The Bottom Falls Out For Team Trudeau – Now We know why
This is not “my story.” It is a deep dive into the whitewash by Terry Glavin from The Real Story: therealstory@substack.com
Terry is an exceptional investigative journalist and writer. It is for people with the skills he has, we have to thank for doing all they can to keep our politicians’ feet to the fire. But, in the case of the Chinese dive into the deep end of an election scandal, and Team Trudeau’s holding fast on no public enquiry, the bottom has fallen out of the bucket and my personal prediction is... well, I will leave it at that.
If you want to follow the best in investigative journalism in Canada, please go to “The Real Story at Substack.com. And for a pittance, you can get behind Terry’s paywall to have access to all his writing.
The News
June 8, 2023
In the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen in print today, a look at that bombshell exposé by Alliance Canada Hong Kong (ACHK) on Beijing's sinister operations in Canada: China's election meddling — Here's the report David Johnston should have written. Subscribers got a sneak peek at the ACHK “Murky Waters” report last week here: The Elephant In The Room: Why is David Johnston going out of his way to camouflage the United Front?
I strongly recommend that subscribers read it, and perhaps compare it with Johnston’s report, and even better, read as well the excellent report from the Canada-China relations committee that has been oveshadowed by everything, titled A threat to Canadian Sovereignty: National Security Dimensions of the Canada-People’s Republic of China Relationship, released to little press attention only three weeks ago.
Johnston’s willing conscription into the coverup
It’s unfortunate that there isn’t a suitable, less-incendiary word for it — is now the primary barricade against the public’s right to know anything about the breadth and scope of Beijing’s reach into the circles of power that ring the Trudeau government. That’s why the Murky Waters report is so valuable and why I’ve come to fear that almost everybody in Ottawa has dug themselves into holes they can’t climb out of on this issue. I don’t mean just in the Liberal benches either.
The chase
Here’s what Johnston and Trudeau don’t want you to see.
Immediately upon assuming office in 2015, the Trudeau Liberals embarked on a mission to transform Canada into a “post-national state” with Chinese capital and China’s vast consumer markets married to Canada’s resource wealth and advanced capitalist economy. Trudeau took on this history-changing mission with an almost messianic zeal, as though he were determined to outdo his father Pierre, who spent most of his life as one of the Chinese Communist Party’s most valued propaganda assets in the liberal democracies.
It was also in 2015 that Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping began pouring immense resources into the CCP’s overseas operations, notably the United Fronts “elite capture” strategy. Just one element of that strategy in Canada was a (largely-unnecessary) grooming operation aimed at Justin Trudeau that had been set in motion in 2013. That’s what that dodgy donation to the Trudeau Foundation was all about.
My point is the result was a match made in hell, and if there is ever to be a public inquiry into “foreign interference” in this country, its laser focus should be on that.
How close we came to the cliff edge
By 2018 the United Front was well on its way, mobilizing its networks among the wealthy and the well-connected Mandarin-bloc overclass that has come to dominate Canada’s Chinese diaspora. Those networks sprang into action during the 2019 federal election, and the 2021 election that followed. David Johnston says there is no “network.” Real Story subscribers will know that Johnston is either lying, or inadvertently trafficking in falsehoods.
Remember: With the kidnapping of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in December of 2018, Xi very nearly succeeded in his long-term goal of driving a fatal wedge between Canada and the United States and the rest of our Five Eyes allies, using Team Trudeau’s imbecility to do it.
Xi bet recklessly that he could pull it off because of the Canadians whose counsel he was taking, not least the former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien and our ambassador to China at the time, John McCallum, both full-patch, bought-and-paid-for consiglieri in China’s comprador caste in this country.
They were not alone in counseling capitulation to Beijing
Among that coterie was Jean Charest - who woud go on to contest the race to replace Erin O’Toole, Beijing’s worst nightmare in Ottawa. There’s a long list of establishment figures who joined in, some out of naivete, some out of avant-garde sneeriness about the United States, some out of grubby self-interest, and some just because that’s what compradors do. For a while there, Chrystia Freeland, who was renegotiating NAFTA at the time, stood almost alone in cabinet in putting up resistance.
Will there ever be a public enquiry?
That’s the background. The foreground is what happened during the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. That’s what a public inquiry should focus on, if there will ever be one. The public inquiry the Opposition has rallied behind will not do that. In what follows I explain why, and let you in on that other stuff I mentioned up top. Paywall time:
Be careful what you wish for
The House of Commons majority has now voted three times for a public inquiry into foreign interference. As it’s currently formulated, the Opposition motion for an inquiry is a big hole the House of Commons has dug for itself. Unless the terms of the proposed inquiry are radically revised, it would be a gong show.
