Canada has announced retaliatory tariffs against the US, in a move that marks the beginning of a trade war between the neighbouring countries.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau set out “far-reaching” tariffs of 25%, affecting 155bn Canadian dollars’ worth ($106.6bn; £86bn) of American goods ranging from beer and wine, to household appliances and sporting goods.
The move matches US President Donald Trump 25% levy on Canadian and Mexican imports to the US – and an additional 10% on China – over his concerns about illegal immigration and drug trafficking.
The workers at a Whole Foods location in Center City, Philadelphia, voted to form the grocery chain’s first-ever union on Monday, marking an incredible victory for workers who have been organizing at the store for over a year.
Whole Foods was bought by Amazon in 2017, and since then benefits, staffing levels, and working conditions have gotten worse. 130 workers voted in favor of unionizing with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), while 100 voted against. Through the union, workers are demanding a living wage (the starting salary is currently only $16/hour), better benefits, and more protections.
The workers at a Whole Foods location in Center City, Philadelphia, voted to form the grocery chain’s first-ever union on Monday, marking an incredible victory for workers who have been organizing at the store for over a year.
Whole Foods was bought by Amazon in 2017, and since then benefits, staffing levels, and working conditions have gotten worse. 130 workers voted in favor of unionizing with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), while 100 voted against. Through the union, workers are demanding a living wage (the starting salary is currently only $16/hour), better benefits, and more protections.
The workers at a Whole Foods location in Center City, Philadelphia, voted to form the grocery chain’s first-ever union on Monday, marking an incredible victory for workers who have been organizing at the store for over a year.
Whole Foods was bought by Amazon in 2017, and since then benefits, staffing levels, and working conditions have gotten worse. 130 workers voted in favor of unionizing with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), while 100 voted against. Through the union, workers are demanding a living wage (the starting salary is currently only $16/hour), better benefits, and more protections.
A document obtained by The Canada Files showcases the Canadian government’s close connection and assistance to anti-communist collaborator Chinese Canadians who are spearheading efforts to usurp the pro-cooperation majority of Chinese Canadians and take control of the diaspora.
The China Human Rights Forum
On November 20, 2023, Global Affairs Canada (Canada’s foreign ministry) and the University of Ottawa co-hosted the “China Human Rights Forum”. The document obtained by TCF sheds more light on the forum, after we touched on the forum itself in October 2023. It gives the telling full title (bolding added): “China Human Rights Forum: Toward Accountability”.
The document contains a six-page draft concept note whose guest names match those of the final poster, on the last page (pg. 7). No full pages were redacted or withheld and public posts found by TCF verified the note’s contents. The document came from TCF’s ATIP request to Global Affairs Canada:
“Email communications at ADM level and above about the The China Human Rights Forum, co-hosted by Global Affairs Canada and the University of Ottawa.
It notes that a Parliamentary Secretary (a sitting MP) or a representative from the OPD – Trade & Diplomacy North Asia would provide “opening remarks and introduction” (pg. 1). This was a Canadian foreign ministry co-hosted forum, so this means MP Rob Oliphant was likely the Parliamentary Secretary who could have spoke (he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs then – and still is).
The forum is an amalgamation of international imperialists and domestic Chinese Canadian collaborators, and Canada’s foreign ministry was an equal part of its creation.
After being contacted by The Canada Files, Global Affairs Canada failed to meet their own extended deadline to answer TCF’s questions and and did not respond to the content our request for comment (until time of this article’s release), only stating that:
“Your request is still being addressed. We will circle back to you as soon as we have updates to share.”
Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region
Rather than being the victim of an aggressive Canadian parliament, it seems the Liberal foreign ministry was pushing for a change in Canada’s engagement with China’s Hong Kong SAR. GAC included a discussion question in the forum’s first session (pg. 2), “How should countries like Canada respond to the irreversible changes that are gradually erasing Hong Kong’s special status within China?”
They also included Benedict Rogers, the then-Executive Director of Hong Kong Watch, an anti-China organization which a former staffer at Apple Daily, testified in court, that [Jimmy] Lai had instructed her to assist Rogers in establishing. Hong Kong Watch Patrons in Canada include “former Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler, Melissa Lantsman MP, James Bezan MP, Senator Leo Housakos, Garnett Genuis MP, Cathay Wagantall MP, and former Senator Jim Munson.” Rogers would go on to force his own resignation by criticizing a colleague for their “Malaysian mindset”, resigning in August 2024, but staying on as a trustee. Rogers is also an Advisor to the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition on China.
Finn Lau was an organizer in the 2019 Hong Kong riots, “founder of ‘Hong Kong Liberty’ and populariser of the doctrine of ‘If we burn, you burn with us’,” and was the third of four speakers for the first session. The last person’s name was redacted.
In November 2024, Canadian parliamentarians would go on to initiate a study into the Hong Kong SAR’s special status, including the diplomatic status of Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) staff, with plans to have anti-China activists testify, which only stopped because Canada’s parliament was prorogued (session ended) by Canada’s Prime Minister.
Tibet Autonomous Region
The Canada Files has covered the narrative of ‘Tibetan Residential Schools’, a narrative birthed by CIA-front (National Endowment for Democracy) funded Tibet Action Institute in December 2021. The narrative compared “comparing Tibetan boarding schools to Canadian residential schools (a brutal genocidal effort to assimilate Indigenous children and separate them from their parents)”. Jerry Grey already debunked this narrative for The Canada Files, pointing out how the Tibet Autonomous Region is incredibly vast (necessitating boarding schools) and that even CBC propaganda against the schools showed the Tibetan language being used.
For the forum’s third session (pg. 2-3), the discussion question was: “Given Canada’s own dark history with residential schools, what should Canada do to ensure these mistakes are not repeated elsewhere?” One speaker would know the Liberal government well.
Sherap Therchin (pg. 1), Executive Director of Canada-Tibet Committee, got his role after participating in Canada’s Parliamentary Friends of Tibet Internship Program and then short-term work with Global Affairs Canada. Before that, “he was the Deputy Chief of Tibet Fund India, with responsibility for oversight and evaluation of USAID projects supporting education and healthcare in Tibetan refugee communities.” USAID is the regime change arm of the United States government.
In 2021, this author wrote the article: “The Canadian social democratic ‘left’ smears China to deflect from our colonial history of genocide”. Turns out the Liberals are on the same page as the social democrats. Such a shocker. Who could have ever seen this coming.
The shamelessness of colonial criminals has no limits, ever.
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region
Canada has been determined to slander China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Before the US even falsely declared that China was committing genocide against Uygur Muslims in January 2021, a Canadian parliament subcommittee had already allowed a CIA-front funded group, Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP), to drive a report which claimed China was committing genocide against Uygur Muslims.
URAP’s Executive Director? Mehmet Tohti.
In February 2021, Canada’s parliament voted for a non-binding motion to declare a ‘Uyghur genocide’. When Canada’s Senate declined to pass a similar motion, URAP had a meltdown and accused Independent Senator, Yuen Pau Woo of “acting as a spokesperson for China rather than for Canada”, promising to retaliate against Pau Woo by campaigning for his expulsion from the Senate.
URAP went on to successfully advocate for Canada to commit to bringing in 10,000 Uygur ‘refugees’ (meanwhile the UN-listed terrorist East Turkestan Islamic Movement has never been listed as a terrorist organization in Canada) and be the organization given $1 million to manage for them (which the Canadian government tried to hide when TCF broke the story).
Tohti is also known for advocating that Canada admit a Guantanamo prisoner, Anvar (Ali) Hassan, a then 34-year-old who “fled China to live and train in a camp in Afghanistan in 2001” and was “later caught in the hills of Pakistan”, who “admitted to military training in Afghanistan” with the motivation of fighting the “oppressive Chinese government”.
Canada’s government also helped fund URAP’s participation in Canada’s Foreign Interference Inquiry with a grant to The Human Rights Coalition, and stood to the side as Tohti’s temper tantrums about the terrifying risk of being asked critical questions by maligned political figures, were successful in crushing this risk. The Human Rights Coalition, including URAP got $178k CAD to ensure they could participate in the Foreign Interference Inquiry. The ‘Chinese Canadian Concern Group’ got $334k CAD for this purpose.
URAP also has advocated for a replica of the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act (UFLPA) in Canada, seeking the help of “the United States officials” to “raise this issue in bilateral discussions with their Canadian counterparts”.
Tohti was a speaker at the forum’s second session, which was on “Forced Labour in China: Supply Chains and Xinjiang” (pg. 2).
The session’s discussion question: “What can government, industry and civil society do to address the challenges of supply chains affected by forced labour?”
URAP is fake opposition to the Liberal government, operating in service of the US drive towards war on China, used to justify action on the grounds of supposed community groundswell demanding action. Canada’s foreign ministry wants the same thing as URAP, to use the imaginary ‘forced labour’ in China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in a bid to destabilize Xinjiang economically.
The way to cement this influence would be for URAP to be crafted into the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (created by Canada’s government in 1940) of the Chinese Canadian community, an extreme-right organization that dominates the diaspora and supports Canadian imperialism. And wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what URAP wants. Kayum Masimov, “project coordinator of Ottawa-based Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project” said to Canada’s Foreign Interference Inquiry, on October 2, 2024 (pg. 142):
“We would further recommend long term organizational and capacity building support to fund Uyghur Canadian organizations to build community resilience. Allocate federal funding to support Uyghur Canadian organizations in their capacity building efforts. This would include resources for advocacy, community outreach, and legal support. Strengthening these organizations will help ensure that they can respond effectively to interference to support their community members.”
Foreign interference paranoia
“Authoritarian governments are increasingly seeking to extend the application of repressive domestic policies beyond their own borders. Human rights defenders, dissidents and overseas diaspora groups are increasingly vulnerable to these tactics, despite living in liberal democratic jurisdictions. The role of PRC propaganda in this context will also be examined”
Canadian foreign ministry’s concept note for the fourth session (pg. 3)
The famously moderate Finn Lau spoke again, while Cheuk Kwan, “author and diaspora leader, co-chair of the Toronto Association for Democracy,” also spoke. Note how Canada’s foreign ministry wants Kwan to be considered a diaspora leader.
Even more brazen is GAC’s invitation to Sheng Xue to speak. Xue is the most separatist of separatists this author has ever seen.
“She is a staunch supporter and activist for Tibet, East Turkestan, Southern Mongolia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Manchuria and other regions who are resisting the CCP’s tyranny and pursuing freedom and independence. SHENG Xue is the state advisor for the restoration of Manchuria… a key leader of the overseas Chinese pro-democracy movement”.
Xue claims that “Over the past three decades” she “has been the main victim of the CCP’s transnational suppression.”
The panel also contained Grace Wollensak, the Falun Dafa Association of Canada’s national coordinator. Falun Dafa is Falun Gong. Falun Gong is a racist, anti-science, anti-communist cult with a ‘peace-loving’ garb placed on top, allowed to spread by the West because of its long-term usefulness for whipping up negative sentiments about China to help the West’s plotting to cripple China and balkanize it.
Again, far from being slow on implementing a foreign influence registry, Canada’s foreign ministry was on board for far longer than they have admitted.
The fourth session’s questions (bolding added) were: “What can Canada do to ensure all those in Canada can enjoy rights and freedoms free from intimidation and repression by foreign state actors? What existing tools could be deployed for this purpose and what new policy or legislative tools are needed? (pg. 3)”
The fierce anti-China advocates were helped by the Canadian state in another way. The forum contained a “Networking lunch” (pg. 1), part-way through. All these speakers had an easy way to connect and develop cooperation for future anti-China activities, directly thanks to Canada’s government.
An Instagram post for Students for a Free Tibet International confirms that the four public topics were Tibet, transnational repression, forced labor, along with media freedom and democracy”, matching the public topics in the draft concept note obtained by TCF.
Who does Canada want to control the Chinese Canadian community?
