Toronto [Canada]: Describing it as a major scandal, a senior journalist from Canada, Daniel Bordman has said that there is a big spectre of foreign interference from China in the country.
The journalist has said that there is an enormous threat of Chinese meddling in Canada as Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party has, during several election cycles sought support from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), regarding which there is a story in Canada to move the spectrum away from Chinese foreign involvement.
In an exclusive interview with ANI, Bordman said, “If you wanna have some Canadian context about what’s going on and why he may have done this, here’s what I think is maybe the leading theory we can say as to why Trudeau has started to fight with India. In Canada, we have this big, big spectre of foreign interference from China. That’s a major scandal right now.
It’s Justin Trudeau’s liberal party, was getting help from the CCP at different points in elections. And how much did they know? How much did they not know? There was a kidnap, two diplomats, the two Michaels. And were there Liberals doing back-channel deals with the CCP to help keep them in jail? It’s a whole big thing that we need an investigation into.”
“Trying to decipher the motivations of Justin Trudeau can be, a maddening task at times, to figure out why he’s done. There is no logical explanation. There’s no reasonable explanation. There’s no good foreign policy explanation. But this is part of the course of Canadian foreign policy since 2015. So in order to shift the spectrum from Chinese foreign interference, we have a story in Canada, which is essentially a story about Pakistani foreign interference, being framed as a story of Indian foreign interference to cover up the real story, which is Chinese interference,” the senior journalist said.
Claiming that every major news outlet in Canada is funded by Trudeau’s Liberal Party now, Bordman said, “Trudeau’s big win over the last 24 hours prior to the visas being suspended was no one was really talking about China. And instead of that, we were talking about this.
And he got the media to pretty much take his side because every major news outlet in Canada is in some way funded by the Liberal Party now. The government has given them billions of dollars. They need government subsidies to survive. So there’s an element of sort of control they can have on the media narrative.”
“It’s the Liberals that are fighting interference. See, they kicked out a diplomat because there was a big thing. They wouldn’t kick out a Chinese diplomat. We had evidence he was threatening the family of a sitting MP. He wouldn’t kick that diplomat out for over a week.
We have to force him to kick him out. So now he’s kicking out a diplomat willy nilly to sort of muddy the waters and gaslight the country to say, look, I’m so strong on foreign interference, I kicked out a diplomat,” Bordman added.
Earlier in May, Canada designated a Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei as ‘persona non-grata’ following an uproar in the country over allegations of political meddling.
However, Beijing (then) fiercely denied any election interference, calling the claims “purely baseless and defamatory”.
“Canada has decided to declare persona non grata Mr. Zhao Wei,” read a statement by Foreign Minister Melanie Joly. “I have been clear: we will not tolerate any form of foreign interference in our internal affairs. Diplomats in Canada have been warned that if they engage in this type of behaviour, they will be sent home,” the Canadian Foreign Minister had said then.
Bordman told ANI that Canadian foreign policy issues have been jumbled up by the Liberals in the media internally in Canada and sold out to Canadians.
“But again, this is blown up in his face because it’s not like the Indian government was just going to sit there and do nothing. They actually push back against Trudeau, and now he’s dealing with the consequences. It’s 09:00 am, Eastern Standard Time here. So Canada is sort of just waking up,” he said.
Notably, the bilateral ties between India and Canada have hit a sharp downward spiral after Prime Minister Trudeau on Monday alleged that “Indian agents” were behind the shooting of Hardeep Nijjar.
Nijjar, the chief of Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) — a Sikh extremist organisation banned by India and a “designated terrorist” was killed in a targeted shooting at British Columbia in Canada’s Surrey in June 2018.
India, however, rejected the allegations by the Trudeau administration, terming them “absurd” and “motivated”.
“We have seen and reject the statement of the Canadian Prime Minister in their Parliament, as also the statement by their Foreign Minister,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement.
“Allegations of Government of India’s involvement in any act of violence in Canada are absurd and motivated,” the MEA added in its statement.
