Kenny Chiu testifies on Day 9 of the Foreign Interference commission’s inquiry hearings. Source: Foreign Interference commission’s website.

Written by: Aidan Jonah

Kenny Chiu, the failed 2021 Conservative MP candidate who served as the MP for Steveston—Richmond East between 2019 to 2021, made a number of startling comments and claims through his pre-testimony interview and testimony to the ninth day of hearings for Canada’s foreign interference inquiry.

Chiu is a Chinese Canadian, born in Hong Kong before its handover back to China in 1997, who took firm evidence-free positions against the Chinese government’s handling of internal domestic affairs as an MP, and pushed for a foreign influence registry which stressed out the Chinese Canadian community, and amid a heavy Conservative focus on China’s internal affairs, proceeded to lose his next election.

In testimony, Chiu startingly demanded (Page 127, Day 9 Testimony) that when a candidate supposedly faces foreign interference in an election, CSIS or another government agency should not simply notify the candidate, but instead find “an effective way of communicating to the diaspora communities that are the target of foreign powers exploitation.”

This demand, put bluntly, if it had been implemented for Chiu’s 2021 re-election run, would then be for the Canadian government to publicly reject and criticize Chinese Canadian diaspora members which did journalism critical of an MP candidate’s proposed legislation and of the candidate’s fitness for office more generally. Making this more alarming, is that the WeChat articles and posts aren’t the pure disinformation exercises Chiu sought to portray them as.

Chiu’s demand is alarming. But Chiu’s ‘love’ for ‘democracy’ produces a rather anti-democratic mentality towards dissent, which spilled out to his interview and testimony.

Chiu’s mentality: general dissent being suspicious, potentially connected to foreign interference

Chiu’s strange attitude towards dissent pops up quickly in his pre-FI Inquiry testimony interview. Chiu had been supportive of the secessionist Hong Kong rioters including in Radio Free Asia commentary (Pages 83-85, Day 9 Testimony). To this day, Chiu blames the HKSAR administration for the protests entering “into a vicious Molotov cocktails were being used against police, you know, the police brutality.”

For The Grayzone, Dan Cohen explained that the HK ‘protesters’ engaged in many peaceful acts such as: throwing Molotov cocktails into intersections to block traffic, beating a mainland traveler unconscious and preventing paramedics from reaching the victim, kidnapping and beating a journalist. Also, they killed a 70-year old man by throwing a rock at the back of his head. Meanwhile, the Hong Kong police killed zero rioters throughout the HK protests.

The Hong Kong protests had NED (a CIA-front) money flowing to important organizations involved in the protests turned riots. Protesters were waving the British and US flags and asking for US President Donald Trump to ‘liberate’ Hong Kong. They also had vociferous, and far more financially important bankrolling from Apple Daily’s owner, the racist anti-mainland Chinese newspaper magnate Jimmy Lai.

Cohen pointed out that:

“In July [2019], protesters vandalized the Hong Kong Liaison Office, spray-painting the word, “Shina” on its facade. This term is a xenophobic slur some in Hong Kong and Taiwan use to refer to mainland China. The anti-Chinese phenomenon was visible during the 2014 Umbrella movement protests as well, with signs plastered around the city reading, “Hong Kong for Hong Kongers.”

With these circumstances in mind, Chiu flew to Hong Kong in October 2019 to be “an invited international observer of the Hong Kong District Council elections” and continued to support the rioters. Chiu was then surprised when “one of his key election organizers” told him a volunteer wanted to know why Chiu had supported the rioters and confirmed they wouldn’t volunteer further.

In testimony, Chiu also said (Pages 85-86, Day 9 Testimony), after his trip to Hong Kong, that he got negative feedback from volunteers:

“I have volunteers, you know, only a month, month and a half ago in my campaign telling me that they will not volunteer for me in the next campaign. They will not even vote for me. Whether they will vote for me or not, they will have to have a deep thought about that. It was because they believe, in their view, that I was in support of rioters in Hong Kong.”

