Category: Claws of the Panda

Our Chinese-Installed Government In Ottawa

Thus, nothing will happen;

A military veteran who spent 20 years in uniform, Lieutenant Colonel Huajie Xu now lives on a quiet street in Winnipeg.

But he did not serve in Canada’s armed forces.

Instead, he was a member of China’s People’s Liberation Army, according to records obtained by Global News.

Before arriving in Canada in 2021, Xu worked at the military academy of the Chinese cyber warfare department that hacks Canadians and steals their secrets.

Chinese state-sponsored cyber attacks have targeted Canadian companies, activists and government agencies.

[…]

Hundreds of pages of records filed in court indicate that Xu joined the PLA in 1998 and became a member of the Chinese Communist Party in 2001.

He earned a degree in Infantry Command from Jinan Army College, and a Masters in Military Education Training from the PLAIEU.

Between 2011 and 2013, Xu was trained by the Russian military in Moscow. Upon returning to China, he became an instructor at the PLAIEU until retiring in 2018.

In 2021, he applied to immigrate to Canada. Despite acknowledging his military career in his application form, he was accepted as a permanent resident.

Immigration, Citizenship and Refugees Canada declined to answer when asked by Global News why it had approved Xu as an immigrant.

Terry Glavin: This guy got permanent resident status before he even set foot in Canada.

Y2Kyoto: Xi See What You Did There

More Chinese Communism can Save Us from Climate Change

Anyone who is curious why China is building wind and solar AND coal, the answer is they are building wind turbines because Xi Jinping told them to build wind turbines.

In 2021, Xi wanted to pimp China’s emissions record in time for the next COP conference, so he issued strict district level energy quotas, demanded more wind turbines and solar, and ordered a transition to renewables.

The order for quotas was obeyed, but Xi forgot to tell everyone to reduce their energy use, to ensure the quotas lasted until the end of the year. As a result, China burned through their quotas and ran out of energy by July 2021, and much of the Chinese economy shut down for a few weeks while people waited for new orders from the Communist Central Committee.

The central committee did the only thing possible, but it took time for news of the crisis to filter through the communist bureaucracy and for a decision to be made – they relaxed the coal quotas.

h/t PaulHarveyPageTwo

Wuhan, Manitoba

Globe&Mail;

Two scientists at Canada’s high-security infectious disease laboratory – Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng – provided confidential scientific information to China and were fired after a probe concluded she posed “a realistic and credible threat to Canada’s economic security” and it was discovered they engaged in clandestine meetings with Chinese officials, documents tabled in the House of Commons reveal.

Dr. Qiu, who worked at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, was dishonest when confronted with her actions, making “blanket denials” and “half-truths, and personally benefited from the arrangement,” the documents state, noting that she repeatedly lied to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and “refused to admit to any involvement in various PRC [People’s Republic of China] programs.”

The two infectious-disease scientists were escorted out of the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg in July, 2019, and later had their security clearances revoked. They were fired in January, 2021. Their whereabouts are not known.

Xiangguo Qiu an Keding Cheng’s connections to China are outlined in detail in a CSIS security assessment from Jan. 8, 2021, marked secret.Governor General’s Innovation Awards; Excerpt from CSIS report

CSIS, in a Jan. 8, 2021, report marked secret, said its findings call “into question Ms. Qiu’s loyalty to Canada and her reliability as it relates to loyalty.”

[…]

Dr. Qiu and her husband had an undisclosed bank account in China’s Commercial Bank, the documents reveal, and she had conducted research connected to the People’s Liberation Army. CSIS said it found an unfinalized work agreement for a talent program with Hebei Medical University that stipulated she would be provided with funding worth the equivalent of $1.2-million Canadian between 2018 and 2022.

The agency said it found an application from her to the program that said she would work for China’s Wuhan Virology Institute for at least two months every year.

As part of her enrolment, CSIS said, Dr. Qiu committed to “building the People’s Republic of China’s biosecurity platform for new and potent infectious disease research.”

The CSIS investigation found Dr. Qiu led a project at Wuhan Virology Institute that would assess cross-species infection and pathogenic risks of filoviruses – work that the service said suggests “gain-of-function studies were possibly to take place.”

