A rchive Date
[ 10-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Canada shuts eyes to Chinese spying
By BOB MACDONALD - Toronto Sun April 30, 2000
In 1970 - during Pierre Trudeau's first term as prime minister - I wrote a story in the Toronto Telegram about a Chinese spy using Canada's mail service to send classified radar parts back to his bosses in Red China.
The man had already been kicked out of the U.S. as a security risk. But he had no trouble entering Canada and coming to Toronto, buying an expensive house, and walking around with an unlimited amount of cash in his search for sensitive information and material. Somehow, he acquired an entire radar system and mailed it back to Beijing - piecemeal.
And yet it was the height of East-West Cold War tensions with the Soviet and Chinese empires pushing to make the entire world a communist paradise.
The sources of my information were two investigation officers from Canada's immigration department. Frustrated about the lack of action, they told me about that case and many others. They were examples of what an easy mark Canada had become after the Liberal government opened up and weakened the immigration system in 1965.
"We report these cases and push for action, but nothing is done because the government doesn't want to admit anything bad about such places as China," said one officer. His investigation arm was terribly short-staffed but was refused extra manpower despite mushrooming immigration.
Of course, we soon saw one reason why Canada became such a soft touch for Mao Tse-tung's gang: Trudeau renewed full diplomatic relations with China for the first time since the Communists grabbed power in 1949. During the time leading up to the deal, he didn't want anything nasty revealed about China - even if it was Chinese spying.
The 1970 Chinese incident came to mind yesterday with published reports that China's Communist regime not only kept running a spy system in Canada, but that it has become a much bigger operation. Apparently a 1997 report prepared by the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service analysts revealed Beijing was working with Asian criminal gangs and some Hong Kong companies to grab Canadian secrets - especially in the hi-tech field.
The study, believed later watered down due to political pressure, found Chinese objectives were to win influence with Canadian politicians and gain control of some Canadian companies while operating narcotics trade and money-laundering operations.
Of course, all such things were promptly denied by both Chinese and Canadian spokesmen. In other words, nothing has changed in Canada's love affair with China's bosses - the Beijing Butchers who slaughtered their own democracy-seeking youth in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
So why is Canada so officially blind to China's spying and espionage operations against our country? After all, the Soviet Union collapsed, with Russia and its former satellite states now democratic. That leaves China, North Korea, Vietnam and Castro's Cuba hanging onto police state communism.
As for Canada, former Trudeau cabinet minister Jean Chretien is now PM and has led trade missions to China. He is scheduled to lead yet another one there this year. Both Chretien and his son-in-law, Andre Desmarais - son of Quebec tycoon Paul Desmarais - have long wanted to get Beijing to open up more markets to Canadian investment and trade.
That's not a horrible objective. But it does become suspect when you see Canada continuing to help China build its economy and trade despite Beijing's constant jailing of political dissidents and crackdowns on any form of free speech.
And it certainly doesn't lessen suspicions when information surfaces about China's continuing, extensive spying and subversion operations against friendly Canada.
Even worse is that the original report was later watered down, kept secret - and obviously never acted upon. So what else is new in the land of the Maple Leaf?
It seems China enthusiastically accepted the greeting: "Welcome to Canada, sucker nation of the world."
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA]
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