Furthermore, Chiu noted that (Pages 83-85, Day 9 Testimony) during the 2019 election campaign, before he even claimed to be a target of Chinese foreign interference:

“I noticed that not too many of them [‘ethnic Chinese elected officials, mostly our school boards and city councillors’] had come out in support of me any more. They would try not to be, you know, seen as with me campaigning, going door knocking, volunteering services, et cetera. I attribute that to my commentary with media such as Radio Free Asia in support of a more open situation in Hong Kong, but I didn’t pay too much attention to it.”

Chiu found also that in the 2019 election campaign (Page 4, Chiu’s pre-testimony interview):

“he did not receive as many donations or other form of support from the mainland Chinese Canadian community as he did in 2015. Leaders in the mainland Chinese Canadian community now mostly stayed away from him. He was no longer invited to CACA, CCSA or individual Canadian Chinese benevolent / community association barbeques.”

Even during the 2019 election campaign, by Chiu’s own words, the writing was on the wall for longer-term disapproval from pro-China engagement Chinese Canadians, which could manifest itself into problems with securing the necessary support to win re-election in the future.

It should be noted that as soon as the Hong Kong Security Law was passed by China’s Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in Summer 2020, “the US Congress was forced to freeze $2 million in planned payouts to HK protest groups and shut down US Agency for Global Media, the shell group that funneled the money.” But Chiu still, to this day, didn’t think critically about why a Chinese Canadian would be upset for his support to the Hong Kong rioters, where involved organizations were taking US government money.

Opposition from likely Chinese Canadians to a stance about China’s internal affairs costing him volunteers and support from local elected officials, before he even claimed to be the victim of Chinese foreign interference, is something Chiu thinks is worth mention in the interview and inquiry testimony focused on alleged foreign interference, all the way forward in 2024.

O’Toole and Chiu of a similar mind

Kenny Chiu isn’t the only Conservative blaming China for his political failures and making demands of imposing the ‘official’ Canadian government approved political narratives on diasporas who don’t accept them entirely. Erin O’Toole was the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada in the 2021 election, and amid controversy around vaccine policies, the rise of the Peoples Party of Canada and China policies which aggravated Chinese Canadians who’d normally vote Conservative, won six to nine less seats than expected, winning 119 instead of the 125 to 128 seats that internal CPC modeling had indicated they’d win.

Instead of accepting that these factors combined to cause this result, O’Toole has gone on to blame China for the seats lost and even for losing his leadership, since supposed Chinese interference caused the Conservatives to win less than 121 seats (the Conservatives 2019 result), which then gave justification for triggering his removal as leader. O’Toole would however, in testimony, admit that other factors than China’s supposed interference, factored into the loss of these seats (Page 64, Day 9 Testimony)

O’Toole’s attitude of suspicion towards dissent in similar to Chiu, in how he speaks about his ouster. O’Toole, in his pre-testimony interview, speaks about (Page 8, Chiu’s pre-testimony interview) the “high-profile CPC party member who has served on the national council of the party”, slandering him by claiming that “a trusted source in a diaspora group and a journalist have advised Mr. O’Toole in confidence that this specific party member had unusual ties to the PRC government.” But even O’Toole admits that he “has no information to corroborate these claims”.

Furthermore, O’Toole also complained to the interviewer that a “Chinese Canadian Conservative Association group backed these efforts against Mr. O’Toole [him]”. Again, we see the mindset of dissent to China policies of the Conservative party being notable to a Conservative political party, even with no evidence to indicate their actions were as a result of foreign interference.

Where O’Toole and Chiu also align is on the danger of WeChat, a Chinese social media application with 1.3 billion users worldwide, and more than 1 million Canadian users. O’Toole said that Canadians who “don’t want the evening news, and don’t read the Globe and Mail or the National Post” and instead get their news from WeChat channels, are “getting almost all of their information from channels that cannot be trusted” (Page 29, Day 9 Testimony). The blunt message is that since these channels are on a Chinese social media application, and there are “no meaningful Canadian controls that exist on these channels” (Page 2, O’Toole’s pre-testimony interview), the information can’t be trusted. Canadians should read the ‘official’ information from Canadian mainstream media and accept it, thinks O’Toole.

