Opinion: People tarred by suggestions they had foreign help to get elected, like Mayor Ken SIm, are among those calling for a full investigation
Everyone is chasing spies these days, trying to find out how China influenced or interfered with Canadian elections, along with who benefitted.
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The chase follows reports of information leaked from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to The Globe and Mail, covering the 2019 federal election and last October’s civic election in Vancouver.
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It includes allegations that China’s consul-general in Vancouver looked for suitable candidates to “groom” and then used proxies in diaspora community organizations to get them elected.
Without full access to more details, Canadians are as much in the dark as the spies are in the shadows. It leaves open questions of whether Vancouver’s first mayor of Chinese descent — Canadian-born Ken Sim — won fairly. It raises questions about whether Beijing helped its native son and first-time Vancouver councillor Lenny Zhou win election.
Without a full investigation, they’re left shadow boxing while some citizens wonder whether they’re beholden to China or fully committed to doing their best for Vancouver and Canada.
Sim, who supports a full investigation and a strengthening of democratic institutions, has responded angrily to the insinuation that his 37,000-vote win was due to China’s help.
“This is the signal that we send to the community that says, you finally get a seat at the table, there are institutions that are going to knock you down,” he told the Globe, “I think it’s disgusting.”
Sim told reporters, “If I were a Caucasian male, we’re not having this conversation.”
What needs underscoring is that even defeated incumbent Kennedy Stewart hasn’t gone so far as to suggest that he lost the election because of China’s enmity towards him. Former councillor Kerry Jang put it more succinctly: “Kennedy Stewart lost because he was a lousy mayor.”
But what needs a full, public airing is what did former consul general Tong Xiaoling and her government do during Vancouver’s election — or, for that matter, the elections in Metro Vancouver’s other municipalities — and what did they hope to achieve?
Were they hoping for activist vassals or were they only trying to send a message about the quiet power they’re able to wield on foreign soil?
A klieg light is what’s needed, not a rapporteur or belated consultations with community members who have been complaining about foreign interference and asking for a foreign influence registry for years.
This isn’t about racism. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau initially attempted to brush aside calls for an investigation by brandishing the R word.
So has Senator Yuen Pau Woo, whose cries have been echoed by Beijing-friendly leaders of organizations like the Chinese Benevolent Society that took out full-page newspaper ads in 2019 supporting China’s crackdown on democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Asking for foreign influencers to register also isn’t a “modern form of Chinese exclusion” as Woo further suggested before urging senators to recommend investigating CSIS for the leaks rather than going after China for attempting to subvert and erode our democracy.
It’s not racism when the Canadians with the strongest voices urging an immediate investigation are people with personal knowledge and experience of foreign influence.
They are people who know all too well the bully tactics that authoritarian regimes use to sow fear, uncertainty and how they spread lies that undermine trust in institutions.
“It’s unrestricted warfare that is really becoming more and more real when you look at how things are developing here,” Bill Chu, a longtime democracy activist, told me.
“I cannot point finger at where or how. But I can say that the kind of organization happening here is abnormal compared to any other country.”
Chu noted with frustration how Canada has failed to support Victor Ho.
Last summer, Hong Kong’s puppet government issued a warrant for Ho’s arrest under its draconian National Security Law, alleging the retired editor-in-chief of Canada’s Sing Tao newspaper and 25-year resident of Metro Vancouver was attempting to subvert state power.
A week earlier, Ho and two other Canadians — businessman Elmer Yuen and former Hong Kong lawmaker Baggio Leung — announced the formation of a parliament in exile that would be democratically elected by Hong Kong’s global diaspora.
While the current reporting has focused on Chinese interference, calls for a full investigation into the CSIS allegations and for a foreign influence registry are also coming from Canadian democracy and human rights advocates who have been threatened by other authoritarian regimes.
If anything, it is its own kind of racism when political leaders refuse to institute safeguards that would lift any veil of suspicion from Canadians — regardless of whether they’re of Chinese, Russian, Iranian, Ukrainian or American descent — who have ties to an embassy or consulates.
Not all are agents, proxies, paid informants or under the influence. Most likely are not.
But without safeguards and protections for whistleblowers, it provides good cover for those who are. That’s exactly what foreign agitators and their proxies have for too long been able to rely on.
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