As I said in my opening statement, my knowledge is that a special report by the Privy Council Office in January 2022 cited Beijing as threatening MPs who are critics of the Chinese Communist regime, so I do think that MP Erin O'Toole, in his speech in Parliament, in my view, accurately reflected that this is a growing, novel, expanding threat run through the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department that seeks to egregiously control and intimidate diaspora communities.
In my opening statement, I also said that, because of my groundbreaking book about the Chinese Communist Party's interference networks, I myself, a journalist, received a CSIS defensive threat brief in 2021, the same time period when other MPs, we've learned, were subjects of disinformation in WeChat Channels. MP Erin O'Toole said that these were funded through the United Front Work Department, so the threat to Canada, in my view.... It's not my view; it's an NSICOP 2019 review's position that Australia and Canada are being attacked in almost the exact same manner.
Yet Australia, in 2018, due to a media report about two PRC-linked donors who had funded about $7 million Australian to the three major parties, allegedly implicated an Australian senator. The media furore that followed, that is, the public discourse that followed those media-leaked disclosures led to the new Australian counter-interference laws.
There was similar activity in the United Kingdom after a very firm disclosure about an individual with the United Front Work Department funding parliamentarians in Britain. They have followed up with laws. Canada is facing the same or worse threat, and most concerning, many of our diaspora community members have stated openly that they feel they are not protected.
This is the nature of the threat against journalists, community members and politicians. Most concerning to me—more than anything else—is that Canadians are fearing that they cannot speak openly about matters because a growing power from a foreign state is impacting lives in Canada.