Canada Endorses Chinese-Scapegoating In Latest Inquiry

The Hogue Commission advances spies’ unknown agenda, media’s unaccountable role, and politicians’ sob stories

NG WENG HOONG in Vancouver
June 10, 2024, Monday, 10.20 pm. Word count: 5,815

The self-congratulations and squabbling for credit were in full swing weeks before Justice Marie-Josee Hogue submitted her finding on May 3 that China had interfered in Canada’s last two federal elections in 2019 and 2021.

The Globe and Mail ran a full-page inhouse ad (1) in April extolling its two award-winning national security reporters, Robert Fife and Steven Chase, for their apparent patriotic service to Canada. “China and India allegedly interfered with Canadian elections. We only know because of Globe reporting,” it proudly announced.

TheBureau.News founder Sam Cooper immediately denounced the paper’s “false advertising” (2) for not acknowledging his role in driving Canada’s latest Chinese Threat narrative when he was at rival Global News. The self-acclaimed investigative journalist was probably upset that he had been overlooked for several national media awards even though all three had faithfully regurgitated the narrative supplied by possibly the same anonymous intelligence source(s).

There will be more drama when Justice Hogue, a Quebec Court of Appeal judge appointed by the government last September to investigate those allegations, resumes the second and final part of her work in the fall.

Another “patriot”, Conservative Party of Canada member Kenny Chiu (3), basked in the commission’s seeming vindication of his drawn-out complaints that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had caused his defeat in the 2021 election. The one-term MP repeated that he had lost his Steveston-Richmond East seat to CCP manipulation of the “Chinese vote” through misinformation on Chinese-language media and the WeChat social media site. His former boss, Erin O’Toole, who led the fractious party to defeat in the election, delivered a similarly tragic script (4) as he blamed Chinese Canadian voters and the CCP for his downfall. This was probably his last opportunity on the national stage to reinforce the conspiracy that he had first shared with a podcaster (5) and the CBC (6) in 2022.

This time, he had a name to offer for his ouster as the party’s leader in early 2022. Conservative member Bert Chen’s (7) “guilt” was his Chinese ethnicity when he launched a well-supported petition (8) for O’Toole to resign following the party’s dismal electoral performance. Its spokesperson, Sarah Fischer (9), told the CBC that O’Toole’s allegations of a CCP-inspired insider hit job on him, submitted under oath to the Hogue Commission, were “ridiculous.”

Chen, whose ties run deep with Taiwan, told me: “O’Toole had to go simply because he failed the party. He wouldn’t have made that accusation against me if I was a white person.”

The biggest winner in the current Chinese Threat bonfire is the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) which was probably the source of it all as its supposedly secret files leaked out like books being lent out from the national library. The agency came away with a bigger budget (10) and increased powers under the proposed Bill C-70 (11), ostensibly to better protect the country from foreign interference and other threats. Should Canadians be concerned about the proposed additional powers for an already powerful agency with a history of costly (12) and damaging (13) lawsuits, and a legacy steep in the abuse of power (14), systemic racism (15), bigotry (16), and sexual harassment (17)? If there were any concerns, they were quickly drowned out by the coincidental gush of Chinese Threat stories in the media, courtesy of those leaked CSIS files. The Hogue Commission helped by not asking CSIS about its failure (or refusal) to protect the nation’s secrets which flowed unimpeded to Cooper (18), Fife, and Chase over the past two years.

Why The Focus On Chinese Canadians?
The breakdown in the Canada-China bilateral relations has given rise to a new phenomenon: the modern-day Canadian nationalist. Its purpose and character are being shaped by an informal coalition of CSIS and its file leakers, the media, mostly Conservative politicians, military-security types and think-tank analysts that wants Canada to become an outright anti-China hawk. In line with the hawks in Washington D.C. and Beijing, the coalition is preparing Canada for war between the West and China (19).

Its influence has grown in response to Canada’s precipitous decline on the world stage, first laid bare by Trudeau’s inability to handle an assertive China under President Xi Jinping. (Will the soon-to-be Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre, with little foreign policy interest, do any better?)

Xi, who came to power in 2012, has trashed the Canadian leader’s offer of friendship in line with Beijing’s new-styled “wolf warrior” diplomacy. His crude treatment of Trudeau on live TV (20) has left many Canadians feeling shocked and humiliated.

Xi has alarmed the West with his Sinofascist ideology (21). In Canada, anti-China sentiments have surged from 27% in 2005 to 45% in 2013 and onto a new high of 79% last year, according to the PEW Research Center (22). As discussed, Canada has become a point of convergence (23) for Sinofascism and Sinophobia.

Bilateral relations between the two countries have been in freefall over a number of issues: Meng Wan Zhou (24) and the two Michaels (25), Hong Kong (26), Xinjiang (27), Taiwan (28), Tibet (29), COVID (30), intellectual property theft (31), espionage (32), Canada’s ban on Huawei (33) from its 5G network, and the mutual expulsions (34) of diplomats.

This long and growing list of grievances is fuelling nationalism on both sides. Unless Canada wants to follow the Sinofascists down the gutter, it must start paying attention to the threat posed by its new roving band of glory hunters, intellectual mercenaries and fearmongers masquerading as patriots.

