Thoughts on BC Politics and More

Canada is grappling with debates over national identity and security as well as international trade. Ottawa is navigating U.S. tariffs and Donald Trump’s threats of higher trade duties ahead of this July’s review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, while also managing populist and separatist movements, hate crimes, and broader pressures on national cohesion ... CLICK HERE for the full story

While North Americans have only begun to recognize that China has been implanting illegal “police stations” in several major cities in recent years, a sweeping new investigation has revealed that Chinese diplomats in Canada have intensified and extended these missions — quietly staging more than 100 quickly mounted and dismantled “pop-up” consular events in 22 cities across 11 provinces since 2015, operating out of small, unofficial sites rather than accredited consulates. The new open-source probe for the Jamestown Foundation by Canadian researcher Sze-Fung Lee finds these diaspora-outreach missions likely violate international law, and appear to be a strategic effort of the Chinese Communist Party to extend its influence into rural and regional parts of Canada — beyond major centres such as Toronto and Vancouver, where Chinese intelligence and United Front networks have already established deep influence in diaspora monitoring and federal election-interference operations ... CLICK HE...

IMAGE CREDIT:  Canadian Chamber of Commerce China’s decision to slap duties on Canadian canola is meant to send a message: submit to removing the tariff on Chinese EVs, or pay the price. For too long, Beijing has treated Canadian farmers as pawns in a geopolitical chess game. But this time, the message should go the other way. Canada holds the trump card. If we call China’s bluff, absorb the short-term cost, and invest in value-added capacity, we can break the cycle of economic coercion once and for all ... ... in 2024, China bought roughly 4.6 million tonnes of Canadian canola, nearly half our exports, worth $4.9 billion CAD. That concentration makes farmers vulnerable, but it also proves Canada’s leverage in the canola market. China cannot easily replace millions of tonnes of high-quality seed. China is already diversifying its imports to buy from India and Australia, but its volumes and quality don’t come close to filling the gap ... CLICK HERE for the full story

BC canola farmers are staring down millions in losses after China slapped new anti-dumping duties on Canadian canola just weeks before harvest begins. The retaliatory 75.8 per cent tariff on canola seed is the latest volley in the ongoing trade fight between the two countries. While farmers brace for the hit, experts are asking whether Canada's own 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs) are worth the cost, and if they should be scrapped in hopes China will reverse its canola tariff ... CLICK HERE for the full story

Federal politicians convened in Ottawa Friday for what was supposed to be a reckoning over BC Ferries’ $1-billion China shipbuilding deal. But instead it became a masterclass in buck-passing, bureaucratic dodgeball and curated helplessness. MPs on the transport committee heard from cabinet ministers and CEOs suddenly rendered impotent on the issue of doing business with an authoritarian regime currently imposing crippling sanctions on Canada’s seafood sector, interfering with its elections and arming its enemies. All expressed concern that a deal like this could happen with a hostile nation, while also insisting they were powerless to stop it ... CLICK HERE for the full story

BC Ferries’ CEO says he isn’t worried that a major ferry order with a state-owned Chinese shipyard might become a bargaining chip between China and Canada if trade and diplomatic tensions between the two countries worsen. The ferry company’s decision to go with China Merchants Industry Weihai Shipyards to build its four new ferries quickly drew criticism from both sides of the aisle in the BC legislature after it was announced Tuesday ... CLICK HERE for the full story

BC Conservatives are shining a light on BC NDP Premier David Eby’s failures on external and interprovincial trade as he heads on a 10-day damage control junket to Asia. Hot off ramming through Bills 14 and 15, the Premier is doing whatever he can to distract from his dismal economic record. “This Premier has not done anything to advance BC’s trade agenda. If anything, he has worked to substantially erode any progress BC made,” said Teresa Wat, MLA for Richmond-Bridgeport and Official Opposition Critic for Trade. “If this BC NDP government had not shut down 13 freestanding trade offices, we would not have to play catch-up when we are facing constant threats of increased US tariffs.” In 2019, the BC NDP government shut down 13 independent trade offices in China, Japan, India, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore. Doing so meant folding up offices, cutting staff, and folding the work of these trade offices into existing Canadian embassies.   "The result of this ...

... the 92-page report, produced under a post-operation initiative called Project Natterjack, paints a portrait of intelligence breakdowns, governance failure, and inappropriate political influence—particularly from senior officials in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government. The review, first obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, included survey responses from 1,641 RCMP officers and personnel deployed during the protests, which paralyzed downtown Ottawa and disrupted key international border crossings. Yet an element overlooked in previous analyses of Natterjack may be its most damning: the complete absence of an organizing vision across Canada’s security and intelligence arms... CLICK HERE for the full story

A Canadian Parliamentarian assessed by national security officials to be part of a Toronto-based Chinese consulate election interference network was the subject of a high-profile foreign interference investigation into an alleged breach of Canada’s Senate, The Bureau has confirmed through multiple intelligence sources. Sources said the investigation examined allegations that the Parliamentarian enabled a close associate—described as a female Chinese national—to bypass Senate security protocols. A source familiar with the Senate breach allegation said the probe was triggered by a complaint from a sitting Canadian senator, who believed they had observed a troubling pattern of behavior involving the Parliamentarian and their Chinese companion. The concern, the source said, centered on the alleged bypassing of Senate security screening, unauthorized entry into the parliamentary precinct, and access to secure Government of Canada computer systems ... CLICK HERE for the full s...

