John Robson: CSIS Leak: What Will It Take for Trudeau to Start Expelling Chinese Diplomats?
Commentary Apparently the Canadian government is justified in taking drastic measures to combat threats to national security or someone’s “self-realization” from, say, a truck horn. But if a totalitarian tyranny attempts to fiddle our elections, well, all good clean fun. At any rate, the prime minister declares himself thoroughly vindicated by the Rouleau report. But while he now claims to realize he shouldn’t have been so mean about his loser nutbar hate-filled domestic critics, he sees nozink, nozink when it comes to China’s efforts to undermine our democracy. And woe betide anyone who attempts to brief him. For instance CSIS. Some days one wonders if our entire government is broken, even the PR department. But it seems that our spy agency has produced detailed studies of what Xi Jinping’s Politburo has tried to do to us. They’ve even told foreign nations we know about it. What about Trudeau? In case no one told him or his cabinet, the Chinese Communist Party explicitly aims to be the dominant power in the world by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the “revolution,” then shove their version of “harmony” down our throats. (It also regards our obsession with net zero by then as useful idiocy.) And I do mean Communist Party. As most Epoch Times readers know, unlike most Canadian politicians, the People’s Liberation Army is a branch of the Party, not the Chinese government, and does not intend to liberate any people, including its own. Another thing our sophisticated betters appear to have missed in college, and the real world, is that totalitarians deliberately engage in ritual humiliation of their foes. It’s not enough to get away with lies; their victims must recite them too. Hence the confessions in Stalin’s show trials, though he could simply have shot his former comrades, then printed forged confessions in Pravda. And hence the former Chinese consul-general in Vancouver boasting about having helped defeat two Conservative MPs. Of course, if Donald Trump had said it we’d be outraged. But what’s a bit of electoral jiggery-pokery by the heirs of Mao in the land of Bethune? Are we Innocents in Red China? Because in the foreword to that 1960 book about visiting during the Great Leap Forward and missing the point, Trudeau Sr. wrote, “It seemed to us imperative that the citizens of our democracy should know more about China.” Still is. But don’t look to Trudeau Jr. to help out. After all he’s done for them, one of Beijing’s goals in 2021 was to hold him to a minority government. Yet he still covers for them: “All Canadians can have total confidence that the outcomes of the 2019 and the 2021 elections were determined by Canadians, and Canadians alone, at the voting booth.” Does he also think it’s not real assault if you lose the ensuing fight? As for those two MPs, are conservatives fringe elements not to be tolerated in a tolerant society? It’s all hidden in plain sight, as usual. Anyone can read Michael Pillsbury’s “The Hundred-Year Marathon” or Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg’s 2020 “Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinse Communist Party is Reshaping the World.” Anyone, that is, who won’t be driven mad by a painstaking catalogue of another totalitarian government attempting to infiltrate and overthrow the West and of the useful idiots taking the money and ignoring or denying the problem. I say another because Jean-Francois Revel’s “How Democracies Perish” about a similar phenomenon in the 1970s and 1980s would make a plaster statue weep. And now here’s what the Globe and Mail had to say about the latest revelations: “Canadian politicians, officials and business executives are the prime targets of Chinese government espionage that employs blackmail, bribery and sexual seduction, with the country even enlisting the Bank of China in its foreign-influence activities.” So tell me. Which is a bigger threat to our security? Some truckers who stopped honking when a court asked them to (shades of getting 40 Canadians out of a swimming pool) and left without throwing a punch when the police finally moved in, or a nuclear-armed genocidal dictatorship engaged in multi-tentacled, lavishly financed, decades-long subversion of our politics, public service, and economy? Duh. The truckers. They hold unacceptable, un-Canadian views. Whereas when we learned that the Chinese warned its “Canadian friends” to keep a low profile so CSIS wouldn’t catch them, Trudeau demanded a crackdown… on CSIS leaks. If Trudeau’s infamous 2013 “level of admiration” for China’s “basic dictatorship” were a youthful indiscretion from which he’d moved on rhetorically and mentally, it would be unfair to keep quoting it. Even though if he’d said “Hey, Mussolini made the trains run on time” he’d be political toast. But a decade later he’s still coddling China and refusing to expel a single diplomat, or even look annoyed. Maybe if they honked. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the vi
Udumbara
Commentary
Apparently the Canadian government is justified in taking drastic measures to combat threats to national security or someone’s “self-realization” from, say, a truck horn. But if a totalitarian tyranny attempts to fiddle our elections, well, all good clean fun.
