Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, pictured in 2021, is reportedly one of two opposition MPs that CSIS has contacted to discuss the threat of foreign interference.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Canada’s spy agency is drawing up a list of parliamentarians for briefings on Chinese political interference and has already reached out to two opposition MPs, more than a week after Conservative MP Michael Chong was informed that he and family members in Hong Kong were targets of Beijing state intimidation.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has contacted former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, who was a candidate for prime minister in the 2021 election, and Jenny Kwan, an NDP MP who has been an outspoken critic of China.
CSIS said it wants to discuss the threat of foreign interference with Mr. O’Toole, a person familiar with the request said. The Globe is not identifying the person because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the CSIS request.
“We are inferring that it is about threats to him and his family,” the person said.
The outreach comes after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instructed the spy service to disclose concerns about federal politicians and their families following a report in The Globe that revealed China targeted Mr. Chong because he sponsored a parliamentary motion condemning Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur minority.
Ms. Kwan, who has COVID-19, said she had a brief Zoom conversation with CSIS officials, but they were unwilling to disclose any intelligence because communications were not secure. She will be meeting in person with the service in Ottawa when she recovers.
An outspoken critic of China’s human-rights abuses, Ms. Kwan said she is anxious to know if Beijing has targeted her in some way. “Luckily for me, I don’t have family members in Hong Kong or in China, but I believe I am definitely a person of interest given my activities and outspokenness,” she said.
“I hope in the in-person meeting that they will disclose what they have learned, when they learned it and what it means in practical terms.”
Ms. Kwan said that while she is concerned about threats to parliamentarians, she is equally worried about China’s intimidation of Canadian critics of the Communist Party’s authoritarian rule. “If members of Parliament are being watched, what happens for everyday Canadians? Are they being watched and observed and, if so, what recourse do they have?” she said.
“If people fear the activities that they participate in – whether it be a rally or speaking out on an issue – it could have repercussions for them or their family members who might be abroad. That is very concerning. And what is the Canadian government doing to address that?”
Mr. O’Toole, who as Conservative leader campaigned for a foreign-agent registry and the banning of Huawei Technologies gear from domestic 5G networks, has said he believes the party lost up to nine seats because of Chinese interference in the 2021 election.
A report for the federal government by a panel of senior public servants, led by Morris Rosenberg, a former deputy minister of foreign affairs, found that efforts to meddle in that election did not affect the overall outcome of the vote.
But Mr. O’Toole had personal reasons for concern. For much of his time as opposition leader, his sister lived in Hong Kong with her husband, who worked as a senior test pilot with Cathay Pacific. The couple were in Hong Kong for roughly a decade, through a period of immense change for the city, which has been convulsed by protests and lost many of its freedoms to Beijing in recent years.
Some of those changes struck close to home for the family. Cathay Pacific’s chief executive resigned in 2019, after some of the airline’s employees joined protests demanding greater political freedoms. The airline came under heavy pressure from Chinese authorities and fired some employees, including pilots, for criticizing local police and taking part in demonstrations.
The departure of the airline’s CEO meant “anyone is vulnerable if the Party wants it,” Mr. O’Toole told The Globe and Mail in a 2020 interview, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. He largely stopped speaking publicly about his sister and her family and declined an interview about the CSIS request this week.
Mr. O’Toole’s family returned to Canada from Hong Kong in 2021, the year the Conservatives lost to the Liberals.
The CSIS request to Mr. O’Toole points to the extent of Chinese attempts to wield influence in Canada, said Kenny Chiu, a former Conservative MP who has said he was the target of a disinformation campaign in the last election, which he lost.
“If Beijing even dared to threaten somebody who has the potential of forming a government, to be the prime minister of the country – just imagine what they can do to ordinary Canadian citizens,” Mr. Chiu said.
CSIS did not immediately respond to a request from The Globe to say how many other MPs are receiving intelligence briefings. But a senior government official said CSIS is still drawing up a list of all parliamentarians who would require such briefings.
The official said CSIS is trying to determine the threshold for providing parliamentarians a briefing: Would a mention in passing during its intelligence collection necessitate one or would it be only reserved for cases where a foreign power was paying special attention to an MP or senator?
The official cautioned no threshold has been set and it may be that CSIS decides to brief everyone. The Globe is not naming the official because they are not authorized to discuss national-security matters.
On May 1, The Globe reported that Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei was part of an effort to target Mr. Chong and his family in Hong Kong in 2021. After the report, CSIS director David Vigneault confirmed to Mr. Chong in a briefing that he had been a target of Chinese intimidation. Neither CSIS nor the government has explained why Mr. Chong was not informed of the threat in 2021.
Beijing retaliated by expelling Canadian diplomat Jennifer Lynn Lalonde, consul of the Consulate General of Canada in Shanghai. China’s embassy in Ottawa has accused Canada of breaching international law by expelling Mr. Zhao, saying the move was based on anti-Chinese sentiment.
