Thank you.
I heartily endorse everything that Mr. Mulroney has just said, and I'd like to go on to the serious allegations made in media reports that Chinese diplomats in Canada or other agents of China's Communist Party regime have been complicit in unlawful actions to influence the results of the 2019 and 2021 Canadian federal elections.
First of all, foreign embassies' expressing of their government's views on Canadian politics and our politicians is consistent with their diplomatic function, although I'd prefer that they didn't do that.
The Canadian embassy to China, on both of my diplomatic postings there earlier in my career, was doing the same sort of thing. I was involved in furthering Canada's foreign policy mandate to promote human rights, democratization and good governance abroad, such as by implementing Canadian government programming to encourage the Government of China to bring China's legislative and judicial system into compliance with the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including by holding free and fair elections at all levels of the Chinese government.
The difference is that what Canada does in this regard is done openly and transparently, whereas China's approach, as CSIS defines it, is: “purposely covert and malign”, designed to deceptively influence and corrupt Canada's national policies, officials, research institutions and democratic processes.
This is very much in line with the distinctive political culture of the People's Republic of China as it has developed since the party was established by Chairman Mao and his cohort of Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries over a hundred years ago. Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, along with Chairman Mao, has identified that his party possesses what he refers to as three treasures of the dharma, fabao, or, as they are sometimes translated, magical weapons. These are party building, armed struggle and the United Front.
The party has a United Front Work Department, consisting of a comprehensive work bureaucracy of over 40,000 people plus a much larger number of agents in foreign countries and within China who collaborate with them. The point of the United Front Work Department is to secretly develop and implement a strategy of carefully crafted deception about the true intentions of the Chinese Communist Party. It engages in a massive program of influence peddling, disinformation and coercion to suppress all voices in Canada critical of the party's domestic and international policy. As it says on their website, its mandate is to rally as many allies as possible in order to defeat a common enemy.
As secretary of the Chinese embassy's Chinese Communist Party branch, the ambassador of China to Canada oversees this activity. Last December 23,, for your reference, I sent the clerk of this committee a note listing 18 recent reports and journal articles that provide authoritative data on how this works in Canada and abroad.
Finally, let me note that over the weekend I pulled out my copy of Global Affairs Canada's publication entitled “Diplomatic, Consular and Other Representatives in Canada”. I counted up the numbers of diplomats accredited to Canada by various countries. Japan has 46 people here. India has 35. The U.K. has 23. China has 146 diplomats accredited to Canada. It does make me wonder if a significant proportion of China's exceptionally large diplomatic cohort here are engaged primarily in United Front Work, monitoring agents involved in influence peddling, disinformation and coercion.
I would imagine that CSIS would know the answer to that question, and if so, I do hope that CSIS will be prepared to share with this committee that information about the United Front work mandate of the Chinese diplomats here in Canada
Thank you, Madam Chair.