Canada: Opposition Parties Demand Inquiry Into Pro-Trudeau Chinese Election Interference

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Australia, being welcomed by Chinese President Xi Jinpin
Bernd von Jutrczenka/picture alliance via Getty Images
Chris Tomlinson

Opposition parties in Canada have demanded an inquiry into Chinese influence in Canadian elections after allegations the Communist Party may have helped Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

A motion was introduced by far-left New Democrat (NDP) MP Peter Julian on Wednesday in the House of Commons Procedure and House Affairs committee calling on the Trudeau government to launch an inquiry into allegations that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interfered in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

The motion comes after NDP leader Jagmeet Singh called for an inquiry into the matter, saying: “The way to stop alleged secret Chinese interference is to refuse to keep their secrets for them. A fully independent and non-partisan public inquiry is the way to shine a light into the shadows,” the National Post reports.

Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), also gave his support for an inquiry, saying: “All parties in the parliament must agree on who the commissioner is; we cannot have yet another Liberal crony named to head up this inquiry.”

Poilievre also slammed Trudeau’s interactions with the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service (CSIS), whose members allegedly warned Trudeau over Chinese interference, particularly relating to the 2019 campaign of Liberal MP Han Dong.

“I want to make everyone understand fully that Han Dong is an outstanding member of our team and suggestions that he is somehow not loyal to Canada should not be entertained,” Trudeau said this week.

Canadian media reports claim that CSIS warned Trudeau that Dong was one of the eleven Toronto-area candidates supported by the CCP during the 2019 election and that Dong was a willing participant in the Communist Party’s election interference network.

Another CSIS allegation revolves around a large sum of cash donated to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, with a CCP diplomat allegedly instructing billionaire Zhang Bin to donate as much as a million dollars to the foundation, stating the CCP would reimburse him for the entire amount.

Zhang, along with Chinese businessman Niu Gensheng, donated a million dollars in 2016, $200,000 of which went to the Trudeau Foundation.

This week, the Trudeau Foundation announced it would be refunding the entire amount donated by the Chinese businessmen. Pascale Fournier, the president and CEO of the Trudeau Foundation, stated they could not “keep any donation that may have been sponsored by a foreign government and would not knowingly do so.”

The Chinese Embassy in Canada, meanwhile, has denied all the allegations of interference and called them “baseless and defamatory.”

“China has always been firmly against any attempts to interfere in other countries’ domestic affairs,” the embassy said. “We are not interested in meddling with Canada’s internal affairs, nor have we ever tried to do so.”

The allegations that the CCP tried to help Trudeau’s Liberals follow the Liberal leader expressing his admiration for the Communist Party regime in 2013, prior to being elected Prime Minister, saying: “There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China.”

“Because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and saying ‘We need to go greenest fastest, we need to start, you know, investing in solar,'” he said.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.

 

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