Just ended: Pierre Poilievre comments on Winnipeg lab documents

Something is Very Wong with San Francisco

A Chinese national was just appointed onto the San Francisco Elections Commission:

The appointment of a noncitizen – who cannot vote – to the San Francisco Elections Commission is a ‘big problem’ as China is playing the ‘long game’ to weaken the U.S., according to a top Republican senator.

Kelly Wong, an immigration rights activist and immigrant who came to the U.S. in 2019 from Hong Kong, was unanimously appointed by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors to the city’s Elections Commission on February 14.

California voters approved a measure in 2020 to eliminate the citizenship requirement to serve on San Francisco boards – and Wong is believed to be the first noncitizen ever to sit on the commission.

Here is her victory speech. Some people don’t think this is a good idea.

Our Chinese-Installed Government In Ottawa

Sam Cooper;

Canada’s Foreign Interference Commission faces intensifying credibility concerns as a Hong Kong immigrant group becomes the second diaspora group to boycott Ottawa’s examination into Chinese interference, based on concerns that several politicians “suspected of ties to Chinese Consulates” were awarded legal standing by Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue.

In addition to publishing a statement to the Commission citing “concerns over its objectivity and security integrity,” Hong Kong Canadian boycott spokesperson Ivy Li personally questioned Commissioner Hogue’s own professional links to former Liberal prime ministers Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien.

In late January, the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP) pulled out of the inquiry, accusing Commissioner Hogue of enabling “a significant security risk” to the diaspora in Canada and their families in China.

URAP spokesman Mehmet Tohti said his group could not participate because two Toronto-area Liberal politicians — MP Han Dong and former Ontario Liberal MPP and current Markham Deputy Mayor Michael Chan — were given full standing, meaning their lawyers will be able to question other participants in the commission.

Chinada

The corruption revelations are getting worse:

In September 2020, as Ontario’s real estate rocketed higher, a Toronto realtor with ties to Beijing claimed a fake Chinese income of $763,689 in order to secure HSBC mortgages for two properties, bringing her personal portfolio in Greater Toronto up to five homes.

What makes this realtor’s case politically explosive is not just that her network allegedly laundered money from China into Toronto real estate, nor the forged Chinese employment records they used to obtain massive mortgages from Canadian banks, or that they became Ontario landlords by leveraging criminal underground banks servicing Chinese diasporas in Vancouver and Toronto.

h/t James MacMaster

Chinada

Canadian Senator met with leaders affiliated to PRC espionage arm days before filing challenge to Foreign Interference Commission:

Three days before submitting to the Foreign Interference Commission that federal reports on election interference and WeChat disinformation are “problematic” — Canadian Senator Yuen Pau Woo met in Vancouver with community leaders involved with Beijing’s “Overseas Chinese” espionage arm, giving a speech suggesting that a foreign agent registry will lead to anti-Asian exclusion.

The February 3, 2024 meeting at Vancouver’s Chinese Canadian Museum was arranged by Senators Woo and Victor Oh and also attended by Ottawa Liberal MP Chandra Arya, according to event accounts posted to WeChat, a social media platform linked in Canadian government reports to China’s disinformation attacks against Conservative MPs in the 2021 federal election.

h/t James MacMaster

Our Chinese-Installed Government In Ottawa


The system is working as intended.

Chinese migrants living across Toronto were obtaining mortgages from HSBC while supposedly earning extravagant salaries from remote-work jobs in China. In one example, an Ontario casino worker that owned three homes also claimed to earn $345,000 in 2020 analyzing data remotely for a Beijing company.

Before joining HSBC Canada, the whistleblower had studied fake-income mortgage frauds for his Business Masters degree at Vancouver Island University. After arriving at Aurora in February 2022, while digging into the branch’s loan books and interrogating his colleagues, he made mind-blowing assessments.

Since 2015, the whistleblower concluded, more than 10 Toronto-area HSBC branches had issued at least $500-million in home loans to diaspora buyers claiming exaggerated incomes or non-existent jobs in China.

These foreign-income scams spiked during the pandemic, the whistleblower believed, because borrowers could somewhat plausibly claim to be working remotely in other countries while riding out Covid-19 in Canada.