Mr. Zhao became a target of CSIS surveillance in 2019, according to one national-security source. The Globe is not naming the source because they risk prosecution under the Security of Information Act.
The source said Mr. Zhao was responsible for keeping track of known opponents of the Chinese Communist Party in the Greater Toronto Area, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghur human-rights activists, Hong Kong pro-democracy activists and supporters of Tibetan and Taiwanese independence.
Mr. Zhao and his proxies took pictures of dissidents, monitored events held by them, documented their identities and sent the information back to China’s secret police, the Ministry of State Security, the source said. The source previously described Mr. Zhao to The Globe as “a suspected intelligence actor.”
The source said Mr. Zhao had also been observed meeting in Toronto with a number of constituency staffers for Toronto-area Liberal MPs, including an assistant for International Trade Minister Mary Ng. Mr. Zhao asked some of those aides to keep their MPs away from pro-Taiwan events, according to the source.
The New Democrats have declared a federal byelection victory in their Winnipeg stronghold riding of Elmwood—Transcona.
The NDP candidate Leila Dance told supporters in a tearful speech that even though the final results weren’t in, she expected she would see them in Ottawa.
With several polls still to be counted, Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds conceded defeat and told his volunteers that they should be proud of what the Conservatives accomplished in the campaign.
Political watchers had a keen eye on the results to see if the Tories could sway traditionally NDP voters on issues related to labour and affordability.
Meanwhile in the byelection race in the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Québécois remained locked in an extremely tight three-way race as the results trickled in slowly.
The Liberal stronghold riding had a record 91 names on the ballot, and the results aren’t expected until the early hours of the morning.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
VANCOUVER – An incumbent BC United legislative member has reversed her decision not to seek re-election and has announced she’ll run as an Independent in the riding of West Vancouver-Capilano in the upcoming British Columbia election.
Karin Kirkpatrick has been a vocal critic of BC United Leader Kevin Falcon’s decision last month to suspend the party’s campaign and throw support behind the B.C. Conservatives under John Rustad.
Kirkpatrick announced her retirement this year, but said Monday that her decision to re-enter the race comes as a direct result of Falcon’s actions, which would force middle-of-the-road voters to “swing to the left” to the NDP or to move further right to the Conservatives.
“I did hear from a lot of constituents and a lot of people who were emailing me from across B.C. … that they didn’t have anybody to vote for,” she said. “And so, I looked even at myself, and I looked at my riding, and I said, ‘Well, I no longer have anybody to vote for in my own riding.’ It was clearly an issue of this missing middle for the more moderate voter.”
She said voters who reached out “don’t want to vote for an NDP government but felt deeply uncomfortable” supporting the provincial Conservatives, citing Rustad’s tolerance of what she calls “extreme views and conspiracy theorists.”
Kirkpatrick joins four other incumbent Opposition MLAs running as Independents, including Peace River South’s Mike Bernier, Peace River North’s Dan Davies, Prince George-Cariboo’s Coralee Oakes and Tom Shypitka in Kootenay-Rockies.
“To be honest, we talk just about every day,” Kirkpatrick said about her fellow BC United incumbents now running as Independents. “We’re all feeling the same way. We all need to kind of hold each other up and make sure we’re doing the right thing.”
She added that a number of first-time candidates formerly on the BC United ticket are contacting the group of incumbents running for election, and the group is working together “as good moderates who respect each other and lift each other up.”
But Kirkpatrick said it’s also too early to talk about the future of BC United or the possibility of forming a new party.
“The first thing we need to do is to get these Independent MLAs elected into the legislature,” she said, noting a strong group could play a power-broker role if a minority government is elected. “Once we’re there then we’re all going to come together and we’re going to figure out, is there something left in BC United, BC Liberals that we can resurrect, or do we need to start a new party that’s in the centre?”
She said there’s a big gap left in the political spectrum in the province.
“So, we just have to do it in a mindful way, to make sure it’s representing the broadest base of people in B.C.”
Among the supporters at Kirkpatrick’s announcement Monday was former longtime MLA Ralph Sultan, who held West Vancouver-Capilano for almost two decades before retiring in 2020.
The Metro Vancouver riding has been a stronghold for the BC Liberals — the former BC United — since its formation in 1991, with more than half of the votes going to the centre-right party in every contest.
However, Kirkpatrick’s winning margin of 53.6 per cent to the NDP’s 30.1 per cent and the Green’s 15.4 per cent in the 2020 election shows a rising trend for left-leaning voters in the district.
Mike McDonald, chief strategy officer with Kirk and Co. Consulting, and a former campaign director for the BC Liberals and chief of staff under former Premier Christy Clark, said Independent candidates historically face an uphill battle and the biggest impact may be splitting votes in areas where the NDP could emerge victorious.
