adplus-dvertising
Connect with us

Politics

There has to be a big broad inquiry on China’s election interference now

Published

 on

David Johnston cannot seriously consider his task to be making a recommendation on whether there should or should not be a full inquiry. That has to be a given now.Sean Kilpatrick

Now we know CSIS reported that Chinese diplomats discussed ways to interfere in Vancouver’s mayoral election last year, and hoped to groom friendly local politicians who might one day run for higher office. But that’s just the latest.

An Ontario Conservative MPP has stepped aside from Premier Doug Ford’s caucus because of unproven allegations he aided Beijing’s election-tampering schemes. The intelligence agency reported Chinese diplomats organized illegal donations and paid volunteers for some federal candidates in the 2021 election as they hoped to help the Liberals win another minority government.

So yes, there is going to have to be an inquiry. There’s no way around that.

And it will have to be big and broad.

300x250x1

The question of whether the opposition parties agree that a former Gov.-General of Canada, David Johnston, can be trusted to handle the hastily fabricated role of special rapporteur should not, in the end, be more than a sidebar. His work can be easily judged. He doesn’t have a lot of credible options.

Mr. Johnston cannot seriously consider his task to be making a recommendation on whether there should or should not be a full inquiry. That has to be a given now. He can only be making recommendations on how broad that inquiry should be – and it has to be broad – or how to fit the requirement of protecting the secrecy of intelligence gathering with the necessity of telling the public what the heck is going on.

And at this point, the inquiry must deal with two sets of issues on two tracks. One is the narrow question of whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ignored credible warnings about Beijing’s meddling. The other is the broader issue of foreign interference throughout Canada’s politics.

That second set of broader issues can’t be avoided now. There are too many concerns that Canada has slumbered while Beijing interfered. And not just that: The lack of clear answers feeds hyperventilating theories that all our elections are or were rigged and no one can be trusted.

The country needs a cool-headed review.

The interference in Vancouver’s 2022 mayoral election recounted in CSIS documents reported in The Globe and Mail should make it clear why it must have a broad scope.

The spy agency reported that China’s consul-general in Vancouver, Tong Xiaoling, was keen to influence the race. She had been critical of then-mayor Kennedy Stewart, a former New Democrat MP, who suspended meetings with Chinese diplomats after Beijing sanctioned Canadian MP Michael Chong. The consulate warned the City of Vancouver not to declare a special relationship with the Taiwanese city, Kaohsiung. Last August, it criticized Mr. Stewart for supporting then-U. S. congressional speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.

Notice: China’s government has no reason to care about Vancouver’s municipal policies. They just don’t like a local pooh-bah who speaks out against Beijing’s line. Ms. Tong, according to CSIS, was also seeking to groom local politicians who might one day run for provincial or federal office.

It’s not clear how far those efforts went, but this is different than trying to influence a national election. It’s Beijing seeking to quash unfriendly voices and install friendly ones throughout Canada’s politics. That’s something that has to be part of an inquiry now.

Yet broad issues such as that can’t be allowed to drown out the narrower questions and have to be answered about Beijing’s interference in recent federal elections and whether Mr. Trudeau ignored credible warnings about it. An inquiry needs a two-track mandate that answers those questions first.

Mr. Johnston’s appointment as a special rapporteur was never going to be enough. That Mr. Trudeau scrambled to conjure up a new office when he was up to his eyes in political pressure to hold an inquiry meant that Mr. Johnston could never be the arbiter of these questions.

That the opposition can point to Mr. Johnston’s family being friendly with Mr. Trudeau and has had links with the non-profit Trudeau Foundation just confirm that. At best, he can provide an interim review and lead Mr. Trudeau to an inquiry.

At this point, that’s also the only outcome that is politically viable for Mr. Trudeau: not a rapporteur, but an inquiry with a capital I. One tasked to answer questions that reach into the Prime Minister’s Office, but with a mandate to look at interference across Canada’s politics.

728x90x4

Source link

Politics

Opinion: Canada's foreign policy and its domestic politics on Israel's war against Hamas are shifting – The Globe and Mail

Published

 on


The vote in the House of Commons last week on Israel’s war against Hamas represents a shift in both Canada’s foreign policy and its domestic politics.

