Sen. Woo downplays evidence that China ‘targeted’ MPs Chong, Kwan

An autarkic legislator is calling grounds the Chinese authorities “targeted” MPs Michael Chong and Jenny Kwan “cavalier and flimsy,” downplaying Beijing’s efforts to cod “human intelligence” connected Canadian parliamentarians.

Sen. Yuen Pau Woo, whom the Liberals appointed to the Senate successful 2016, has been a vocal professional of the national government’s effect to Chinese interference operations and skeptical of allegations that Beijing is meddling successful Canadian affairs, was denied lasting during the 2nd signifier of the national enquiry into foreign interference aft participating successful the archetypal round.

Standing would’ve allowed Woo to enactment successful the 2nd circular of testimony, and the legislator requested the committee screen his ineligible costs. Both requests were denied.

But Woo inactive offered immoderate closing thoughts arsenic Justice Marie-Josée Hogue and her squad prepare their last study connected overseas interference successful the past 2 national elections. Woo’s written submission, published by the enquiry past week, suggested Chong and Kwan inflated claims that the Chinese authorities “targeted” them.

“Other claims made by salient witnesses, for example, Mr. Michael Chong and Ms. Jenny Kwan, are not lone cavalier and flimsy, but they magnitude to a smear connected individuals and groups that is highly corrosive of Canada’s multicultural identity,” Woo wrote.

“Could it beryllium that the Chinese Embassy ‘targeted’ Mr. Chong and Ms. Kwan lone successful the consciousness that they kept files connected the 2 MPs, among different files that they support connected parliamentarians?”

A 2021 quality study from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) suggested Beijing’s Ministry of State Security targeted Chong aft the MP voted successful favour of a 2021 House of Commons question condemning China’s attraction of the Uyghur number arsenic a genocide.

CSIS’s appraisal recovered that successful summation to sanctioning Chong and barring him from China, Beijing took different measures to unit the Halton Hills MP, including targeting his relatives successful Hong Kong.

The Liberal authorities yet took the bonzer measurement of expelling a elder Chinese diplomat, Zhou Wei, who CSIS assessed was progressive successful the campaign.

NDP MP Jenny Kwan revealed successful 2023 that CSIS informed her that she’s been a people of Chinese overseas interference going backmost years – interference that the spy bureau believed to beryllium ongoing. Citing nationalist information concerns, Kwan said she could not stock details of the alleged interference.

But successful her interrogation with the Hogue commission, Kwan testified that CSIS informed her that she would beryllium an “evergreen target” for Beijing – adjacent aft she retired from governmental life. Kwan told committee lawyers that the interference has damaged her narration with some voters and large Chinese assemblage groups – a important constituency successful her Vancouver East riding.

In an interrogation past week, Woo told Global News helium takes contented with the word “target” and said it suggested Beijing was threatening carnal unit oregon taking retired a “hit” connected the MPs.

Woo said, based connected Chong and Kwan’s ain grounds earlier the inquiry, they were not alert of immoderate threats of carnal harm to them oregon their families.

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Woo conceded that there’s a spectrum of harm from overseas interference – that specified enactment could beryllium damaging to a parliamentarian without rising to the menace of carnal violence.

“And wherever (Hogue) chooses to enactment her mentation of that spectrum is important due to the fact that if she puts it astatine the utmost extremity and leaves the content (with) Canadians that immoderate authorities collecting accusation connected politicians is harmful, past it’s an overstatement of the threat,” Woo said.

Asked if helium thought it was mean signifier for Chinese information agencies to cod accusation connected the families of Canadian politicians who unrecorded abroad, Woo suggested it wasn’t antithetic but isn’t needfully for nefarious purposes.

“All of that, I think, is mean quality collection, and it doesn’t person to beryllium seen successful a sinister light,” Woo said.

In a statement, Kwan’s lawyer, Sujit Choudry, said Woo’s allegation that the MP’s grounds was “flimsy” is “false and misleading.”

“It was CSIS who informed MP Kwan successful a classified briefing that she was a long-time people of (Chinese Communist Party) interference and volition stay an ‘evergreen target.’ MP Kwan testified and brought to the commissioner’s attraction that she believed she had been de-platformed by Chinese assemblage organizations,” Choudry wrote successful a connection to Global News.

Choudry noted that CSIS officials testified that Beijing works done proxy agents successful Canada’s Chinese diaspora and that Kwan is acrophobic the Chinese authorities utilized those proxies to people her for her advocacy connected quality rights issues successful China.

“Senator Woo has each close to crook a unsighted oculus to overseas interference actors and activities. MP Kwan chooses to usage her dependable to talk up and talk retired to support and support Canada’s antiauthoritarian institutions and processes.”

Chong’s bureau declined Global’s interrogation request.

Hogue and her squad of lawyers person until the extremity of January 2025 to present their last study and recommendations.