Canada’s government and state institutions do not operate in good faith towards China or Chinese Canadians. Once CSIS’ Director, David Vigneault, bought the US line of ‘China danger’ hook, line and sinker in Spring/Summer 2018 (pg. 10-12), Canada’s relations with China spiraled.
Canada kidnapped Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on the US’ behest in Winter 2018. A Canadian parliament subcommittee began the process that would lead to a 2021 Xinjiang genocide vote, in 2018. Canada condemned China’s Hong Kong SAR in its handling of the 2019 riots and also condemned the 2020 Hong Kong National Security Law (which is strikingly similar to Canadian national security laws).
Some Canadian MPs and Senators quickly joined the anti-China Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) when it was founded in 2020, and more of them have joined since. They have gotten no pushback from the government, for pushing parliament’s actions to become more anti-China.
A Canadian Senator was viciously attacked by a CIA-front funded group which promised to cost him his position, in retaliation for opposing a bill they wanted to see pass, and Canada’s government did nothing.
Canada’s RCMP bought into Safeguard Defenders’ “Chinese police stations” paranoia in 2022, and targeted Chinese community centers in Québec. The Chinese Canadian community has since rallied (PDF to be inserted) to save a building of the Chinese Family Services from repossession, and continues to wait as the RCMP has stalled a community lawsuit by 13 months to complete their investigation into the centers. The community has urged the RCMP to move rapidly to complete the investigation, and reiterated their cooperation with the investigation since day one.
Canada’s parliament was also busy getting ready to demonize China on the Tibet front. The same parliamentary subcommittee which targeted Xinjiang was doing a study on the supposed ‘Tibetan Residential Schools’ which the forum discussed in fall 2023, after that subcommittee put out a report pushing the CIA-front funded narrative in the summer. In November 2023, right around the time of the forum, 24 Liberal MPs including four Liberal cabinet ministers met with President of the “Central Tibetan Administration”, Sikyong Penpa Tsering, who came to Canada, “to garner support for Tibetan freedom struggle”.
Then, in June 2024, Canada’s parliament voted in favour of a non-binding motion that “refers to Tibetans as ‘a people and a nation’ who should get self-determination.” In Summer 2024, a Canadian official, Amy Awad (Director General, Digital and Creative Marketplace Frameworks at the Department of Canadian Heritage), called Taiwan province a country, and the department didn’t condemn the comments nor did the foreign ministry say anything to oppose Awad’s comments.
Canada is also busy participating in US-led ‘freedom of navigation’ missions in the South China Sea, to harass China. Further, Canada openly came out in support of Uygur and Tibetan separatists, after they were sanctioned by China for their separatist activities. More Canadian misdeeds towards China have already been discussed in this article.
Canada’s government has a clear objective: to impose the imperial diaspora faction of the Chinese Canadian community, as the ruler of the Chinese Canadian community. Canada’s funding to and political support of the imperial diaspora faction of the Chinese Canadian community puts this beyond doubt.
Canada wants this imperial diaspora faction to rule, just as the UCC was made to rule the Ukrainian Canadian community. The UCC has ruled their community for 85 years and there’s no sign of this control ending.
Yet, many in the Chinese Canadian community are not fooled by the pro-colonial elements in the community. They act as a fifth column for the government’s anti-China policies inside the community. From Canadian history, we see how the government’s view of China determined its policy towards Chinese Canadians. Remember the 62 years of state racism (Head Tax and Chinese Exclusion Act) against Chinese immigrants when China was weak.
Today, China is economically challenging the west and the Canadian government views Beijing as an adversary to be isolated. Ottawa’s policies towards China determine how the government treats Chinese Canadians. The democratic rights of Chinese Canadians are being attacked under the guise of the ‘China threat’ and ‘Chinese interference’. The rights of Chinese Canadian in participating in the political process are being undermined with the promotion of the “good” Chinese to divide the community.
The Canada Files is aware that many Chinese Canadians are forming a united front within their community and with other Canadians, to protect their full democratic rights to participate in the political process without their loyalty being questioned. Their efforts will be covered by this outlet.
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country’s only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We’ve provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
Please consider setting up a monthly or annual donation through Donorbox.
What will happen to Australia — and New Zealand — once the superpower that has been followed into endless battles, the United States, finally unravels?
With President Donald Trump now into his second week in the White House, horrific fires have continued to rage across Los Angeles and the details of Elon Musk’s allegedly dodgy Twitter takeover began to emerge, the world sits anxiously by.
The consequences of a second Trump term will reverberate globally, not only among Western nations. But given the deeply entrenched Americanisation of much of the Western world, this is about how it will navigate the after-shocks once the United States finally unravels — for unravel it surely will.
Leading with chaos Now that the world’s biggest superpower and war machine has a deranged criminal at the helm — for a second time — none of us know the lengths to which Trump (and his puppet masters) will go as his fingers brush dangerously close to the nuclear codes. Will he be more emboldened?
The signs are certainly there.
President Donald Trump 2.0 . . . will his cruelty towards migrants and refugees escalate, matched only by his fuelling of racial division? Image: ABC News screenshot IA
So far, Trump — who had already led the insurrection of a democratically elected government — has threatened to exit the nuclear arms pact with Russia, talked up a trade war with China and declared “all hell will break out” in the Middle East if Hamas hadn’t returned the Israeli hostages.
Will his cruelty towards migrants and refugees escalate, matched only by his fuelling of racial division?
This, too, appears to be already happening.
Trump’s rants leading up to his inauguration last week had been a steady stream of crazed declarations, each one more unhinged than the last.
Denial of catastrophic climate consequences
And will Trump be in even further denial over the catastrophic consequences of climate change than during his last term? Even as Los Angeles grapples with a still climbing death toll of 25 lives lost, 12,000 homes, businesses and other structures destroyed and 16,425 hectares (about the size of Washington DC) wiped out so far in the latest climactic disaster?
The fires are, of course, symptomatic of the many years of criminal negligence on global warming. But since Trump instead accused California officials of “prioritising environmental policies over public safety” while his buddy and head of government “efficiency”, Musk blamed black firefighters for the fires, it would appear so.
Will the madman, for surely he is one, also gift even greater protections to oligarchs like Musk?
“…pave the way for my Administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal agencies”.
So, this too is already happening.
All of these actions will combine to create a scenario of destruction that will see the implosion of the US as we know it, though the details are yet to emerge.
The flawed AUKUS pact sinking quickly . . . Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with outgoing President Joe Biden, will Australia have the mettle to be bigger than Trump. Image: Independent Australia
What happens Down Under?
US allies — like Australia — have already been thoroughly indoctrinated by American pop culture in order to complement the many army bases they house and the defence agreements they have signed.
Though Trump hasn’t shown any interest in making it a 52nd state, Australia has been tucked up in bed with the United States since the Cold War. Our foreign policy has hinged on this alliance, which also significantly affects Australia’s trade and economy, not to mention our entire cultural identity, mired as it is in US-style fast food dependence and reality TV. Would you like Vegemite McShaker Fries with that?
So what will happen to Australia once the superpower we have followed into endless battles finally breaks down?
‘Trump has promised chaos and chaos is what he’ll deliver.’
His rise to power will embolden the rabid Far-Right in the US but will this be mirrored here? And will Australia follow the US example and this year elect our very own (admittedly scaled down) version of Trump, personified by none other than the Trump-loving Peter Dutton?
If any of his wild announcements are to be believed, between building walls and evicting even US nationals he doesn’t like, while simultaneously making Canadians US citizens, Trump will be extremely busy.
There will be little time even to consider Australia, let alone come to our rescue should we ever need the might of the US war machine — no matter whether it is an Albanese or sycophantic Dutton leadership.
It is a given, however, that we would be required to honour all defence agreements should our ally demand it.
It would be great if, as psychologists urge us to do when children act up, our leaders could simply ignore and refuse to engage with him, but it remains to be seen whether Australia will have the mettle to be bigger than Trump.
Republished from the Independent Australia with permission.
Intimidating a diaspora organization for presenting to the foreign interference inquiry should be widely condemned. But the victims of intimidation contradict the dominant narrative, so it won’t be.
In Summer 2024, the Iranian Canadian Congress (ICC) presented to the Foreign Interference Commission’s Public Consultation Process and Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue. Seven members of the Iranian community detailed pressure they’ve faced from supporters of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), Tehran and Israel. The Foreign Interference Commission’s official summary of their presentation explains:
“Certain attendees spoke about being targeted online and facing harassment due to their advocacy for peace and against sanctions and war with Iran, explaining that those who voice such views are falsely labelled by some political groups within the Iranian Canadian community as disloyal to Canada, and subject to intimidation and harassment. Attendees described the chilling effect this has on a portion of the Iranian Canadian community, explaining that it silences people. Several attendees indicated that they have restricted or ceased their advocacy work, and that the ICC had lost volunteers, due to such harassment. Certain attendees described the negative impacts that the closing of the Iranian embassy in Canada had on members of the Iranian Canadian diaspora, including the expense and difficulties encountered in accessing consular services readily available to non-Iranian Canadians.”
In response to their presentation, the ICC has faced a new wave of harassment and threats from elements of the Iranian community threatened by a narrative that contradicts the notion the community supports North American aggression against Iran. The ICC’s President, Saideh Khadir, has been targeted with abuse online and in person. At a cultural event on December 21, 2024, the head of the most representative Iranian organization in the country was harassed by Pejman Asgari Gohar. In response to Gohar’s persistent threats, Khadir filed a complaint with the police.
Iranians Canadians who oppose war against Iran and want to restart diplomatic relations between the two countries are often threatened by proponents of the former king. Some Iranians outside the country want to return the eldest son of the last Shah, who has received CIA assistance and has largely lived in the US since the mid 1970s. (After playing a small part in the 1953 US/UK coup that returned the Shah to power Ottawa backed the king until he was ousted by popular protest in 1979.)
In early 2023, the “Crown Prince of Iran”, Reza Pahlavi, spoke at an event in Toronto that drew Pierre Poilievre, Deputy Conservative leader Melissa Lantsman and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Rob Oliphant.
Supporters of the MEK cult, which Canada previously listed as a terrorist organization, also target the ICC. An organization backed by Israel and Saudi Arabia, the MEK has recently been promoted by former interim Conservative party leader Candice Bergen and Senator Michael L. MacDonald. In recent years Stephen Harper, John Baird, Tony Clement, Judy Sgro and other Canadian political figures have attended MEK conferences.
It’s unlikely that Khadir or others associated with the ICC who’ve faced harassment will receive much support from the political or media establishment. Those attacking the ICC benefit from a remarkably anti-Iranian political and media climate.
Three months ago, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre called for Israel to pre-emptively bomb Iranian nuclear energy facilities, saying it would be “a gift by the Jewish state to humanity.” While slightly less bombastic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has also justified violence against Iran and its 90 million people. For their part the NDP has participated in the Zionist/US empire campaign against Iran. Last month, NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson posted:
“Great news – Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi has been freed! Working with Iranian Justice Collective, I secured a unanimous consent motion in Parliament to impose targeted sanctions on officials from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court. Women Life Freedom.”
The top item on the Iranian Justice Collective’s X account when this author looked was a column in the Jerusalem Post calling for regime change in Iran from Nazanin Afshin-Jam MacKay, wife of former Conservative minister Peter MacKay. A half dozen posts below the article in the Israeli paper is a post from a senior fellow at the hard right Canadian-government connected Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Kaveh Shahrooz, stating “The ICC is a fifth column organization operating in Canada.”
On January 8, 2025, the five-year anniversary of the downing of flight PS752 from Tehran to Kyiv, Poilievre posted a statement ignoring the context in which Iranian forces shot down the plane. Five days earlier the US assassinated top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and nine others in Iraq in flagrant violation of international law. In response Iranian forces struck US bases in Iraq that day and were on high alert for a possible US counterattack. That context was ignored by the Conservative leader who noted, “five years ago today, 176 people, including 55 Canadians and 30 more who called Canada home, were murdered by the terrorist IRGC on flight PS752. We honour their memory and pray for the families whose lives were devastated as we fight for justice. The tyrants in Tehran will never prevail. The Iranian people will be free. And Canada will stand with them in that fight for freedom.”
