In this recent post Canadian blogger BC Blue re-reminds us of how the NDP’s Olivia Chow, the wife of dearly departed leader Jack Layton, was positively offended earlier this year when Richard Fadden, the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, brought up the possibility that Chinese nationals were possibly interfering in Canadian politics. Chow vigorously admonished our collective selves to shut the hell up for the good of the nation:
“Let us not give in to the politics of fear.”
Fear was front and centre on the NDP’s agenda earlier this week, though, when Conservative MP Bob Dechert was under suspicion over reports that he had e-flirted with a Chinese woman who worked for China’s state-run news agency. Interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel, evidently concerned about the peril of Chinese nationals possibly interfering in Canadian politics, insisted that Dechert resign:
“He should step down and there should be an investigation.”
An investigation? As in, an investigation about the possible intersection of foreign nationals and government employees? Well, boy oh boy, in the last 24 hours, do we ever have an investigation:
The federal government is calling in the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency to investigate allegations of fraud and bribery in a PEI immigration program that allowed hundreds of primarily Chinese nationals to buy their way into Canada….The federal Citizenship and Immigration Department referred the case to police late Wednesday after it received information from at least three former provincial public servants, including detailed allegations from one of them that, at a Marriott hotel suite in Hong Kong, would-be immigrant investors gave senior island bureaucrats cash-stuffed envelopes to have their applications approved.
A nation breathlessly awaits the NDP’s statement on the matter.
// the possibility that Chinese nationals were possibly interfering in Canadian politics. //
VS
// a Chinese woman who worked for China’s state-run news agency. //
Two things. Surely you would have allowed Canadian officials to differentiate between german canadians [even german”nationals”] who live here as opposed to representatives of foreign german organizations [say press] who are suspected of really being government types.
Secondly, there is a difference between a focussed concern about a particular relationship & vague McCarthyite aspersions cast like a net over an entire minority group.
That said, there isn’t much to this case now that it’s in the open. If there is a problem let CSIS do its snooping.
And the PEI business is a scandal about business-class immigration. In which OUR government basically announces “citizenship for sale”
“Let us not give in to the politics of fear.”
Are you sure that’s what she said? It sounds like something she’d say, but I can never understand what she’s talking about.
Remember when a Chinese shopkeeper in Toronto was charged with some “vigilante” justice when he accosted a persistent thief? Usually the NDP abhors this kind of thing, but Chow backed the guy. There is no element of ethnic politics this character won’t sink to.
“The federal government is calling in the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency to investigate allegations of fraud and bribery in a PEI immigration program that allowed hundreds of primarily Chinese nationals to buy their way into Canada….”
If there’s one thing the Chinese are famous for it is CORRUPTION!
Good food though.
And as usual the lazy MSM allow the NDP and Libs to manipulate and take the moral high ground with Deckert.
One leading question from the media would end this little game:
“Let’s compare flirty dorky e-mails by a politician to 1 a.m visits to a ‘message parlour’ by another politician.”
dizzy – oh, I don’t know. I first came across this chilling cautionary tale at the indespensible Five Feet of Fury:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_Incident
Don’t get me wrong; FDR’s internment program was unjust and way over the top. But if Trudeau could invoke the WMA over a horrific but essentially, on a national scale, localized and minor (I mean, heard of the IRA?) act of domestic terrorism, I’m not sure that internment in time of war (I assume you’re talking about WWII, what with “germans” and such) is intrinsically so outrageous.
“That said, there isn’t much to this case now that it’s in the open.” – the “case” here is, of course, the outrageous hypocisy of the NDP.
“Let’s compare flirty dorky e-mails by a politician to 1 a.m visits to a ‘message parlour’ by another politician.”
I assume the message parlour was the local Western Union office. Nothing wrong with sending a telegram at 1 AM!
btw, imho,Dechert should be the poster boy for “dorky politicians”.
Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssidewinder…
Re: Chinese influencing Canadian politics. That seems rational to me. They have money and they use it to buy political influence where ever their interests are. The Chi-coms hate Harper because he has limited their trade with us because of their anti-democratic despotism and human rights abuses.
The Chi-coms need cheap fuel to feed their industrialization. They want Oil sands oil but they don’t want it at market value, I suspect there is a lot of laundered Chi-com money driving the anti-Harper anti-Alberta, anti-oil sands spin. I’m sure they know some demented degenerate socialist PM will give it away free to them to process off shore after they crash the international demand for Albera oil. Follow the money and there is always a sinister motive at its source.
just imagining Jack Layton as prime minister at the “rub and tug” and his little oriental masseuse , Jack spilling the country secrets.
so two tugs yes. one tug no!
geez, I think I need to go rinse my brain from such imaginations.
Nobody worried about state secrets when Jack Layton married a Chinese communist.
That’s rich coming from Nycole Turmel, who until a couple months ago her connections to Communist and former Communist organizations in Quebec read like a contemporary “who’s who” in the neo-Marxist/Quebec Separatist lexicon (I put a link to some of the connections, including early NDP relations, in “Reader Tips” last month — sorry I can’t remember where).
