In their search for submissive and compliant foreign leaders, China has hit the jackpot with JT.
Perhaps the biggest area of weakness for the Trudeau Liberals is the perception that the Liberal government – and particularly Justin Trudeau – is weak when it comes to China.
It’s one of the key areas where the Liberals are not only offside with public opinion, but massively so.
It’s also an area where the Liberals themselves are split, as could be seen when many Liberal MPs voted to declare China’s actions against the Uyghur’s a genocide, while Trudeau and the federal cabinet did not.
The Uyghur motion, and Trudeau’s weak response to China’s jailing of Michael Kovrig & Michael Spavor is the key reason for why the public perceives Trudeau as so weak on China.
However, this has been going on a long time.
And, with an election just about to start, there’s no better time than now to refresh and remind the public about Trudeau’s long history in government of selling Canada out to China.
In late March of 2017, I wrote about how Trudeau let China take over ITF technologies:
“ITF Technologies is described as a world leader in laser technology, which can be used for directed-energy weapons. ITF Technologies had worked closely with Canada’s Department of National Defence, and was closely linked with the National Security of our country.”
As I had noted, “both the Department of National Defence and CSIS had warned against the takeover. They warned that letting China buy ITF Technologies would give China access to advanced technology.
Here is what they said at the time:
“If the technology is transferred, China would be able to domestically produce advanced military laser technology to Western standards sooner than would otherwise be the case, which diminishes Canadian and allied military advantages.”
After national security reports warning against the sale, the Conservative government did the wise thing and blocked it.
Now, Justin Trudeau has reversed that decision and allowed China to take ITF Technologies.
But Trudeau wasn’t done.
In June of 2017, Trudeau let China take over another Canadian company linked to national security, without even so much as a security review:
“The company is Hytera Communications from Shenzhen, China. They are taking over Norsat International Inc., a company based in Vancouver. Norsat recently delivered a satellite communication system to Canada’s Coast Guard.”
Among Norsat’s customers were “the U.S. Department of Defence, The U.S. Army, The Taiwanese Army, Boeing, Reuters, The U.S. Marine Corps, CBS News, and the Irish Department of Defence.”
Here’s more of what I wrote at the time:
As if letting Hytera take over Norsat itself isn’t bad enough, it turns out that Hytera has an incredibly controversial reputation. Hytara has been accused by Motorola of a massive theft of Motorola’s intellectual property, and is now facing a court case over the matter.
Michael Byers, a professor at the University of British Columbia told the Globe & Mail he was “astonished” at the move by the Trudeau government: “I find this incomprehensible because it is so clearly involves cutting-edge technology as well as Canada’s most important security alliance. We have a Canadian company that is building satellite receivers for essentially the most advanced satellite system operated by NATO and the Chinese takeover of that company is not being subject to a national-security review.”
Byers also asked, “Do we want small and medium-sized Canadian companies that are engaged in cutting-edge telecommunications research and development to be snapped up by foreign companies that are essentially hollowing out Canada’s aerospace and military industries by doing this?”
While the Conservative government of Stephen Harper gets criticism – much of it justified – for failing to push back more strongly against China’s influence, it is important to note that they were blocking transactions that gave China control over Canada’s sensitive national security companies, decisions that Trudeau later reversed.
Ahh, but that’s not all.
Remember when Trudeau let a Chinese oil company drill for oil in Canadian territory, at the same time as he was imposing policies that further damaged the Western Canadian energy sector?
“The Trudeau Liberal government is allowing Communist China’s main government-run oil company to drill for oil in Canadian territory.
China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), has been given approval to drill in the Flemish Pass Basin, which is roughly 400 KM east of Newfoundland & Labrador.”
How about when the Trudeau government invested $141 million of our taxpayer dollars in China’s coal industry, while wrecking the industry here in Canada?
The Trudeau government has arrogantly and repeatedly celebrated their deliberate destruction of the Canadian Coal industry. The destruction of a historic Canadian industry has put thousands out of work, weakened our energy security, and caused significant damage in communities that were based on the coal industry.
Yet, under the Trudeau government, it turns out that the Canadian Pension Plan Board, a federal agency controlled by the Trudeau government, has invested $141 MILLION in the Chinese Coal Industry.
It was reported by Blacklock’s:
“CPP Board likes coal investments — in China. Fed agency has no comment on $141M spent on Chinese polluters. https://blacklocks.ca/agency-bets-141m-on-coal/ #cdnpoli #ClimateEmergency @cppib @environmentca”
Here’s part of what they said in their report:
“A federal agency has spent more than $100 million in the Chinese coal industry even as cabinet’s climate change plan proposes to eliminate Canadian coal-fired power plants. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board yesterday did not comment: “The whole world needs to phase out coal.””
What about when Trudeau used steel from Communist China instead of Canadian steel?
“As I reported earlier, the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction ripped the Trudeau government for allowing Chinese steel companies to produce parts of the two massive LNG projects in BC. The projects – valued at $42 Billion – will now be something that China is able to profit from, meaning jobs for Canadian construction workers, and profit for Canadian companies will be lost and go to China instead.
It’s a disgusting move for a government to make, and it’s much worse considering that it sends a message to Communist China that there are zero consequences for their ongoing abuse of our country.”
