China tried to sway MPs to vote against Uyghur genocide motion

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OTTAWA – Chinese government officials tried to influence Canadian MPs to vote against a 2021 motion condemning China’s genocide of Uyghurs and even looked to build “profiles” on certain parliamentarians after the vote.

That’s according to a summary of intelligence by Canadian security agencies and departments that was tabled at the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference (PIFI) on Wednesday.

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The document reveals that People’s Republic of China (PRC) officials made “initial” efforts to influence an unspecified number of MPs to vote against the motion recognizing the country’s treatment of its Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim minorities as “genocide.”

The motion ultimately passed unanimously in the House of Commons. But after the vote, the document states the PRC began efforts to “build profiles on a number of MPs” who supported the motion.

“This research may have informed the PRC’s decision to impose economic sanctions on some of those MPs or may have informed other actions,” reads the unclassified summary of intelligence produced for the inquiry.

Those were just some of the examples of suspected or confirmed foreign interference efforts by China against Canadian MPs brought up during Michael Chong’s testimony on Wednesday.

The Conservative MP also revealed that in October last year he was approached by an individual in the street offering him “political support, assistance with elections, and political advice here on (Parliament Hill),” he told the inquiry.

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The twist: he realized shortly after that the individual was Haiyan Zhang, a former senior analyst at the Privy Council Office who was fired for being a suspected Chinese spy in 2003.

But when Chong raised the encounter with government officials and asked if Zhang was still a “national security threat,” he was told they had destroyed all files regarding Zhang.

“It’s another example of the government failing to provide information to members of Parliament to help them protect themselves against potential threats to Parliament and to our democracy,” Chong told reporters after his testimony.

Chong has been a key figure in the government’s controversial handling of foreign interference since 2023, when The Globe and Mail revealed that Canadian intelligence agencies knew for at least two years that the PRC had been collecting information about Chong as well as his family members in Hong Kong.

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On Wednesday, the inquiry showed Chong a CSIS issues management brief dated May 31, 2021, that revealed that he and then Conservative MP Kenny Chiu were the target of foreign interference attempts by PRC officials.

A summary of redacted information in the 2021 brief shows CSIS already knew that China was interested in Chong’s relatives in the PRC, though the MP only found out in media reports in the spring of 2023.

It was only in the hours following the publication of the story that Chong was offered a briefing by the prime minister, his staff and the CSIS director on PRC activities targeting him and his family.

Chong was outraged that he wasn’t informed by the government for years and described the Liberals’ handling of foreign interference to date as “gross negligence.”

“I think they should be providing this information because it will allow those parliamentarians to take actions, to protect themselves, to be situationally aware. I think that’s so important,” he said Wednesday.

He was also shocked to find out that the information in 2021 was provided by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service to then Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, but that Blair never read it for undisclosed reasons.

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“It’s inconsistent with the practice of this government, or alternatively, it’s alarming incompetence not to be reading and actioning intelligence that is being sent up the chain,” Chong said.

Chong said the government needs to release “much more” information about foreign interference to the public than it has in recent years.

He pointed to the fact that the government still hasn’t significantly changed how foreign interference threats are shared with Canadians despite years of media revelations.

“We’re buried in a mountain of process,” he said. “This is not how our institution should function. This is not how Parliament should work. This is not how the government of Canada should treat threats to our national security. We’re buried under process. This should have been dealt with a long time ago.”

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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