According to the Canadian press, Beijing would have tried to influence the 2019 and 2021 elections for the benefit of the Liberal government, which was slow to take measures intended to protect themselves from it.
by Hélène Jouan (Montreal, Correspondent)
An unusual climate of tension reigns in the House of Commons in Ottawa, where the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has been facing, for several weeks, the uninterrupted blows of his parliamentary opposition. She blames him for his inertia in the face of allegations of interference from China, revealed by Canadian media.
To try to lower political pressure, the Minister of Public Security, Marco Mendicino, announced, Friday, March 10, the launch of consultations to set up a register of foreign agents, in order to promote, -It declared, “transparency with regard to legitimate lobbying activities of foreign states in Canada”. People who act on behalf of a foreign state to promote its objectives will have to disclose their links with the government which employs them. The United States in 1938, then Australia in 2018 have been equipped with similar registers to counter attempts at foreign interference.
On March 6, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the appointment of a “special rapporteur” responsible for formulating “recommendations for the protection of our democracy”. But so far he refuses to give in to the injunction of his main opponent, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Hairyvre, and on his own political ally, essential parliamentary support in the context of a minority government, the new Democratic Party (NPD, left), who demand an independent public inquiry from the government on the subject. “It seems that there is more and more things to hide. All this does not help Canadians trust in their electoral system,” lambasted Jagmeet Singh (NPD) during a session in the House of House municipalities March 8.
financing of eleven candidates
The crisis has been about since in November 2022 the Global Television Network – one of the largest Canadian television networks – revealed that the Canadian security intelligence service suspected the Toronto Chinese consulate to have been at the heart , during the 2019 general elections, a network of assistance and financing of eleven candidates, whose identity has not been revealed, considered as “sino-compatible”.
Since the beginning of February, still on the faith of sources emanating from intelligence services, the most powerful English -speaking daily in Canada, the Globe and Mail, has in turn published a series of articles claiming that China had done everything to promote a short victory of the Liberal Party to the detriment of the Conservatives in the general elections of 2021. The country is accused of having set up, through the WeChat application, disinformation campaigns targeting the Chinese diaspora Canada and have recruited students of Chinese origin to volunteer liberal candidates to campaign. “In several constituencies where a high proportion of voters has Chinese origins [5 % of the Canadian population is in this case], the Conservatives have suffered heavy defeats,” said the National Post, a Canadian Conservative daily.
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