“How can Canada have an election if Canadians don’t know whether the people they’re voting for have their best interest at heart, or if they’re serving a foreign master?” ~ Independent MP Kevin Vuong.

By Jen Hodgson | Western Standard News

Summary

Names were named at MP Kevin Vuong’s press conference Monday but there were no surprises — only troubling reiterations of earlier suggestions that some Canadian parliamentarians had either suspiciously close links to the Government of China, or had been at risk of being used as agents of influence, possibly without their knowledge.

Independent MP Vuong, joined by three foreign interference experts, hosted the Monday morning press conference to highlight and discuss allegations that had emerged from a House of Commons National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) report released in the spring. The committee alleged there was “troubling intelligence that some parliamentarians are semi-witting or witting participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere with our Parliament.”

Investigative journalist Sam Cooper, as part of the panel, revealed a hitherto unheard recording of the Liberal-appointed senator Yuen Pau Woo attempting to downplay the significance of the Chinese Communist United Front organization. Trudeau-appointed Sen. Woo is heard in a 47-minute briefing with another Chinese-influence organization (the Vancouver-based Canada Committee 100 Society) decrying any attempt to make ‘a litmus test’ out of a relationship with the United Front.

Vuong emphasized the need for transparency, stating that without naming the parliamentarians implicated in the NSICOP report, suspicion lingers over all parliamentarians, particularly those of Chinese descent. Vuong questioned how Canadians can vote democratically without knowing who these alleged traitors are.

Former CSIS Asia-Pacific Desk Chief Michel Juneau-Katsuya said documents submitted to the Hogue commission “shed light on the systemic problem that now exists.”

Canada’s Department of Global Affairs, now led by Liberal MP Mélanie Joly, “is part of the problem, not the solution,” said Juneau-Katsuya. “And this is the problem for decades. There is a spirit of contradiction in this system,” he said, referring to “comments made by the prime minister and others in regard to world affairs.”

He called for a “very serious review” of the foreign affairs department, because their analyses are erroneous.”

“Is this voluntary, is this accidental? The result is the same, so a clean-up is necessary,” he said. “A prime minister who doesn’t go as far as is needed to protect the country is a problem,” “We all need to become well aware the country is in bad shape, and our allies have lost confidence in us — confidence we did have several decades ago, but has become eroded.”

Read the full report at the publisher’s website here.