The Liberal government is now markedly more supportive of the rights of Palestinians and less supportive of the state of Israel than in the past. That shift mirrors changing demographics, and the increasing importance of Muslim voters within the Liberal coalition.

Both the Liberal and Conservative parties once voiced unqualified support for Israel’s right to defend itself from hostile neighbours. But the Muslim community is growing in Canada. Today it represents 5 per cent of the population, compared with 1 per cent who identify as Jewish.

300x250x1

Although data is sparse prior to 2015, it is believed that Muslim Canadians tended to prefer the Liberal Party over the Conservative Party. They were also less likely to vote than the general population.

But the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper deeply angered the community with talk about “barbaric cultural practices” and musing during the 2015 election campaign about banning public servants from wearing the niqab. Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was promising to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada if elected.

These factors galvanized community groups to encourage Muslims to vote. And they did. According to an Environics poll, 79 per cent of eligible Muslims cast a ballot in the 2015 election, compared with an overall turnout of 68 per cent. Sixty-five per cent of Muslim voters cast ballots for the Liberal Party, compared with 10 per cent who voted for the NDP and just 2 per cent for the Conservatives. (Telephone interviews of 600 adults across Canada who self-identified as Muslim, were conducted between Nov. 19, 2015 and Jan. 23, 2016, with an expected margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points 19 times out of 20.)

Muslim Canadians also strongly supported the Liberals in the elections of 2019 and 2021. The party is understandably anxious not to lose that support. I’m told that Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly often mentions the large Muslim community in her Montreal riding. (According to the 2021 census, 18 per cent of the people in Ahuntsic-Cartierville identify as Muslim.)

This is one reason why the Liberal leadership laboured so mightily to find a way to support last week’s NDP motion that would, among other measures, have recognized the state of Palestine. The Liberal caucus was deeply divided on the issue. My colleague Marieke Walsh reports that dozens of Liberal MPs were prepared to vote for the NDP motion.

In the end, almost all Liberal MPs ended up voting for a watered-down version of the motion – statehood recognition was taken off the table – while three Liberal MPs voted against it. One of them, Anthony Housefather, is considering whether to remain inside the Liberal caucus.

This is not simply a question of political calculation. Many Canadians are deeply concerned over the sufferings of the people in Gaza as the Israel Defence Forces seek to root out Hamas fighters.

The Conservatives enjoy the moral clarity of their unreserved support for the state of Israel in this conflict. The NDP place greater emphasis on supporting the rights of Palestinians.

The Liberals have tried to keep both Jewish and Muslim constituencies onside. But as last week’s vote suggests, they increasingly accord a high priority to the rights of Palestinians and to the Muslim community in Canada.

As with other religious communities, Muslims are hardly monolithic. Someone who comes to Canada from Senegal may have different values and priorities than a Canadian who comes from Syria or Pakistan or Indonesia.

And the plight of Palestinians in Gaza may not be the only issue influencing Muslims, who struggle with inflation, interest rates and housing affordability as much as other voters.

Many new Canadians come from societies that are socially conservative. Some Muslim voters may be uncomfortable with the Liberal Party’s strong support for the rights of LGBTQ Canadians.

Finally, Muslim voters for whom supporting the rights of Palestinians is the ballot question may be drawn more to the NDP than the Liberals.

Regardless, the days of Liberal/Conservative bipartisan consensus in support of Israel are over. This is the new lay of the land.

Adblock test (Why?)

728x90x4

Source link

Continue Reading

Politics

Recall Gondek group planned to launch its own petition before political novice did – CBC.ca

Published

 on


The third-party group helping promote the recall campaign against Mayor Jyoti Gondek had devised plans to launch its own petition drive, as part of a broader mission to make Calgary council more conservative.

Project YYC had planned with other conservative political organizations to gather signatures demanding Calgary’s mayor be removed, says group leader Roy Beyer. But their drive would have begun later in the year, when nicer weather made for easier canvassing for supporters, he said.

Those efforts were stymied when Landon Johnston, an HVAC contractor largely unknown in local politics, applied at city hall to launch his own recall drive in early February. Since provincial recall laws allow only one recall attempt per politician per term, Project YYC chose to lend support to Johnston’s bid.