The signs are already past ominous with the emergence of what the University of Victoria historian John Price calls “Canada’s China Panic” (35). In a paper published in January, he said CSIS together with the CIA, FBI and other US intelligence agencies have manufactured “an inflated China Threat” narrative that will ultimately hurt Canada’s interest.

The Hogue Commission has advanced China Panic in producing a flawed and incomplete report. The early crosslinking and conflation of “foreign” with “Chinese” doomed the inquiry’s mission before it even started. As the hearings proceeded, it became clear that the commission was not trying to find out if foreign (Chinese and all other types of) agents had interfered in Canada’s elections. Rather, it was looking for “evidence” to confirm its pre-determined conclusion that Chinese and, to a lesser extent, Indian agents had interfered. Once the headlines were envisioned, the commissioner’s job was to look for confirmation to prop up the narrative.

The commission failed to address the inquiry’s core contradiction as to how the CCP supposedly persuaded voters to elect allegedly pro-Beijing candidates despite the hard evidence that Canadians increasingly disliked and distrusted China. If Canadians were so put off by China, why would they vote for supposedly CCP-endorsed candidates? The standout example of this contradiction was Kenny Chiu’s story which Justice Hogue failed to question. She should also have asked him about the 2019 election when he ran as an underdog to beat the entrenched Liberal MP by a wide margin. Did Chiu mention his upset victory (36), and has he ever “blamed” the CCP for manipulating the vote in his favour in 2019? Here is a longer critique (37) of both Chiu’s shameless self-promotion and the media’s equally shameless decision to become his vehicle for propaganda.

The inquiry did uncover flaws with the nomination process in at least one riding in Ontario where the candidate Han Dong (38) won the right to represent the Liberals in 2019 with the solicited votes of non-citizen students from the People’s Republic of China. It also gave voice to Mehmet Tohti regarding the suffering of the Uyghur people in their Xinjiang homeland, and the fear of China human rights activists in Canada. Their testimony affirms the fact that CCP agents are in Canada and other parts of the world to suppress criticism against the regime. There was plenty of finger-pointing between CSIS and the government, which showed why Canada’s intelligence stories, especially the leaked ones, must be taken with caution. The CCP tried, but its efforts did not affect the results (39) of the 2019 and 2021 elections.

These were probably the most important findings from the hearings, which point more to the threat from the turf-guarding, disorganized state of Canada’s intelligence machinery than it does about China’s attempts to interfere in Canadian politics. For sure, China tried, but its efforts have only succeeded in creating greater vigilance and a backlash among Canadians against all things Chinese. The 1.7 million Canadians who identify as ethnic Chinese will increasingly feel that vigilance and backlash.

What Happened To COVID And Maxim Bernier’s PPC?
From the moment it was declared a global pandemic in March 2020 right through to the Federal election on September 20, 2021, COVID became the biggest factor in Canadian politics during that 18-month window.

But it was barely mentioned during the inquiry in an astonishing display of selective cognition by Justice Hogue, CSIS (40), government officials, think tank analysts (41) and the media (42).

The disease had devastating economic, health, and social impacts on every country around the world. But it was worse in Canada where Ottawa’s COVID policies likely contributed to the economy shrinking by a record 5.4% (43) in 2020, far worse than the 3.1% decline (44) in the world’s GDP. The country, along with so many others, was in deep panic as it verged on a 1929 Depression-level economic collapse (45).

With no precedence for managing a deadly disease of this scale (SARS was no match), the Liberal-led government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looked to foreign advice, expertise, and vaccinations to deal with the pandemic. Those measures proved divisive, provoking intense anger among some Canadians, who also turned to foreign actors for direction. COVID morphed into an explosive political issue that impacted the 2021 election and beyond, putting Canada onto the path of the Freedom Convoy protests of 2022 and collision with the U.S. government. More on this later.

The Hogue Commission made only two references to COVID in its 194-page report (46). On page 21, it noted the 2021 election took place amid COVID restrictions. On page 129, the Conservatives were thought to be “echoing anti-Asian sentiment” and on page 136, Asian communities could not hold Lunar New Year celebrations during the lockdown years. Seriously?

The official opposition, the Conservative Party of Canada, was just as lost. It responded to the Liberals’ COVID policies by appearing to align (47) with the anti-vaccination movement that had grown into a global political force (48). Many Canadians criticized Trudeau’s imposition of medically unproven vaccinations and mandatory lockdowns as an attack on their livelihoods, human rights and political freedom. The Conservatives were well-positioned to harvest the anxiety and anger that had swept Canada by the time of the election.

Instead, they vacillated and lost the angry vote to the upstart People’s Party of Canada (PPC) which had staked out a far-right anti-establishment position even before the pandemic broke. Founded in 2018 by the former Conservative Party heavyweight Maxime Bernier, the PPC had already won over hardline Conservatives with its opposition to the carbon tax (49), multiculturalism (50), and “mass immigration” (51).

