MP Chong responds to Chinese intelligence targeting family overseas

Wellington-Halton Hills MP Micheal Chong says the government should have told him that his family overseas was being targeted by the Chinese government.

Chong also wants the Chinese diplomat in Canada reportedly involved in the effort against his family to be kicked out of the country.

Chong was responding to a story on the weekend about Chinese government foreign interference in Canada by the Globe and Mail that exposed a plot to have a Conservative MP's foreign relatives investigated. 

The story was based on a nine-page document called The People’s Republic of China (PRC) Foreign Interference in Canada: a Critical National Security Threat, that lists several examples of Chinese influence operations aimed at the opposition Conservative Party.

Of the information obtained, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service report indicated China's intelligence service, the Ministry of State Security (MSS) took "specific actions to target Canadian MPs,” after a parliamentary motion condemning Beijing’s oppression of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities passed in 2021. 

"It is obvious and dumbfounding that the government continues to turn a blind eye to the threat of foreign interference," said Chong, in a Twitter statement Monday morning in response to the article. "Like many Canadians, I have family abroad...the PRC's targeting of (foreign families) to intimidate and coerce (us) is a serious national threat." 

Identified by an anonymous national-security source, the report included an MSS officer seeking information on Chong's family "for further potential sanctions." 

This effort, the CSIS report said, “is almost certainly meant to make an example of this MP and deter others from taking anti-PRC positions.”

"While I had been briefed...about foreign threat activities, these briefings did not provide any information on the individual and specific threats to me or my family," said Chong in his statement. "My conclusion is that the PMO did not authorize CSIS to inform me." 

Presented as a “baseline for understanding the intent, motives, and scope” of Beijing’s foreign interference in Canada, the report was produced by the agency’s Intelligence Assessment Branch on July 20, 2021, several weeks before the federal election campaign began. 

It’s not known whether elected officials in Canada gained access to the report during that time. 

Chong claims that when the government became aware he was being targeted they should've taken two actions: informing him of the threat before prohibiting that democrat from entering Canada. 

"The fact that the government neither informed me nor took any action is indicative of its ongoing laissez-faire attitude towards the PRC's intimidation tactics," said Chong. "(Their) ongoing failure to act leaves all Canadians vulnerable to foreign interference threat activities of the PRC and other authoritarian states bent on undermining our democracy." 

The report warns that Beijing is Canada's “foremost perpetrator” of foreign interference as its agents are unconcerned about repercussions. 

Citing Canada as a critical target, the CSIS report said because the country has a “robust reputation," it can be "used or co-opted to help legitimize Chinese Communist Party interests. 

The report also said China seeks to shape political conduct and policy in order to persuade Canadian governments to reject or at least fail to support what it considers “problematic” U.S. administration policies by generating positive portrayals of the Chinese government.