Notwithstanding Turmel and the NDPs’ outrageous hypocricy, she is absolutely correct — Dechert should step down. This is no joke, and John Baird and the Harper government’s smuggness about the matter is truly troubling. This is a classic potential espionage entrapment/blackmail case, using one of the oldest tricks in the book: sex. As Ezra Levant has correctly pointed out, Dechert needs to be thoroughly debriefed by our intelligence people. I wonder if Baird should be debriefed as well — his attitiude demonstrates incredible naivete.
And of course the past comments of NDPers regarding Chinese spys by MPs such as Olivia Chow demonstrated more than naivete — they evidenced complacency to the point of potential collusion with the Chinese. And when it was revealed that her now deceased husband Jack Layton was caught in a compromising position with a masseuse and they both shrugged it off, it was equally troubling — not because it was another juicy tabloid “sex” story about a politician, but because of the potential that Jack Layton could be politically compromised by a foreign agent in a classic blackmail situation if in fact he was lieing about the incident.
My experience is that Canadian citizens are among the dumbest and under-informed people in the world where foreign espionage is concerned, and our politicians aren’t much better, especially when the threat emanates from Communist regimes. Required reading for all Canadians: American author JOHN BARRON (former Navy intelligence officer who has written prolifically on Communist espionage documented with special access to de-classified CIA, MI5, etc. material). Non-fiction.
Way,way ,back in March, a parliamentary committee recommended that Fadden resign,and that PM Harper and Toevs be censured for even daring to suggest that there may be ‘spies’ amongst us(or them).
” The reputation of Canadian politicians and of the Chinese-Canadian community was damaged by CSIS Director Richard Fadden and the Conservative government should ask him to resign, a parliamentary committee has concluded.”
Oh my,times have changed,or not.The media and their opposition buddies massage the message.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/03/24/pol-fadden.html
Having had some experience with the Chinese community over the years, let me throw some more mud in the water.
You’ve got two kinds of Chinese people in Toronto/Vancouver these days. You’ve got a minority of them from Communist China, they immigrated lately.
Any who immigrated earlier than about the 1990s were -escaping- from the Communists. Vancouver particularly got a huge influx of people from Hong Kong who were getting the hell out of Dodge before the city was given back to the Chicoms.
Then you have your Old School guys who came here in the 1960’s/70’s. There are a lot of Chiang Kai-shek supporters there, they -really- don’t have any use for the Communists. You find these old geezers hanging around the mah jong parlors and older kung fu clubs in down town Toronto.
I’m pretty sure they’d be pretty hostile toward any commie shenanigans they heard about in the Chinese community.
*
Bob Dechert has to go.
I mean… you’re found stark-naked in a sketchy triad-run brothel during
a late-night police raid, what choice… WAIT… A… MINUTE…
*
Phantom, that’s an interesting take on the Chinese community. It somewhat parallels the Polish community in Hamilton. You had the Poles who came here to escape the communists then you had the communists who came here to escape when Poles after the fall of communism. They didn’t mix well. In fact the communist Poles beat up the priest of the Catholic church for dissing them in a sermon.
Lots of scores to settle.
Canada!!! The Worlds biggest sucker.
Since this guy is a Government aristocrat nothing will be done.
Doubly so since no one in the MSM really wants to dis the Chinese . Even though they make up a paltry amount of our economy. Bashing the US though is fine, even if we do trade 85% of our goods with them.
The Chinese ae doing this espionage all over the World to secure , oil, gas, minerals & soft political power in said nations.
Canada has a bullseye painted on our Country for resources.
Its not the Chinese fault if where that stupid.
// this chilling cautionary tale //
A very interesting article. Presumably the import is that —
// it was “the rapidity with which the three resident Japanese went over to the pilot’s cause” which troubled the Hawaiians. “The more pessimistic among them cited the Ni‘ihau incident as proof that no one could trust any Japanese, even if an American citizen, not to go over to Japan if it appeared expedient. //
It certainly wasn’t proof, although I can understand the sentiment in the wake of Pearl Harbour. And the particular situation, in which only the pilot initially knew of the attack, brings to mind Ambrose Bierce’s definition of —
INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter’s advantage for the other to have said.
In any event, this didn’t prevent Hawaiians of Japanese descent from fighting with the Allies [in Europe].
Canada had less excuse for internment. The Liberals of B.C. were demanding action, and King, presumably after consulting the spirit of his dog, acceded to Internment. He knew it was bogus. I think part of the B.C. attitude was just wanting to be a part of the Big Show. Sort of like some guy fished out of a puddle who claims to have been “going down for the third time”. And what was done to their property has to be factored in. The U.S. did better there too.
Thank Zeus that Trudeau, with his ideas at the time, wasn’t PM. We’d have been on the other side. But he grew, once he got out in the world.
