Canada is Being Infiltrated by China! Or is it all a Hoax?
The manufacturing of consent to hate the foreign.
“CHINAAA, CHINAA, CHINAAAA, we have to do something about CHINAAA”, quick guess! Is this Donald Trump or a Canadian news outlet who said this in the last week?
Neither, but it is essentially a summarization of what Canadian news outlets have been putting in their headlines for the past week. Really for the last month China has been enemy number one, whether it be Tiktok, election interference, or the goddamn spy balloons!
(A goddamn Chinese air balloon)
If you were to base your reality on what the Canadian media is saying (I have no idea who on the Gods green earth would ever subject themselves to this reality) then you would think every ounce of Canadian society has been infiltrated by Chinese operatives and we are seconds away from having Josh Peck risk his life for our freedom god damnit!!!!!
Apologies, for the over enthusiasm and referencing the remake of Red Dawn. Plus if it were a Canadian Red Dawn it would be more suitable for Seth Rogen or maybe Mac Demarco to be saving us, I digress.
When I first saw “China” and “Meddling” in the same headline I instinctively did a little prayer to the high speed train gods in hopes of high-speed travel without endless traffic and little mini-death traps flying everywhere, or at least some form of travel besides cars. But I was quick to realize my wish upon the stars was once again hit by some space debris.
Instead, I was greeted with an article exclaiming China is doing exactly what every other global super power does including Canada itself, meddle in elections. Now don’t get me wrong, is it good China is meddling in our election? No, does it matter that much? No. That is of course not how every article, podcast, and blog I have read/heard feels about the situation. According to them it deserves all of this attention.
Just for transparency sake, lets fully lay out what China has done to meddle in our elections, as reported in the Globe and Mail article that starting this media rampage. According to the CSIS’s (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) leaked documents, China during the 2021 (and 2019 I think) election had an interference operation that had the “stated goal” to have Liberals regain minority power and to have specific Conservative MP’s who were unfriendly to China lose. With a “consular official at an unnamed Chinese diplomatic mission in Canada” saying that Beijing prefers to have the parties in Canada fight and not have a majority, because it makes harder for any policies to get through. All of which is gathered from intelligent gathering operations done by CSIS, a obviously trust worthy source that has never produced some form of lets say exaggerated reports (propaganda) towards a foreign government or had rampant racism, sexism, homophobia, and incompetency.
The article goes on to detail some of the methods used to reach the operations goals. The main method was to leverage politically active Chinese community members and associations to support the politicians they wanted and did this through consultants and obfuscated links to China. This also included disinformation campaigns intended to make Chinese-Canadian voters doubt the Conservative party, including saying that if they are elected they may ban Chinese students from education.
Another tactic was undisclosed cash donations to politicians of their choice as well as free volunteers through international students who were hired by businesses and allowed to volunteer full-time for a campaign. That former tactic is one quite well known to Canadian politicians. Doug Ford is of course a master of this tactic, with him most recently receiving what could be consider undisclosed cash donations from some developer buddies who happen to own land in the Greenbelt, which Doug Ford just happened to open up for development, damn China!
Of course the report also stated that it does not seem that China’s meddling swayed the results of the election in any meangiful way. Do I believe that? I mean sure, I guess. It isn’t hard for me to believe that Chinese-Canadians moved away from Conservatives after they spent 3 years blaming the country their family is from for the pandemic and subsequently treated that pandemic like it simply didn’t exist.
At the end of the day it can’t be denied that exactly what China wanted to happened, happened, the Liberals won a minority. And honestly I would bet money on China meddling in some form, in our elections, because literally every developed country does this. Similar actually to how Canada has poured millions of dollars into opposition groups in Venezuela and has pushed to have their elected official not be recognized, oh, and also placed numerous sanctions on Venezuela to put pressure on the already struggling economy. Not to mention that they had a very real and significant role in the attempted coup d'état in Venezuela. I am also forgetting Haiti of course, but Canada’s election meddling is too vast to fully get into here. Of course Canada’s election meddling is for a noble cause, neoliberalism.
Now I am certain many reading this have already determined I am a Chinese spy or a dirty commie or something along those lines, but let me ask you this, do you trust what intelligent services have to say? Personally, I have become a little skeptical of intelligent services whose only route to furthering their budget is proving the country is under threat. Of course it also has to be considered why this document was leaked, if it was simply to inform Canadians than why was it leaked now? Despite this question and the obvious cloud of doubt that should surround all “intelligence” gathered from the CSIS, the presses wasted no time in pumping out content that is nearly copy and pasted from similar Russia gate articles in 2017.
For those unfamiliar with Russia gate let me give you a very brief synopsis. A Steele dossier was released saying Russia wanted Trump to win and manipulated the election to do so. It also stated Trump was under the thumb of Russia, do to the notorious pee tape (not real). Media picked up on this as well as politicians. Years and years of investigations and impeachments revealed the original report was based on false intelligence given by some random Russian dude. Intelligence that multiple agencies, government officials, and media members just assumed was true. This scandal allowed Trump to do awful shit while the majority of the media focused on an election scandal that’s greatest evidence was some awful Facebook memes, synopsis over. For a more detailed explanation you can check out Aaron Mate’s work.
Now back to the Canadian election scandal that is fueled by unknown sources and has people claiming Trudeau is under the thumb of China and that China has fully infiltrated Canadian elections. Did I just repeat my self? My bad.