Although it did not win any seat in Parliament, the PPC performed impressively by more than tripling its share of the popular vote over the two elections. It won 4.9% of the vote (52) in 2021, up from 1.6% in 2019. The Conservatives’ loss of a sizeable chunk of its angry anti-establishment base, not the “Chinese vote”, was the main reason for the party’s failure in the 2021 election.

The Hogue Commission lost the plot. Maxime Bernier, not Erin O’Toole or Kenny Chiu, should have been the star of the inquiry.

“The PPC probably cost the Conservatives a few seats. Maybe even a dozen if we’re being very generous,” said Eric Grenier (53), a former polling analyst with the CBC.

O’Toole knew that the PPC was the real deal. He lost his nerves just before the election with a desperate plea to Canada’s right: “Justin Trudeau wants you to split the vote by voting PPC.”

According to CTV News, (54), “it was the first time that O’Toole gave voice to what some have been implying for weeks in this election, that the PPC may prove to be a spoiler for the Conservatives.”

The Canadian Press (55) had made the same point a few days earlier:

“Political watchers, including Conservatives, have increased their warnings in recent days about splitting the vote on the right with Maxime Bernier’s populist PPC, which could sink the Tories’ chances of defeating the Liberals in a race that has been razor tight.”

NOTE: Maxime Bernier mocked the Canadian establishment as his far-right People’s Party of Canada surged in the polls shortly before the Federal election on September 20, 2021


A post-mortem analysis (56) of the election suggested that the PPC had also won over Liberals disillusioned with the Trudeau government and some independent voters. Did foreign influencers contribute to the PPC’s winning over 840,000 votes in 2021 compared with 294,000 in 2019? Without a doubt. Given the strong ties between far-right groups in North America and Europe, the PPC would have received support from foreign groups for its opposition to “mass immigration”, diversity, and multiculturalism.

When O’Toole did bring up the PPC/COVID factor (57), his comment was fleeting and nowhere as passionate in 2021 when he begged voters not to split the conservative vote.

The commissioner and her team did not ask about the 840,993 people (58), or 4.9% of the total voter turnout, who chose the PPC in 2021. Increasingly alienated from mainstream Canada, this group probably exceeded the entire ethnic Chinese voting population in 2021, but it’s “the Chinese” who are now in the dock, the subject of an official inquiry into their loyalty.

The Hogue Report omitted any mention of Bernier and the PPC, and cited COVID only twice. It was as if COVID was irrelevant and the PPC did not exist in 2021. The Hogue Commission had its eyes only on “the Chinese”.


Who Killed The Moderate Conservative?
Maxime Bernier and the PPC badly wounded O’Toole’s attempt to create the “Moderate Conservative” to take the middle ground between the fading conservatism of the old world and the angry populism of the new world’s right-wing politics. The Moderate Conservative was on life support after the 2021 election as it laid helpless awaiting execution.

“Whoever the next leader is … they will have to get the balance right between conservative, traditional policies and populism,” he said in an interview with CBC Radio (59) in June 2022, a few months after he had stepped down as party leader.

“And I believe as leaders we have to channel people’s frustrations into positive change, not add fuel to the fire.”

O’Toole was, of course, not being truthful as he had already found a new target for Canadians on whom they could vent their frustrations.

Blaming the PPC or COVID for his failed leadership would never salvage his reputation or heal the split within the conservative movement. But blaming “the Chinese” would. It would divert much of the populist anger onto this group of people who somehow never quite belong despite having been in Canada since 1788 (60). He knew too that there would be no one from “the Chinese community” to contradict anything he said.

Chinese scapegoating is a well-honed Canadian tradition (61) going back to the founding of the country in 1867. Over the past century, politicians like Mackenzie King (62), who became prime minister in 1921, and David Eby (63), who became British Columbia’s premier in 2022, labour unionists (64), academics (65), journalists (66) and activists have enjoyed career success in scapegoating Chinese people and other Asians for various problems facing Canada. Importantly, there is very little political or financial downside to anyone staking Sinophobic and anti-Asian positions in Canadian public life.

Even more important for O’Toole, his new strategy (67) has the party’s tacit support and the backing of its most senior ethnic Chinese member, the foreign affairs critic Michael Chong. Both Chong and Chiu gave him the cover from any charges of Sinophobia. Furthermore, the likes of pro-Hong Kong activist Ivy Li (68) have declared that Sinophobia is mostly fiction invented by the CCP to silence its critics. To draw the support of O’Toole, the media, and other Canadian nationalists in their fight against Beijing, Li and her supporters downplay the ongoing reality of Sinophobia and anti-Chinese racism in Canada. She is correct to say that criticism against the CCP is not racist and that the Chinese government has falsely appropriated the concept of Sinophobia to stifle opposition to its policies. But she also ignores the reality that Sinophobia was not invented by the CCP. Anti-Chinese racism was already a major part of North American life long before the CCP was founded in 1921. Sinophobia and its evil twin, anti-Asian racism (69), are very much alive in Canada today and do not depend on the CCP for sustenance.

At the Hogue inquiry, O’Toole gave (70) the baying crowd what it had come to hear: his continuing unsubstantiated allegation (71) that Chinese interference had cost his party between five and nine seats in the 2021 election.

