Amid a tempestuous debate among Canadian parliamentarians over China’s interference in Canadian domestic politics, it’s unclear if many MPs noticed a visitor in their midst.
The leader of a deposed government from a remote tropical island came to share a cautionary tale: his own.
It’s about how his provincial government collapsed after it began opposing the pro-Beijing policies of the national government, in the Solomon Islands.
It’s an absorbing account involving allegations of bribery and counter-allegations, and political intrigue connected to one great geopolitical power struggle.
Other capitals are becoming theatres in an emerging cold war between China and the U.S., from frosty Ottawa to the balmy island provinces of the Pacific.
Last week, the scenes collided.
The former premier of the Solomon Islands’ Malaita province and his senior adviser were in Ottawa amid the Canadian political scandal.
Daniel Suidani and his adviser Celsus Talifilu met with a few MPs from different parties: a Liberal, a Conservative, and a Bloquiste.
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Liberal MP John McKay said he’d never heard of the Solomon Islands saga, until he met Thursday with the visitors for a little over a half hour.
“I had no idea,” McKay told CBC News.
“But [this story is] really, in retrospect, no surprise at all.”
In his view, Beijing’s political power is growing, including through interference and intimidation.
And that’s happening in a vital maritime corridor, one that McKay said advanced democracies have too long taken for granted: the South Pacific.
The Suidani saga
In an interview, the newly unseated premier described repeated attempts to bribe him.
They began, Suidani said, when he started complaining about his country’s historic rapprochement with Beijing in 2019.
It signed a security pact with Beijing; according to a leaked version, the pact would allow China to place police, military personnel and other law enforcement on the island.
Now the national government has delayed planned elections until next year.
“[The prime minister] has become a dictator. Using vestiges of democracy that suit him,” said Anne-Marie Brady, a scholar of China and Pacific politics at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury.
As head of the largest province in the Solomon Islands, home to almost one-quarter of the country’s 700,000 people, Suidani proposed halting new business licenses for investors linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
In an interview, he described his motivation as environmental: Suidani said his island’s poor rural residents had seen little benefit from logging and he accused Chinese companies of dragging machinery through rivers and polluting their water.
“It’s all destructive exploitation of resources,” Suidani said during a recent visit to Washington, before he left for Ottawa.
But there were also clear ideological reasons in a policy plan Suidani signed: it emphasized his island’s deep Christian faith, and rejected what it called Beijing’s atheistic ideology.
Discontent over the new China policy flared in destructive fashion, with some islanders violently opposed, rekindling old tensions in the country.
The first attempt to bribe him, he said, came during a visit to the capital, Honiara. He said he got a call in his hotel room, inviting him to meet in a nearby casino hotel.
Daniel Suidani says the national government did not have public support to change the Solomon Islands’ China policy, and he accuses Beijing of corrupting his country’s politics. (Alex Panetta/CBC News)
He said the anonymous caller, speaking local pijin, made a cryptic offer of 1 million Solomon Islands dollars (about $160,000 Cdn).
The caller, he said, warned that his political career would be over after four years, while the money could help his family forever.
“‘After four years you’re nobody,'” he recalled the caller saying.
“‘Get the million and your family can be well off.'”
Suidani said the caller refused to say more over the phone, and he didn’t go to the meeting. This was in 2019. A more flagrant attempt occurred months later, he said.
He said a family acquaintance, someone married to his relative, invited him to supper with a very well-known politician, a former prime minister of the country.
“After five minutes, I see a representative from the Chinese embassy,” Suidani said, recalling that the diplomat walked to their table, introduced himself, and moved on.
He said his dinner companions then urged him to create a fake invoice for services rendered, and collect payment from the Chinese embassy.
He said the nationally famous politician told him: “If you’re scared to come to the embassy office, you can come to my house. … Come to my house with your invoice. We can just give you the money [there].”
Debris lies on the street outside damaged shops in Chinatown, in the Solomon Islands’ capital, Honiara, in 2021. Discontent over a new, friendlier China policy was a driver of deadly rioting. (Piringi Charley/AP)
He said he refused. CBC News could not independently verify Suidani’s account.
After that restaurant meeting, he said attempts to unseat his provincial government began. He survived a first confidence vote, then a second a year later, then this year he was toppled.
“He became target No. 1,” said Cleo Paskal, a Montreal-based analyst and writer on the Indo-Pacific region with the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank.
“It meant Suidani’s government needed to either be brought under control. Or taken out, from Beijing’s perspective.”
He was even stripped of his seat in the provincial legislature — by the national government.
The Chinese embassy in the Solomon Islands did not respond to a request for comment. The Solomon Islands government denounced Suidani for what it called irresponsible and dangerous behaviour.