Wow. Really? Olivia Chow was offended that We speak the truth about Chinese spies in Canada? F**k her. The left is always sympathetic to traitors and terrorists. But then again, she probably reports directly to the Chinese intelligence services herself. Good thing she is in a low level position as a member of a worthless party.
There are other reasons why Harper has to take this incident seriously and get CSIS/RCMP involved. It can be a “false flag” operation by the Chinese in order to pressure Canada into being more friendly and backing off on its human rights position.
The “false flag” possibility is because the Chinese allowed their State journalist’s husband to go public with this — a very unusual move for a Police State that would not only keep their journalists/agents activities with a Canadian MP under close wraps, but would certainly not allow one of her family members to go public about the scandal unless it were officially pre-approved. The fact that her husband went public raises the possibility that Dechert was deliberately entrapped to embarrass the Conservative Government. A good Chinese intelligence operation would have accurately predicted that Harper would have shrugged off the incident in order to save face (which Harper did), putting Canada in a more compromised position with the Chinese. Now the Harper gov can no longer rant about spies, human rights etc., or he’s going to look like an idiot with the Canadian public and with the Opposition.
Either way, whether it was a real attempt to gather specific intelligence from an MP or a “false flag” to influence Canada’s foreign policy in general, Harper is an idiot if he falls into the trap. Harper MUST DEMAND THAT DECHERT STEP DOWN and cooperate fully with our intelligence people. This isn’t a partisan issue, and the real Chinese mole may in fact be in the NDP or the Libs, who have been pressuring Harper forever to cozy up to the Chinese and drop his human rights position.
And if Harper doesn’t act, there are other problematic corallaries in addition to the above: Harper will have generally lost Parliamentary discipline regarding National Security matters in general. What’s to stop NDP MPs from cozying up to the Taliban, or Hamas or Hezbollah agents, since some MPs have never really agreed with their designation as banned terrorist organizations? Or how about sympathetic Liberal MPs cozying up to Hugo Chavez or Castro agents, or the Iranians, or banned narco-terrorist orgs such FARC which at one time were legal in Canada?
I’m afraid that if you’re breathlessly awaiting the NDP’s statement on the allegations of fraud and bribery in a PEI immigration program that allowed hundreds of primarily Chinese nationals to buy their way into Canada …
… you’re gonna die.
Has anyone noticed that Bob Dechert was separated at birth from “The Family Guy”?
“My experience is that Canadian citizens are among the dumbest and under-informed people in the world where foreign espionage is concerned, and our politicians aren’t much better, especially when the threat emanates from Communist regimes”
Ricardo, right on the money!!!
Olivia Chowcesceau should shut her fat, taxpayer-funded yap.
ricardo, well said, both times.
Dechert should step down from his position.
This looks good on Chow and Turmel’s phoney outrage is a joke after having had communist affiliations.
Ricardo is bang on in his observations.Methinks he has experience in this business.
ricardo, BINGO!
I suspect Canadians are dumb as hammers when it comes to espionage and being taken to the cleaners by the spy guys, because for too long we’ve fancied the conceit that we’re “better than the Americans,” that we’re “nicer people,” that, somehow, we’d be left alone.
That’s all a pile of crap.
We’d better smarten up and grow a pair, though I’m not sure what’s going to make that happen. (An aside: I once knew a guy, a neighbour, who, apparently, was retired from CSIS. Though very “nice,” he was one of the duh-lest, most pedestrian guys on the block. It’s always possible that that was his CSIS persona, to get people to talk thinking he was a “nice” guy, but somehow, I don’t think so. If he was typical of the CSIS operative, God help us.)
Dechert and the Conservative government should return the thrown down gauntlet. Demand that Turmel, a member of not one but TWO separtiste parties, resign. If Dechert is a security risk, how much more is a leader of the opposition who is not even loyal to the country she, supposedly, represents?
She’s an elected MP for Quebec who is loyal to Quebec, Thomas. This isn’t the Soviet Union. We don’t throw people into death camps because you decide you don’t like their politics. Perhaps you should go live in a country where they do, if you can find one. You’re not going to be happy in Canada with an attitude like yours.
You’re wrong ebt. Turmel is elected to the federal NDP party — her loyalty in that capacity is supposed to be to Canada including Quebec, not to Quebec separatism. Freudian slip?
And who said, or even remotely implied, anything about “death camps” for political opponents. You did! Another Freudian slip (revealing your own attitude toward your political opponents)? What a completely insane and outrageous assumption. Get psychiatric help.
For the information of the foreign or the stupid, an MP is elected by his constituents, and owes his duty to them alone. And no one in Canada is under any obligation of any kind to want to keep the country together, or to refuse to consider or advocate any kind of change.
No one is elected to a party. Turmel joined the party, and the party accepted her, both of their own free will. If a rejection of separatism were actually necessary in the NDP, we can safely say that she wouldn’t be accepted as a member. In fact, she’s accepted as the leader. Draw your own conclusions.
The penalty for treason is death. When you call Turmel a traitor, you are demanding that she be killed. You have a problem with the advocates of murder, take it up with them, not me.