His “revelation” earned him a prominent role in the Hogue Report with 37 citations, and a place in Canadian history as the biggest political martyr of Chinese treachery.

In the wider context, O’Toole had won big not by blaming the CCP, but by targeting Chinese Canadians and their “captured” friends among the Canadian elite. In a Shakespearean act of betrayal, it was O’Toole who killed the Moderate Conservative. Bernier was his junior accomplice.

O’Toole fanned populist anger with his underhanded accusation that ethnic Chinese voters are untrustworthy and disloyal to Canada. They are weak and easily influenced by Beijing. They allow themselves to be brainwashed by the CCP to vote for the Liberals.

No one challenged his racist assumptions or asked him tough questions because neither the Hogue Commission nor the mainstream media wanted tough questions that would open up contrarian views. They found it easier to take O’Toole at his word. This is the state of Sinophobia in Canada today.

Perhaps mindful of the rough treatment (72) dished out to David Johnston, her predecessor in investigating foreign interference, Justice Hogue kept tightly to the Chinese-interference script laid out by CSIS, the Conservative Party, and the Globe and Mail.

She avoided Johnston’s “mistake” of asking questions about CSIS’s leakers, the media, and their murky relationship with each other. She did not second-guess the opaque editorial process and arbitrary judgment of Canada’s mainstream media and their total reliance on shadowy figures for scoops that lacked depth and context. She did not ask Kenny Chiu if his sub-par performance as an elected official was the real cause of his defeat. She did not highlight the size of the Chinese Canadian population, their constant infighting and inability to organize, and their renowned disinterest (73) in politics and the vote. She probably does not know that many Chinese Canadians do not speak or write Mandarin, do not read Chinese-language newspaper reports, and do not have WeChat accounts, putting the majority out of the reach of the CCP. But she did settle for the widely-held notion that Canada’s 1.7 million Chinese population is a monolithic block of dummies and zombies easily manipulated to swing elections.

David Johnston (74), on the other hand, cast doubts on the extent of the CCP’s interference right from the start. He probably thought he had enough political heft as a former governor-general, university chancellor, and law professor to ask real questions. He quibbled with the establishment’s endorsement of the CCP interference story which was already a sacred cow by the time of his appointment as “special rapporteur” in March 2023. He even criticized (75) Canada’s media!

If the most devastating disease in history could not dent the new political orthodoxy about China Interference, who was Johnston The Naïve with his line of questioning to take on the mob?

Instead of answering the questions and criticisms raised in his report of May 2023 (76), the media and opposition parties pounded him for being too friendly with China and the Trudeau family. Johnston soon found himself attacked as an alleged traitorous member of the CCP’s captured elite (77). The coalition was not just targeting his report, they were out to get him. An outraged Parliament voted to sack him. The lynch-mob environment left him no choice but to resign in humiliation. He lasted less than four months as the special rapporteur.

Johnston’s departure paved the way for another investigator to lead the “Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions”. Having flexed its muscles, the coalition of Canadian nationalists made clear it wanted someone more amenable (78) to its cause. By the time the Quebec Court of Appeal judge was found, approved and appointed to her new role last September, she was already versed in the risk of offending Canada’s new nationalists. The country’s new guardians are setting Canada up for an unprecedented experience in political purges as they aspire to rival Mao Zedong’s Red Guards and Xi Jinping’s Wolf Warriors in cleansing the system of its liberal foundations and the “traitors” working for foreign interests.

Who Is “Foreign”?
How did “foreign” become synonymous with “Chinese” in Canada? Why have “American” and “European” been spared?

In the growing firestorm over national security threats now reaching levels of paranoia, Canada is drawing inspiration from its dark past.

The European settlers who founded and ruled Canada harboured fears of being overwhelmed by the cheap labour and dirty immigrants from China (79) even as they coveted the cheap labour of the same dirty immigrants and the fabled markets where they came from.

Thus, was born Canada’s ambivalence towards the Chinese, with the pendulum swinging between greed and fear depending on the mood of the ruling class. The Chinese seem to incite this extreme dichotomous greed-fear reaction in the West. Canada has returned to the fear phase where every Chinese person is starting to look like Fu Manchu (80). In the recently ended greed phase, Canadian prime ministers and businesses fantasized about “the Chinese” as a giant market of a billion faceless consumers and suppliers of endless cheap labour and capital. The objectification of the Chinese explains why they will always be foreign to the Canadian establishment, regardless how long they have been in the country.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (81), the father of the current leader, had to overcome an army of skeptics, opponents and critics to push for the opening of diplomatic ties between the two countries in 1970. His successors and loyalists were able to beat back attempts to derail Canada’s China engagement in response to the Chinese government’s murderous suppression of its people in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and the publication of the Project Sidewinder report (82) in 1997. Sidewinder, a joint project between CSIS and the RCMP, discovered that Chinese criminal gangs had infiltrated Canada from the 1980s as part of an alleged long-term CCP masterplan to embed its spies, agents and influencers in the West. These moles allegedly melded into Canada’s Chinese communities and worked undercover to undermine, exploit and steal from their host country.

