The president and CEO of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation who was at the helm when it received a donation from businessmen tied to the Chinese regime told the House of Commons ethics committee on May 2 that the donation was not foreign, but MPs questioned the assertion with receipts.
Conservative MP Luc Berthold, apparently having on hand a copy of the receipt, read out loud the address, which mentions Hong Kong, China.
Berthold asked Rosenberg if he had any concerns that he signed and sent a donation receipt to China for a company incorporated in Canada.
“That didn’t seem strange after working as a deputy minister of foreign affairs?” asked Berthold. “The receipt is not saying what you’re saying.”
‘Soft Power’
Millennium Golden Eagle International Media is listed as one of the executive directors of the China Cultural Industry Association (CCIA) on the CCIA’s website.The CCIA is an entity directed by the Chinese regime, which Rosenberg called a “soft power organization.” Soft power is a tool used by states to advance their national interests through influence and persuasion.
Zhang and Niu struck a deal with the Trudeau Foundation and the Université de Montréal (UdeM) in 2014 to provide them respectively with $200,000 and $800,000. The foundation would run China-related conferences and the UdeM would set up scholarships for students wanting to go to China.
The donation was framed as coming from the businessmen and not corporate or state entities, and to honour former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s effort to build relations with communist China. The former PM studied and taught at the UdeM faculty of law.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett called Zhang and Bin “cutouts for a soft power operation” for the Chinese regime to wield influence in Canada. He asked Rosenberg if he had been sensitized to such threats as a deputy minister.
“Did you not find it odd that this donation from Beijing, from cutouts acting directly on behalf of the communist dictatorship in Beijing, were suddenly looking to target a donation to a foundation that bared the name of one of the candidates for prime minister in the election?” Barrett asked.
Rosenberg said the donation had to be taken in the context of the time, when “just about every university in Canada, many corporations, the government of Canada, including the Harper government, had changed their attitude towards China.”
Foreign Influence Concerns
The Globe and Mail broke the two stories related to the donation in the context of foreign influence schemes.The Globe reported in February, according to a Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) source, that an unnamed diplomat at one of China’s consulates in Canada had in 2014 instructed Zhang Bin to donate money to the Trudeau Foundation, as the Liberals were perceived as poised to take power in 2015.
Conflict within the foundation leadership over how the donation was handled led to most of its leadership resigning in April.
Alexandre Trudeau, brother of the current prime minister, had been involved early in the negotiations for the Chinese donation deal in 2014. He will testify before the committee on May 3.
Fournier said she couldn’t explain how Alexandre Trudeau, a foundation director at the time, had signed the donation contract instead of Rosenberg.
Election Integrity
Rosenberg was tapped to review the 2021 federal election protocol meant to inform Canadians if there was a threat to the integrity of the election. In his report published in February, he said the protocol had worked generally well but made recommendations on improving communications with the public.He told the ethics committee on May 2 that his review was not meant to determine whether there had been foreign interference, but only if the protocol had worked.
“There’s a lot of stuff in that report that is critical of the government,” he said, pointing to the 16 recommendations he made.
The protocol said there were no incidents that met the threshold to inform the public of a threat.