The media and politicians alike do not seem to be concerned with whether this information gathered from spies (who are usually complete idiots) is true or not. Or really is sourced in any way beyond the leaked document, but who cares China bad.
Heading this band of brothers trying to keep the scary Chinese out of our ballot boxes is of course, the honorable Pierre Poilievre, Canada’s newest online influencer, ugh sorry I mean conservative party leader.
Now its hard to say whether the media or Pierre has made a bigger deal out of the whole China situation, but I mean Pierre is essentially just his own news network for his followers now so distinguishing the two is quite futile. He has spent the last couple week making claims that Trudeau is a Chinese operative or that he is under the thumb of big China, which quite frankly is hilarious. Yes, the US would most certainly tolerate the country directly beside its leader to be in bed with the Chinese. Plus there are already plenty of powerful people in bed with the Canadian government, and they work for Loblaws and every company who has formed a monopoly in Canada.
Don’t get me wrong, leaders like Jagmeet Singh and well, you won’t know the names of any others, but all of them too have been willing participates in the theatrical play CHINAAA!!
No surprise the NDP jumped in on this since the party has essentially devolved into toothless rhetoric with severe inaction. Their fate was sealed as the Liberal-lyte when they "supported” educational support workers right to “bargain” yet never actually went out to bat for a true pay increase for them. Instead supporting a rushed deal that was functionally pushed into place by high up bureaucrats and Trudeau and Singh themselves to avoid even the slightest of significant workers movements in this country.
Hilariously, this strategy by Singh and the NDP to tweet out weak half assed “gotcha’s” at Trudeau and Poilievre while never actually throwing any weight around to help working class people has done nothing but rapidly decrease the parties support (In reality watching the closest thing to a party that represents the working class fall into the depths of neo-liberalism is extremely depressing). I imagine the NDP are jumping on this chance to bash Trudeau thinking that whatever loss Trudeau has in the polls will go to them, or at least some of it will. In reality none of it will.
Any voter who see’s this horrendous attempt at Canadian Russia gate and suddenly changes their support of Trudeau will not be going to the Liberals-lyte over in the NDP, I can tell yeah that much. They are going to Pappy Pierre over in the we hate illegal immigrants, tax’s, and public services party.
Regarding the media, it has truly surprised me the extent to which it has been all hands on deck to churn out China is scary takes. With every news outlet from The Toronto Sun to Canadaland (Canadaland has had some less reactionary takes on this issue recently) putting out takes that at the very least sympathize with the fear over big bad China, whilst ignoring the clear double standard in place by Canada and its politicians. It may be unfair of me to even put the Toronto Sun and Canadland in the same sentence considering the truly great work Canadaland has done over the years, but I did this to emphasis the united front that has taken shape in the Canadian media.
Trudeau has really not handled this well, avoiding questions and refusing to begin a public inquiry. Pierre and many Canadians alike are saying this means Trudeau is truly a Chinese operative. But anyone with more than a 30 second memory will remember that the public inquiry into the emergency act took two years to complete, what exactly is in two years? Oh, that’s right an election.
This isn’t Trudeau trying to help China, its his last ditch effort to save his job. Does this mean there shouldn’t be a public inquiry, of course not. But he is betting that the story has more of a chance to fizzle out if dealt with quick by a special rapporteur (possibly the dumbest thing I have heard Trudeau say) rather than a public inquiry that may result in a resurgence of the story right during election time. Was this the motivation of the leak? Who knows, it does seem that if the CSIS really wanted Trudeau to do something about this they would have stated that it did effect the election in a substantial way, or maybe leak it earlier and not two years after the fact.
The month long China frenzy in our news cycle, (including of course the Chinese balloons and the constant fear mongering around Tiktok) seems to have finally successfully manufactured the consent of everyday Canadians to doubt our elections and fear the Chinese. With polls showing that 50% of Canadians think China is a serious threat to our democracy and 34% believing our elections are getting weaker.
Obviously xenophobia has been on the rise in Canada for years, but never have I seen China be regarded as such a boogie man for everyday people. I have had co-workers tell me how war with China is an imminent threat in the coming years (we would get absolutely shreked). And this isn’t that permanently paranoid stoner type of co-worker either, this is like a normal one.
Perhaps the ultimate consequence of this leak is that Pierre Poilievre is nearly guaranteed to be Canada’s next prime minister. Ah, how I look forward to having our social services further gutted and more of our tax money going to big ol’corporations for whatever hollow unregulated subsidy program he puts through. Will he stop Chinese election meddling? Probably not, the only thing he will likely do is beef up the defense budget to give some military contactors a pay day and further ruin the lives of Chinese-Canadians.
What is so hilarious about this is that there is plenty to critique Trudeau over that isn’t speculative. Trudeau just voted to allow for private or profit health care to takeover aspects of healthcare in Canada. Or the fact that he has does nothing to mitigate the housing crisis or inflation what so ever. People are outside freezing on the streets as understaffed shelters are being pushed to their absolute limits and we are running around screaming about China as if it was the nineteen fucking sixties.
As of now this scandal essentially boils down to some allegations from a leaked document from a shithole of a spy agency, some politicians smelling blood in the water, and a media apparatus that found a click pig for the next six months. Oh, and a population that has successfully been convinces that our problems are do to China and Justin Trudeau. Sure some of the stuff may end up being true and China tried to meddle in our elections, but for now it is hear say. What is not hear say is the fact that Canadians are suffering and we are stuck here listening to how China is bad while being asked to please look away from the corporations, politicians, and think tanks behind the curtain.