The Department of Canadian Heritage bought over $300,000 worth of maple leaf pins made in China, according to records presented in the House of Commons, despite MPs condemning the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for genocide last year.
According to a House “Inquiry of Ministry” obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter, the department has spent exactly $344,513 over the past two years on Chinese-manufactured Canada flag pins.
The records show that Heritage Canada purchased over 6.1 million Canada-flag “plastic lapel pins” from China that were priced at about four cents each. The department also bought over 45,000 “iron-stamped” maple leaf pins and about 5,500 aluminum lapels, all made in China.
In 2005, the federal Public Works Department, under then-Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, declared it would stop supplying MPs with Canada-flag lapel pins that were made in China. Then-Public Works Minister Scott Brison said the government instead awarded the federal pin-manufacturing contract to a Canadian company,
according to CBC.
CBC
also reported in 2017 that the federal government spent about $1.5 million on Canada-themed but foreign-manufactured merchandise for the country’s 150th anniversary.
“Everything from flags and pins, to cellphone cleaning cloths, T-shirts and tote bags,” read the article published June 30, 2017.
“Pins made in China. Ball caps from Bangladesh. Even the 6,200 Canada 150 hockey pucks bought by the Canadian Heritage department were made in the United States.”
CCP Persecution
In February 2021,
MPs voted 266–0 to condemn Beijing’s oppression of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims and declared China’s oppression of the groups to be a genocide.
“We can no longer ignore this,” said Conservative MP Michael Chong on Feb. 15, 2021. Chong submitted the motion to the House on Feb. 18.
“We must call it for what it is: a genocide,” he said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal cabinet abstained from the vote.
Former Uyghur detainees in China’s “reeducation centres” have said that prisoners are regularly beaten, tortured, and forced to pledge loyalty to the CCP, The Epoch Times has previously reported.
An
article published in October 2019 detailed the story of Sayragul Sauytbay, a Muslim woman of Kazakh descent who spent several months detained in a CCP reeducation centre in China’s Xinjiang region before being granted asylum in Sweden, who said prisoners are tortured by electric shock, raped, and have their fingernails pulled out.
Practitioners of
Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that teaches truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, also experience persecution from the CCP, with a large number being subjected to harassment, torture, and forced labour.
Tibetan Buddhists and Christians have also been subjects of CCP persecution, along with Hong Kong democracy activists.
Canadian MPs last week
voted unanimously to support a motion demanding that the federal government expand immigration measures to accommodate Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims fleeing CCP persecution.
Trudeau and his cabinet once again abstained from voting on the motion.
The motion arose after a
recent report from the House immigration committee said Uyghurs are suffering “an ongoing genocide” in China and even those who escape to other countries “are at continuing risk of detention and deportation back to China, where they face serious risk of arbitrary detention, torture, and other atrocities.”
Isaac Teo, Isabel van Brugen, and Andrew Chen contributed to this report.