While a small bank of Aurora’s size was expected to issue about $23-million in residential loans every year, this branch had shovelled out $88-million in mortgages in 2020, according to the whistleblower, and over $50-million in 2021. […]

The Bureau’s seven-month investigation into D.M.’s allegations suggests HSBC Canada and other Canadian banks could have issued many billions of dollars in questionable mortgages to Chinese diaspora buyers, and a significant cause of Canada’s real estate bubble is hundreds of billions in illicit fund transfers from China into Canada, and bank lending that amplifies its impacts, especially in Toronto and Vancouver home prices.

“There are thousands of these cases, large scale,” D.M. said in an interview. “Hardworking Canadians are denied mortgages and these Chinese residents forge documents and get mortgages approved, heating up the already hot Ontario real estate markets.”

Closing the Stable Door after the Dragon is Already Inside

Corruption or incompetence?

The federal government will stop funding grant applications if the researchers working on them are affiliated with a foreign military, state security entities or certain foreign state actors, citing a need to protect Canadian national security.

Ottawa made the announcement Tuesday evening, and following a report from The Globe and Mail last month that since 2005, 50 Canadian universities have had extensive research collaborations with China’s military. The projects with China’s National University of Defence Technology included areas like quantum cryptography, photonics and space science, the newspaper reported.

Now, Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne says protecting Canadian research is a matter of national security and cited “recent events” when asked about the decision.

h/t James MacMaster

Our Chinese-Installed Government In Ottawa

Toothless by design.

On Jan. 1, the Forced Labour and Supply Chain Reporting Law, which aims to curb the importation of goods made through forced labour, came into effect. The law is toothless. It merely requires companies to report on their efforts to keep forced labour out of their supply chains.

The U.S. Congress and the Biden administration, in contrast, passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021. That law compels anyone wishing to import products from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to prove that forced labour was not used.

Since its implementation in June, 2022, more than 6,000 shipments entering the United States have been reviewed under the new law, and more than 2,500 denied entry.

But according to Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, not one shipment from China has been denied entry into Canada on the same grounds.

Our Chinese-Installed Government In Ottawa

Dan Knight;

Let’s start with the laughable irony of the Liberal government’s latest bureaucratic endeavor – a registry on plastics. Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, in a tweet as tone-deaf as it is revealing, boasted about this registry saving Canadians money and creating a “more circular economy.” But when has expanding bureaucracy ever led to cost savings for the common man? This move reeks of hypocrisy and misplaced priorities. While Guilbeault and his colleagues pat themselves on the back for such trivial pursuits, they blatantly ignore the elephant in the room – foreign interference in Canada’s democracy.

Meanwhile, as this farce unfolds, genuine threats to our democracy are being swept under the rug. Blacklock’s Reporter reveals a startling truth: Attorney General Arif Virani has dismissed all-party demands to unmask agents of foreign influence. The Commons committee’s call for a registry of these agents is buried until after the next election. Why the delay? Could it be that the Liberals, embroiled in their own scandalous dance, find it convenient to postpone addressing these threats?

The Libranos: Business As Usual

The system is working as designed.

A vast “financial underworld” is operating in Canada whose members commit fraud and other financial crimes without punishment, corroding communities, undermining democratic institutions and even the country’s prosperity, the authors of a new book say.

That’s because elected leaders at all levels are enabling and emboldening financial criminals by failing to fight them or even try to hamper their lawbreaking efforts, according to the co-authors of Dirty Money: Financial Crime in Canada.

“Canada is a preferred destination to launder ill-gotten gains with impunity,” say Jamie Ferrill and Christian Leuprecht, the co-editors of Dirty Money. They also wrote some of its 16 chapters. […]

One chapter examines the mysterious workings of the country’s super-secret financial intelligence agency, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, known as FINTRAC.

Katarzyna McNaughton, a visiting post-doctoral fellow at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ont., reveals that FINTRAC produces and delivers a large volume of proactive disclosures about potential major financial crimes to police agencies.

However, the intelligence disclosures often sit unused or acted upon inside police services because investigators are already overwhelmed with their own mountain of cases, McNaughton writes, quoting an unidentified former FINTRAC worker as her source.

(h/t David M)

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