Trade Minister Mary Ng will not comment on her association with a Toronto group that the House ethics committee has heard has a record of echoing the Chinese communist regime’s Party line.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, Ng’s office declined to comment on her association with the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations (CTCCO) after a witness warned about the CTCCO at the
March 10 meeting of the committee which is examining reports of China’s alleged foreign interference and meddling in Canada’s federal elections.
Ng has
openly shared on social media about her attendance at a February 2019 CTCCO event. According to the group’s website documenting its “major events,” Ng attended a number of other CTCCO events between 2018 and 2020.
Cheuk Kwan, co-chair of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China, named CTCCO when speaking on how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks to exert its soft power on Canadian society through efforts such as having individuals sympathetic to the regime establish organizations within Canada.
“Among them are the National Congress of Chinese Canadians, NCCC, and its successor the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations,” Kwan testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.
“These and many other proxy organizations practise the art of astroturfing, echoing the Party line to defend China’s foreign and domestic policies.”
“In addition to engaging friendly academics and business people to advocate on its behalf, China also spreads its tentacles to cultivate elected officials and infiltrate political institutions at all levels of Canadian society,” he added, citing from
“Claws of the Panda,” a book by long-time journalist Jonathan Manthorpe.
The CTCCO, an umbrella group now consisting of over 100 member associations,
has been reported over the years as having taken stances aligned with Beijing.
In August 2019, when
tens of thousands of Hongkongers protested Beijing’s erosion of the city’s legal autonomy through a proposed extradition bill, CTCCO
took part in a rally in Markham, Ontario, to condemn the pro-democracy protesters.
In 2020, the group asked the Ontario Legislative Assembly to hold a ceremony to
raise the Chinese regime’s flag—a request the legislature later cancelled amid souring Canada-China relations over the arbitrary detention of Canadian citizens Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
The Epoch Times reached out to Ng for comment but didn’t hear back by publication time.
Ng isn’t the only Canadian politician to have attended events hosted by CTCCO. Melanie Joly, now foreign affairs minister, posted photos of herself and Ng attending a Chinese Lunar New Year celebration in 2018 when she was the Liberal minister of Canadian heritage.
Joly didn’t respond to an inquiry from The Epoch Times about her attendance at the CTCCO event. The Epoch Times also reached out to the CTCCO for comment but didn’t hear back.
Foreign Interference
Kwan testified before the House ethics committee on how CCP agents “harass and intimidate Canadians who are critical of China.” Such targets include activists, dissidents, and human rights advocates, he said.“You get a phone call in the middle of the day asking, ‘So, how are your parents doing back in Sichuan, China?’” he told MPs on March 10.
That means “if you don’t behave, your parents’ phone numbers, address, or even their physical well-being is under threat. It’s a very subtle threat. They have used this on many, many Chinese-Canadians.”
When asked how commonly known it is that CCP agents make use of such intimidation tactics, Kwan noted that it’s “very commonly known.”
“We’ve seen a lot of this on the ground,” he said, adding that many of these incidents have not been reported, “or if they were reported to local police or the RCMP, they will not be handled because of lack of evidence.”
Kwan urged Parliament to enact a Foreign Agents Registration Act, which would require individuals or organizations working on behalf of a foreign entity to
register their activities with the federal government.
“The Chinese-Canadian community and other people welcome this registry,” he said.
A December 2022 survey by Nanos Research shows that
nearly 90 percent of Canadians support or somewhat support the creation of a foreign agent registry.
The full scope of the ethics committee’s
study is to look at “foreign interference and threats to the integrity of democratic institutions, intellectual property and the Canadian state,” and March 10 was the first meeting.
