The two businessmen linked to the Chinese regime who donated to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation in 2016 met with federal ministers on several different occasions.
Zhang Bin, president of the regime-backed China Cultural Industry Association (CCIA), and his colleague Niu Gensheng, an adviser to the CCIA, had reached a deal in 2014 to donate $200,000 to the Trudeau Foundation and $800,000 to the Université de Montréal (UdeM), where former prime minister Pierre Trudeau used to study and teach.
The signing ceremony for the deal took place in June 2016, just weeks after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
attended a cash-for-access event in May at which Zhang was present.
A few months later, in October 2016, Niu met with Trudeau at
Willson House in Meech Lake, Quebec.
Niu, a dairy industry magnate, was part of a delegation from the China Entrepreneur Club that visited Canada that October. A family
photo of the event posted on Twitter by then-minister of innovation Navdeep Bains shows Niu to the left of Trudeau.
Others who attended include then-finance minister Bill Morneau and then-environment minister Catherine McKenna. All three former ministers have since left politics.
A Chinese-language
account of the meeting posted online reports that Trudeau called for closer relations between Canada and China.
“The global relationship with China has changed dramatically, and I hope that as China produces great change, it can better engage with Canada, and between our two countries, we can explore more and greater opportunities, and we are partners, and we can produce all kinds of collaborative relationships, and we are going to face a new era,” he reportedly said.
A few weeks earlier, Trudeau made his first official
visit to China and gave an address at a roundtable hosted by the China Entrepreneur Club in Beijing.
“Because [of] the friendship and the openness towards China that my father taught me, I’m certainly hoping to pass [that] along, not only to my children but to generations of Canadians in the future,” he
said.
The Epoch Times asked the Prime Minister’s Office whether Trudeau knew that Niu was behind the donation when he met with him in October 2016. A response was not returned by publication time.
After requests by Opposition parties to probe the donation in 2016, then-ethics commissioner Mary Dawson
said there were no lapses since Trudeau had left the foundation and wasn’t involved in its affairs.
Donation Controversy
The controversy surrounding the donation to the Trudeau Foundation from the Chinese businessmen erupted after the Globe and Mail
reported on Nov. 22, 2016, that Trudeau had attended a cash-for-access fundraiser with Chinese billionaires that May.
The report covered the donation by Zhang and Niu in June 2016 to the Trudeau Foundation.
The story resurfaced this February when the Globe
reported that CSIS had intercepted a conversation in 2014 between Zhang and a Chinese consulate official, stating that the official asked Zhang to donate to the Trudeau Foundation, and that Beijing would reimburse him.
Zhang is a
member of the National Committee of the Chinese People Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
A
post in Chinese on the CCIA website lays out the mandate Zhang was given by CCP leader Xi Jinping.
“In accordance with the instruction of General Secretary Xi and the policy of the Party Central Committee, in order to give full play to the role of the industry association as a bridge and link, Mr. Zhang Bin has always been committed to building a high-level industrial exchange platform,” says the website.
It adds the CCIA is at the forefront of a large number of enterprises bringing China’s cultural industry to the world through international cooperation, with “long-term contact mechanisms” with government agencies in North America and elsewhere.
The Epoch Times reached out to the CCIA but hasn’t heard back.
Other Meeting
Another Liberal minister who met one of the donors was Mélanie Joly when she was head of Heritage Canada.Joly
led a delegation to China in April 2018 where she attended a “Cultural Industry Cooperation and Project Matchmaking Meeting” that was co-hosted by the CCIA and the Canada-China Business Council, according to a CCIA
web posting.
A picture shows Joly beside Zhang Bin and Yu Qun, an official within the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
The Epoch Times reached out to the Canada-China Business Council (CCBC) about its links to the CCIA but didn’t immediately hear back.
In 2018, the CCBC awarded its Gold-level Education Excellence Award to the UdeM’s Faculty of Law, with former faculty dean Guy Lefebvre receiving the prize on its behalf. Lefebvre
told Le Devoir he had orchestrated the 2014 donation deal with Zhang Bin and Niu Gensheng, who both work with the CCIA. Lefebvre did not respond to several previous requests for comment.
Turmoil at Foundation
The Trudeau Foundation
announced on March 1 it would be returning its part of the donation, the day after the Globe and Mail published its report based on CSIS information.
The foundation
said the amount it actually received was $140,000, and not $200,000. Similarly, the UdeM says it only
received $550,000 of the initially promised $800,000.
On April 11, the entire leadership of the foundation resigned following internal tensions arising over how the donation was handled. Publicly, the board
said it was due to “politicization” of the issue.
The foundation
reportedly was unable at first to reimburse the donors since the name on the cheque was for a business controlled by Zhang instead of his own name. The Globe
reported that the CCIA had contacted the Trudeau Foundation to request that the name of Zhang and Niu not appear on the tax receipt for the donation.
The foundation has since announced an independent review of the matter and called on the auditor general (AG) to investigate. However, Karen Hogan’s office said on April 24 that she will not conduct an audit as examining the source of private donations is not within her authority.
The Trudeau Foundation says it’s an independent scholarship organization. It received a $125 million endowment from the federal government upon its creation in the early 2000s and it is
associated with the Innovation Canada portfolio. The minister of Innovation can appoint up to eight members of the foundation’s leadership.
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