[Éditorial] A public inquiry is essential to counter China’s interference in the federal elections

Over the past few days, we have witnessed an accelerated deterioration in the public’s bond of trust in Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, the result of the Prime Minister’s casualness in protecting Canadian democracy from Chinese interference.

Not a day goes by without the Globe and Mail adds a layer of revelations about China’s outrageous provocation and the dubious ties Beijing vassals have with the liberals. Not a day goes by without the Prime Minister failing miserably in the test of leadership that this great democrat, enamored of the values ​​of justice, should nevertheless pass hands down after so many years of experience in power. . He is content, instead, to criticize the leaks of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in the media and to accuse his adversaries of racism against Asians.

When it’s not Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell accusing the Tories of being sore losers and denying the 2021 election results, going so far as to compare them to Donald Trump’s conspiratorial supporters, c It is the Prime Minister himself who trivializes the situation. He does not deny Chinese interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections, quite the contrary, but he mitigates the consequences by saying that these gestures would not have changed the results. The Liberals would have won anyway, and that seems to be all that matters to them.

Tell that to the eight conservative candidates who attribute their defeat in 2021 to the surplus of coordinated efforts by activists and donors aligned with Beijing’s interests, as evidenced by CSIS information leaked into the Globe. Xi’s regime got what it wanted, the election of a minority liberal government.

It is not by adding and subtracting the votes that one must assess the allegations of interference by China, but by looking at the big picture. China has demonstrated for itself and other authoritarian regimes that it is possible to interfere in the Canadian electoral process with disconcerting ease, without being slapped on the knuckles by the authorities responsible for respect the electoral law of the country. As a bonus, the Prime Minister-elect welcomes this attack on Canada’s national sovereignty with a shrug. In this sense, the rascals bet on the right horse. They won all the way.

A new report by independent experts fully validates Prime Minister Trudeau’s position. The group, which reviewed China’s sophisticated intrusions into the 2019 and 2021 elections, said they weren’t significant enough to change the results. With or without the help of China, it was a minority Trudeau government that awaited Canada the day after the election of September 20, 2021.

We now learn that the chairman of the group of experts, Morris Rosenberg, was also the chairman of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, from 2014 to 2018. The same foundation which received, with the University of Montreal, one million dollars from wealthy businessmen with ties to the Chinese regime in 2016. Of this amount, $200,000 was intended for the Foundation directly, $50,000 was used to erect a statue of former Prime Minister Trudeau (great architect of the normalization of relations between China and Canada) and $750,000 were awarded in scholarships to the University of Montreal. Embarrassed, the Foundation announced that it would reimburse $140,000 (the amount it officially received from Beijing-linked donors).

All of this may just be an unfortunate coincidence, but the fact remains that this web of links affects the credibility of the expert group’s report. Serious doubts remain as to his impartiality. With the luxury of hindsight, we can connect the dots of this predictable paint by number. One can reasonably wonder if the fundraising cocktail organized by Zhang Bin (the mastermind behind the donation to the Foundation), in 2016, was not the first point of this disturbing picture. What if Chinese interference in the elections was to yin what the illicit financing of the Liberal Party of Canada (PLC) is in yang in its scandal?

The Prime Minister believes that the creation of a register of foreign agents as well as the work of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House of Commons Affairs will be enough to reassure voters. He ignores the obvious appearance of partiality concerning him. If Beijing’s political interference turns out to be at the intersection of PLC funding, one conclusion is in order. Justin Trudeau will not have the required distance, and even less the ethical reflex, to shed complete light on this affair.

The Commissioner of Canada Elections could get involved, but what more does she intend to accomplish than she should have already done? The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) should investigate, but the Deputy Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Shawn Tupper, went there with an astonishing confirmation in the Commons. There is no active criminal investigation into the 2021 election. Let’s not even talk about the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada (CEO), an organization that lacked the tools and scope to detect bogus volunteers and the illegal funding of Liberal candidates in the 2019 and 2021 polls. who have a secret level security clearance have not raised awareness. Moreover, CSIS is not the appropriate forum to shed light on the interference. Its evidence and intelligence gathering methods cannot be used in court.

We are entering a decisive phase of this scandal. The institutions in place, starting with the Prime Minister’s Office, have failed in the task of shedding light on a problem that is shaking Canadians’ trust in their democratic system and the institutions responsible for protecting it. integrity. Among the institutions that are still trying to play their watchdog role, none can claim to have all the powers, information and expertise necessary to tackle the task. So far, a public inquiry has been called for by all opposition parties as well as former influential figures in government: former adviser to Prime Minister Gerald Butts, former director of CSIS Richard Fadden, former DGEC Jean-Pierre Kingsley.

When a similar situation arises in a democratic country, and governance issues are of the utmost importance to preserve the trust and integrity of public institutions, we can conclude that the conditions justifying the holding of a public inquiry are reunited. It is an unavoidable decision that we will have to demand relentlessly from the Trudeau government.

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