300x250x1

“Now we have to try to do door-knocking in the winter, and there’s a lot of preparation that you have to contemplate prior to starting. And Landon didn’t do that,” Beyer told CBC News in an interview.

Project YYC has helped gather signatures, created a website and erected large, anti-Gondek signs around town. It has supplied organizational heft that Johnston admits to lacking.

Their task is daunting.

According to provincial law, in order to force a recall plebiscite to oust the mayor before the term is up, they have two months to gather more than 514,000 signatures, an amount equal to 40 per cent of Calgary’s population in 2019.

They have until April 4 to collect that many signatures, and by March 21 had only 42,000.

Beyer criticizes the victory threshold for recall petition as so high that it’s “a joke,” and the province may as well not have politician recall laws.

So if he thinks it’s an impossible pursuit, why is he involved with this?

“You can send a message to the mayor that she should be sitting down and resigning … without achieving those numbers,” Beyer said.

Project YYC founder Roy Beyer, from a Take Back Alberta video in 2022. He is no longer with that provincial activist group. (royjbeyer screenshot/Rumble)

He likened it to former premier Jason Kenney getting 52 per cent support in a UCP leadership review — enough to technically continue as leader, but a lousy enough show of confidence that he announced immediately he would step down.

Gondek has given no indication she’ll voluntarily leave before her term is up next year. But she did emerge from a meeting last week with Johnston to admit the petition has resonated with many Calgarians and is a signal she must work harder to listen to public concerns and explain council’s decisions.

The mayor also told the Calgary Sun this week that she’s undecided about running for re-election in 2025. 

“There used to be this thing where if you’re the mayor, of course you’re going to run for another term because there’s unfinished business,” Gondek told the newspaper.

“And yes, there will be unfinished business, but the times are not what they were. You need to make sure you’re the right leader for the times you’re in.”

The last several Calgary mayors have enjoyed multiple terms in office, going back to Ralph Klein in the 1980s. The last one-term mayor was Ross Alger, the man Klein defeated in 1980.

Beyer and fellow conservative organizers launched Project YYC before the recall campaign. The goal was to elect a conservative mayor and councillors — “a common-sense city council, instead of what we currently have,” he said.

Beyer is one of a few former activists with the provincial pressure group Take Back Alberta to have latched themselves to the recall bid and Project YYC, along with some United Conservative Party riding officials in Calgary. 

Beyer’s acknowledgment of his group’s broader mission comes as Premier Danielle Smith and her cabinet ministers have said they want to introduce political party politics in large municipalities — even though most civic politicians have said they don’t want to bring clear partisanship into city halls.

Although Beyer admits Project YYC’s own recall campaign would have been a coalition effort with other conservative groups, he wouldn’t specify which ones. He did insist that Take Back Alberta wasn’t one of them.

A man in a grey baseball cap speaks to reporters.
Calgary business owner Landon Johnston speaks to reporters at City Hall on March 22 following his 15-minute conversation with Mayor Jyoti Gondek. (Laurence Taschereau/CBC)

Johnston says he was approached by Beyer’s group shortly after applying to recall Gondek, and gave them $3,000 from donations he’d raised.

He initially denied any knowledge of Project YYC when documents first emerged about that group’s role in the recall, but later said he didn’t initially realize that was the organizational name of his campaign allies.

“They said they could get me signatures, so I said, ‘OK, if you can do it by the book, here’s some money.’ And it’s worked,” he said.

Johnston has said he’s new to politics but simply wants to remove Gondek because of policies he’s disagreed with, like the soon-to-be-ended ban on single-use plastics and bags at restaurant takeouts and drive-thrus.

He’s no steadfast conservative, either. He told CBC’s Calgary Eyeopener that he voted for Rachel Notley’s NDP because one of its green-renovation incentives helped his HVAC business.

Adblock test (Why?)

728x90x4

Source link

Continue Reading

Politics

Larry David shares how he feels about Trump – CNN

Published

 on


Larry David shares how he feels about Trump

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David shares how he feels about former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Watch the full episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” streaming March 29 on Max.


03:21

– Source:
CNN

Adblock test (Why?)

300x250x1

728x90x4

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending