TERRY GLAVIN,

Chinese-Canadians are afraid to write to their federal MPS on matters related to China or money laundering. People are saying, ‘will my name be handed to the Chinese Communist Party by somebody on the staff that works for my MP?’

You’d want a heart of stone to be unmoved by the tragedy unfolding in Hong Kong this week, an epochal juncture in democracy’s global retreat, now nearly halfway through its 15th consecutive year. And you’d want a very strong stomach, as well, to look too closely at the indecencies committed in Ottawa this week.

It wasn’t just the Trudeau government’s cavalier indifference to Beijing’s lynching of Hong Kong. It was its contempt for Canada’s own democratic integrity, in an act abetted by the New Democrats, extending the suspension of ordinary parliamentary proceedings until September. Adding insult to the ignominy, the Liberals and the NDP stooped to shutting down debate in the House of Commons about what they were up to.

As though unsatisfied that their shameless conduct was sufficiently brazen — and in this particular bit of shabby business they were joined by the Greens — the Liberals and New Democrats combined to scupper a Conservative motion that would have reconvened the Special Committee on Canada- China Relations to address the catastrophe now engulfing Hong Kong.

The torments Hongkongers are being made to endure in order to satiate the megalomania of Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping came into sharp relief again on Wednesday in scenes of pro-democracy protesters disappearing into clouds of tear gas, the rounding up of schoolchildren, phalanxes of riot police firing volleys of pepper balls at journalists, and the usual mass arrests. Roughly 300 people were hauled away in police wagons from unauthorized gatherings in Causeway Bay and Admiralty and along Hennessy Road.

“Today’s excessive and indiscriminate use of force by the police to disperse protesters once again exposes the authorities’ utter disregard for human rights on the streets of Hong Kong,” said Joshua Rosenzweig, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for East and South East Asia. “Mass arrests in entirely peaceful assemblies show that the Hong Kong government is targeting anyone exercising their right to freedom of expression.”

The Hong Kong protests on Wednesday were focused on the absurd “national anthem” law the Xi regime imposed on China’s 1.4 billion people three years ago and later unilaterally added to an annex of Hong Kong’s mini- constitution, the Basic Law. The Basic Law stipulates unambiguously that following the United Kingdom’s 1997 handover of its former colony to the People’s Republic, Hong Kong is to be autonomous in all things except the military and foreign relations.

But the national anthem law was imposed on Hong Kong anyway, and Carrie Lam, Beijing’s chief executive puppet in Hong Kong’s perversely gerrymandered Legislative Council, saw to it that Beijing’s wishes would be obeyed, and the second reading of a Hong Kong version of the national law was before the Legislative Council on Wednesday. For mocking the People’s Republic anthem, or even so much as slouching while the anthem is being played, Hongkongers will face fines of up to $9,000 and three years in jail.

But much worse, Beijing’s National Peoples Congress this week doubled down on last summer’s incendiary extradition law, which provoked Hongkongers into a mass pro-democracy uprising that drew millions of people to marches and rallies. A new “national security” law, based largely on an effort that was abandoned in 2003 after half a million people rose up against it, is back on the books. And Carrie Lam has pledged to promulgate the law within the next few weeks.

It was against this backdrop that a Conservative motion, which would have allowed the strictly circumscribed proceedings in the House of Commons to accommodate a resumption of the Special Committee on Canada- China Relations, was scuppered by the Liberals, the NDP and the Greens. The Conservatives wanted to afford the committee the opportunity to address this week’s dramatic developments in Hong Kong.

Trudeau’s Liberals have been strangely quiet about the Hong Kong crisis. They’re wholly and conspicuously absent from an international multi-party effort involving more than 300 parliamentarians and former diplomats from 30 democracies that is mobilizing in support of Hong Kong’s beleaguered democrats.

While Trudeau was busy with engagements aimed at advancing his vanity-project bid to fill a soon-vacant seat at the United Nations Security Council, the strange intimacies between Beijing’s friends in Canada and Trudeau’s Liberal party were awkwardly drawn into the limelight again. This time it was a scandal unfolding in a discussion group run by the staff of Digital Government Minister Joyce Murray on the heavily-censored Chinese social-media platform Wechat.

It turns out that a lawsuit was being promoted on Murray’s WeChat group site that takes aim at Global News reporter Sam Cooper for his investigative effort exposing how Beijing’s overseas influence- peddling operation, the United Front Work Department, had been organizing mass purchases of personal protective equipment ( PPES) in Canada for shipment back to China during the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s got to the point that Chinese- Canadians are afraid to write to their federal MPS on matters related to China or money laundering,” Alex Lee, an activist with the Alliance Hong Kong Canada, told me. “People are saying, will my name be handed to the Chinese Communist Party by somebody on the staff that works for my MP?”

Liberals and the NDP stooped to shutting down debate.