Michael Chong (centre) appears before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 12.James McCarten/The Canadian Press
The good news is, Conservative MP Michael Chong finally appeared before a bipartisan committee determined to get to the bottom of China’s growing influence over domestic politics.
The bad news is, that committee was in Washington, D.C.
What’s remarkable, to Canadian ears, is how straightforward the Tuesday proceedings were. Mr. Chong delivered sober and sobering opening remarks that warned of China’s “serious and concerted effort” to interfere with Canadians’ democratic life and urged closer co-operation between allied democracies such as Canada and the United States.
Mr. Chong is not just an observer of those efforts; he is a target. In May, The Globe and Mail revealed that China had targeted Mr. Chong and family members in Hong Kong ahead of the 2021 election, with those malevolent efforts continuing to this spring.
The Republican chair, Representative Chris Smith, and the Democratic co-chair, Senator Jeff Merkley, listened closely and then asked Mr. Chong a series of thoughtful questions, resulting in a productive discussion of how Canada and the U.S. could better co-ordinate their efforts.
“We need to rally behind you, and others like you,” Rep. Smith said, while Sen. Merkley denounced the “egregious harassment” of Mr. Chong.
Here is what did not take place at the committee: hours of pointless filibustering, smirking condescension, or thinly veiled accusations of racism. The contrast with the clownish antics of government MPs in committees this spring could hardly be more embarrassing for Canadians, accustomed to sniffing at the often mindless partisanship of U.S. politics.
Then there is the even more worrisome contrast between the measured discussion in Washington and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s response a few days earlier at a Bloomberg event in Singapore, when he was asked why Canada has yet to introduce a foreign-agent registry. The United States and Australia both have such a registry, and the United Kingdom is in process of implementing one.
Mr. Trudeau, after a perfunctory nod toward such a measure, repeated his frankly bizarre concern about setting up a registry. “But there are stories, there are moments of our history, where creating registers of foreigners in a given country or Canada even, has led to less than optimal outcomes.”
If the Prime Minister is worried about inadvertently setting up modern-day internment camps, he should stop fretting. No one is asking him to compile a list of foreign nationals, or of Canadians born in other countries. The laws on the books in other countries (and bills proposed in Canada) would only require the registration of persons acting at the behest of foreign powers. And a registry would be a useful tool to protect diaspora communities in Canada.
Mr. Trudeau, of course, knows all this and is simply engaging in the kind of juvenile distraction that his MPs indulged in this spring as the government fought against setting up a public inquiry to scrutinize Beijing’s interference in the 2019 and 2021 campaigns, and what Ottawa did in response.
An inquiry-lite gambit, the appointment of former governor-general David Johnston as a special rapporteur, collapsed. After that, the government did appear to be taking the need for a public inquiry seriously, engaging in substantive talks with opposition parties that resulted in last week’s creation of a formal probe.
That seemed to be a sign that the Liberals were, after months of foot-dragging, finally taking the issue of foreign interference seriously. Mr. Trudeau’s comments in Singapore, unfortunately, point in the opposite direction, namely that the government will continue to resist action until such resistance is untenable.
As the proceedings in Washington show, there is another option open to the Liberals: not to merely repeat the mantra that they take foreign interference seriously, but to take actions to demonstrate that seriousness.
The public inquiry is a start. The Liberals can build on that by speedily providing documents that the inquiry needs, and by committing to implement its recommendations. More immediately, Mr. Trudeau can make the creation of a foreign-agent registry a priority when Parliament resumes sitting next week.
This week’s hearings in Washington gave a glimpse of what a constructive discussion about foreign interference looks like. Canadians deserve the same from Parliament this fall.