Any reasonable observer would have to admit that until Wednesday, anyway, the Liberal government had been doing quite a good job of putting a bold and rosy gloss on the humiliations, embarrassments and scandals that have lately encumbered its foundational policy of kowtowing to China’s Xi Jinping in the hopes of winning trade advantages and global-statesman status for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In the headlines, everything had been going swimmingly. The Guardian: “Trudeau raises ‘serious concerns’ about Chinese interference in talks with Xi.” Al Jazeera: “Canada’s Trudeau raises Chinese ‘interference’ in talks with Xi.” The BBC: “Trudeau accuses China of ‘aggressive’ election interference.”
That’s pretty good spin when you consider what the story was really about. It was about Global News revealing last week that for 10 months, Trudeau had been sitting on reports from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service disclosing an elaborate plot hatched out of China’s Toronto consulate that funded interference in 11 ridings during the 2019 federal election campaign.
It’s pretty good press, because it was so rich: Trudeau getting points for defending Canadian sovereignty after having invited and encouraged Beijing’s sordid influences in Canada’s economic and political life at every opportunity, ever since he was ushered into the Prime Minister’s Office in 2015 by Peter Harder, the head of the Canada-China Business Council, the guy Trudeau hired to lead his transition team and then elevated to lead the government side in the Senate.
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