Chiu meanwhile, despite claiming to have faced a vicious Chinese disinformation chose to not get a WeChat account, supposedly on the grounds of “the danger that I’m submitting myself to”. Chiu also chose not to “engage with people on WeChat” (Page 141, Day 9 Testimony).

But Chiu simultaneously complains that China didn’t intervene on his behalf, for a fiercely anti-China politicians, against what he claims is dis/misinformation (Page 7, Chiu’s pre-testimony interview):

“In Mr. Chiu’s view, at the very least, the PRC interfered by omission. By this he means, because the PRC wanted him to lose the election, it did not take any steps to reduce or eliminate the misinformation spreading on Chinese language social media about him. The Chinese government has control over social media in China and so, according to Mr. Chiu, it could have stopped the misinformation if it so desired.”

O’Toole’s attitude towards WeChat goes even further than Chiu’s. O’Toole complains of the lack of influence and sight that intelligence agencies have with Western social media, for WeChat (Page 69, Day 9 Testimony):

“I don’t believe our agencies have adequate line of sight into WeChat. There are two different platforms of WeChat; one for mainland China, one for the diaspora globally. If you monitor it as a foreign account, you may not get the same algorithmic flow that some other users get.”

O’Toole further said:

“we have to make sure that we’re giving our intelligence agencies the resources to properly monitor this, and if we don’t have the ability to properly monitor, perhaps there should be some restrictions as we’ve been seeing with TikTok.”

Unsurprisingly, O’Toole wants more power for the national security state, further than just around WeChat [bolds added by this author]:

“I do think that the parties both in the House of Commons and their electoral parties that run nominations and that run general elections do need linkages directly with our security agencies”

His justification is that this allows for issues to be “flagged like the financing issue from 2019 and so that parties can be aware if there’s a security concern of any type before a nomination is completed, before someone gets elected to Parliament, before -- before that potential interference goes right into our Parliament.” But this justification entails giving CSIS the effective ability to veto candidates whose foreign policy stances they don’t like. But for both Chiu and O’Toole, only dissent acceptable to the system is acceptable. We wouldn’t want to have any pro-China engagement voices in a mainstream political party without scrutiny, would we now.

Pro-China engagement sentiment and actions from politicians aren’t only suspicious in the minds of O’Toole and Chiu, but also when these actions when coming from ordinary Chinese Canadians. This suspicion is hidden in demands for aggressive government action against foreign interference campaigns, like the one they claim occurred from China against Chiu.

Chiu demands (Page 127, Day 9 Testimony) that when a candidate supposedly faces foreign interference in an election, CSIS or another government agency should find “an effective way of communicating to the diaspora communities that are the target of foreign powers exploitation.” Chiu also complained (Page 103, Day 9 Testimony) that “the Government of Canada did not have any clarification to clear my names” when “things come like a tsunami, to me”.

O’Toole meanwhile “wanted a caution, a public notice to voters to be wary of information that they were obtaining from social media, particularly foreign controlled, foreign language social media. (Page 29, Day 9 Testimony”.

This ‘communication’ or ‘caution, a public notice’ to ‘voters’ or ‘diaspora communities’, would be against articles and dissent more broadly produced by members of a diaspora community (in Chiu and O’Toole’s case WeChat articles and groups discussion of the Chinese Canadian community), who exercise their supposed right to free speech and dissent which Canada claims to provide in practice.

But there’s a problem for Chiu in particular. What happens if the articles he’s demanding communication in opposition to, aren’t such disinformation after all?

WeChat articles and group chats amid Chiu’s 2021 re-election campaign

Kenny Chiu’s Bill C-282 was what prompted many of the WeChat articles and posts from the Chinese Canadian community in opposition to him. Chiu admitted to obtaining no feedback from his constituents before proposing the legislation which would create a Foreign Influence Registry, and obtaining “very few feedback coming from… constituents on that” (Page 92, Day 9 Testimony).