The government statement on National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Air Disasters largely echoed Poilievre. In a sign of the anti-Iranian climate, January 8 was chosen to mark air tragedies even though the event in question happened 10,000 km from Canada with the flight on route to another country 10,000 km away.
(The first death in a flying accident in Canada took place over a century ago and there have been multiple crashes in, or on flights to or from Canada, that have left more dead.)
National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Air Disasters has effectively become National Day to Criticize Iran. In his statement on National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Air Disasters BC Premier David Eby said, “We continue to condemn all acts of terrorism and violence, and we support the federal government’s work to hold the Islamic Republic of Iran accountable for the attack on Flight 752.”
The political and media climate in Canada emboldens harassment and threats against Iranian Canadians who promote peace and diplomatic relations with Iran. A few questions: Whose interests does this serve? Is Iran the worst country in the world for its treatment of women? How about Saudi Arabia? Does Canada have diplomatic relations with that country? Why the double standard?
It would be nice if politicians who claim to be in favour of an independent Canadian foreign policy would think before they reflexively repeat U.S. and Israel foreign policy talking points.
Yves Engleris the author of 13 books. His latest book, available now, is “Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy”.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country’s only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We’ve provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
Please consider setting up a monthly or annual donation through Donorbox.
Trump told the Davos Economic Forum January 23: “My message to every business in the world is very simple: Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth.” Otherwise, if they continue to try and produce at home or in other countries, their products will be charged tariff rates at Trump’s threatened 20%.
To Germany this means (my paraphrase): “Sorry your energy prices have quadrupled. Come to America and get them at almost as low a price as you were paying Russia before your elected leaders let us cut Nord Stream off.”
“Alberta is taking a zero-tolerance approach to crime,” bragged Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in 2023 on social media after her government announced more enforcement, greater emphasis on public safety, and limited discretion of prosecutors to let offenders off the hook. “
“There is an increasing sense that the system is not holding criminals properly accountable and letting the public suffer the consequences,” chimed in Alberta Minister of Justice Mickey Amery during the announcement. “This is simply unacceptable.”
If only the governing United Conservative Party applied those laudable principles to oil sands companies that repeatedly flout legal requirements not to pollute waterways, air and land.
Lulu Hernández said when she first started working as a cleaner in Vancouver, she just accepted the long hours and low wages that were the industry standard.
But two women she met on the job helped her realize her workday could be different, Hernández said.
“We were just dreaming about having a company where we are all women and fairly paid and a community,” she said. “We had all these ideas, but we didn’t know what we were creating until we put the name on it.”
Hernández is one of the three founders of the Cleaning Co-op. Since incorporating in May 2023, the co-operative has grown to employ about 20 women and gender-diverse employees, including cleaners and administration staff.
The world regards Canada as nice and boring—nothing exciting happens there—but over the last couple of months, things have been very different. On the one hand, within a week or two of being elected president-elect, Trump started issuing threats against Canada: threats about tariffs, threats about undertaking all sorts of measures because Canada was not helping reduce illegal immigration into the U.S., and of course, the threat about making Canada the 51st state, which he issued first by calling Prime Minister Trudeau “Governor Trudeau.”
On the other hand, we have seen that Prime Minister Trudeau has resigned in the last two weeks.
As 2025 begins, California is on fire. And it feels like much of the rest of the world is burning, too. From the slaughter in the Middle East to a new Cold War brewing in Asia, everywhere we look is filled with uncertainty.
At home, the California wildfires have exposed much of the true face of capitalism. From prison laborers risking their lives for pennies by fighting the blazes to massive price hikes for rents in Southern California, the U.S. is crumbling.
Yet externally, America is as aggressive as ever. Only last month, it helped force through a coup against the Assad government in Syria, and Trump has made noises about using force against Panama, Greenland, and has threatened Canada, Cuba, Venezuela and other nations in the Global South.
New polling shows that a majority of Americans reject president-elect Donald Trump’s recent imperialist demands, including his calls for the U.S. to take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland. In mid-December, Trump demanded that the Panama Canal, territory that was returned to Panama as part of a 1977 treaty, be given back to the U.S., claiming that U.S. ships were being “ripped off.”…
It’s not uncommon for Canadian dentist Brandon Doucet to see patients who are in so much pain that they’ve tried to extract their own teeth. As a dental student, Doucet was inspired by Bernie Sanders’s first presidential campaign and realized that he needed to take action where he was, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 2019, Doucet founded a group called the Coalition for Dental Care to advocate…
Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (center), with Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino and Minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair (left), holds a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in response to the release of a special report on foreign interference. [Source: hindustantimes.com]
Censorship and persecution of anti-war and anti-imperialists in the U.S. have extended to Canada where members of the country’s ruling elite—which increasingly align with U.S. foreign policies—have displayed utter hostility and contempt for immigrants who dissent against Canadian foreign policy.
A Cold War climate was on display at a recent foreign interference inquiry on Parliament Hill, which reflected a growing jingoism and paranoia about foreign subversion.
The foreign interference inquiry, driven into existence by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), has focused heavily on supposed Chinese interference in Canadian politics. It also exposed an attitude of suspicion toward any kind of dissent promoted by members of the Chinese Canadian community in what is supposed to be a free country where dissenting views are encouraged.
From this inquiry, it is clear that members of the Chinese Canadian community are welcome to speak out only if they support Canadian foreign policies. Anyone else is silenced.
Conservatives and Social Democrats United in Trying to Limit Dissent
The brazen nature of the hostility toward Chinese Canadian dissent has become undeniable throughout the foreign intelligence inquiry.
The man whose antics are most dramatic is former Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) and failed 2021 MP candidate Kenny Chiu. Chiu, since September 2021, has blamed the Chinese government (which is led by the Communist Party of China) for his election defeat in the riding of Steveston-Richmond East in British Columbia.
As explained by The Canada Files, Chiu’s decline in support from the Chinese Canadian community followed a clear path: in 2015, having strong support because he didn’t make China’s internal politics a constant issue; in 2019, winning a seat but losing support from ethnic Chinese elected officials and donations/support from the mainland Chinese Canadian community because of his support for the Hong Kong rioters; and, in 2021, losing his re-election after pushing for a foreign interference registry which would—because of the Canadian political climate—inevitably force Chinese Canadians in some community groups to lie and file returns under threat of jail time and fines.
Rather than explaining his decisions to constituents, Chiu simply displayed fierce hostility toward anyone seen to be defending the Chinese government.
Chiu spoke about two Chinese Canadian groups in defamatory terms:
“CACA [Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations] and CCSA [Canadian Community Service Association] use their member organizations to promote narratives the PRC wants people to believe about China. For example, CACA bought full page ads in Canadian Chinese language newspapers, celebrating PRC passing the National Security Law in Hong Kong.”
Chiu “questioned whether China was funding such efforts, given the cost of buying such advertising space.”
Chiu also complained about the logical consequence of having capitalist media companies.
His complaint was that, in 2021, after taking the China stances he did, that the owner of Vancouver Chinese Radio had the power to instruct “staff not to mention Mr. Chiu or invite him onto their programs.” This is supposed to be suspicious, rather than another of the many self-admitted examples of dissent from the Chinese Canadian community in his riding, around the ideological spectrum.
Chiu also targeted dissent toward his foreign influence registry bill, claiming it was PRC-directed foreign influence, disinformation. WeChat group posts, articles on WeChat, were supposedly a PRC-driven operation. But also, the PRC should have crushed Chinese Canadian community dissent via censorship and, “at the very least,” “interfered by omission.”
The utter incoherence and rampant hatred of dissent is crystalized in Chiu’s demand to the inquiry, explained by this author:
“When a candidate supposedly faces foreign interference in an election, CSIS or another government agency should not simply notify the candidate, but instead find ‘an effective way of communicating to the diaspora communities that are the target of foreign powers’ exploitation.’”
In short, demanding that the government spoon-feed diasporas the “official” information, and crush dissent from the diasporas under the invented grounds of purported foreign interference.
And this demand was also endorsed by ex-Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, at the inquiry hearings. O’Toole even went further by claiming that “the parties both in the House of Commons and their electoral parties that run nominations and that run general elections do need linkages directly with our security agencies” because candidates which CSIS does not like could get elected into Canada’s Parliament. O’Toole wants CSIS to be able to veto candidates using the grounds of “a security concern of any type before a nomination is completed.”
Further showcasing the extreme attitude toward dissent, Conservative MP Michael Chong confirmed (Day 9 Testimony, pp. 236-37) that he had engaged in “racial profiling” in fall 2022 after CSIS leakers began going to the media, by pulling “the lists of all the people with Chinese last names who had donated to my 2021 and my 2019 campaign” to check if “they may be people under suspicion.” Chong genuinely blamed his ethnic profiling on the Canadian government for not suppressing dissent, saying his actions were “a result of the Government of Canada’s lack of transparency about the intelligence they have concerning agents and proxy agents here in Canada that may be targeting our democratic institutions”.
But the Conservatives are not the only ones hostile toward dissent from the Chinese Canadian community. There is an extremely hawkish “HongKonger” Chinese Canadian NDP MP, Jenny Kwan, who joined in Chiu’s example with wild claims toward dissent against her China policies.
Kwan, a New Democratic Party (NDP) MP since 2015, had spoken more on China, but not been too aggressive on the front, up until 2019. From 2019 on, by her own admission, she took more action against China’s handling of its internal affairs. Kwan supported the Hong Kong rioters in August 2019, even speaking at a public event in favor of them, and continued supporting them. She then supported a “Uyghur genocide” motion. In 2020, she spoke at a rally hosted by the “Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement,” which describes itself as “committed to promoting democracy and human rights in China,” which, put bluntly, is a push for regime change in China.
Kwan also supported the campaign to get China’s Taiwan province observer status at the World Health Organization and World Health Assembly. The Canadian government’s One-China Policy “acknowledges that there is only one Chinese government, does not recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state and does not maintain official government-to-government relations with Taipei.”
Kwan’s support, which Canada’s government would also demonstrate in 2023, is an attack on China’s sovereignty and rejection of Canada’s “One-China Policy,” since the WHO and WHA observer status can only be obtained by sovereign countries, which Taiwan province is not even according to Canadian government policy.
Kwan would admit in a pre-testimony interview (WIT0000012.EN, p. 4) that, from 2019 on, when she took more actions on China, her relations with five important Chinese Canadian community organizations deteriorated over time.
Kwan was also upset that Chinese-language media are “being used to propagate PRC talking points” (WIT0000012.EN, p. 7)—which really means she was upset at support for the PRC government’s handling of internal affairs and dissent that the Chinese Canadian community had toward portrayal of Chinese government actions. Some constituents would tell her “directly that she should not be speaking out about China” (WIT0000012.EN, p. 7), indicating some Chinese Canadian dissent toward her stances, in conjunction with Chinese Canadian organizations’ opposition to demonization of China.
Kwan would also attack the then-President of CBA Fred Kwok in Fall 2021. Kwan noticed Kwok would not speak with her once she became vocal about China’s internal affairs (WIT0000012.EN, p. 7). Kwan, complaining about an August 2021 free lunch event to support her Liberal opponent, “wonders whether the Chinese Consulate may be operating a petty cash slush fund to finance events, such as the lunch hosted by Mr. Kwok” (WIT0000012.EN, p. 8). But she has no evidence of this, as she admitted after a multi-minute word salad (Day 9 Testimony, pp. 188-90). Kwok admitted to violating the Elections Act by not registering as a third party, and paid $1,500 CAD total for the event (Day 9 Testimony, p. 187). A receipt indicating any higher payment has not been seen as of yet, but even if it was, there is no proof of this being foreign interference, but there is clear proof that this is another example of Chinese Canadian descent Kwan does not approve of.
