An independent senator is calling evidence the Chinese government “targeted” MPs Michael Chong and Jenny Kwan “cavalier and flimsy,” downplaying Beijing’s efforts to collect “human intelligence” on Canadian parliamentarians.
Sen. Yuen Pau Woo, whom the Liberals appointed to the Senate in 2016, has been a vocal critic of the federal government’s response to Chinese interference operations and skeptical of allegations that Beijing is meddling in Canadian affairs, was denied standing during the second phase of the federal inquiry into foreign interference after participating in the first round.
Standing would’ve allowed Woo to participate in the second round of testimony, and the senator requested the commission cover his legal costs. Both requests were denied.
But Woo still offered some closing thoughts as Justice Marie-Josée Hogue and her team prepare their final report on foreign interference in the last two federal elections. Woo’s written submission, published by the inquiry last week, suggested Chong and Kwan inflated claims that the Chinese government “targeted” them.
“Other claims made by prominent witnesses, for example, Mr. Michael Chong and Ms. Jenny Kwan, are not only cavalier and flimsy, but they amount to a smear on individuals and groups that is highly corrosive of Canada’s multicultural identity,” Woo wrote.
“Could it be that the Chinese Embassy ‘targeted’ Mr. Chong and Ms. Kwan only in the sense that they kept files on the two MPs, among other files that they keep on parliamentarians?”
A 2021 intelligence report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) suggested Beijing’s Ministry of State Security targeted Chong after the MP voted in favour of a 2021 House of Commons motion condemning China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority as a genocide.
CSIS’s assessment found that in addition to sanctioning Chong and barring him from China, Beijing took other measures to pressure the Halton Hills MP, including targeting his relatives in Hong Kong.
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