The national government accused Suidan of inflaming the country while trying to rewrite its foreign policy from a provincial capital.
It also blamed him for illegally planning a potential independence vote.
Former Micronesian president David Panuelo, seen here in 2022 with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, accused Beijing of bribing and bullying his country’s politicians. (Craig Ruttle/Reuters)
‘Have you been bribed by the PRC?’
With an eye on regaining Taiwan, Beijing has been working to turn its rival’s allies in the region into its own.
Angered by these accusations, the Solomon Islands’ government has threatened to throw journalists out of the country, following a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The report described a Chinese slush fund for political projects, with the money available only to MPs who supported the pro-China administration.
In the past, Taiwan used to fund this constituency program, available for members of parliament to use in their ridings.
Islanders have long complained about political cronyism in these funds; but Paskal said Beijing has taken it to a whole new level by reserving it for certain MPs, turning it into a means of control.
Elsewhere in the region, the story repeats itself.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is seen during a 2019 meeting with Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare in Beijing. (Reuters)
In a letter this year to his country’s politicians, the outgoing leader of Micronesia accused China of an illicit carrot-and-stick approach to politicians: bribing or bullying.
The departing president, David Panuelo, described cash-filled envelopes; gifts; offers of free plane rides; checks for projects that didn’t appear in the public records; and threats.
In his departure, he proposed new money-laundering and transparency legislation, writing to his fellow politicians: “Have you personally received a bribe from the PRC? If the answer is ‘no’ — you are in the minority.”
The geopolitical angle
All of which raises a question: Why would China care so much about sparsely populated islands in the South Pacific?
The answer, in a sense, used to sit on John F. Kennedy’s desk. That’s where he kept a wartime memento from the Solomon Islands: a coconut shell.
Great powers have coveted the location in the past. In the Second World War, the Solomon Islands is where the U.S. launched its land invasion against Japan.
A young John F. Kennedy, seen aboard a PT-109 boat during the Second World War, before a near-fatal battle in the Solomon Islands. (Reuters)
The reason the U.S. chose this site, the Solomon Islands’ Guadalcanal: preserving vital American links with Australia.
The surrounding chain of islands separates the U.S. from its regional ally. The Solomon Islands, like Papua New Guinea, and Micronesia, sit between Australia and American-held Guam and Hawaii.
Kennedy nearly died there as a young naval lieutenant: on his White House desk, he kept the coconut shell he used to send an SOS message.
“The politics change [through the years] – but the geography doesn’t,” Brady said.
In testimony last month before the U.S. House of Representatives, Paskal referred to these islands as a corridor of freedom.
She called it disturbing that the U.S. Coast Guard has, during recent fishing patrols, been blocked from docking to refuel at ports in Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.
U.S. soldiers walk during annual joint combat exercises in Indonesia in 2022. Other countries joined the annual U.S.-Indonesia exercise, as Washington looks to bolster its alliances in Oceania and Asia. (AP)
“China wants to push the U.S. out of the Pacific. And push it back to Hawaii,” Paskal said in an interview.
Chinese media have called concerns about its presence in the South Pacific fear-mongering and hypocritical, given that the U.S. has numerous military sites around the world, while China has just one, in Africa.
Amid the surge in Chinese activity, the U.S. is renewing its interest in the region. It just reopened a long-shuttered embassy in the Solomon Islands.
High level White House officials have made repeat visits – both to the country and region.
While U.S. President Joe Biden hosted Pacific island leaders at the White House last year, he cancelled a planned visit to the recent summit in Papua New Guinea. People are seen gathering here in Port Moseby outside a meeting between the U.S. secretary of state and New Zealand’s prime minister. (Nick Perry/AP)
Just days ago, U.S. President Joe Biden was supposed to be at a regional summit in nearby Papua New Guinea.
In what the Associated Press called a foreign policy setback, Biden wound up canceling that visit. The reason: Biden had to be in Washington to deal with a domestic political crisis – the threat of a U.S. debt default, since defused.
Brady argues that democracies have been asleep while China installs equipment in the region that could have military applications, from maritime to satellite infrastructure.
“Our countries move too slow,” she said, lamenting that the U.S. still barely has any diplomats in the Solomon Islands.
In the meantime, Solomon Islands politicians are coming to North America for meetings in Washington, Ottawa, and elsewhere.
“We are lucky that they’re coming here – to remind us how essential and precious and vulnerable democracy can be,” Paskal said.
“You can see that playing out in real time in the Solomon Islands. Which went from not a perfect, but a functioning, democracy in 2019 when it [still] recognized Taiwan, to a fear-based, election-depriving, proto-authoritarian regime four years later.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