What is clear is that politicians take issue with the “wrong” kind of dissent from Chinese Canadians, and view that dissent with hostility. But there is a “right” kind of dissent that is liked by Canadian political elites and the politicians across numerous diasporas.
So Who Exactly Gets to Dissent?
The trigger point for the Canadian political class’s near century-long control tactic of using diaspora factions to control or intimidate the rest of a diaspora, was World War II. At the time, a fanatical anti-communist who thought favorably of Hitler, William Lyon Mackenzie King was Canada’s Prime Minister.
Canadian elites were rampantly anti-communist, and they had a problem: A pro-Soviet organization, the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (AUUC), represented the majority of the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora. To solve this “problem,” the Canadian government drove the creation of the right-wing Ukrainian Canadian Congress (then Ukrainian Canadian Committee [UCC]) which united fascists, monarchists and other right wingers into one organization in 1940.
Over the last near 80 years, the UCC has received favorable engagement with governments and significantly more grants and support from the federal government because, to put it bluntly, it serves the interests of the Canadian political elite. This has seen the formerly organic representative of the Ukrainian Canadian community isolated and shunted to the side, in favor of a middle manager to control and intimidate the diaspora as necessary.
Echoes, but not replications, abound in the situation of the Chinese Canadian diaspora. The development of diaspora middle managers for the Ukrainian Canadian community occurred as Canada was hostile to the “home territory” of the diaspora, the USSR. But similar middle managers for the Chinese Canadian community had not been developed by the Canadian state by the time Canada was considering initiating diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China back in 1968.
This reality can be seen in a 1968 news article collected by the FBI in its 1968 dossier on Pierre Elliott Trudeau. In the article, Chinese Canadians who supported the KMT in its futile bid to retake the Chinese mainland against the Chinese peoples’ support for socialism, begged the Canadian government to not initiate diplomatic ties with the PRC.
They sought a position reached by the UCC—of diaspora middle management—by pushing the claim that a “flood” of “Communist agents” would come into Canada after the PRC was recognized. Though these collaborators of Canadian imperialism failed in their bid to have no diplomatic relations with the PRC, they would never give up their ambition of becoming the middle managers.
In the next few decades, Canada and the PRC had overall positive diplomatic relations, and some mainland Chinese moved to Canada. After the handover of Hong Kong back to China was agreed with the UK in 1984, Canada imported more than 300,000 “HongKongers” before the handover occurred in 1997.
After CSIS initiated smears of China in 1997, through a joint CSIS/RCMP counter-espionage report which claimed that Chinese Canadians are being used by the Chinese government to influence Canadian politics, the imperialist collaborators slowly gained prominence, with Falun Gong cult members being given asylum in Canada over the 2000s.
The imperialist collaborators, whether they be Falun Gong, “Uyghur” separatists, or Hong Kong “freedom” activists, would slowly build alliances with CSIS, in building up hostility toward China. In doing so, they slowly built up the middle management role their forefathers sought so dearly in 1968, by going around Canada’s elected government, which still maintained good relations with China for economic reasons.
Falun Gong cult members and the other Chinese Canadian imperialist collaborators played their middle management role to a tee in helping gin up the animus toward Canada-based Confucius Institutes—language and cultural learning institutions—as supposed Chinese “propaganda” institutes, during the 2010s. With CSIS leading the demonization of these institutes, the imperialist faction of the Chinese Canadian diaspora put a Chinese face of Canadian elite machinations against China.
With the advent of the Uyghur “genocide” narrative, Canada’s kidnapping of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou and the Hong Kong riots, all within three years as China kept rising economically, anti-China sentiment came in full force from a Canadian political elite which saw China as a threat to the NATO unipolar political order.
All of a sudden, the aspiring middle managers were thrust into the limelight, though no longer under the guise of being the Chinese face, but instead the “HongKonger,” “Uyghur,” or “Tibetan” faces used to justify imperialism against China.
All these middle managers, before and after obtaining their desired position in Canadian society, have been leading in denouncing China as an interferer in Canada who supposedly target dissents, but never provoke any successful RCMP charges against such interference.
Mehmet Tohti is a prime example of this. Tohti is a long-time Uyghur separatist who founded Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project in 2020, thanks to funding from the CIA front National Endowment for Democracy. URAP was the collaborator organization Canada’s parliament used to put a Uyghur face on a campaign by parliamentarians to follow the U.S. in declaring that China was committing a “genocide” against Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Canada’s parliamentarians would farcically vote to declare a Uyghur “genocide” in 2021.
Tibetans in Canada have been the “Tibetan” face of demonizing China all the way back to the 2000s. In the 2020s, they helped push demonization of China’s boarding schools in Tibet, meant to provide better education for citizens in geographically remote areas. Canadian parliamentarians would jump at any opportunity to demonize China and, when the NED-funded Tibet Action Institute claimed that the boarding schools were “colonial” boarding schools like Canadian residential schools, parliamentarians jumped at the opportunity.
Canadian Tibet separatists would testify to a parliament committee which would condemn Chinese “human rights violations” and call for a “special temporary immigration pathway to get more Tibet dissidents into Canada.” Their decades-long agitation would pave the way for domestic acceptance of 24 MPs, including four Liberal cabinet ministers, to meet with the president of the separatist “Central Tibetan Administration” organization, Sikyong Penpa Tsering. This grave insult to Chinese sovereignty could be justified thanks to the work of the “Tibetan” middle managers.
Liberal MP and Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, on the left, pictured with other Canadian MPs at a Canadian “Parliamentary Friends of Tibet” meeting with “Central Tibetan Administration” President, Sikyong Penpa Tsering. Image credit: @TurnbullWhitby/’X’
“HongKongers” in Canada have gained prominence by nature of their numbers, showcased their value during the Hong Kong riots in 2019 and 2020, being the “HongKonger” face which demanded an “independent inquiry” into China’s successful combatting of the rioters.
And as such, it is little surprise that two of the most aggressive anti-China politicians, for their comments on Chinese Canadians who favor engagement in China, are two “HongKongers,” former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu and NDP MP Jenny Kwan, who work in tandem with CSIS to clamp down on the “wrong” Chinese Canadian dissent.
URAP, led by Tohti, is another of the middle managers who, along with Cheuk Kwan of the regime-change-focused Toronto Association for Democracy in China, even testified to Canada’s 2024 foreign interference inquiry, claiming intimidation. The regime-changer Falun Gong cult is another middle manager. And of continual relevance to Canadian parliamentarians even in 2023, the Tibet separatists, mainly coalesced in the Parkdale-High Park area of Toronto, have their middle manager in Ontario provincial parliament representative Bhutila Karpoche.
They, among others, are among the collaborator middle managers of the Chinese Canadian community, who have attained the prominence which collaborators in 1968 could only dream of. Their victims are the Chinese Canadians who are pro-China engagement, who face the very same “Communist agent” smears as were posed in 1968.
In the eyes of Canadian political elites the “right” dissent has always been the dissent which provides it cover to pursue its imperialism and the “wrong” dissent that which condemns imperialism by name or even seeks engagement or simple peace—something that still stands in the way of imperialism.
The manufacture and maintenance of imperialist diaspora factions as middle managers is a key ongoing tactic of the Canadian political elites to avoid engaging in mass violent repression of anti-imperialist sentiment, that would destroy the democratic façade they so dearly covet and claim. Such a sincere “democracy,” wouldn’t you say?
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country’s only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We’ve provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
Please consider setting up a monthly or annual donation through Donorbox.
Two forces have traditionally determined Canadian foreign policy: Support for empire and Canadian corporate interests abroad.
Generally, these forces align. But occasionally they clash as has recently been the case with mining firms and China. Much of Canada’s powerful global mining industry opposes Ottawa following the US into conflict with its only “peer competitor”.
As part of its anti-China policy, Washington has hyped Chinese influence over certain “strategic” minerals. In response, Ottawa imposed a new security review restricting companies from “non-like-minded” states — China — from partnering or purchasing firms focused on 31 minerals, including lithium, nickel and copper. Ottawa ordered several Chinese firms to divest their shares from Canadian lithium companies and stopped Carbon One New Energy from purchasing a fifth of SRG Mining, which has a graphite project in Guinea (to make batteries for the European market). They also stopped Zijin Mining from buying 15 per cent of Solaris Resources, which controls minerals in Ecuador.
As part of the resource panic the Pentagon has begun financing Canadian mining projects. In “What’s behind a historic, unusual U.S. military cash transfer to Canadian mines”, CBC News detailed $15 million in Pentagon funding for projects to extract and process copper, graphite, gold and cobalt. They are offering grants to assist Canadian companies with feasibility studies and permitting. In exchange the US military gets first dibs on purchasing the resources (at market rate) under certain security conditions.
While mining companies are happy to have access to Pentagon funding, some powerful, unsavoury players shaping Canadian foreign policy have pushed back against the anti-China policy. A year ago, Barrick Gold CEO Mark Bristow criticized these measures and said his company wouldn’t exclude new investment from Chinese companies. At the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada conference in March, Ivanhoe CEO Robert Friedland argued that, as a Northern Miner headline put it: “Make metals with China not war, Friedland tells PDAC.”
The corporate interests vs empire tension has also played out in the pages of the Globe and Mail. The business section of a paper leading the charge against China has published many articles and commentaries advocating the mining industry’s criticism of the restrictions.
The China mining tussle highlights the state’s ability to assert its authority towards corporations when desired. After SRG Mining suggested it would redomicile to the UAE to bypass restrictions on selling a fifth of the company to a Chinese firm, Francois Philippe Champagne clapped back. At last year’s PDAC conference the industry minister declared, “I would say to anyone watching or reading, it’s never smart to try to circumvent the rules. The Government of Canada has a number of tools in our toolbox to make sure Canadian law is upheld.”
It is illuminating to contrast the government’s willingness get tough on firms partnering with Chinese firms to their response to civil society groups calling for better legislation on pursuing mining companies domestically for their international abuses. For decades the government rejected calls for better rules on restricting public assistance for firms violating rights abroad on the grounds it would be complicated and could lead to companies moving their operations abroad.
Prior to being elected Trudeau promised an ombudsperson to lessen Canadian mining abuses abroad but he failed to follow through. After dragging their feet on the issue for three years the Liberals announced a Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE), which had relatively robust investigative powers and the ability to limit public assistance to firms found responsible for abuses. But actual legislation broadened (diluted) CORE’s mandate beyond mining and when the mining industry launched a major lobbying campaign the government buckled completely. Ultimately, the position became a largely powerless advisor to the Minister of International Trade.
As a result, almost all the grassroots campaigners and mining-affected communities gave up on the position, leaving space for others to turn it into a tool to assist the US empire’s bid to demonize China. CORE has almost entirely dealt with ‘forced’ Uygur labour and even though it only has advisory powers, in the current climate, the trade minister is likely to accept any recommendation the ombudsperson delivers regarding Xinjiang. In effect, a position promoted by internationalists to curtail the epidemic of Canadian mining abuses has morphed into a tool to assist Washington in its bid to contain China’s rise.
Ottawa is willing to impede corporate interests to assist the US empire. It is not willing to do so to protect indigenous or peasant communities from being trampled on by Canadian mining companies.
However, the conflict between some corporate interests’ desire to utilize Chinese investment and Canadian foreign policy kowtowing to US Empire is ultimately resolved will be interesting to monitor. But no one should expect the interests of ordinary Canadians to be even considered.
Yves Engleris the author of 13 books. His latest book, available now, is “Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy”.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country’s only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We’ve provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
Please consider setting up a monthly or annual donation through Donorbox.
2024 had some bumps in the road for environmental protection. Attacks on nature, clean energy, and livable communities filled the headlines. But what about for 2025? Can we secure a better future despite the regressive forces out there that want to drag us all down?
We are committed to trying, and history shows that together we can succeed. Let’s take a look at some key issues and explore how we can work together to create a better 2025.
