FIRST READING: How China allegedly spent the last 10 years trying to influence Trudeau
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Amid ever-louder revelations that the Trudeau government ignored CSIS warnings that China was brazenly toying with the 2021 election, a Wednesday report in The Globe and Mail cited a CSIS official who said that the People’s Republic of China has been openly pursuing an influence operation against Justin Trudeau since well before he became prime minister.
Below, a cynic’s guide to how Beijing may well have put this plan into action.
China was throwing money at the Trudeau Foundation
Probably the most damning allegation in the CSIS leak is that one of China’s Canadian consulates told Chinese billionaire Zhang Bin to donate $1 million to Trudeau-related causes — after which he would be reimbursed for the amount.
So, $200,000 went to the Trudeau Foundation, $50,000 went to fund a statue of Pierre Trudeau, and the rest went to Pierre Trudeau-named initiatives at the University of Montreal.
It’s been known since 2016 that a Beijing-affiliated billionaire was throwing money at things with the word “Trudeau” in them — but it’s only this week that charges first emerged that he was explicitly doing it on orders from the Chinese Communist Party.
Notably, the donation occurred soon after Trudeau spent the evening with Zhang Bin at an exclusive $1,500-a-plate fundraiser organized by the Chinese Business Chamber of Commerce.
Meanwhile, somebody was showering the Trudeau Foundation in foreign cash. Right up until Trudeau became Liberal leader in 2013, the organization didn’t receive a cent in foreign donations. Then, all of a sudden, in 2015 the Trudeau Foundation was hit by a $438,000 surge in foreign donations, followed by $535,000 in 2016.
Oh, and the head of the Trudeau Foundation during this period — Morris Rosenberg — now has a new job drafting reports for the Trudeau government about Chinese election interference.
An obscure Pierre Trudeau book was released by Chinese state publishers
Even among die-hard Canadian political nerds it’s hard to find someone who’s read Two Innocents in Red China, a 1960s memoir co-authored by a then-obscure Pierre Trudeau. So it’s perhaps a little weird that a state-owned Chinese publishing firm struck a deal with the Trudeau family in 2005 to translate the book and release it in the People’s Republic of China — they even got Justin’s brother Sacha to write a preface.
It’s not known how well the book did among Chinese readers, but in 2021 former Canadian Ambassador to China Guy Saint-Jacques told the National Post that the whole enterprise looked very much like a naked attempt to curry favour with a Canadian political family (even though Justin’s first stab at politics was still three years away).
“The approach is always the same: you make people feel special, you tell them they understand China and you pretend to give them special access,” said Saint-Jacques.
Eleven years later, it happened again when a state-owned publisher released a Chinese-language version of Trudeau’s memoir Common Ground. Of course, they gave it a slightly more flattering title, The Legend Continues.
Trudeau was utterly feted by Beijing during a 2016 visit
Trudeau’s family has always had a weird relationship with the People’s Republic of China. As prime minister, Pierre Trudeau paid semi-regular visits to the country and often hauled his children along.
When Sacha later wrote a fawning book about China in 2016, he named it Barbarian Lost, a reference to Pierre’s 1970s-era advice that China rightly used to see Westerners as barbarians (he was saying it to shame Sacha and Justin for roughhousing at a Chinese cultural site). “It’s a place that’s unique. It’s separate,” the younger Trudeau brother told CBC in 2016.
So in 2016, it didn’t take all that much for the People’s Republic of China to utterly flatter Justin Trudeau during his first official visit to the country. China’s premier Li Keqiang made sure to offer praise of Trudeau’s father within seconds of their initial meeting, and the Washington Post noted that “Trudeau’s China trip has received mostly favourable coverage in the party-controlled press.” Said media even made sure to give the prime minister kudos for wearing a red tie.
Trudeau, meanwhile, framed the whole thing as a kind of family reunion — and made sure to note that he had brought his own kids along. “The friendship and the openness towards China that my father taught me, I’m certainly hoping to pass on not only to my children but to generations of Canadians in the future,” he said.
IN OTHER NEWS
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is obviously spending a lot of his time these days countering allegations that his government tolerated known foreign interference. Here’s a quick summary of his main counterpoints:
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has called for a “fully independent and non-partisan public inquiry” into the allegations of Chinese election interference. The idea has already been dismissed by Trudeau, but this is one of those things that Singh could technically push for anyway given that he holds the balance of power in a minority government. However, as per usual, Singh made no mention of invoking such powers, but did say he “shares people’s disappointment” about the whole thing.
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