Conservative Party House Leader Andrew Scheer is calling for an emergency debate in the House of Commons regarding Beijing’s reported threatening of a Tory MP’s family members living in Hong Kong, which Scheer says the Trudeau government knew about but did nothing.
Scheer informed House Speaker Anthony Rota on May 1
in a letter that he will be calling for the emergency debate on the morning of May 2, saying that the House “must address the latest report in Beijing’s interference in our democracy at the earliest opportunity possible.”
Scheer was
referring to a May 1 Globe and Mail report citing a top secret CSIS intelligence assessment on interference in Canada by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The assessment says Beijing views Canada as a “high priority target.”
It also provides
examples of some covert interference activities the regime has carried out in Canada, one of which was the CCP’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) taking “specific actions to target Canadian MPs” who were behind a 2021 House of Commons motion that called Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghur minority a genocide.
The assessment adds that the MSS sought information on one of the MP’s relatives who may be located in China “for further potential sanctions,” according to the Globe.
CSIS
assessed that this was “certainly meant to make an example of this MP and deter others from taking anti-PRC positions,” and an unnamed national security source reportedly told the Globe that this MP was Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong.
Chong said on May 1 that the federal government never informed him of the MSS targeting his family overseas. He also claimed the Trudeau government was aware of the incident “two years ago.”
“The government did not inform me that a diplomat was targeting my family, nor did the government take any action to expel the diplomat responsible for orchestrating this intimidation campaign,”
Chong said in a statement.
‘Intimidation Tactics’
Scheer said
in his letter to Rota that “Beijing’s intimidation tactics are not limited” to MPs, “but are being deployed against many Canadians of Chinese descent in diaspora communities across the country.”
“These allegations are widely reported and well established through House of Commons committee testimony and reports by Canada’s security establishment,” Scheer said.
Responding on May 1 to the news report of Chong’s family being targeted by the CCP, Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau said it is “absolutely unacceptable” that any politician be targeted by a foreign government and said he has called on national security officials to follow up on the report.
“This is something obviously that we need to take seriously and that’s what we’re doing,” Trudeau said during question period in the House.
He added that experts will be investigating “all the information on this file on what happened, on who was informed and who was not informed, to make sure that we are following up in an appropriate way.”
Noé Chartier and Matthew Horwood contributed to this report.