Creating Livable Communities
The proportion of people that live in cities has increased dramatically around the world. Nowhere is this more true than in Canada where three quarters of people now live in places with more than 100,000 residents. This means that urban issues are front and centre for most Canadians, and making progress there matters a lot. The way we get around, where and what kind of places we live in, and how we heat and cool our homes are going to be key to our quality of life and the health of our environment this year.
We travel mostly by car here in Canada, and we know that more cars on the road means more time spent stuck in traffic. Adding more highways doesn’t solve this problem: it just means even more gridlock. Everyone will get where they’re going faster if we can get more people out of their cars and on to public transit, bikes, and walking paths.
We will keep working with all of you to stop new gridlock-enabling mega highways and instead ensure that public funds are invested in better public transport. Together, we can demand new bus and rail lines and more funding to make our existing transit systems run frequently enough to offer people viable ways to get around.
We’re also acutely aware of the fact that buying or renting a home has never been more expensive. In 2025, we urgently need new solutions to this crisis. Large homes built far from cities on farmland, wetlands and in forests are expensive and force residents to use a car for all of their daily needs. Building more of this type of housing is not an affordable solution. That’s why we will be working hard with our partners to ensure our new Midrise Manual helps break down the barriers to building more affordable housing in the neighbourhoods where people want to live and where services like transit, schools, work and shopping are readily available. Progress is happening in Toronto and in other cities as well. Let’s keep the momentum going in 2025.
Speaking of homes, heating and cooling a home in Canada where we see 50 degree temperature swings over the course of the year requires lots of energy. The world is moving away from fossil fuels in favour of things like new and improved heat pumps and renewable energy sources. Heat pumps can now be used in most of the country all year round and replace more expensive, polluting and dangerous gas and oil. Solar and wind energy has become much cheaper and solar is now the cheapest source of electricity on the planet. Environmental Defence will be working to ensure that people in Canada can choose cheaper and non-polluting energy sources, that home owners and renters can install and benefit from clean energy and that new buildings in our cities do not get built with antiquated fossil fuel hook-ups. Vancouver has done this and many other Canadian cities could follow.
We also know that a big part of living well in our cities depends on how we use and dispose of the products that we buy. Environmental Defence will be working to increase the amount of returnable, re-usable packaging so we have less plastic and other garbage. While we’re at it, we’ll also be vying to get toxic chemicals out of our consumer products and foods, making us all healthier while ensuring the safety of the broader ecosystem and our food supply.
Protecting Nature
As we mentioned, Southern Ontario has a sprawl problem. But this problem doesn’t just exacerbate the cost of housing — it’s also causing a rapid loss of farms, forests and wetlands. With this loss goes flood protection, air pollution removal, plants and animals (including some of the most rare and endangered), food production, and recreational opportunities. We will continue to push for government policy that reigns in sprawl and focuses growth inside of towns and cities. We will also work with all of you to have your voice heard in your community to ensure that high value areas like wetlands are protected and farmlands protected for future generations.
Building a Clean Energy future
Nearly 85% of Canada’s electricity comes from non-carbon polluting sources. That means that getting to 100% and also increasing the supply that will be needed to get rid of fossil fueled transportation (both here in Canada and also for our neighbours in the U.S.) should be easier for us than other countries. The rapidly falling prices and greater efficiencies of solar and wind power should make the switching and growth even easier. The electrification revolution is accelerating globally and Canada’s revenue from oil will be threatened by declining demand as electric vehicles come to dominate the market. We need only to look to China to see this happening quickly. In the second half of 2024, 50% of new car sales in China were battery powered and oil demand is predicted to decline starting in just a couple of years. Environmental Defence’s team will be working in Alberta, Ontario and at the federal level to ensure that the electrification of our economy proceeds as quickly as possible and that the fossil fuel industry is not permitted to block this transition by using its influence on politicians. This will require key reforms in Canada’s investment rules, new restrictions on oil and gas pollution and support for workers who need to thrive in a rapidly changing energy marketplace.
If we continue to work together, cleaner energy, livable communities and abundant nature can be part of a better future for Canada. Your voice matters. We hope you will add yours to the fight this year. Together, we will make 2025 a year to remember and celebrate.
Legislative action has ground to a halt in the Canadian Parliament, which has suspended its work until March. The legislative stop is now the Liberal Party’s de facto deadline for selecting a leader to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who announced on Monday that he will resign as soon as his replacement has been chosen. But despite the political turmoil, Canada’s wealthy are still…
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday he is stepping down as leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, following rising discontent over his leadership and growing dissent within his government. Trudeau had served as Canada’s prime minister since 2015. His resignation comes as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to annex Canada. For more, we speak with Canadian activist and electoral candidate Avi Lewis for the New Democratic Party, who says that, “like Joe Biden,” Trudeau “waited way too long” to step down from candidacy in upcoming national elections. Lewis calls Trump’s aggressive rhetoric on Canada a “cartoon threat” that comes out of the real estate mogul’s long-running use of “force” in his personal and business dealings.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
At a news conference Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump renewed his threats against Gaza, Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal as he continues to push an agenda of extreme U.S. imperialism. Democratic Congressmember Jim McGovern calls Trump’s comments “outrageous,” “ridiculous” and, ultimately, a distraction from his planned abandonment of social services. We also discuss social networking behemoth Meta’s announcement that it is ending its fact-checking program, in what’s being seen as a capitulation to Trump and conservative media disinformation campaigns, and how President Biden’s unqualified support for Israel’s assault on Gaza violates multiple U.S. human rights laws.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
On January 6, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation. “I care deeply about this country and I will always be motivated by what is in the best interests of Canadians. And the fact is, despite best efforts to work through it, parliament has been paralyzed for months after what has been the longest session of a minority parliament in Canadian history,” Trudeau said as he resigned after nine years as prime minister and 11 years as the leader of the Liberal Party. Trudeau was facing a mounting cost of living crisis, dire opinion polls, and a tariff threat by the United States.
Canada’s ‘leading independent researchers’ are here to ‘help’ the government save Chinese Canadians from the big bad ‘PRC Proxies’, according to reporter Sam Cooper. They just need the ‘Ineffective Ottawa Agencies’ to let them help [WebArchived]. Let the celebrations begin, we are all saved! Are we though?
How independent are the ‘independent researchers’?
In fact, the only organization, Digital Public Square, who worked with the researchers claiming to “map out how Chinese agents target and attack critics on Canadian soil, and identify the perpetrators”, is one which has taken $7.6 million CAD from the Canadian government since 2020 [WebArchived].
Another researcher, Marcus Kolga, runs DisinfoWatch, which is part of a media research network funded by the Canadian government to the tune of $5.5 million. Kolga is also known for defending Estonian Nazis and claiming (in a Global Affairs Canada video endorsed by Canada’s $10 million ‘Protecting Democracy Unit’) that the USSR’s first leader, Vladimir Lenin, who died in 1924, was alive during the 1940s to “help Stalin ‘create’ the ‘disinformation’ tactic during the Cold War era”. In 2023, Kolga claimed the ‘far left’ has been ‘working with Moscow since Stalin’s days’, a time period that includes the collapse of the socialist USSR in 1991, the subsequent implementation of ‘shock therapy’ in Russia, and the banning of the Communist Party in Russia by former Russian President, Boris Yeltsin.
Sze Fung-Lee, a diaspora ‘HongKonger’ researcher who is independent presently, was a Data Analyst at Global Affairs Canada from 2022 to 2023 and before that, a Research Assistant at the US Army War College from 2021 to 2022. Lee’s Linkedin states their latest publications were at, among others, the “Jamestown Foundation, Global Taiwan Institute, Macdonald-Laurier Institute”.
Sarah Teich, a lawyer, while independent, is tightly tied into Canadian anti-China circles. Teich is the CEO of Human Rights Action Group (HRAG), which contains the “Canada-Tibet Committee who, while raging against supposed Chinese interference, took a $38k USD grant from the CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy, for a program focused on influencing Canadians’ views on Tibet separatism.” Teich is also a Senior Fellow at the MacDonald-Laurier Institute, known for taking money from the Taiwan area administration to bash mainland China and the Latvian government to bash Russia. Further, Teich is also a legal advisor for Uygur Rights Advocacy Project, which was founded and funded by the CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy, and recently given $1 million CAD to manage for incoming Uygur ‘refugees’, by the Canadian government.
According to Cooper’s article [WebArchived], the researchers are working to map how ‘Chinese agents target and attack critics on Canadian soil’ and ‘identify the perpetrators’, which supposedly revealed “the growing reach of Beijing’s agents in diaspora communities”.
The researchers conducted a survey to help their efforts, which Cooper described as “its survey of diaspora leaders”. But who would Cooper, Fung, Kolga, and a think-tank think taking money from Canada’s government, think are ‘diaspora leaders’, except for anti-China separatists and those that seek regime change to bring Western ‘democracy’ to China.
To be exact, the researchers interviewed “25 Canadian community leaders from Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Falun Gong backgrounds.”
And to the greatest degree of shock humanly possible, anti-China activists will claim that China is harassing them. Cooper states that:
“They [the researchers] found 85 percent of respondents reported direct threats against Canadian activists, deployed by Beijing’s proxies to intimidate and control these communities. Eighty percent noted coercive threats targeting family members in China, 70 percent identified political pressure, and 75 percent observed financial incentives swaying community members. Nearly half of respondents experienced harassment—including threatening phone calls and online abuse—at least monthly.”
What evidence do they have of this? As this author noted back in 2021, the evidence available of threats or intimidation being directed by “Beijing’s proxies”, conveniently doesn’t seem able to be accessed by reporters reporting on the subject, nor by the targets of this supposed Chinese government-directed harassment.
Cooper himself uses “The Bureau’s national security sources” to claim that Chinese ‘police stations’ in Canada are “linked to Chinese mafia leaders in Toronto and Vancouver and Beijing’s security apparatus.” Sources, sources and more sources, along with ‘leaked’ CSIS reports (so regurgitating intelligence agency claims) are all Cooper seems to have in his arsenal.
And what do these researchers want from the Canadian government? To be “ultimately liaising with Ottawa’s underperforming enforcement and intelligence agencies to offer their expertise and implement a ‘kill chain’ framework to disrupt Beijing’s attacks before victims are harmed.”
Great ‘thinkers’ like Kolga, who said Lenin was alive in the 1940s, will defend Estonian Nazis and think the ‘far left’ cooperated with Yeltsin’s Russia during ‘shock therapy’, are the ones wanting Canadian government agencies to take their help.
The ‘kill chain’ framework is explained in Cooper’s article, in more detail:
“A comprehensive kill chain framework is proposed to systematically counter PRC operations, enabling government, law enforcement, civil society, and Canada’s democratic allies to both individually and collaboratively address threats at every stage of their development and execution.”
Cooper, anti-China diasporas and their McCarthyite friends: no defenders of Canadian ‘democracy’
The ‘kill chain’ framework would equal nothing less than a total rejection and repression of Chinese-Canadians’ right to dissent against Canadian hostility towards China, or even just to seek Canada-China cooperation while still regurgitating some false narratives about Chinese policy.
Cooper would surely love nothing more than to see this. This author noted in 2023 that:
“This faction’s [Canadian diaspora McCarthyites] favourite reporter, Sam Cooper, has even called for Chinese Canadian organizations against McCarthyism to be prevented from suing Canada’s Attorney General in regular courts – under the guise that their resistance is “CCP lawfare” – they should only be allowed to sue in special ‘national security’ courts. It’s very consistent with the mentioned desire to crush opposition.”
“Donald Trump and whoever is leader in Ottawa should be standing shoulder to shoulder saying we will together eradicate the PRC United Front networks in our cities — that’s my one sentence policy, we don’t need tariff threats.”
