On Monday morning, Liberal Leader Mark Carney refused for a second time to dump Paul Chiang, the Toronto-area Liberal candidate who made light of the fact his Conservative opponent has a bounty placed on his head by Hong Kong’s Beijing-controlled authorities and even suggested it was a reason to not vote for him.
Then, late Monday, the RCMP said it was looking into Mr. Chiang’s comments. “Foreign actor interference, including instances of transnational repression, continues to be a pervasive threat in Canada,” a Mountie spokesperson said in a statement.
Just before midnight on Monday, Mr. Chiang announced he was dropping out of the race. His statement came after most newspaper print deadlines were over, keeping his resignation off front pages.
Much more importantly, though, it cast a harsh light on Mr. Carney’s failure of leadership. This episode now stands as a reminder of the Liberal Party’s unwillingness to come to terms with, and fight back against, Chinese election interference.
Mr. Chiang’s comment during a Chinese-language news conference in January that someone could deliver his Conservative opponent – a pro-democracy activist born in Hong Kong who emigrated to Canada – to the Chinese consulate in Toronto and collect a HK$1-million bounty was bad enough.
But his so-called joke was not the worst offence. That came just before it, when – based on one reported translation of the comment – he suggested that electing a man wanted by Beijing in a riding that is majority ethnic Chinese would cause a “great controversy.”
That plays into the hands of Beijing. After all, the bounty was placed on Joe Tay’s head as a way of silencing him and to undermine his election chances.
Mr. Carney’s continued support for Mr. Chiang after the candidate had exploited Beijing talking points reached the level of scandalous by Monday, when the Liberal Leader once again brushed aside all concerns.
“I view this a teachable moment,” he said on Monday. If so, the only lesson was a make-up course in the Liberal Party’s refusal to put the country’s interests ahead of its own.
Mr. Carney’s calculations were clearly tinged by partisan interests in the race in Markham-Unionville, a riding that was held by the Conservatives after the 2015 and 2019 elections and only came back to the Liberals in 2021 in a tight race. Risking a riding in Toronto or anywhere else in order to take a stand against foreign interference has never been a Liberal concern.
The Liberals were notably more decisive about removing Chandra Arya as the Liberal candidate in Nepean last month over foreign interference concerns. But Nepean is a safe Liberal seat, and the party had time to find a pretty good candidate to replace Mr. Arya – Mr. Carney himself.
This is clearly still the Liberal Party that, under Justin Trudeau, stalled and misdirected on the need for a public inquiry, and took years to create a foreign agent registry, after allegations of Chinese election interference first arose.
Mr. Carney had the opportunity in this campaign to show that the party was moving on from that era under his leadership. His handling of Mr. Chiang’s comments demonstrates that it has not.