Meeting with Chinese questioned

OTTAWA — An all-party committee of elected MPs planned a closed-door meeting with a delegation of Chinese politicians and diplomats this week, but abruptly cancelled it on Wednesday.

David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador to China, said the meeting was a bad idea in the first place because holding it in-camera meant a lost opportunity for Canada to show Beijing how a democracy really works.

The meeting was cancelled one day after Canada’s new top spy told a business audience that interference by hostile states has now become a greater threat to Canadian national security than terrorism.

The Commons foreign-affairs committee had planned to meet in-camera for one hour on Thursday with Lu Shaye, Beijing’s ambassador to Canada, and four visiting members of the National People’s Congress of China.