The report was initially discredited but has made a comeback following the recent sharp deterioration in Canada-China ties. Sidewinder inspired Sam Cooper to write Wilful Blindness, a sensational book (83) with a beguiling plot to rival The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (84). Similar to the conspiracy about Jews controlling the world, Cooper spins an epic tale about how “the Chinese” are controlling Canada through their “Vancouver Model” masterplan. Under the direction of the CCP over the past four decades, Chinese gangs and immigrants created Canada’s housing crisis, ousted the Hells Angels and took over Vancouver’s organized crime, laundered billions of dollars through little backwater casinos, flooded the country with drugs, corrupted Canadian officials, captured the country’s political, economic, cultural and educational elite, and infiltrated every major institution to influence the nation’s policy-making process. By mixing bits of facts with speculation, conjecture, assumptions, and false information, Cooper’s book was an instant best-seller on its release in May 2021. Its success underlines the elevated state of Sinophobia in Canada today. Canadians are increasingly distrustful of their media (85), but they can’t seem to get enough of damning stories about “the Chinese” in Canada.

The CSIS file leaker(s) took it to the next level by curating information for a handful of friendly reporters, starting with Cooper. Their shadowy partnership has produced the winning narrative of the CCP working with the “Chinese community” and their “captured” Canadian elite friends to subvert Canada’s political process.

In the framing by the Globe and Mail (86), Global News (87), and the Canadian media in general, “foreign” does not apply to Western governments, activists, or anything Western. The Hogue Commission has gone along with that definition. American and European interferences in Canadian affairs are not seen as foreign which explains why their long-entrenched participation is taken for granted. In the 1980s, European fixers with direct ties to Hitler’s Nazi Germany (88) infiltrated the conservative movement to fund the rise of Brian Mulroney, Canada’s 18^th prime minister, and helped create the Conservative Party of Canada. Despite the controversy that erupted and lasted over two decades, there has been no demand for an inquiry into the links between Europe’s far-right and Canada’s Conservative politics.

NOTE: Franz Josef Strauss was a senior officer in Hitler’s army who became a powerful politician and businessman in post-war Germany. See: How Strauss interfered in Canadian politics for over a decade and got away with it.


The U.S. role in Canada’s energy (89) and environmental (90) politics is well known as Americans have been driving and funding both sides of the energy-climate battle on Canadian soil for decades. Since late last year, political economist and climate campaigner Gordon Laxer has made high-profile pitches to the Hogue Commission to investigate Big Oil’s interference in Canada’s elections. He was ignored.

Laxer criticized Justice Hogue for excluding Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May from appearing before the inquiry to “present evidence on election meddling by Big Foreign Oil.”

“So did several others that Justice Hogue called the “climate group,” he wrote in the Ottawa Citizen (91).

Apparently, Justice Hogue had decided she would investigate only foreign governments and their proxies. In her reckoning, Big Oil did not qualify even though it comprises mostly foreign entities with a long record of interfering in Canada’s elections and politics.

Laxer, a founding director of the University of Alberta’s Parkland Institute, said the Hogue Commission’s narrow focus on state entities and their proxies contravened Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly’s (92) declaration that “we won’t let any foreign actor meddle in our democracy.”

Justice Hogue has good reason to exclude climate campaigners from her inquiry. They would have opened up an entirely new topic of investigation that would dilute and possibly derail her mission (93) to name China as “the main perpetrator of foreign interference” and “the biggest threat to the Canadian electoral space.”

Laxer probably spooked the commission with this comment in Policy Option (94) magazine last September:

“China’s ability to sway a broad spectrum of Canadian voters is far weaker than the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producer’s (CAPP) foreign-funded political interference.”

This was not what the commission wanted to hear. What if the media started repeating Laxer’s comment that the CCP is an inept operator with a poor record of winning friends and influencing people?

Five months later, Laxer killed off any lingering hopes that he might have for an invitation to the inquiry with this Ottawa Citizen op-ed (95):

“Foreign oil corporations know how to meddle in our mainstream politics far more effectively than the clunky agents of China who have little experience with democracy.”

This comment contradicted everything that Canadians have been told about the Chinese Threat. It runs counter to the Globe and Mail’s messaging that China operates a “sophisticated strategy” to interfere in Canada’s politics and elections.

NOTE: Downloaded May 15, 2024. The Globe and Mail’s special section on foreign interference is mostly about China and its “sophisticated strategy to disrupt Canada’s democracy.” The paper has planted the idea that “foreign” equates “Chinese”, which the Hogue Commission has adopted. The Globe and Mail does not cite interferences in Canadian affairs by U.S. and European entities.

The oil lobby (96) has counter-attacked by accusing foreign donors from the U.S. of funding environmental groups to hurt Alberta’s oilsands industry. The issue simmered for years before blowing up in the pro-conservative province months before the Federal election in September 2021. The Canadian Press (97) reported on the controversy surrounding accusations that “U.S. foundations funded Canadian environmental charities with the aim of landlocking the oilsands.”