During the cross-examination period for Chiu, a lawyer for the inquiry commissioner, Matthew Ferguson, highlighted (Pages 101-102, Day 9 Testimony) that an article released on September 7, 2021, by Richmond News, “cites one of the posts [against Chiu and Bill C-282] circulating on WeChat as stating:

"'This bill [Bill C-282] is going to have extremely negative consequences for immigrants from mainland China. It will also harm economic, cultural and technological exchanges between Canada and China...'"

And

“'Although the bill [does not] list which countries belong to the foreign forces, considering the [sourced] relationship between Canada and China…(and Chiu's) anti-China background, undoubtedly this bill is targeting mainland Chinese associations and aims to control or monitor mainland Chinese speech and behaviours...'"

While on the surface of this such statements may seem farcical, consider the political atmosphere in Canada around the UFWD (United Front Work Department) driven by Canadian intelligence agencies and parroted uncritically by CSIS-loving reporters such as Sam Cooper. Chinese Canadian organizations which are part of UFWD, which is accused of being, but is not in fact a Chinese organization to puppet-control member groups, instead being a group where diaspora Chinese can help China build a prosperous society and eliminate poverty. Yet this puppet-control narrative is mainstream in Canadian government agencies and the society more broadly. Under this logic, a group within the UFWD or having been given ‘guidance’/assisted in getting operations set up by the UFWD, could be considered to be acting on behalf of the Chinese government.

That Bill C-282 doesn’t name specific countries where individuals supposedly conducting activities on their behalf would be forced to file returns (Page 91, Day 9 Testimony), doesn’t mean much, as Chiu said “Privy Council officers and also the bureaucrats basically” could “define which countries that Canada are subjected to foreign interference and foreign influence from” and ensure that the new law was enforced around these countries specifically. Consider how a group which was set up under the ‘guidance’ of the UFWD is spoken about in a Canadian mainstream media outlet’s article. China would rapidly be added to such a foreign influence registry, and then individuals in UFWD groups would come under intense scrutiny.

Now let’s look at Bill C-282 itself.

The bill says that “an entity is related to a foreign government or to a foreign political organization that pursues political objectives if:

o “A) in the case of a corporation

(iv) The directors of the corporation are accustomed or under an obligation, whether formal or informal, to act in accordance with the directions, instructions or wishes of the foreign government or foreign political organization or

(v) the foreign government or foreign political organization is in a position to exercise, in any other way, total or substantial control over the corporation

o B)

(i) The members of the executive committee of the entity are accustomed or under an obligation, whether formal or informal, to act in accordance with the directions, instructions or wishes of the foreign government or foreign political organization or

(ii) the foreign government or foreign political organization is in a position to exercise, in any other way, total or substantial control over the corporation”

And such an entity (also just individuals acting outside an organization), through an individual or supposedly acting on behalf of a foreign principal, would have to register (via filing a return with the Minister) if it seeks to:

”(a) communicate with a public office holder in respect of:”

(i) the development of any legislative proposal by the Government of Canada or by a member of the Senate or the House of Commons,

(ii) the introduction of any Bill or resolution in either House of Parliament or the passage, defeat or amendment of any Bill or resolution that is before either House of Parliament

(iii) the making or amendment of any regulation 25 as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Statutory Instruments Act,

the development or amendment of any policy or program of the Government of Canada,

(vi) the awarding of any grant, contribution or other 30 financial benefit by or on behalf of Her Majesty in right of Canada, or the awarding of any contract by or on behalf of Her Majesty in right of Canada;

(2) arrange a meeting between a public office holder and any other person”

To but it bluntly, individuals in a Chinese Canadian organization which is part of the UFWD could very easily be forced to register on the Foreign Influence Registry proposed by Chiu. This would force them to falsely declare that they are acting on China’s behalf/are controlled by China’s government. This would put a very chilling effect on these organizations, since these organizations are made up of individuals, the important members who would, if pressured, have to falsely register themselves.