A powerful new investigative map released by diaspora researchers traces political ties reaching from Chinese Communist Party-controlled intelligence networks to the highest levels of British Columbia’s government. The visual exposé centers on Senator Yuen Pau Woo and his pivotal role in welcoming Chinese state-linked entities into Canadian institutions—an effort that resonates in a secretly recorded 2020 meeting obtained by The Bureau, in which Woo assured United Front figures he would help shield them from critical scrutiny. These same United Front entities have been credited by Beijing for their role in promoting Chinese Canadian candidates during federal election campaigns ... CLICK HERE for the full story

Conservative MP Adam Chambers has notified Parliament of his proposal to examine circumstances of Royal Bank of Canada’s purchase of HSBC Canada and to have at least $100-million set aside to cover the possibility of fines from “any current or future investigations by regulators.” The notice of motion to Ottawa’s Finance Committee is in response to The Bureau’s investigation of an HSBC Canada whistleblower’s allegations of surging mortgage fraud and money laundering concerns in Toronto-area HSBC branches during the Covid-19 pandemic. The whistleblower, who left HSBC Canada after making internal complaints in April 2022, believed bank staff were complicit in a fraud that enabled Chinese diaspora real estate investors to secure at least $500-million in questionable mortgages since 2015, by claiming faked or exaggerated incomes in China . . . . CLICK HERE for the full story

. . . Ottawa's success in achieving the goals of its Indo-Pacific Strategy hinges not only on its dealings with China and India but, given its middle-power status, on its ability to achieve its strategic objectives through partnerships with smaller developing nations in the region. Canada needs these countries as active partners for its own interests, rather than viewing them as undemocratic adversaries, if it intends to establish a tangible influence in the Indo-Pacific . . .  CLICK HERE for the full story

. . . As Ottawa’s Foreign Interference Commission starts this week with a mandate to discover whether China interfered in the past two federal elections, the documents obtained by Bell and reviewed by The Bureau, broadly confirm much of the reporting on China’s interference started by Global News in November 2022, and later followed by Globe and Mail reporters in Ottawa. Much of the leaked, sensitive evidence that informed those reports — and continues to be collected and reported on by The Bureau — stems from the challenges that Canadian intelligence agents say they face, in providing documented alerts and in-person “defensive briefs” to senior Canadian politicians regarding their vulnerability to influence agents from China . . . CLICK HERE for the full story

"There is a lack of understanding in Canada of Taiwan as a democracy, and there’s even more lack of knowledge of what China is about,” Tseng said. “This is going to backfire on you. If you are hoping to cooperate with China, just how many lessons do you need to see?” CLICK HERE for the full story

Flavio Volpe, head of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, believes the recent electric vehicle targets set out by Canada's environment minister also carried this pointed message to Canada's domestic auto industry: "Let them eat cake." Volpe says he has come to this conclusion because he believes those goals, which include a national target of 100 per cent zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035, cannot be met. He accused the government of not caring whether those cars are domestically built or come from China, regardless of the impact it may have ... CLICK HERE for the full story

A House of Commons committee believes Canadian public pension funds, including British Columbia’s, should stop investing in Chinese companies that abuse human rights... ... The committee’s study on the exposure of Canadian investment funds to human rights violators in China was triggered by Hong Kong Watch’s 2021 research. The non-governmental organization found Western governments, corporations and institutional investors — including Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, and the B.C. Investment Management Corporation (BCI) — were investing more in China, despite the mass-incarceration of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, also known as East Turkestan ... CLICK HERE for the full story

Government of India agents appear to have interfered in the Conservative’s 2022 leadership race by purchasing memberships for one candidate while undermining another, and also boasted of funding “a number of politicians at all levels of government,” according to CSIS. The allegations come from an October 2022 CSIS Intelligence Assessment that details sweeping election interference operations from hostile states including China and India ... CLICK HERE for the full story  

Canadian Mayoral candidate got clandestine financial support from community leaders mobilized by Chinese Consulate in 2022 and 2018: "Intelligence Assessment" A senior Canadian politician running to lead a provincial political party clandestinely met officials inside a Chinese Consulate in 2022, subsequently becoming China’s preferred candidate, and winning campaign support from Consulate proxies, a Top Secret CSIS document alleges. Details of the Consulate meeting are contained in a sweeping CSIS “Intelligence Assessment” dated October 31, 2022.  Without identifying candidates by name, it details Beijing’s efforts to influence leaders of Canadian parties – at the federal, provincial and municipal level – before and after recent elections ... CLICK HERE for the full story

The University of Toronto is deeply enmeshed in cutting-edge research with the Chinese Communist Party’s top military-affiliated universities, which risks assisting Beijing in developing Artificial Intelligence weapons systems such as robotic soldiers and smart drones, according to a study led by a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer. The October 2023 study — Navigating Collaborative Waters — uncovered about 200 recent University of Toronto (U of T) collaborations with China’s so-called Seven Sons of National Defense institutions. These elite civilian universities have direct ties to the People’s Liberation Army, and likely are exploiting Western institutions, intelligence experts warn, harvesting advances especially in Artificial Intelligence, for military as well as civilian applications... CLICK HERE for the rest of the story

In a two-part interview with a Canadian intel expert The Bureau looks at Chinese intelligence approaches to Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau via organized crime and corruption suspects ... CLICK HERE for the full interview