Given the huge political and economic stakes involved in Alberta’s all-important energy sector, it is a puzzle why lawmakers and the media have not demanded the Hogue Commission investigate the influence of foreign oil and environmental organizations in the 2019 and 2021 elections.

The U.S. was also heavily involved in Canada’s COVID politics that started well before the 2021 election. Trudeau’s slender victory intensified anti-Ottawa sentiments as American and Canadian protestors teamed up to blockade cities and highways in the lead-up to the Freedom Convoy stand-off of 2022.

American interference contributed to billions of dollars in damage (98) to the Canadian economy while threatening Canada’s national security (99). The truckers, who blockaded Ottawa city and several U.S.-Canada border crossings in protest against Trudeau’s vaccination policy, received funding from the American right (100) and encouragement from former President Donald Trump (101).

As the standoff reached a dangerous impasse in February 2022, President Joe Biden (102) ordered the Canadian government to end the convoy’s protests as he sought to protect the U.S. auto industry and American jobs. At great political cost to himself and the nation, Trudeau complied by controversially evoking the Emergency Act (103) that violated the Charter rights of Canadians (104). Neither he nor his government has been accused of being captured by the Americans, although that was exactly what happened.

The influential talk-show host, Tucker Carlson, previously at Fox News, has also exposed the extent of his American capture of the Canadian elite and media.

Described as a “vicious demagogue” (105), Carlson built up a loyal following in Canada during his time at Fox News promoting white supremacism (106) and attacking diversity and multiculturalism. He certainly had an impact on Canada’s election in September 2021 that was overlooked by Justice Hogue, CSIS’s file leakers and the media. His attack (107) on Trudeau’s vaccination policy five months before the 2021 election was music to his large following in Canada. It added fuel to anti-Ottawa sentiments and also strengthened the separatist cause in Alberta.

According to the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (108), the CSIS Act (109) broadly defines foreign interference as “activities within or relating to Canada that are detrimental to the interests of Canada and are clandestine or deceptive or involve a threat to any person.”

Fox News may not be a U.S. state agency, but it is a proxy given its strong ties to the Republican Party, which controls the House of Representatives. While Carlson did most of his anti-Canada work at Fox, he remains a threat to Canada operating on his own (110) now. He has called for the U.S. military to invade and liberate (111) Canada from the Trudeau “dictatorship” (112) which he compares with Cuba under the late Fidel Castro. In January 2024, the right-wing political pundit repeated his “liberation” message in Calgary where he was invited to deliver a speech and to conduct a live interview with Alberta’s Premier Danielle Smith. Given the latest frenzy to hunt down “traitor MPs” (113) in Parliament, should Smith also be given the same treatment along with her government and thousands of her supporters in Alberta who hosted and applauded Carlson for calling for Canada’s destruction?

Carlson can be described as a shadowy proxy of the U.S. state machinery given his hugely successful career at Fox and close ties to Trump (114), a convicted criminal with enormous influence in the U.S. government who may yet return as the country’s next president. Carlson could also be a proxy for the Russian government considering his access to President Vladimir Putin (115) which is unheard of among the Western media fraternity. He was granted an exclusive interview (116) in February to relay Putin’s views to the world.

When the commission resumes hearing in the fall of 2024, it should expand the concept of “foreign” to include American and European actors and their allies in Canada. The proposed registry of foreign agents (117) should extend its coverage beyond those suspected of having ties with governments and private organizations in Asia, the Middle East, and Russia to include others now quietly working for entities in the U.S. and Europe. The registry should also include journalists, academics and activists, and not be limited to politicians and lobbyists.


Who Is “Diaspora”?
The term “diaspora” has taken on political significance in the Canadian discourse on foreign interference. Thanks to the Hogue Report, “foreign” and “diaspora” have now become specific terms of reference to Canadians with ethnic and cultural ties to China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Russia.

In its 59 references to “diaspora”, the report does not mention Canadians of Anglo-Saxon and Western European background who are also spared the association with “foreign”. The omission of Canada’s largest ethnic group from the inquiry implies that its members are automatically “local” or “real Canadians”, and somehow immunized as a group from being the targets of foreign interference and influence.

In so doing, Justice Hogue overlooked the fact that far-right extremism is a long-established (118) and an ever-present threat (119) in Canada on account of the extensive influence exerted by international white supremacist groups (120).

In 2021, nearly 68% (121) of Canada’s total population of 37 million identified as “white”, according to Statistics Canada. Given that only indigenous peoples are native to Canada, the 25 million “white” Canadians should also be classified as diasporic. Like Canada’s other diasporas, most white people maintain cultural, ethnic, religious or language connections with their place of ancestry, which, in this case, is Europe and/or the U.S.

As a result of this oversight, the Hogue Commission did not consider the reality of American and European interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections through their ties with Canada’s majority diaspora population. Trump, Carlson and the Freedom Convoy organizers provide examples that Canada’s white population is, in fact, just as vulnerable to being influenced by foreign agencies that are hostile to Canada. In the run-up to the 2021 election, white supremacist groups targeted the prime minister (122) and threatened his safety (123). Earlier, he was threatened by violent elements operating inside the military (124) that remains plagued by systemic racism and extremism (125).