The deeper danger for the individuals of Chinese Canadian organizations in the UFWD is in these contents of mandatory returns to be filed:

“(b) the name and business address of the foreign principal on whose behalf the individual is acting and business address of any person or organization that, to the knowledge of the individual, controls or directs the activities of the foreign principal and has a direct interest in the outcome of the individual’s activities on behalf of the foreign principal; and

(c) the nature and amount of payments received directly or indirectly by the individual to enter into an undertaking referred to in subsection (1) on behalf of a foreign principal, the form and date of each payment, their purpose and the name of the payer.”

If the rampant slander against the UFWD, and therefore the organizations in it or who received early ‘guidance’/assistance from them, didn’t exist, then complaints about the risk to Chinese Canadians would be less convincing. But with the UFWD slander, the WeChat post is factual. Now let’s counterpose Chiu’s staggering evidence-free allegation in his pre-testimony interview (Page 4, Chiu’s pre-testimony interview):

“CACA [Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations] and CCSA [Canadian Community Service Association] use their member organizations to promote narratives the PRC wants people to believe about China. For example, CACA bought full page ads in Canadian Chinese language newspapers, celebrating PRC passing the National Security Law in Hong Kong. Mr. Chiu questions whether China is funding such efforts, given the cost of buying such advertising space.”

It should be of little surprise that Chiu, a person who’d talk this way, would be perceived even in the past, by Chinese Canadians to have intent for his bill to have an impact proposed by the aforementioned WeChat post quoted in the Richmond News article.

The risk to Chinese Canadian organizations which engage with mainland China is serious under such an act and political climate combined because of the punishment:

“7 (1) Every individual commits an offence who fails to file a return as required under subsection 6(1), or knowingly makes any false or misleading statement in any return filed with the Minister under this Act”

Remember that Canadian UFWD groups aren’t funded by China, but may get travel expenses to China for events covered. These groups would not have any payments received directly or indirectly to do an undertaking on China’s behalf, nor would they have a “name and business address of the foreign principal on whose behalf the individual is acting” or “business address of any person or organization that controls or directs the activities of the foreign principal and has a direct interest in the outcome of the individual’s activities on behalf of the foreign principal”.

But once such a registry exists, and the potential for ‘failure’ to file a return exists as a result, there is a clear path to a circumstance where Chinese Canadian individuals, not filing a return as they have nothing to report - especially ones in organizations in the UFWD - would face one of these penalties if convicted:

“(a) on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding $200,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or to both; and

(b) on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding $50,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or to both.”

Yet, Chiu seeks to shame and claim that dissent against his Bill C-282 is PRC-directed foreign influence, disinformation.

Chiu also claims that a September 9, 2021, Today Commercial News article which calls him “anti-China” is false, and opposes the other idea proposed by the article, that “The registration of foreign forces bill to suppress the Chinese community.” (Page 107, Day 9 Testimony). The very real path to suppression of the pro-China engagement section of the Chinese Canadian community just been explained. But for the “anti-China” question, remember that even in 2018, a World Values Survey, of China, showed 95 per cent of Chinese people have a great deal of confidence in the Chinese government.

In testimony, Chiu said “I do not believe I am anti China. I do not support the Chinese Communist Party because of the historical reasons since they got into power in 1949.” To be against the Communist Party of China’s governance is to be against the Chinese peoples’ will, therefore making him anti-China.

A lawyer for the inquiry commissioner, Matthew Ferguson, would highlight (Page 107-114, Day 9 Testimony) that a few Chinese Canadian sites and channels had very similar articles to the Today Commercial News article, with no consideration that news media often write similar reports about an issue, or consideration of the possibility that some sites may have re-published another site’s article. Ferguson would mention an October 25, 2021 Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task force report, which detailed that three of the sites had a media partnership that enabled them to republish China News Service (CNS) articles for free, and claimed without evidence that CNS was under the UFWD umbrella. The evidence-free inference from SITE is that a media partnership means they are puppeteered by CNS. Yet the SITE report itself says that in the narratives of articles both in opposition to O’Toole and Chiu, “there is no indicating the PRC government or the CCP clandestinely or deceptively coordinated the content and/or publication of these narratives.”