But the United Front network in Canada, and other countries, was created to assist Chinese development and the elimination of poverty in China. Many Chinese Canadian organizations, filled with ordinary Chinese Canadians are in this United Front. It’s not an organization focused on foreign interference, and fundamentally, Chinese Canadians are capable of dissenting to Canada’s China policies, without being directed by Beijing. The paranoia against organizations in or associated with the United Front, just for the connection, comes as part of a years long effort to tank Canadian cooperation and engagement with China.
To “eradicate the PRC United Front networks in our cities”, would equate to mass repression against Chinese Canadians and the effective crushing of their democratic rights.
Cooper’s claim to want to defend Canadian ‘democracy’ is a lie, just as he lied in his opening paragraph by claiming those involved in the report he covered were all ‘independent researchers’. Lies similar to those from the anti-China diaspora factions in Canada, who claim to be working to protect Canadian ‘democracy’, while working to forcefully assert control over the whole Chinese Canadian diaspora.
Think critically, and act accordingly.
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country’s only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We’ve provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
Please consider setting up a monthly or annual donation through Donorbox.
If in the 19th century Marx and Engels could prematurely proclaim that Communist revolution was a “spectre haunting Europe,” in 2024 the business class of North America and its compliant mainstream press were growing increasingly nervous about a different but related spectre, a working class that was showing signs of increased and well organized militance.
Strikes were more common and workers, still remembering the hypocritical Covid-era praise for them as heroes and the post-pandemic collapse into attempts to restore business as usual exploitation, are pissed off, and their anger has been expressed with increased levels of organizing and work stoppages.
US President-elect Donald Trump recently referred to Canada as the “51st State” and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as its “governor.” While on one level, such ridiculous statements are part and parcel of Trump’s political persona, they reveal something deeper about the role that Canada occupies in the American economy and political imagination. This is an issue that the Canadian Marxist historian Stanley B. Ryerson explored in a pamphlet entitled “Why Be a Doormat?” published by the Labor-Progressive Party in 1948.
“Canadians need complete and permanent union with the US… Since Canada has shown that she cannot fiscally operate in today’s world, and since Britain is fiscally impotent, it is up to the US to act.”
Israel is waging war on Palestinian healthcare and the Canadian Medical Association is complicit.
The Israeli military recently attacked and emptied the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza. They also detained and abused the staff as well as kidnapping its director Hossam Abu Safiyeh.
The World Health Organization said it was “appalled” by Israel’s attack on Kamal Adwan and its “systematic dismantling of the health system” in northern Gaza. It called for the immediate release of Abu Safiyeh whose life is at risk. Several Palestinian health workers have died in Israeli custody over the past fifteen months.
As part of its ever-worsening holocaust in Gaza, Israel has waged war on Palestinian health services and workers. On Tuesday the UN human rights office released a report showing there were at least 136 attacks on 27 hospitals and 12 other medical facilities between October 7, 2023, and June 30, 2024.One thousand Palestinian health workers have been killed. Medical staff have been killed at an even greater rate than the general population. Reportedly, the chance of being killed as a registered nurse or medical doctor in Gaza is 3.5 times higherthan the general population. International law explicitly protects medical personnel and hospitals. But Israel is indifferent to international humanitarian law.
Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and rector of the University of Dundee Craig Murray posted, “I am trying to think of any other instance in the history of war where a whole series of civilian hospitals were completely destroyed and medical staff repeatedly tortured to death. I cannot. Not even the Nazis. Genghis Khan treated captured medical personnel with respect.”
Most of the Canadian medical establishment has been complicit in Israel’s attack on the Palestinian health system. The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has remained silent in the face of Israel’s war on Palestinian healthcare even though they “unequivocally condemned” the October 7 “terrorist attacks by Hamas”. After February 24, 2022, CMA divested from Russia. On the only occasion in which the CMA and its president (indirectly) criticized Israel’s destruction of a medical facility, the October 17 attack on Al-Ahli hospital, they later reversed course under pressure from genocidal Jewish supremacists.
When a member of its board of directors was suspended from his residency at the University of Ottawa for opposing genocide, the CMA failed to defend Yipeng Ge. In response to the CMA’s failure to oppose Israel’s war on Palestinian healthcare, Geresigned from the CMA board.
Many doctors are appalled by the CMA’s complicity in Israel’s holocaust. In May the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations of Canada announced that many doctors were canceling their CMA membership over its complicity in genocide. In recent days hundreds of doctors have followed Ge in posting a picture of themselves to social media “calling for the immediate release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.”
Ontario Physician Kavita Algu posted:
“As health workers in Canada we have watched Israel:
bomb every hospital in Gaza.
turn hospitals into military bases.
kill almost 1,000 health workers
kidnap 300 health workers.
bomb medical students trying to write exams.
burn patients and displaced civilians alive.
CMA has remained silent, even actively silencing those speaking out like Yipeng Ge. [CMA head] Joss Reimer must uphold their ethical principles as doctors and speak out condemning Israel’s abduction, murder and targeting of health workers and destruction of health in Gaza.”
While many doctors demand the CMA oppose the destruction of Palestinian healthcare, there’s also a vocal pro-holocaust lobby within the health sector. In December 2024, 555 doctors at the University of Toronto signed an Open Statement to the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine (TFOM) from Jewish Physician Faculty. The statement endorsed Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
An umbrella organization that includes the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario, Jewish Medical Association of British Columbia, Jewish Physicians Association of Manitoba and L’Association des Médecins Juifs du Québec, the Canadian Federation of Jewish Medical Associations seeks to portray Jewish doctors as under assault by colleagues opposing genocide. With a mission statement saying it aims to “combat anti-Zionism” and “build solidarity with Israel”, the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario released a report last month suggesting the real victims of Israel’s holocaust are pro-genocide Jewish Canadian doctors (making $250,000 a year on average, doctors are far from an oppressed group.)
Recognizing the existence of a genocidal Jewish supremacist lobby in the health sector doesn’t get the CMA off the hook from raising its voice against Israel’s war on Palestinian health workers and facilities. Failure to condemn these crimes is complicity.
Practically, the CMA must join the World Health Organizationin demanding the immediate release of Kamal Adwan hospital director Hossam Abu Safiyeh. As 8000 have emailed it in recent days, the Canadian Medical Association must also condemn Israel’s war on Palestinian health infrastructure and workers.
Yves Engleris the author of 13 books. His latest book, available now, is “Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy”.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country’s only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We’ve provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
Please consider setting up a monthly or annual donation through Donorbox.
At the Port of Montréal, nearly 1,200 longshore workers have been ordered into binding arbitration by the Canadian government following a 10-day lockout.
There’s still one final chance to reach a consensual agreement. The Syndicat des Débardeurs (Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 375) and the Maritime Employers Association have entered a 90-day period of mediation. During this period, they are to refrain from making any public statements.
If the mediated negotiations fail, a new contract will be imposed by the federal government.
Longshore workers at the port have been working without a contract since December 31, 2023. Their biggest concerns are scheduling, workplace rules, and forced overtime.
Canadians have recently learned that only one Uygur ‘refugee’ had been brought to Canada out of 10,000 slots, months (at minimum) into a special program from Canada’s government. This program came into being because of the efforts of an Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) member in Canada’s parliament, while the terrorist East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) groups are not on Canada’s terrorist list.
Remarkably, in October, The Canada Files revealed that Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (a separatist organization), founded with CIA money was then given $982k CAD of funds to manage for Uygur dissident immigrants, by Canada’s immigration department, who hid the grant after the investigation came out. URAP’s Executive Director, Mehmet Tohti, had called for Uygur detainees including a man who “admitted to military training in Afghanistan” with the motivation of fighting the “oppressive Chinese government”, to be admitted to Canada in 2009.
So where has the money gone to exactly?
Special program for Uygur ‘refugees’: How’d we get it
A special program for Uygur ‘refugees’ was launched in the first place because of a non-binding “private member’s motion”, M-62, brought to the parliament by the Liberal MP for Pierrefonds—Dollard, Sameer Zuberi, on June 21, 2022. The motion was based on:
“recognizing that a genocide is currently being carried out by the People’s Republic of China against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims”
“urgently leverage Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s Refugee and Humanitarian Program to expedite the entry of 10,000 Uyghurs … over two years starting in 2024 into Canada.”
MP Zuberi’s motion was passed unanimously on February 2, 2023, with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau voting in favour.
MP Zuberi wasn’t just a banal MP who got roped into touching geopolitics. By 2022, as William Dere noted for The Canada Files, he was then “Chair of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs [SDIR], and Co-Chair of the Canadian-Uyghur Parliamentary Friendship Group.”
During SDIR proceedings between December 2019 and August 2020, MP Zuberi – as a member – was involved in allowing US-funded Uygur separatist groups to drive subcommittee proceedings towards an October 2020 report – while not speaking to The Grayzone journalists who exposed the farce of the genocide narrative – which led to the February 2021 Canadian parliament Xinjiang genocide vote.
However, The Canada Files missed a crucial element back in 2022. By December 2021, MP Zuberi had become a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), an anti-China coalition of parliamentarians founded in May/June 2020 just before China’s government passed the Hong Kong National Security Law (NSL). The scale of IPAC’s influence in Canada-China policy discussions is touched on, in this article (LINK).
IPAC influence in Canadian politics
The anti-China IPAC has a heavy influence in Canada, since it’s founding in May/June 2020. IPAC Canadian MPs are patrons of Hong Kong Watch (Irwin Cotler and Conservative MP Garnett Genuis are Canadian IPAC Co-chairs), the main pusher behind securing a Canadian parliament committee study of diplomatic protections and trade privileges afforded to China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative region, following in successful US efforts to put the protections and privileges in jeopardy.
There are four Canadian IPAC members and one Hong Kong Watch patron on the Special Committee on the Canada–People’s Republic of China Relationship (CACN), which will be conducting the study.
Liberal MP Judy Sgro, Chair of the Standing Committee on International Trade in Canada’s House of Commons, is also a Canadian IPAC member. Sgro and Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie (another Canadian IPAC member) attended the 2024 Canadian parliament delegation to the Taiwan area.
Canadian IPAC members were also central around the Xinjiang genocide vote farce, even from the end of July 2020, when the subcommittee hearings that would trigger the eventual 2021 parliament vote were still ongoing. In November 2023, when “Central Tibetan Administration” (the “Tibetan-Parliament-in-Exile”) President, Sikyong Penpa Tsering, came “tp garner support for Tibetan freedom struggle”, an IPAC Co—chair for Canada (Conservative MP Garnett Genuis) and three other Canadian members including Canada’s justice minister MP Arif Virani, MP Zuberi and MP Sgro, met with Tsering.
It would be IPAC Canada member, Bloc Québécois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, who put forward a non-binding motion in June 2024, unanimously supported by parliament, that refers to Tibetans as ‘a people and a nation’ who should get self-determination.
Furthermore, The Canada Files has found that Conservative MP Alex Ruff, who sits on the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), a crucial body has seriously influenced Canadian political discussion, has also been an IPAC member since July 2020.
Who’s being paid to help the special ‘Uygur refugge’ project?
Canadian IPAC member MP Zuberi’s bill led to $982k CAD being given to CIA-funded Ugyhur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP) – founded in April 2020 and known for threatening to get a Senator, Yuen Pau Woo, kicked out of the Senate after he opposed a Uygur genocide motion in Canada’s Senate in Summer 2021 – to “provide direct financial support and fund the provision of immediate and essential services to eligible recipients as listed in Ts & Cs [Uygur Muslim dissidents]”, beginning on May 8, 2024.
These funds being disbursed to URAP more than a year after Canada’s parliament voted unanimously (on a non-binding motion) to bring in 10,000 Uygur refugees, should raise questions about the true ‘urgency’ of the situation.
“URAP has a blunt message, funded by the CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy to the point where they can have four staffers, of falsely claiming that China is committing genocide against Uygurs in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. URAP founder Mehmet Tohti had already had connections with this CIA-front as early as 2004, when he was a co-founder of the World Uyghur Congress, who’d serve two terms as Vice-President; WUC is perennially funded by the NED.
