COOPER: Trudeau keeping Canada tight with China

In a recent column I noted the many, many deficiencies of electric vehicles (EVs). They are particularly bad for drivers who experience winter cold. There is, however, another reason why they are un-Albertan. They increase our dependence on the People's Republic of China, a country that nearly everyone outside the higher echelons of the Trudeau Liberal party understands is not our friend.Moreover, the economic and manufacturing sources of Chinese dominance in the EV market are no mystery. PRC government subsidies are the most obvious reason, along with Chinese control over much of the extraction of cobalt and rare earth minerals needed to produce EV batteries.A Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report in 2023 made an equally obvious observation: China’s desire to control EV markets is a threat to Canadian jobs and industrial competitiveness. In case you couldn’t guess why, CSIS helpfully explained: dependence on China provided that country with a greater ability “to punish countries that challenge its position in international affairs.”The Trudeau Liberals have been pushing EVs ostensibly because they do not produce the dreaded gas, CO2. No one says anything about Chinese production being tributary to their building innumerable coal-fired and CO2-spewing electricity generating plants. Marxists used to call this a contradiction. Liberals don’t.Here’s another problem with EVs. They present enhanced cybersecurity risks. When they are connected at charging stations, they are controlled by software systems that can be remotely changed — or “updated,” to use a favoured progressive term.In short, EVs, chargers and even rooftop solar systems are much more vulnerable to cyberattack than alternatives. Distributed energy systems for EV charging stations, for example, appear to a potential enemy as so many “entry points to the grid,” as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal put it last weekend. Such “entry points” provide access for malign actors to take down the grid across the continent. Now, who might want to do that?Another thing to consider: if an EV driver’s phone is connected by Bluetooth, it can be accessed to provide intelligence about her identity, finances, other contacts and so on. And if those vehicles were manufactured in the PRC, who do you think would harvest the data?The point? The PRC has a strategic political interest in supporting green technologies and green fanatics in the West. For them, the obsession of our political leaders with anthropogenic climate change is a political vulnerability that they can exploit. And they do.Back in the bad old days of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, Western intelligence agencies distinguished between witting and unwitting communist or Soviet sympathizers, whom they called “comm-symps.” Most of their targets were unwitting, not full-fledged self-identifying communist agents and spies — though there were plenty of them as well.Today the distinction is more difficult to establish owing to the greater subtlety of PRC subversion in countries such as Canada. The Chinese communists — the “Chi-comms” of the Cold War — have improved upon the tricks of their Soviet predecessors. And their more-or-less witting Canadian proxies have become increasingly oblivious of the need to hide their “Chi-comm-symp” attitudes. Who can forget the November 2013 statement by Justin Trudeau at a “Ladies’ Night” reception in Toronto? Trudeau spoke of his “admiration” for China “because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say ‘we need to go green fastest… we need to start investing in solar.’ I mean there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about, of having a dictatorship that can do everything he wanted. That I find quite interesting.”Trudeau’s claim to know the dreams of Stephen Harper was clearly a projection of his own attitudes regarding the way he would govern. But more importantly, his admiration for the PRC has always been linked to green policies and green policies are inherently dictatorial. That his vision of a green Canada is anti-Alberta merely adds sweetness to perfection.It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that the Trudeau Liberals and the PRC are singing from the same hymn book.Indeed, more than a year ago, Tristin Hopper reported in the National Post how the Chi-comms have been seeking to influence the Right Honourable Prime Minister long before he could claim the honourific. To review recent history:1. The PRC has supported the Trudeau Foundation. Specifically, the Toronto and Montreal consulates told Chinese billionaire Zhang Bin to donate $1M to Trudeau causes and they would make him whole. So, he sent $200K to the Trudeau Foundation, $50K to construct a statue of Pierre Trudeau, $750K to Pierre-named programs at the University of Montreal. Prior to Justin becoming leader of the Liberal Party, the Foundation received $0.00 from Chinese sources. In 2015 the foreign donations started to roll in, rather as they did earlier for the Clinton Foundation, which seems to be a model for the Montreal outfit.2. The PRC supported republication in 2005 of Pierre’s awful book Two Innocents in Red China, first published 60 years ago. Son Sacha wrote a fawning new preface. His advance and the royalties remain unknown.3. The Chinese translated Justin’s awful book, Common Ground, now renamed The Legend Continues. No news on PRC payments to the author either.4. Trudeau excused the Chinese human rights violations of their own citizens, from repressions of Hongkongers to genocide of Uyghurs, during his glorious 2016 visit to China. Back then he allowed that Canada’s human rights record also was not perfect. Incidentally, this was the same trip when Justin earned the title “little potato,” xiao tudou in Mandarin, on a popular Chinese talk show. Little potato was praised in the PRC media for sporting a red tie.The Trudeau Liberals have been very generous with Canadian taxpayers’ dollars by supporting Chinese businesses. In March 2021 Mairead Lavery, CEO of the Export Development Bank, told the Commons Finance Committee that approving $3B in loans to Chinese companies conformed to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. He neglected to mention the Uyghurs. On January 3, 2024, Postmedia reported on a Blacklock’s Reporter story that China had received only $7.59M in foreign aid during the last reporting year, down from $41M in 2020. The decline followed objections from several MPs to giving money to a communist dictatorship. That figure did not include other loans from the Export Development Bank and from the Finance Department that were sent to the Asia Infrastructure Development Bank in Beijing, which is part of the PRC’s strategic belt and road initiative.In return, the Chinese helped and supported the Trudeau Liberals. We learned once again from testimony last week before the Public Inquiry into Foreign (= Chinese) Interference in Canadian Elections how they did it, most notoriously in the Greater Toronto Area and the BC Lower Mainland.That is how honour among thieves works. We whitewash Chinese repression and they explain via Canadian Chinese-language social media that now former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu, running in Richmond-Steveston, was a “race traitor” for supporting Hongkongers. What could be simpler?The most interesting bit of evidence to come out last week before Madame Justice Marie-Josée Hogue was also not news. The timeline on Trudeau’s knowledge regarding PRC subversion, which was now confirmed in public by CSIS, had earlier been reported in the media.CSIS pointed out in 2021 (and there were earlier rumours, since confirmed) that the PRC was interfering in the selection of Liberal candidates — Han Dong in Don Valley North in particular. Trudeau first replied by saying how “extraordinarily happy and lucky” they were to have Dong as a candidate.Then, when the CSIS intelligence was leaked to the media, Trudeau denounced them, not the Chi-comms: “its not up to unelected security officials to dictate (yes, dictate!) to political parties who can and cannot run.” He called for a review of security within CSIS, “and I’m expecting CSIS to take the issue very seriously,” then went on to decry the leaks as being filled with unspecified “inaccuracies,” and added gratuitously (but to no one’s surprise) the PRC talking point that the whole accusation regarding Chinese subversion was racist. How boring, unimaginative and utterly irrelevant. Whom did he think he was kidding?But more important, what are we to make of our Justin in light of the old Cold War categories? We know he is a comm-symp because he has said so. But is he also witting? It would explain a lot. Perhaps Justice Hogue could let us know?

COOPER: Trudeau keeping Canada tight with China

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