But Chiu had said more on the WeChat front, by providing WeChat quotes to the inquiry among others in WeChat groups which his campaign volunteers were in, as being misinformation or disinformation. These four were highlighted by Ferguson, a lawyer for the inquiry commissioner:

“It would be so ironic if the Chinese elect an anti-Chinese political party, wouldn’t it?”
“Conservative Party- anti-Chinese […] anti-China, a garbage political party that discriminates against the Chinese!!!”
“What matters is [that] O’Toole (vomiting) from Conservative Party is just Trump’s follower. Putting him in power is detrimental to Chinese Canadians and to the country’s long-term interests.”
“It is too ironic that in the federal election, the Chinese vote for an anti-Chinese Party (Conservative Party), which is unacceptable to me personally. China is the motherland of the Chinese…”

Again, Chinese Canadians who are pro-engagement with China just shouldn’t dissent in Chiu’s mind, if they don’t support his preferred narratives, they are spreading misinformation or disinformation. Chiu can dress it up in a thousand flowery words, but his own testimony and interview spell out the truth.

Consequences and anger

Before the 2021 election, in Parliament, the Conservative Party of Canada pushed a farcical non-binding motion claiming a Uygur genocide, which passed in Canada’s parliament, by 266-0 with Liberal Cabinet members and the Prime Minister abstaining. The Conservatives also publicly proposed that Canada call on the International Olympic Committee to move the 2022 Olympic Games out of China, supposedly with the caveat that if China stopped the imaginary ‘genocide’ then Canada not call for a location change. The CBC noted that the 2021 Conservative election platform contained:

“the request to ban mobile giant Huawei from Canada's 5G mobile infrastructure and investigate the "company's role in providing surveillance capabilities that have been used against the Uyghur people and other persecuted minorities in China.’”

Further disapproval towards Chiu and the Conservative party, on top of dissent for his stance in support of Hong Kong rioters, would obviously have been growing from pro-China engagement Chinese Canadians in the riding Chiu represented and ran for re-election in, Steveston—Richmond East.

In the 2021 election, Chiu would discover that taking the political stances, pushing the legislation he did and both the Conservative party’s past proposed legislation and present election platform, would have political consequences for him, though he still seems incapable of grappling with the pro-China engagement Chinese Canadians’ mindset. Chiu said in testimony (Page 100, Day 9 Testimony):

“It was very confusing. Like I said, the pandemic, COVID-19, masking mandates, all these are polarising issues, but as an ethnic Chinese, I have no problem wearing a mask myself. Even when go door knocking. Doors that have been opened to me near 20-some months ago, as soon as they heard my Chinese name, (speaking Chinese), they would shut the door in my face.

And there have been families, a house I vividly remember door knocking, and they were very supportive in 2019, that they will vote for me, that they would actually allow us to put a lawn sign on their property. This time, when we knock on the door, the lady who opened the door, I even remember her face, she had become emotional, with a deep sense of hurt and hate, and she -- I mean, we didn't bother asking for a lawn sign because she said she is not going to vote for us ‘because we hate China, because we hate them.’"

In Chiu’s pre-testimony interview, it was noted that (Page 10, Chiu’s pre-testimony interview): “Mr. Chiu thinks it is strange that people who held conservative values like him and who largely supported him in the 2019 election were in 2021, less than two years later, campaigning for someone they did not know from a political party with less conservative values.” Further, it was noted that (Page 7, Chiu’s pre-testimony interview): “Mr. Bains who won the election is not ethnically Chinese and, according to Mr. Chiu, had no existing connection to the Chinese Canadian community in Steveston-Richmond East.”