This omission must be rectified when the inquiry resumes its work later this year.

Inevitably, the commission will encounter complications in imputing political affiliation and values on people along ethnic lines. Trump and Freedom Convoy also have found strong support among non-white groups. To imply that all “white” people think alike, are susceptible to supremacist ideology, or are easily influenced by Fox News, Trump or Carlson is wrong. And racist. But that is exactly what Justice Hogue is doing to 1.7 million Chinese Canadians. Her method of inquiry assumes that everyone in this StatCan grouping thinks alike, is swayed by WeChat and Xinhua News propaganda, is inherently loyal to Beijing, and is being targeted by the CCP.

These false assumptions are the key talking points of the Chinese Threat narrative created and sold to the world by the informal coalition from CSIS, the Conservative Party, and the media. The Hogue Commission is now their enabler by repeating and affirming those talking points into quasi-truths. The story that the commission has yet to uncover is that the inquiry has been an exercise in confirmation bias. For operating on false assumptions, for failing to challenge these assumptions, and for not questioning the dodgy sources of these assumptions, the commission has produced a flawed and sloppy report that Canada must reject and repudiate.

If it does not, Canada will end up endorsing the most dangerous and insidious strain of Sinophobia yet. Its effects on Canadian society will be far uglier, durable and more damaging than those from the last major outbreak that stretched from the late 1800s to the last century which Canada has yet to overcome.

FOOTNOTES
1. https://www.instagram.com/globemediagroup/p/C6EVADRx4A-
Globe and Mail, Instagram, April 2024. Robert Fife and Steven Chase win Ross Munro Award and Canadian Hillman Prize for expose on foreign interference in Canadian politics

2. https://twitter.com/scoopercooper/status/1780298974403981569
Sam Cooper, April 16, 2024. Message to the Globe and Mail: Don’t put out false advertising

3. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/foreign-interference-kenny-chiu-1.7194074
The Canadian Press, May 3, 2024. Foreign meddling may have flipped B.C. riding, inquiry finds. Report says inference didn’t affect who formed government, but highlights ‘troubling’ events

4. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/04/03/news/each-vote-matters-erin-otoole-tells-foreign-interference-inquiry
Laura Osman and Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press, April 3, 2024. Erin O’Toole says foreign interference lost his party seats

5. http://www.uncommons.ca/p/climate-conversion-and-convoys-with-54f
Nate Erskine-Smith, June 7, 2022. Climate, conversion, and convoys with Erin O’Toole @15.55 minutes

6. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thehouse/otoole-china-interference-claims-1.6493606
Christian Paas-Lang · CBC News · Posted: Jun 18, 2022. O'Toole claims Chinese interference in 2021 election flipped Tory ridings — but experts urge caution

7. https://crier.co/whoah-former-leader-of-canadas-conservatives-acuses-his-own-party-of-working-with-chinese-communist-party-to-interfere-in-canadian-elections
Dean Blundell, Crier Media, April 4, 2024. Former leader of Canada’s Conservatives accuses his own party of working with Chinese Communist Party to interfere in Canadian elections

8. https://www.tvo.org/article/anything-to-end-the-insanity-a-tory-insider-on-otooles-ouster
Matt Gurney, February 3, 2022. ‘Anything to end the insanity’: A Tory insider on O’Toole’s ouster

9. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/otoole-leadership-interference-1.7162568
Kate McKenna, CBC News. April 3, 2024. Former Conservative leader alleges Chinese interference may have played a part in his ouster

10. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-budget-grants-canadas-spy-agency-6557-million-to-fight-foreign
Steven Chase, Globe and Mail, April16, 2024. CSIS to get more than $650-million to fight foreign interference

11. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2024/05/government-introduces-legislation-to-counter-foreign-interference.html
Public Safety Canada, May 6, 2024. Bill C-70. Government introduces legislation to counter foreign interference

12. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/goodale-freeland-settlement-apology-1.4016572
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13. https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/huda-mukbil-csis-s-first-black-arab-canadian-muslim-spy-opens-up-about-her-fight-against-terrorism-and-discrimination-1.6426504
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16. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/09/14/news/bigotry-blinding-csis-and-rcmp-disastrous-effect
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17. https://twitter.com/JessMarinDavis/status/1783959575676280918
J.M. Davis, April 26, 2024. CSIS continues to harass female officer who reported rape by supervisor

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58. https://www.elections.ca/res/rep/off/ovr2021app/53/table8E.html
Number of valid votes by political affiliation, Election Sept 20, 2021
PPC 2021: 840,993 or 4.88% of total votes cast (17,209,811)
PPC 2019: 294,092 or 1.60% of total votes cast (18,350,359)
PPC gained 546,901 votes: 2021 vs 2019

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Stephanie Carvin, August 9, 2023. Is anyone actually surprised that no one qualified wants to do this after what happened to Johnston?

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Nono Shen & Kirsten Clarke, September 18, 2021. Volunteers gather in Richmond to urge Chinese-Canadians to vote

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Christopher Nardi and Ryan Tumilty August 9, 2023. Multiple candidates to oversee foreign interference inquiry have rejected the job. The Liberals have contacted ‘at least’ a half-dozen current and former judges to oversee an eventual inquiry, but all of them declined

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Chinese Immigration Act, 1923

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Tyler Dawson, Oct 21, 2021. Foreign donors opened wallets to ‘hurt’ Alberta energy sector.

