The foreign interference mess
A LOT FOR TORIES TO CLEAN UP IF THEY WIN NEXT YEAR
It was the rarest of events. In the House of Commons last week, an impeccably well-informed address was entered into the record that clearly articulated the perilous state of the world, Canada’s place in it, and the possibility of a useful Canadian contribution to global democracy, stability, and peace.
That it was delivered by a rookie makes it that much more notable. Calgary Heritage Conservative MP Shuvaloy Majumdar arrived in Parliament only last summer after a cakewalk byelection win following the resignation of Conservative Bob Benzen.
In his remarks to the House, Majumdar was generous in his support for the comprehensive security partnership the Liberal government concluded with Ukraine last month. But Majumdar was also frank about what everybody knows, which is that it will fall to the Conservatives to follow through with the arrangement.
Barring some unimaginably cataclysmic event, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government will be history by October next year. It will be up to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives to pick up the pieces of a shattered economy and the unfathomably bleak prospects facing almost every Canadian under the age of 30.
An unknowable American presidential election result that could change everything about the way the world works this fall doesn’t exactly help in the challenge of charting a course forward. A sophisticated grasp of the big-picture state of affairs in the current moment, though, will help.
Majumdar’s equipped with a grasp like that, at least. “I think it is important, as we get into this debate, to take a step back and consider the environment we are in right now,” Majumdar began.
Canadians have to face up to the hard fact that we have enemies out there. The days of sunny-ways diplomacy are over, and Canadians will have to find friends to sort out a way of defending our way of life.
“The democratic world needs to arrive at a shared understanding of the rivals we must now confront,” Majumdar said. Foremost: Russia, “most fiercely met by Ukrainian soldiers on the borders that they are fighting so hard to defend.” In the Middle East, “terrorist extremists that deserve to be defeated,” and China and its satrapies that threaten the order of the Indo-pacific region.
In other words, a partnership to counter the Beijing-moscow-tehran axis — rivals that require deterrence and need to be made fully aware that there are still powers that can mobilize against their ambition to reorganize the world. In Majumdar’s future, “Canada would be a fierce and vital part of that partnership.”
Majumdar’s been around. He’s been sanctioned by Moscow three times now. He was an adviser to John Baird during the Harper years. He’s a respected foreign policy analyst, and his arrival in the House adds to the prospective bench strength in a Poilievre government that comes with veteran MPS like Michael Chong, Garnet Genuis and Michael Cooper.
A crew like that stands in stark contrast with Senators Victor Oh and Paul Massicotte, NDP MP Don Davies, Liberal MP Majid Jowhari and the controversial former Liberal MP Han Dong, who were all making a spectacle of themselves this week in Beijing. They were making the rounds as members of that disgraced Chrétienera relic, the Canada-china Legislative Association, “to engage their counterparts in Parliamentary diplomacy,” as Canada’s ambassador in Beijing Jennifer May put it, “an important part of fostering people-to-people ties and seeking areas of co-operation.”
The senators notwithstanding, the MPS of a Parliamentary democracy have no “counterparts” in Xi Jinping’s viciously anti-democratic police state, whose agents of influence, well-to-do Canadian proxies and influence pedlars are supposed to be the subject of the long-delayed public inquiry into foreign interference in Canada’s federal elections in 2019 and 2021.
After the Trudeau government’s many delays, filibusters and obstructions, the troubled inquiry, led by Justice Marie-josée Hogue, is getting off the ground only this week after Canada’s Uyghurs and Hongkongers, reckoning it was already too compromised, decided against participating.
What the inquiry is not directly mandated to inquire into is a wide-open invitation to foreign interference in Canada’s political parties, the subject of a shocking investigation just published in the journal of the Canadian International Council. Titled “Beyond general elections: How could foreign actors influence the prime ministership?” the study’s authors managed to join the Conservative party, the Liberal party and the New Democratic Party by using only random identity information and paying small fees.
Canada’s party membership rules open up “a perilous loophole that is highly susceptible to foreign interference by effectively allowing anyone to become a party member, and hence eligible to choose party leaders and subsequently the prime minister. At worst, using fake or random identities through the online registration process, foreign actors could purchase large numbers of memberships without needing to resort to diaspora manipulation or mobilization.”
This is how Han Dong is alleged to have been selected as the Liberal party’s candidate in Don Valley North, according to a series of intelligence leaks that caused him to resign from the Liberal party to allow him time to get himself sorted. The preponderance of evidence from a series of intelligence disclosures and Parliamentary committee testimony points to extraordinary lengths Beijing’s diplomats and United Front Work Group proxies in Canada went in order to monkeywrench the 2019 and 2021 elections to the Liberals’ advantage.
The Conservatives allow only citizens and permanent residents to join the party, which is something, you could say, even if the party doesn’t seem to verify anything. The Liberals and New Democrats allow anybody to join and to participate in candidate-selection votes. You only have to be 14-years old, “ordinarily” resident in Canada, and not a member of another party.
With Canada’s long-standing and globally-coveted points system for immigration now just a thing of nostalgia, it’s not even clear how many people live in Canada and what their status is. A recent Statistics Canada report suggests that Canada is home to 2.67 million “temporary” residents, close to twice the number of only two years ago. That’s 6.5 per cent of the county’s population, putting a crushing weight load on housing availability and affordability.
Meanwhile, a “secret” RCMP report warns of a heightened likelihood of civil disturbances in Canada in the coming years, owing at least partly to the fact that “many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever to be able to buy a place to live.” Also on RCMP’S radar: “Erosion of Trust,” “Paranoid Populism” and “Effects of Climate Devastation.” Then there’s the Gallup organization’s recently released World Happiness report, which ranks Canadians under the age of 30 in 58th place among the nations of the world, and they’re not getting any happier.
That’s the Canada that Poilievre’s Conservatives will be inheriting. He’s going to need MPS like Shuvaloy Majumdar in his wheelhouse.
We all will.
THE DAYS OF SUNNY-WAYS DIPLOMACY ARE OVER.