The United Steelworkers ripped Trudeau at the time:
“The Post Millennial has also reported on this betrayal of Canada’s steel companies and Canada’s construction workers, speaking directly with the head of United Steelworkers:
United Steelworkers’ national director Ken Neumann says the Liberal government’s decision to drop tariffs on Chinese steel for the construction of two west coast liquid natural gas plants is “absolutely ludicrous”.
“They should be embarrassed because what they’re doing is continuing to give to China. Here’s a country that continues to dump. They’ve been found guilty,” Neumann told The Post Millennial.
“And yet they’re going to allow these Canadian projects to use Chinese steel to manufacture some of these modules in China and bring them over here – to me that is just absolutely ludicrous.”
Neumann says the government is abandoning Canadian workers and Canadian Steel:
“They keep telling us how they stand up for the workers and ‘we’ve got your back’,” said Neumann.
“Unsurprisingly, they’re not prepared to own up to what they’re doing and that’s abandoning Canadian workers and the Canadian steel industry and that’s where our members work.”
Let’s not forget when the PMO wanted to silence former Canadian Ambassador to China David Mulroney during the past election:
The Trudeau PMO reportedly sought to control statements made by former Canadian Ambassador to China David Mulroney.
And their reason?
The “election environment.”
According to the report, David Mulroney – Canada’s Ambassador to China from 2009-2012, says Paul Thoppil, the assistant deputy minister for Asia-Pacific at Global Affairs, told him he was passing on a message from the Trudeau PMO, asking him to ‘clear’ his comments on the ongoing dispute with China with them first.
While the Liberals will obviously try to downplay this and pretend it’s no big deal, Mulroney makes clear that he was “deeply concerned” by the attempt to control what he said:
Mulroney has said he doesn’t want to be “silenced or co-opted,” and noted that discouraging experts from speaking is “fundamentally an undemocratic idea.”
And, we should also remember how the Trudeau government has now ignored three former CSIS directors who warned about the espionage threat from Huawei:
As the Trudeau government seeks closer ties with Huawei – a massive Chinese telecom/smartphone company – three former leaders in Canada’s national security agencies are expressing serious concerns about our national security:
According to a report, “Ward Elcock, John Adams and Richard Fadden are weighing in on the matter after the heads of the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and the Defence Intelligence Agency recently told the U.S. Senate intelligence committee that Huawei poses a cybersecurity threat to American customers. U.S. spymasters say Huawei’s smartphones and networking equipment could be used to conduct undetected espionage, especially the next, advanced generation of 5G technology.”
Elcock was the former director of CSIS, and also served as the deputy minister of national defence, in addition to the security and intelligence deputy clerk of the Privy Council.
According to the report, Elcock said “I have a pretty good idea of how signal-intelligence agencies work and the rules under which they work and their various operations and … I would not want to see Huawei equipment being incorporated into a 5G network in Canada.”
Notably, “Canada has been wary of Huawei’s operations for years, but the company’s presence here has been growing, and security experts say Ottawa has not been as aggressive as other Western countries, such as Britain, in testing Huawei’s equipment for security vulnerabilities.”
Adams once lead the Communications Security Establishment, and also warned about Huawei – particularly when it comes to 5G technology.
Former CSIS Director Fadden said “I think Huawei is operating in an area of strategic interest to both Canada and China and I think it is a strategic interest area where you do not want to make available to a large Chinese company, with ties to the Chinese government, access to Canadian infrastructure.”
Finally, did you know that Trudeau gave China access to the confidential tax info of Canadian Citizens?
A new report reveals that the Trudeau government included policy changes that will allow 35 foreign countries/institutions to get access to the confidential tax info of Canadians.
According to the report by Elizabeth Thompson, “Confidential information from Canadian taxpayers could soon be shared with police and authorities in three dozen countries around the world, under measures included in Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s latest budget. In an inconspicuous section tucked into a small 78-page annex to the budget, the government says it wants to give police and tax authorities new powers to fight tax evasion and advance international investigations into serious crimes, ranging from drug trafficking and money laundering to terrorism.”
Disturbingly, among those countries are both China and Russia, meaning the government can now chose to give authorities in those nations access to tax info of Canadian citizens. That’s important to point out, since the definition of a crime in an authoritarian country like China may be very different than here in Canada, and China could seek to persecute people in Canada originally from China.
At the time, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association warned of the danger:
“If you can get something buried in the budget that nobody knows about, sometimes you can get something past without getting the kind of heat it deserves. The big concern is that Canada would be unwittingly participating in a star chamber investigation and prosecution of somebody in another jurisdiction, or that Canadians would in essence be thrown under the bus and information would be shared with other jurisdictions that don’t have our due process and constitutional protections.”
A pattern of giving in to China’s interests
The stories above aren’t even all of what Trudeau has done to empower China at Canada’s expense.
Any one of the things mentioned above would be bad enough, but for all of them to have happened under one government, and for that government to be continuing a pattern of weakness towards China, makes it abundantly clear that an election win for Justin Trudeau would be a win for China.
All Canadians need to keep that in mind.
Spencer Fernando
***
If you value my independent perspective, you can make a contribution through PayPal, or directly through Stripe below. Thank you.
[simpay id=”28904″]