At any rate, the prime minister declares himself thoroughly vindicated by the Rouleau report. But while he now claims to realize he shouldn’t have been so mean about his loser nutbar hate-filled domestic critics, he sees nozink, nozink when it comes to China’s efforts to undermine our democracy. And woe betide anyone who attempts to brief him.
For instance CSIS. Some days one wonders if our entire government is broken, even the PR department. But it seems that our spy agency has produced detailed studies of what Xi Jinping’s Politburo has tried to do to us. They’ve even told foreign nations we know about it. What about Trudeau?
In case no one told him or his cabinet, the Chinese Communist Party explicitly aims to be the dominant power in the world by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the “revolution,” then shove their version of “harmony” down our throats. (It also regards our obsession with net zero by then as useful idiocy.) And I do mean Communist Party. As most Epoch Times readers know, unlike most Canadian politicians, the People’s Liberation Army is a branch of the Party, not the Chinese government, and does not intend to liberate any people, including its own.
Another thing our sophisticated betters appear to have missed in college, and the real world, is that totalitarians deliberately engage in ritual humiliation of their foes. It’s not enough to get away with lies; their victims must recite them too. Hence the confessions in Stalin’s show trials, though he could simply have shot his former comrades, then printed forged confessions in Pravda. And hence the former Chinese consul-general in Vancouver boasting about having helped defeat two Conservative MPs.
Of course, if Donald Trump had said it we’d be outraged. But what’s a bit of electoral jiggery-pokery by the heirs of Mao in the land of Bethune? Are we Innocents in Red China? Because in the foreword to that 1960 book about visiting during the Great Leap Forward and missing the point, Trudeau Sr. wrote, “It seemed to us imperative that the citizens of our democracy should know more about China.” Still is. But don’t look to Trudeau Jr. to help out.
After all he’s done for them, one of Beijing’s goals in 2021 was to hold him to a minority government. Yet he still covers for them: “All Canadians can have total confidence that the outcomes of the 2019 and the 2021 elections were determined by Canadians, and Canadians alone, at the voting booth.” Does he also think it’s not real assault if you lose the ensuing fight? As for those two MPs, are conservatives fringe elements not to be tolerated in a tolerant society?
It’s all hidden in plain sight, as usual. Anyone can read Michael Pillsbury’s “The Hundred-Year Marathon” or Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg’s 2020 “Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinse Communist Party is Reshaping the World.” Anyone, that is, who won’t be driven mad by a painstaking catalogue of another totalitarian government attempting to infiltrate and overthrow the West and of the useful idiots taking the money and ignoring or denying the problem.
I say another because Jean-Francois Revel’s “How Democracies Perish” about a similar phenomenon in the 1970s and 1980s would make a plaster statue weep. And now here’s what the Globe and Mail had to say about the latest revelations: “Canadian politicians, officials and business executives are the prime targets of Chinese government espionage that employs blackmail, bribery and sexual seduction, with the country even enlisting the Bank of China in its foreign-influence activities.”
So tell me. Which is a bigger threat to our security? Some truckers who stopped honking when a court asked them to (shades of getting 40 Canadians out of a swimming pool) and left without throwing a punch when the police finally moved in, or a nuclear-armed genocidal dictatorship engaged in multi-tentacled, lavishly financed, decades-long subversion of our politics, public service, and economy?
Duh. The truckers. They hold unacceptable, un-Canadian views. Whereas when we learned that the Chinese warned its “Canadian friends” to keep a low profile so CSIS wouldn’t catch them, Trudeau demanded a crackdown… on CSIS leaks.
If Trudeau’s infamous 2013 “level of admiration” for China’s “basic dictatorship” were a youthful indiscretion from which he’d moved on rhetorically and mentally, it would be unfair to keep quoting it. Even though if he’d said “Hey, Mussolini made the trains run on time” he’d be political toast. But a decade later he’s still coddling China and refusing to expel a single diplomat, or even look annoyed.
Maybe if they honked.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