For one thing, what we need in Ottawa is a government animated by a genuine determination to take whatever tools arise from an inquiry commissioner’s recommendations, and use them. That is not how a reasonable person should expect the Trudeau government to conduct its affairs with respect to Beijing’s United Front network in this country.
Even if the Trudeau government collapsed and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives formed the government with the backing of Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats and they set about proceeding with the exact terms of the one thing they agree on - firing David Johnston and getting on with a public inquiry - we’d still be in the weeds.
Here’s why
The latest version is pretty much unchanged from New Democrat Peter Julian’s version from months ago, when he was hoping to interrogate all and sundry about his fantastical conception of the truckist Freedom Convoy as the handiwork of Russian spies and disinfo specialists.
The latest version, put forward by the NDP’s Jenny Kwan (for whom I have much respect) and adopted by the House May 31, proposes a public inquiry into “allegations of foreign interference in Canada’s democratic system” on the grounds that “only a full public inquiry can fully restore the confidence of Canadians in the integrity of our democratic institutions.” I don’t know why the point of all this should be a public-relations exercise on behalf of Canada’s funhouse “democratic institutions,” but set that aside.
A public commission of inquiry should be “led by an individual selected with unanimous support from all recognized parties in the House,” the motion reads, which is all to the good. But here’s how we’d still be in the weeds:
The agreed-upon commissioner should “review all aspects of foreign interference from all states, including, but not limited to, the actions of the Chinese, Indian, Iranian and Russian governments.”
Maybe it’s just me, because I’ve been banging on about this for ages, as in this piece in Macleans from four years ago if you don’t mind: The real election threat is China: Ottawa has been focused on cyber-meddling. But consider the case of John McCallum for a glimpse at a more present danger.
By all means, yes, let’s have an inquiry that will produce a solid roadmap for statutory tools to equip the Canadian government and Canadian voters with adequate defences against clandestine foreign influence activities in Canada. I’ve paid particular attention to the Trudeau government’s slovenly open-door approach to the Khomeinist regime’s gangsters, for instance.
As in Khomeinist Agents are Spying on Iranian-Canadians but Trudeau Does Nothing, and Ottawa's lush welcome mat for rich Iranians linked to its brutal regime and so on.
But say the Opposition miraculously gets its way. The Liberal government doesn’t fall but Trudeau unbelievably submits to the will of the House of Commons, and away we go with the inquiry as described by the May 31 motion.
That inquiry would be expected to “present its report and any recommendations in advance of the next dissolution of Parliament or, at the latest, at the fixed election date as set by the Canada Elections Act.” The 45th Canadian federal election must take place on or before October 20, 2025.
I don’t buy David Johnston’s alibi that a public inquiry would be “unhelpful” or costly or too time-consuming. But if we have to put up with a parade of witnesses banging on about foreign interference “including but not limited to” Narendra Modi’s government in Delhi making mischief with Khalistani extremists in Surrey, B.C., and conspiracy theories from all the usual leftish pamphleteers about the Kremlin’s agents in the Truckist High Command - all before October 20, 2025 - I swear I’d overdose on crazy pills.
Dong Advising China
Jenny Kwan’s questioned Johnston, and Johnston skated around a CSIS finding that was re-written (and about who rewrote it if in fact that happened, as Johnston claims) while it was on its way to Trudeau’s office, regarding “irregularities” in Dong’s July 2019 nomination victory.
You can watch Johnston’s evasions here, starting at 1:11:57.
Anyhow, the facts to which I (Terry Glavin) can personally attest:
The bit about Dong quietly advising Beijing’s Toronto consul-general that it would be best for Trudeau’s Liberals if Xi Jinping held onto Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor can be found in a disputed transcript of that exchange, which forms the basis of Global News’ defence against the libel suit Dong has filed against Global and Cooper.
The lawsuit is the excuse Johnston has used for not even calling Dong on the telephone to quizz him about the “irregularities” in the nomination race, and Dong’s persistent calls to the consulate during the election, that even Johnston has conceded did occur.
The Bottom has fallen out of the bucket
We now know why there is a whitewash and why Trudeau is so deeply dug in to not call for a public enquiry. What happens from today onwards is dependent upon the actions of each and every one of us.
We can either speak up and keep speaking up, or we can be quiet and fall in behind others who are not standing up for our country and our democracy. What say you? From my perspective it is Facts that Matter.
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Facts that Matter and here are the facts: Team Trudeau and David Johnston's Whitewash of the Chinese Affair
We now know why Trudeau has dug in so deep. With the revelations here, the Bottom Falls Out For Team Trudeau. Let’s talk about it with Facts That Matter.
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