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103. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/federal-court-rules-emergencies-act-invocation-not-justified-1.6738624
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104. https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/trudeau-governments-use-of-emergencies-act-during-freedom-convoy-violated-canadians-charter-rights-federal-court/article_b7881b12-ba15-11ee-98df-5fb651ed9996.html
Stephanie Levitz, Alex Ballingall, and Joy SpearChief-Morris, Toronto Star, January 23, 2024. Trudeau government’s use of Emergencies Act during ‘Freedom Convoy’ violated Canadians’ Charter rights: Federal Court

105. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/tucker-carlson-fox-news-misinformation-1.6821822
Nick Logan, CBC News, April 25, 2023. Tucker Carlson is gone from Fox News. But will his polarizing influence linger? Controversial cable news host was known for divisive rhetoric, conspiracy theories

106. https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/fox-s-tucker-carlson-s-biggest-racist-conspiracy-theory-n1295212
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, MSNBC, May 7, 2022. Tucker Carlson is the No. 1 champion of this leading far-right conspiracy. How Tucker Carlson revived and supercharged the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy.

107. https://tnc.news/2021/04/14/tucker-carlson-slams-trudeaus-vaccine-statements
True North Wire, April 14, 2021. Tucker Carlson slams Trudeau’s vaccine statements.

108. https://www.asiapacific.ca/publication/briefing-note-canadas-public-inquiry-foreign-interference
Chloe Yeung and Vina Nadjibulla, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, 2024. Canada’s Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions

109.https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/csis-scrs/documents/publications/2021/foreign-interference-threats-to-canada%27s-democratic-process.pdf
CSIS, July 2021. Foreign interference threats to Canada’s democratic process

110. https://tuckercarlson.com
Tucker Carlson Network

111. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vp7FpnQnQc
The Young Turks, January 27, 2023. Tucker Carlson: We need to invade Canada

112. https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/tucker-trudeau-has-declared-canada-a-dictatorship
Fox News, February 14, 2022. Tucker Carlson: Trudeau has declared Canada a dictatorship

113. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-we-need-to-know-the-names-of-the-traitor-mps-but-dont-count-on-any-of
Andrew Coyne, June 5, 2024. We need to know the names of the traitor MPs, but don’t count on any of the parties to give them up

114. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-08-24/donald-trump-and-tucker-carlson-a-love-story
Timothy L. O'Brien, August 24, 2023. Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson: A love story. The former president and ex-Fox News host indulge a bromance made in conspiracy heaven

115. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/tucker-carlson-goes-russia-everything-090009620.html
Joe Sommerlad, The Independent, February 8, 2024. Tucker Carlson goes to Russia: Everything we know about ex-Fox host’s unlikely interview with Vladimir Putin

116. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tucker-carlson-vladimir-putin-interview-ukraine-1234965053
Nikki McCann Ramirez, February 8, 2024. Putin used Tucker Carlson to wipe the Kremlin’s floor. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, the Russian president conceded little and controlled the conversation from its beginning

117. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canadian-government-proposes-new-foreign-influence-registry-as-part-of-wide-spanning-new-bill-1.6875228
Rachel Aiello, CTV News, May 6, 2024. Canadian government proposes new foreign influence registry as part of wide-spanning new bill

118. http://newsletter.insightthreatintel.com/p/mapping-canadas-white-power-ecosystem
Dan Collen, April 23, 2024. Mapping Canada’s white power ecosystem

119. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00113921231182183
Kayla Preston, June 25, 2023. An analysis of Canadian right-wing extremism

120. https://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/foreign-and-security-policy/canada-has-a-white-supremacist-problem-4757
Jordan Leichnitz, October 30, 2020. Canada has a white supremacist problem

121. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221026/dq221026b-eng.htm
StatCan, October 26, 2022. The Canadian census: A rich portrait of the country’s religious and ethnocultural diversity

122. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/federal-election-2021/known-white-nationalists-far-right-groups-among-election-protest-organizers-expert-says-1.5579181
Nicole Bogart, CTV News, Thursday, September 9, 2021. Known white nationalists, far-right groups among election protest organizers, expert says

123. https://globalnews.ca/news/8172664/national-security-attack-trudeau-future
Ahmar Khan Global News, September 7, 2021. Attack on Trudeau unsurprising, experts say, warning of future violence against politicians

124. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rangers-far-right-investigation-1.5697977
Murray Brewster and Elizabeth Thompson, CBC News, August 25, 2020. Military intelligence probes far-right activity in Canadian Ranger unit. Serving Canadian Ranger described prime minister as a ‘treasonous bastard’ in Twitter posting.

125. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canadian-military-not-doing-enough-to-detect-prevent-extremism-in-the-ranks-report-1.5874626
Lee Berthiaume, The Canadian Press, April 25, 2022. Canadian military not doing enough to detect, prevent extremism in the ranks: report