Liberal MP and Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, on the left, pictured with other Canadian MPs at a Canadian “Parliamentary Friends of Tibet” meeting with “Central Tibetan Administration” President, Sikyong Penpa Tsering. Image credit: @TurnbullWhitby/’X’

Written by: Aidan Jonah

This author has already explored how the Canadian government violates its own One-China policy, and the broader One-China principle that saw the People’s Republic of China join the UN in 1971. Canada does this via its engagements with Taiwan province and efforts to involve the province in international bodies which only sovereign states can engage in, a subtle form of support for Taiwan separatism. In the last week, the Canadian government has escalated its attacks on China’s sovereignty.

Canadian cabinet ministers meet with Tibet separatists

Tibet dissidents have sought to curry favour with the Canadian government since the founding of the Canada-Tibet Committee in 1987, after Canada initially allowed more than 200 of these dissidents to immigrate to Canada in 1970. Thousands more have come to Canada in the following decades, and have proved to be a notable political bloc manufactured by successive governments and immigration policy.

This political bloc is mainly represented by the Students for a Free Tibet Canada and Canada-Tibet Committee organizations. The Tibet dissidents are in active support of the main Tibet dissident organ, the “Central Tibetan Administration” (the “Tibetan-Parliament-in-Exile”), and its President, Sikyong Penpa Tsering.

Tsering and the CTA would receive gold-star treatment from Canadian Liberal MPs, and the broader Canadian “Parliamentary Friends of Tibet (PFT)” group, when Tsering came to Canada, “to garner support for Tibetan freedom struggle”. The “Tibetan freedom struggle” from its beginning has consisted of a CIA-funded theocratic fight-back against the PRC’s liberation of Tibetan serfs from a theocracy which was “not even recognized by any other countries as an independent state until the Communists gained control of Tibet and China as a whole.”

Declassified Canadian cables from 1950 described the Tibetan regime as such:

“The spiritual and temporal spheres of authority are combined in a theocracy under the Dalai Lama, who is believed by Tibetans to be a reincarnation of a Buddha and who resides in a monastery-palace in Lhasa. The administrative system is maintained chiefly through the local authority of the wide-spread monasteries, which are linked together by a common veneration for the parson of the Dalai Lama.”

As this author explained, since becoming “an autonomous region of China, the Tibetan people have seen a drastic improvement in life expectancy and living conditions. After the CIA backed counter-revolution failed, more than 1 million serfs, 95 per cent of Tibet’s population were freed from serfdom. The average life expectancy of a Tibetan was 35.5 years before the PLA took control of Tibet, and rose to 70.6 years as of 2019”, while also protecting Buddhism. The state delivering these achievements is what Tibet dissidents are fighting against.

The most notable politician Tibetan separatist CTA President Tsering met with was the Liberal government’s Minister of Justice & Attorney General of Canada, MP Arif Virani. As the CTA correctly stated, Virani is a “long-time Tibet supporter”, who was thanked by Tsering for “his continued support to Tibet”.

Virani is the MP for Parkdale-High Park, where the Tibetan dissident community’s core is concentrated. Virani has been the chair of the PFT since 2017 and has been the lead figure in the running the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet Internship Program, which began in 2009. This author explained that the program ensures that:

“young dissidents have been able to build connections and influence, on the Canadian taxpayer’s dime. That’s because the interns participating in parliamentary internship programs are paid from an MPs designated member’s office budget. According to the Hill Times, as of 2017, “an MP’s basic office budget is $355,400, from which all staff wages must be paid, including ‘salaries, service contracts, some operating and travel costs, and other expenses.’”

But Virani isn’t the only Liberal Cabinet Minister to meet with Tsering and the CTA, with the other three being:

MP Gary Anandasangaree, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations,
MP Kamal Khera, Minister of Seniors,
Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs

More Liberal MPs outside of cabinet met Tsering. The House of Commons’ Speaker, MP Greg Fergus, was thanked by Tsering for “his support to human rights”. Liberal MP for Whitby, MP Ryan Turnbull, also “had the distinct honour of meeting President of Central Tibet Administration”. Liberal MP’s James Maloney, Rob Oliphant, Sameer Zuberi, Yvan Baker, Francesco Sorbara, Brendan Hanley, Jaime Battiste, Paul Chiang, Francesco Sorbara, Parm Bains, Fayçal El-Khoury, Joël Lightbound, Judy Sgro, Kody Blois, David McGuinty, Adam van Koeverden, Brenda Shanahan and Bryan May, all attended the meeting with CTA President, Tibetan separatist, Sikyong Penpa Tsering.

Liberal MP Maloney would go on to acknowledge CTA President Tsering in a live session of Canada’s parliament. By engaging with Tsering, these MPs have done nothing short of declare their support for Tibetan separatism, an open attack on the Peoples Republic of China’s sovereignty. A total of 24 Liberal MPs engaged warmly with Tsering, quite notable for Canada’s governing party, which professes to care about improving relations with China.

The extent of support in Canada’s parliament for Tibet separatists extends beyond the governing Liberal party. Tsering also met with Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet and fellow BQ MPs Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe & Julie Vignola Beauport-Limoilou. Tsering additionally spoke with Conservative MP Garnett Genuis.

The China Human Rights Forum

On November 20, while the Tibetan separatist leader was touring Ottawa and meeting Liberal MPs, a Global Affairs Canada and University of Ottawa co-hosted “China Human Rights Forum” was taking place. The forum saw the attendance of Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project’s Executive Director, Mehmet Tohti, whose organization pushes the debunked idea of a Uygur genocide committed by China, which itself was founded because of financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA-front. Others attending included prominent Tibet dissident Chemi Lhamo, Alliance Canada Hong Kong’s Executive Director, Cherie Wong, and Tibet dissident Gyal Lo.

Tohti explained that the forum was focused on “Topics like Uyghur Genocide, slave labour, transnational repression, separation of children, Hong-Kong, Tibet and much more”. The topic of a ‘Uygur genocide’ underlines the Western backed separatist campaign to split Xinjiang off from China and create a state called East Turkestan. The separation of children topic is centred on debunked claims comparing Chinese boarding schools in Tibet to genocidal Canadian residential schools, coincidentally also funded by the NED, a CIA-front. The focus on Hong-Kong is all about futile attempts to undermine the PRC’s governance of the Hong Kong SAR, returned to China by the United Kingdom in 1997 after 100-plus years of colonial occupation.

This forum, again, was co-hosted by Global Affairs Canada. The foreign affairs ministry of the same Canadian government which claims to respect China’s sovereignty, and care about improving relations with China.

The sponsoring of this forum, the engagement of 24 Liberal MPs with the Tibet separatist leader CTA President Tsering and Canada’s subtle support for Taiwan separatism, shows that these Canadian government claims are an utter farce.

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Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah has broken numerous stories, including how the Canadian Armed Forces trained neo-Nazi "journalist" Roman Protasevich while he was with the Azov Battalion, and how a CIA front group (the NED) funded the group (URAP) which drove the "Uyghur genocide" vote in parliament to pass in February 2021. Jonah recently wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.

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