In a May 2023 memorandum, URAP verified stories The Canada Files initiallybroke, and even confirmed their central role in getting Canadian government commitment to bring in 10,000 anti-China Uygur dissidents to Canada:
“Successes include: the building of a Uyghur parliamentary friendship group; Canada’s recent commitment to welcome 10,000 Uyghur refugees; and the hearing conducted by the Subcommittee on International Human Rights in 2020 and the subsequent parliamentary motion recognizing the Uyghur genocide.”
A 2023 URAP memorandum “declared their efforts to have a replica of the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act (UFLPA) implemented in Canada, and told an unnamed department of the US government that ‘URAP would greatly benefit from the United States’ assistance in these efforts.’ Their desired help was for the United States officials’ to ‘raise this issue in bilateral discussions with their Canadian counterparts’, ‘among other things’.”
Which Uygurs has Tohti wanted to bring to Canada before?
Fascinatingly, the US government wanted Canada to bring in Uygurs (these from Guantanamo Bay [Cuban territory occupied by the US] prison) as early as 2005. Back then, Canada supposedly rejected this request, based on terrorism-connection concerns:
“In a cordial but candid exchange, A/DMs Janet Siddall (Operations) and Daniel Jean (Policy and Program Development) made clear that Uighurs — both enemy combatant and non-combatant — are ineligible for admission to Canada based on their prior association with Taliban training camps…
Another concern was that these individuals were ‘terrorists,’ albeit not directed against the U.S. and its allies. (NOTE: Atkinson had noted that unlike U.S. law, Canadian law does not “differentiate” among terrorists based on putative target. END NOTE).”
However, Uyghur Canadian Society (UCS)’s then-President, Mehmet Tohti, would allege in The Ottawa Citizen in 2009, that Canada’s rejection of Guantanmo Uygurs was a close decision came to in 2006.
Now guess who advocated for these Uygurs to come to Canada: UCS’ then-President, Mehmet Tohti, in February 2009. Tohti’s justification? The Ottawa Citizen article quotes Tohti, in a February 3, 2009 article, as saying “Canada should ‘get the score equal’ with China [for not getting Hussein Celil, who was convicted on terrorism charges, out of China] with China by ignoring the country’s international plead to reject the Guantanamo Uyghurs” and also “send a signal of Canada’s willingness to co-operate with the Obama administration.”
A February 5, 2009, article in The Calgary Herald noted that “The minister [Immigration Minister Jason Kenney] meets every few months with Mehmet Tohti of the Uighur [Uyghur] Canadian Society in Toronto, most recently in late January, when they discussed Canada accepting a few Guantanamo detainees now that President Barack Obama has ordered the prison’s closure”.
One of the six Guantanamo prisoners who Tohti said should be allowed in, was Anvar (Ali) Hassan, a then 34-year-old who “fled China to live and train in a camp in Afghanistan in 2001” and was “later caught in the hills of Pakistan”, who “admitted to military training in Afghanistan” with the motivation of fighting the “oppressive Chinese government”. This was confirmed in The Ottawa Citizen’s February 3, 2009 article:
What’s being done with the money, and who could be let in?
There has only been one Uygur ‘refugee’ brought to Canada under this special program. Canadian YouTuber, Daniel Dumbrill, points out that:
“Since there isn’t even a significant Uyghur refugee crisis in countries bordering China, finding large numbers of legitimate refugees is inherently challenging.
The standard of life and economic opportunities in Xinjiang have continually improved.”
This author, having visited the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region this June on a media tour, can concur with Dumbrill’s last sentence. The horrific terrorism China had to quelch, is mentioned in the article on the tour. Furthermore, the US only de-listed the UN-listed terrorist organization, East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), from its own terrorist list in November 2020, having previously had it on since 2002.
With the lack of Uygur ‘refugees’ in mind, here’s an important question: what has URAP been doing with the $982k CAD given to them by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)? The Canada Files reached out to both URAP and IRCC with questions and a request for comment, which were not responded to.
Another important question for Canadians is this: Are there potential security risks of bringing in 10,000 Uygur ‘refugees’? This concern comes particularly because of three factors:
In 2009, URAP Director Mehmet Tohti advocated for a Guantanamo Uygur to come to Canada, who admitted to getting military training in Afghanistan in 2001 with the goal to fight the “oppressive Chinese government”.
Dumbrill argues there’s a possibility of Uygurs who fought with re-branded Al-Qaeda (Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham [HTS]) to overthrow the Syrian government, or Uygurs who come to HTS-run Syria, being brought to Canada under the program. However, HTS is listed on Canada’s terrorist entities list, so this is unlikely, at least through the M-62 program.
In 2023, URAP Director Mehmet Tohti confirmed that “As more Uyghurs to arrive in Canada next year some of them will join the Canadian Arm[ed] Forces”. This means that past and present East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) terrorists could be allowed into Canada’s military, especially since ETIM and TIP are not listed on Canada’s terrorist entities list.
These concerns are exacerbated by the reality that Canada is not above bringing those with terrorist connections into the country. For example, members of the medical brigade of Al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate (Al-Nusra), known as the White Helmets, were brought to Canada in 2023.
Canada’s national security seems to be a non-existent priority for the federal government, in comparison to supporting the desperate US bid to maintain unipolarity at all costs and crush any peer competitors or economic blocs that could challenge its power.
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country’s only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We’ve provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
Please consider setting up a monthly or annual donation through Donorbox.
Canada Post workers have been on strike for five weeks. On Tuesday morning, legal strike action ended after a decision from the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) which said operations were to resume.
On Friday, labour minister Steve MacKinnon asked CIRB to investigate whether the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and Canada Post were likely to reach a deal before the end of 2024. The Board found an agreement before the end of the year was unlikely and ordered postal workers back on the job.
Canada is on the path to further escalation of its hostility with China, this time, by setting the path for targeting engagement with China’s Hong Kong SAR, which has special privileges to enable trade. To do this, Canada’s parliamentarians, some tied to the Interparliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), are following the same path which they’ve used to demonize China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region: parliament committees.
What privileges of China’s HKSAR are being targeted
On November 18, 2024, Canadian parliament’s “Special Committee on the Canada–People’s Republic of China Relationship (CACN)”, a hotbed of ‘China danger’ paranoia, announced it was going to:
“examine the current regulatory, diplomatic, and trade privileges granted to Hong Kong through the Canada-Hong Kong Tax Agreement Act, the bilateral Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA), and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office Privileges and Immunities Order”
This will be done while the committee conducts “a study on Canada’s economic and diplomatic relations with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, including its Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO)”. The statement notes that “the first meeting on this study [will] be held no later than Monday, January 27, 2025”.
“The privileges and immunities accorded to consular posts under section 3 of the Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act are hereby granted to the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, and persons connected therewith, in Canada including members of their families forming part of their households in Canada, who are not nationals or permanent residents of Canada.”
Conveniently, similar privileges are going to be targeted in the Hong Kong Policy Act of 2024, a bill introduced on December 9, 2024, by U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
One key provision is to codify “into U.S. law that Hong Kong will no longer receive differential treatment from the PRC except in certain circumstances.”
But this targeting had begun earlier on. In February 2023, the H.R.1103 – Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) Certification Act was tabled in the US House of Representatives, and passed in September 2024. The bill “requires the President to periodically determine whether to allow the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices (HKETOs) to continue to operate in the United States.” Removing that approval means removing diplomatic immunity for HKETO representatives, which would force China’s HKSAR administration to remove them from the US out of fear of political persecution. The US can then infer that this shows guilt by the Chinese government, helping with their narrative management efforts to bolster support for hostility with China.
The focuses of the Hong Kong Policy Act and H.R. 1103 match the focus of the Canadian parliament committee’s upcoming study on the situation in China’s HKSAR.
The committee’s justification?
“Beijing’s imposition of the national security law that violates the Sino-British Joint Declaration”
The National Security Law has provisions similar to Canada’s national security laws. Meanwhile, the joint declaration’s core principles are vague enough where societal changes unfavourable to the West could be declared as violations.
While speaking about the declaration, the committee also seems determined to damage the continued implementation of the tenth core principle:
“(10) Using the name of ‘Hong Kong, China’, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region may on its own maintain and develop economic and cultural relations and conclude relevant agreements with states, regions and relevant international organisations.”
So much for concern about the sanctity of the joint declaration.
In reality, for China, losing the FIPPA would be an irritating inconvenience and the tax agreement likely not a damaging event. The diplomatic status of HKETO is the real target, the rest is just gravy.
Who advocated for the study?
Hong Kong Watch (HKW) appears to be leading force in securing the study into privileges held by the Hong Kong SAR.
HKW’s colonial nature can be gleaned from their 40th anniversary of the joint declaration statement where they griped that Hong Kong was excluded from negotiations between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Britain, for Hong Kong’s return to China. Hong Kong was stolen from China by Britain in the mid-1800s after Britain waged war on China, and this theft ‘legitimised’ by a 99-year “lease deal” in 1898. Even in formalist terms, the question of a ‘lease’ renewal or lack-thereof, thereby requiring a return of territory to the country who ‘leased’ the territory, doesn’t morally require the involvement of that territory in any way, unless you want to badmouth a victim of colonialism. To top it off, this logic infers that Chinese people in Hong Kong didn’t fight against British rule, which they did.
On October 15, 2024, HKW’s Chair of Trustees, Aileen Calverley and their Canadian policy advisor, Katherine Leung, met with the Chair of the Canadian parliament’s CACN, “to discuss Hong Kong’s special privileges in Canada and the possibility of a study/hearing.” HKW further said, “[Canada] It’s time to review #HKETO and other #HK special privileges.”
But their advocacy didn’t start there. As HKW gleefully stated, they have “published several briefings on the topic, including the June 2024 publication, From Hong Kong To Toronto: The CCP’s Overseas Outposts via HKETOS and October 2022 publication, PRC Embassies in Disguise: Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices are Another Overseas Arm of the CCP.”
Furthermore, the organization said:
“We have been briefing parliamentarians about Hong Kong playing a role in facilitating sanctions evasion, increased security concerns about the HKETO in Toronto, and the need to review bilateral investment agreements with Hong Kong”
This parliamentary advocacy included building relations with Canadian parliamentarians. Canadian MP Shuvaloy Majumdar, of NED-past, and Bloc Quebecois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe MP, a China-hawk, member of the Interparliamentary Alliance on China who has previously attended a World Uyghur Congress meeting, and member of the International Human Rights Subcommittee (SDIR) when the Uygur study hearings were occurring in 2019 and 2020.
Other Hong Kong Watch Patrons in Canada include “former Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler, Melissa Lantsman MP, James Bezan MP, Senator Leo Housakos, Garnett Genuis MP, Cathay Wagantall MP, and former Senator Jim Munson.”
Irwin Cotler and Conservative MP Garnett Genuis are IPAC Co-chairs, and Conservative MPs James Bezan and Cathay Wagantall are regular IPAC members for Canada.
US government institutions and future Canadian political influence
MP Shuvaloy Majumdar, who serves on the same SDIR sub-committee as Brunelle-Duceppe, can’t be just passed by, however. MP Majumdar worked for the CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy (NED)’s International Republican Institute (IRI) from 2006 to 2010: in Iraq, Afghanistan and then serving as Resident Director for the Middle East & North Africa Division between 2009 to 2010.
One year later, Majumdar became Director of Policy to Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, until the defeat of the Conservative government in 2015. Then, 2016 onwards, Majumdar worked as “Director of the Foreign Policy and National Security Program” and served as a “Munk Senior Fellow for “the MacDonald-Laurier Institute which has taken money from the Latvian and US governments, along with the Taiwan province administration, where he “Founded and led the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s national security and foreign policy practice”. The same year, he became Global Director of “Harper & Associates” – the consulting firm of former Conservative PM Stephen Harper – who served from 2006 to 2015 – where he worked until 2023. MP Majumdar is the definition of an imperial zealot, committed to US empire, as can be seen in his public writings and op-eds during these years, such as this one fearmongering about Russia and China. In July 2023, Majumdar became a member of Canadian Parliament for the Calgary Heritage riding, after winning a by-election. His rhetoric and actions have not eased up since becoming an MP.
