Poilievre Deplores Lack of Action on Beijing Interference Ahead of Guilbeaut’s China Visit

Poilievre Deplores Lack of Action on Beijing Interference Ahead of Guilbeaut’s China Visit
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks to reporters in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on May 16, 2023. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick
Noé Chartier
Updated:

As a Liberal cabinet minister prepares to travel to China, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre says it’s “outrageous” that more concrete action hasn’t been taken by the federal government to counter Chinese interference.

“Beijing interfered in two subsequent elections to help Trudeau win, they have police stations on Canadian soil, targeting Canadian citizens—I just think it’s incredible that he’s done absolutely nothing to stop it,” said Mr. Poilievre while talking to reporters on Prince Edward Island on Aug. 16.

The Tory leader was responding to questions from reporters about the upcoming visit to China by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault in the context of an eventual public inquiry into Chinese interference and recent disinformation efforts targeting Conservative MP Michael Chong, with Beijing likely involved.
Mr. Guilbeault announced the trip on Aug. 16 by way of two interviews in Canadian media. The visit is framed by his department and Global Affairs Canada as a meeting on the environment, but the minister told the media it’s also about restoring relations with China in the first ministerial visit since 2018.
The environment minister told French-language CBC that Canadians might not understand a commercial mission to China in the current context, but he said that after a summer of severe weather events, “there’s a greater awareness that we must do something about climate change.”

Mr. Poilievre did not address Guilbeault’s visit specifically, but he reiterated his party’s call for an “immediate” public inquiry and the implementation of a foreign influence registry.

The Liberal government has resisted calls to hold an inquiry but allowed the possibility after David Johnston resigned from his special rapporteur position in June. Talks with opposition parties on the terms of the inquiry have not borne fruit so far.

The government also held consultations in the spring about the foreign influence registry, but there’s been no timetable offered for the introduction of a related piece of legislation. The Conservatives have a foreign registry bill in the Senate, but it doesn’t have government support.

Calls for those measures stem from a stream of national security leaks in the press since November 2022, which depict widespread interference by the Chinese regime in Canada.

Mr. Poilievre called it “extremism” that such interference would be allowed to take place. He used the term after being asked earlier in his press conference if he was attempting to “court the far-right.”

“You want to talk about extremism? That’s extreme. It’s extreme to have a Prime Minister who would allow a foreign dictatorship to run police stations in our country to single out and target Canadian citizens with intimidation,” he said.

“Maybe it’s because of their ideological kindred spirits that they have. He said, in his own words, that he admires the basic Chinese communist dictatorship, something he has never retracted.”

Mr. Trudeau said in 2013 that he has a “level of admiration for China,“ and that ”their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.”

As for the Chinese police stations, multiple locations have been identified in Canada since 2022, but the RCMP said in June that their operations have ceased following their overt disruptive actions.
The issue became publicly known after Spanish NGO Safeguard Defenders published a report revealing the network of Chinese police stations spanning the globe in September 2022.

The federal government has not said whether it was aware of their presence before the report was released.