“It really comes down to, if the NDP are in a position to get 33 per cent of the vote, they might have a chance of winning,” McDonald said of the impact of an Independent vote-split with the Conservatives in certain ridings.
He said B.C. history shows it’s very hard for an Independent to win an election and has been done only a handful of times.
“So, the odds do not favour Independents winning the seats unless there is a very unique combination of circumstances, and more likely that they play a role as a spoiler, frankly.”
The B.C. Conservatives list West Vancouver School District Trustee Lynne Block as its candidate in West Vancouver-Capilano, while the BC NDP is represented by health care professional Sara Eftekhar.
Kirkpatrick said she is confident that her re-entry to the race will not result in a vote split that allows the NDP to win the seat because the party has always had a poor showing in the riding.
“So, even if there is competition between myself and the Conservative candidate, it is highly unlikely that anything would swing over to the NDP here. And I believe that I have the ability to actually attract those NDP voters to me, as well as the Conservatives and Liberals who are feeling just lost right now.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to Egypt on Tuesday for his 10th trip to the Middle East since the war in Gaza began nearly a year ago, this one aimed partly at refining a proposal to present to Israel and Hamas for a cease-fire deal and release of hostages.
Unlike in recent mediating missions, America’s top diplomat this time is traveling without optimistic projections from the Biden administration of an expected breakthrough in the troubled negotiations.
Also unlike the earlier missions, Blinken has no public plans to go to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on this trip. The Israeli leader’s fiery public statements — like his declaration that Israel would accept only “total victory” when Blinken was in the region in June — and some other unbudgeable demands have complicated earlier diplomacy.
Blinken is going to Egypt for talks Wednesday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and others, in a trip billed as focused both on American-Egyptian relations and Gaza consultations with Egypt.
The tamped-down public approach follows months in which President Joe Biden and his officials publicly talked up an agreement to end the war in Gaza as being just within reach, hoping to build pressure on Netanyahu’s far-right government and Hamas to seal a deal.
The Biden administration now says it is working with fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar to come up with a revised final proposal to try to at least get Israel and Hamas into a six-week cease-fire that would free some of the hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Americans believe public attention on details of the talks now would only hurt that effort.
American, Qatari and Egyptian officials still are consulting “about what that proposal will contain, and …. we’re trying to see that it’s a proposal that can get the parties to an ultimate agreement,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday.
The State Department pointed to Egypt’s important role in Gaza peace efforts in announcing last week that the Biden administration planned to give the country its full $1.3 billion in military aid, overriding congressional requirements that the U.S. hold back some of the funding if Egypt fails to show adequate progress on human rights. Blinken told Congress that Egypt has made progress on human rights, including in freeing political prisoners.
Blinken’s trip comes amid the risk of a full-on new front in the Middle East, with Israel threatening increasing military action against the Hezbollah militant organization in Lebanon. Biden envoy Amos Hochstein was in Israel on Monday to try to calm tensions after a stop in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has one of the strongest militaries in the Middle East, and like Hamas and smaller groups in Syria and Iraq it is allied with Iran.
Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged strikes across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas started the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it will ease those strikes — which have uprooted tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border — only when there’s a cease-fire in Gaza.
Hochstein told Netanyahu and other Israeli officials that intensifying the conflict with Hezbollah would not help get Israelis back in their homes, according to a U.S. official. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks, said Hochstein stressed to Netanyahu that he risked sparking a broad and protracted regional conflict if he moved forward with a full-scale war in Lebanon.
Hochstein also underscored to Israeli officials that the Biden administration remained committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the tensions on Israel’s northern border in conjunction with a Gaza deal or on its own, the official said.
Netanyahu told Hochstein that it would “not be possible to return our residents without a fundamental change in the security situation in the north.” The prime minister said Israel “appreciates and respects” U.S. support but “will do what is necessary to maintain its security and return the residents of the north to their homes safely.”
Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, meanwhile, warned in his meeting with Hochstein that “the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action,” his office said.
In Gaza, the U.S. says Israel and Hamas have agreed to a deal in principle and that the biggest obstacles now include a disagreement on details of the hostage and prisoner swap and control over a buffer zone on the border between Gaza and Egypt. Netanyahu has demanded in recent weeks that the Israeli military be allowed to keep a presence in the Philadelphi corridor. Egypt and Hamas have rejected that demand.
The Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 killed about 1,200 people. Militants also abducted 250 people and are still holding around 100 hostages. About a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, said Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count. The war has caused widespread destruction, displaced a majority of Gaza’s people and created a humanitarian crisis.
Netanyahu says he is working to bring home the hostages. His critics accuse him of slow-rolling a deal because it could bring down his hardline coalition government, which includes members opposed to a truce with the Palestinians.
Asked earlier this month if Netanyahu was doing enough for a cease-fire deal, Biden said, simply, “no.” But he added that he still believed a deal was close.
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Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.
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