likely to be more persistent and pervasive in future elections."
To the victor goes the indifference
Trudeau claimed in November that he had no knowledge of China funding federal candidates during the 2019 and 2021 elections, and he dodged questions about whether he was ever informed of efforts by the genocidal regime to meddle in Canadian politics, reported the Globe and Mail.
Trudeau's government set up a task force to monitor security and intelligence threats to elections, which similarly failed to acknowledge or issue public warnings about foreign interference.
Concerning the most recent revelations, the leftist prime minister — narrowly cleared last week for declaring martial law in early 2022 to bring an end to a peaceful anti-vaccine mandate protest — downplayed Beijing's meddling and corresponding efforts to help him as "not a new phenomenon" and as "something that countries around the world have been grappling with for a long time."
Former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole, whose party won the popular vote in the 2021 election, but failed to secure enough seats in parliament, noted that his party lost at least eight seats owing to Chinese election interference.
Tom Kmiec, a member of parliament, asked, "Did the prime minister turn a blind eye to foreign interference because he stood to gain from it politically?"
Current Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre claimed Friday that "Justin Trudeau knew about this interference, and he covered it up because he benefited from it. ... He's perfectly happy to let a foreign, authoritarian government interfere in our elections as long as they're helping him."
\u201cThis explains a lot today.\u201d
— Pierre Poilievre (@Pierre Poilievre) 1676657672
Canadian state media — which Poilievre has both implied is a propaganda outfit for the Trudeau Liberals and promised to defund — parroted Trudeau's suggestion that the Chinese interference did not ultimately change the outcome of the election.
"Canada has some of the best and most robust elections in the world, and all Canadians can have total confidence that the outcomes of the 2019 and 2021 elections were determined by Canadians, and Canadians alone, at the voting booth," said Trudeau.
A CSIS spokesman told Canadian state media, "Although Canada's electoral system is strong, foreign interference can erode trust and threaten the integrity of our democratic institutions, political system, fundamental rights and freedoms, and ultimately, our sovereignty."
The agency's findings have reportedly been shared among senior government officials, as well as Canada's Five Eyes intelligence allies, including the United States.
The Montreal Gazette reported that David Mulroney, Canada's former ambassador to China, recently told a parliamentary committee that the nation must be ready and willing to kick out Chinese diplomats involved in interference or harassment.
A "failure to do so only encourages increasingly brazen meddling," added Mulroney.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!