Interestingly enough, another vocal ex-NED employee, Dominic Cardy, who worked in the 2000s to prevent Nepali communists from overthrowing the monarchy and controlling the government, became a vocal anti-China figure who targeted Confucius Institutes when New Brunswick Education Minister, and now leads the centrist ‘Canada Future’ party on the federal level. Meanwhile, Sherap Therchin, the head of anti-China group Canada-Tibet Committee (CTC) which has taken NED money, worked for the USAID in India between 2013 to 2015:[AJ1]
“From 2013 to 2015, he was the Deputy Chief of Tibet Fund India, with responsibility for oversight and evaluation of USAID projects supporting education and healthcare in Tibetan refugee communities. USAID is the regime change arm of the United States government.”
Afterwards, Therchin was funneled into his current role with CTC via Canada’s Parliamentary Friends of Tibet Internship Program and then short-term work with Global Affairs Canada.
Hong Kong Watch and the committee wanted for testimony
HKW’s advocacy towards a CACN study on the HKSAR webinar included a seminar in October, “on Hong Kong’s special status in the Canadian Parliament.” HKW notes that the “seminar was chaired by Hong Kong Watch’s Patron Shuvaloy Majumdar MP”. Shockingly, given the previous quote, the event focused on “the evolving dynamics of Hong Kong as a” supposed “backdoor for the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” and the implications for Canada.
Then, on November 1, 2024, Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation representative Samuel Bickett, “testifiedbefore the Canadian Parliament’s Standing Committee on International Trade.” CFHK claims Bickett “provided evidence that Hong Kong has become the preeminent global transshipment center of illicit finance and advanced technologies for Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and presented policy options for the Canadian government and international community.”
The US government is pursuing the same angle. As Nikkei Asia reported on December 17, 2024:
“A senior U.S. Treasury official this month met with Hong Kong financial institutions to warn them against doing business with Russia”
The CFHK said it was “grateful for the strong leadership of Judy Sgro, Chair of the Standing Committee on International Trade in Canada’s House of Commons, for defending freedom and human rights in Hong Kong and around the world.”
Judy Sgro is a Canadian MP and member of IPAC. Judy Sgro headed up the 2022 Canadian delegation to Taiwan province/area, and the 2024 delegation (which was attended by fellow IPAC member MP Stephanie Kusie (Conservative), who is Vice Chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence, and SDIR member Fayçal El-Khoury.
Then, on November 15, 2024:
“The CFHK Foundation, Hong Kong Watch, and the Hong Kong Democracy Council issued a joint statement urging global finance executives to withdraw from the Hong Kong Global Financial Summit, which will take place at the same time as the sentencing of most of the Hong Kong 47 on November 19, and the restart of Jimmy Lai’s trial proceedings the following day.”
On November 20, 2024, fellow IPAC Canadian Co-chair, Liberal MP John McKay, “supported an Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China statement calling on global governments to review their diplomatic engagement with Hong Kong”. On the same day, China-hawk NDP MP Jenny Kwan, “tabled petition e-5137 in solidarity with Hong Kong political prisoners and pro-democracy movement”, which among other things “urges the government to proactively apply sanctions under the Magnitsky Act on Chinese and Hong Kong officials; and to stop according any special rights or diplomatic status to the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO).”
This came two days after the CACN committee chose to study HKSAR’s diplomatic and trade privileges in Canada. In that announcement, the committee noted that it would “invite representatives of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation”, Canadian government officials and “other interested stakeholders”, to testify. Frances Hui is the CFHK’s Policy and Advocacy Coordinator.
The Hong Kong Watch Patron in the CACN committee is:
Melissa Lantsman MP (Conservative)
IPAC Canadian MP members in the CACN committee are:
Damien Kurek (Conservative)
Tom Kmiec (Conservative)
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (Liberal)
Heather McPherson (NDP)
On November 27, CFHK’s Policy and Advocacy Coordinator, Frances Hui, testified at the same Canadian parliament’s SDIR committee whose studies triggered the Xinjiang genocide and Tibet ‘colonial’ boarding schools motions in Canada’s parliament.
“Speaking before the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development [SDIR], Hui urged Canada’s government to criminalise acts of transnational repression and revoke the special privileges afforded to the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) in Toronto.”
Hong Kong Watch and Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation’s activism will no doubt continue onwards, through the upcoming study, which will begin no later than January 27, 2025, unless there is an election called before then.
How did past parliament committee studies lead to anti-China parliament resolutions/votes?
The Canadian parliament’s Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development (SDIR), has been the vector used to drive anti-China parliament motions.
Then came the founding of Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP) in April 2020with CIA-front (NED) money, just before IPAC was founded in June 2020, just around the time of the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law on June 30, 2020. URAP’s Executive Director, Mehmet Tohti, is deeply tied into the CIA-front world, as this author explained in 2022:
“In 2004, Tohti was a co-founder of the NED-funded World Uyghur Congress. He was a “Special Representative” of the WUC to the European Parliament between 2010 to 2012, and even served as Vice-President of the World Uyghur Congress for two separate terms. Later in 2021, he even was elected to serve as the Director of the Legal Committee for fellow NED funded organization, World Uyghur Congress.”
This author noted on URAP’s public-facing influence:
“This public-facing influence was his testimony to the second sitting of the subcommittee, on July 28, 2020, where he pushed the debunked narrative that 80 per cent of all sterilizations in China occurred in Xinjiang, and falsely claimed that Uygurs are having their organs harvested and sold.”
But most importantly, URAP had extensive background influence on the SDIR’s study:
“Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project strongly supported MPs after they set up an unofficial Parliamentary Uyghur Friendship Group, launched on February 28, 2020, partway through the subcommittee’s term, with URAP proceeding to express their pleasure and promise to work closely with the friendship group. PUFG’s working program was publicly revealed on URAP’s website.
These MPs were far from nobodies. Five out of the eight MPs (including NDP MP Heather McPherson) were members of the Parliamentary Uyghur Friendship Group throughout the Xinjiang study of the subcommittee. These MPs were not impartial judges to determine whether China is committing genocide or not. Bloc Quebecois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, a member of this subcommittee, was even a delegate to the NED funded World Uyghur Congress in November 2021.
An archived version of URAP’s site from July 2020 declared that “[We are] pushing to have Parliamentary Hearing around July 20 or 21 in Ottawa.” They succeeded in this goal.
The MPs in the PUFG could be even less impartial judges towards a witness, Tohti, who was part of the same Parliamentary Uyghur Group as the majority of the subcommittee’s members, when he testified on July 28, 2020.”
Looking back to July 28, 2020 – by which time IPAC had been created – SDIR Co-chair, Conservative MP David Sweet, and members Conservative MP Garnett Genuis and NDP MP Heather McPherson were already members of IPAC.
On October 21, 2020, the “stage-managed committee released its report summary… coming to the conclusion that China was committing genocide against the Uygurs, and demanding the Trudeau government take action.”
“Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal and Grayzone contributor Ajit Singh, who provided the basis for debunking the Uygur genocide narrative, were never invited to testify by the Canadian parliamentary subcommittee. Inconvenient information would get in the way of imperial propaganda narratives.”
On February 22, 2021, the Canadian parliament voted unanimously for the Conservative party’s “non-binding motion urging the Canadian government to declare that China is committing a genocide against Uighurs in Xinjiang.”
This author explained events around Canada’s Senate after the parliament vote, which culminated in a URAP meltdown in June 2021:
“Senator Leo Housakos [an IPAC member by July 2020] filed a motion in the Canadian senate to declare a ‘Uyghur genocide’ in Xinjiang, China. On June 29, 2021, this motion was defeated, with 29 votes for, 33 against, and 13 abstentions. The opposition to this motion was spearheaded by Independent senator Yuen Pau Woo. The defeat of Housakos’ motion caused URAP to have a full-fledged meltdown in the form of a statement. The most egregious element, pushing anti-communist Red Peril narratives, claimed that ‘Mr. Yuen Pau Woo has been acting as a spokesperson for China rather than for Canada.’ URAP promised to retaliate against Pau Woo by campaigning for his expulsion from the Senate.”
The Tibet front begins with a report from the NED-funded Tibet Action Institute, which “came out with a report in December 2021, comparing Tibetan boarding schools to Canadian residential schools (a brutal genocidal effort to assimilate Indigenous children and separate them from their parents).” Conveniently, “The Canadian state-backed Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) did a news report just days later, on December 8, 2021, promoting this TAI report.”
The flaws of this report are explained by Jerry Grey in an article for The Canada Files, written in April 2023.
This author already explained the similarities to the machinations which led to the Uygur ‘genocide’ vote, back in July 2023:
“In February 2023, the same Subcommittee on International Human Rights launched a study into ‘colonial boarding schools’ in Tibet. The methods taken to ensure an anti-China report were similar to those which ensured an anti-China Xinjiang report in 2020. They focused on amplifying the claims of NED funded groups (Tibet Action Institute, Tibet Watch and the Canada-Tibet Committee), and brought in witnesses who would sing to the same tune, while avoiding calling any witnesses who would challenge the comparison of Tibetan boarding schools to the genocidal Canadian residential schools.
The report called for sanctions on Chinese officials and a special temporary immigration pathway to get more Tibet dissidents into Canada, among other actions.”
In July 2023, this author explicitly warned that “If history is a suitable guide, we’ll see a Canadian parliamentary vote about the ‘colonial’ Tibetan boarding schools, within the next year.” In November 2023, 28 Canadian MPs (including 24 Liberal MPs, the leader of the Bloc Québécois party and more) met with the main Tibet dissident organ, the “Central Tibetan Administration” (the “Tibetan-Parliament-in-Exile”) President, Sikyong Penpa Tsering, who came “to garner support for Tibetan freedom struggle”.
IPAC Co-chair for Canada, MP Garnett Genuis (Conservative), met with Tsering.
IPAC member MPs who met with Tsering include:
Minister of Justice & Attorney General of Canada, MP Arif Virani (Liberal)
MP Sameer Zuberi (Liberal)
MP Judy Sgro (Liberal)
On June 10, 2024, Canadian parliamentarians unanimously voted for a non-binding motion, “put forward by Bloc Québécois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe [and current IPAC member], that refers to Tibetans as ‘a people and a nation’ who should get self-determination.”
What these two examples should make bluntly clear, is that since 2018, when a Canadian parliament subcommittee targets an element of supposed Chinese ‘human rights violations’, this is a ploy to justify ramping up anti-China sentiment and targeting Canada-China engagement. Fascinatingly, 2018 is the same year when, as academic John Price (Emeritus Professor at the University of Victoria) notes in a January 2024 discussion paper:
“heads of the CIA, FBI, and other US intelligence agencies, appointed by Donald Trump, launched what the Wall Street Journal called an unprecedented campaign in early 2018 to portray China and the telecom giant Huawei as a major threat to the Five Eyes, composed of the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.”
After which, Price emphasized that:
“Attending Five Eyes’ meetings in London (UK) and in Halifax was CSIS director David Vigneault who uncritically accepted the US accusations, rushing to share them with Justin Trudeau in the spring and summer of 2018. Fully informed of US accusations, the Canadian government willingly accepted the US request to extradite Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. The firestorm that erupted with the subsequent arrests of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig plunged Canada-China relations into a crisis from which they have yet to recover.”
On the China file, coming from the West’s side, there are few flukes.
Don’t let misleading rhetoric from Canada’s government, and your own dreams of Canada-China cooperation, get in the way of reality. China’s HKSAR is the latest target of Canada’s parliament and IPAC more broadly, and since Canada-China cooperation advocacy is utterly non-existent, it will be targeted by Canada’s parliament sooner than later.
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country’s only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We’ve provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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