That interview also heard Chiu complain that his “treatment by Chinese language media was different from their treatment of his Liberal Party opponent.” The interviewer noted that “For example, during the campaign his opponent had an in-studio interview and profile on Vancouver Chinese Radio. Mr. Chiu was never profiled, even though one of the co-founders of the station knew him and had his personal contact information. One of Mr. Chiu’s contacts at AM1320 told him that the owner of that radio station had instructed staff not to mention Mr. Chiu or invite him onto their programs” (Chiu’s pre-testimony interview).

Chiu also, despite being a hardcore capitalist, unintentionally complained about the logical consequences of having capitalist media companies instead of media co-operatives (which struggle because of government regulation in favour of the mainstream media and a “$600 million media bailout plan” since 2019, gives the easy dominant path to them) which results in most media having an owner that dictates priorities and does intervene to make sure some issues are touched on, and others not.

Chiu can’t accept that pro-China engagement Chinese Canadians’ would be angry with him about his actions in opposition to the Chinese government, even if they have conservative values --- angry enough to vote for a candidate with no existing connection to the riding’s Chinese Canadian community.

Ironically, an October 25, 2021 SITE report would admit that “domestic actors within Canada may have endeavored to further narratives damaging to the CPC of their own accord without official direction or resources from any PRC officials”, but only after an evidence-free claim that “the nature of UFWD work encourages proxies and third-parties favorable to the PRC to conduct work generally in China’s interest.”

Chiu would start complaining about how his election defeat was China’s fault, only days after his election loss was confirmed. Chiu has never stopped.

So, Chiu is still filled with anger about his defeat to this day, saying that (Pages 116 – 117, Day 9 Testimony):

“And, you know, in 2021, unfortunately, it seems like my worry has come true. But then I thought I would be protected by my country, and I was deeply troubled, disappointed that I was exposed, and the government doesn't seem to care. And now that through the Commission I've learned that they've known all about it, it's almost like I was drowning, and they are watching, and the best they could do, by the way, is to let me know that I'm drowning. I don't need their notification. I need their help. And so that's the overall disappointment mixing with a emotion of anger that I have.”

Chiu’s anger kept flowing in testimony, where he claimed to have been betrayed by the Canadian government:

“But I -- by and large, I have focussed on how I can propose, my party can propose a view, a way of how Canada can be governed better. And for that, I've been betrayed. That's how I see it.”

Chiu claims to have been betrayed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau since "The buck stops there” (Page 121, Day 9 Testimony).

Does he have any evidence, not claims, evidence, that can prove he’s been betrayed? No, he does not.

Chiu would continue going off the rails with a strange diatribe during testimony about the Liberal government urging the CPC and himself to not be “anti-Asian”/”anti-Chinese” (Page 118, Day 9 Testimony):

“I don't know if the Chinese Communist government had learned of this line of attack and copied it, or maybe it's the Prime Minister who actually -- and the Liberal Party had actually copied that attack, but the matter of fact is, this anti Asian, you know, Chinese hate and racism line has been continuous and used in collab by the CCP in my riding against me,” and then-CPC leader Erin O’Toole.

Chiu, the anti-democratic failed Conservative re-election candidate, is Canada’s Hillary Clinton. Chiu, like Clinton, can never accept that voters in his riding, or for Clinton the country, could just reject them for their policies. For Clinton, the forever villain to blame is Russia, for Chiu, the forever villain to blame is China. On and on they’ll go. Will they ever grapple with the fact that there’s no big bad foreign evil that stopped them from winning their election, and find peace? Who knows.

References

Day 9 Testimony: https://foreigninterferencecommission.ca/public-hearings/day-9-april-3

Chiu’s pre-testimony interview: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://foreigninterferencecommission.ca/fileadmin/foreign_interference_commission/Documents/Exhibits_and_Presentations/Exhibits/WIT0000014.EN.pdf

O’Toole’s pre-testimony interview: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://foreigninterferencecommission.ca/fileadmin/foreign_interference_commission/Documents/Exhibits_and_Presentations/Exhibits/WIT0000024.EN.pdf

Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.

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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 wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.

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