By: Anthony Furey

There’s an odd mood right now in Ottawa about what’s going to happen next on the China file.

The questions and the tone are mostly of the same variety: What is China going to do next? How are they going to respond? Will Canada find a way to release Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou? How will we patch up this damaged relationship?

These questions all have the same angle to them, the same underlying assumption – — we’re the passive actor in this exchange and ultimately it’s the communists in Beijing who set the agenda We just determine to what degree we obey or disobey.

This is the wrong attitude to have, one that we need to pivot away from.

Canada needs to talk more about what we’re going to do, how we’re going to reshape the agenda and how we’re going to be proactive on this file.

Back in the 1990s, the establishment opinion on the issue was that China was a rising power that we all needed to get behind. We needed to make them our ally and trading partner.

This makes sense up until a point.

The hope was that through increased ties with the Communist regime in Beijing, they would slowly become more like us. That they’d abandon their anti-democratic, centrally-planned ways and head in our direction to be more like a Western democratic capitalist country.

Fast forward to today and almost the opposite has happened.

China hasn’t become more like the rest of the world. Instead, it’s pressuring the rest of the world to become more like China.

Their disproportionate reaction to Canada’s arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou is a natural result of this. They detained not one but two prominent Canadians on trumped-up allegations, they re-opened the sentencing of one Canadian to give him the death penalty, their Ambassador to Canada has accused us of “white supremacy” and their spokespeople are laughing at us.

“I can tell you for sure that we are not worried at all,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in Beijing on Wednesday in response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland’s recent statements calling for the release of detainees.

“You can count by the fingers of your hand the few allies of Canada that chose to side with it on this issue. These several countries can by no means represent the entire international community,” Chunying said.

Do you see what they’re doing?

They’re saying that China calls the shots more than Canada and our allies do.

And guess who they mean by allies? The United States, of course. That’s what this is all about: China’s attempts to realign global power away from the U.S. and towards them.

I’ve heard a lot of people say China doesn’t care about Canada and there’s little we can do in all of this.

Not true.

If they didn’t care about us, their state-owned enterprises wouldn’t have been trying to buy up our natural resource companies and other strategically important assets, like construction giant Aecon.

Secondly, if they don’t care about us all that much and the relationship chills, then maybe that’s OK. Maybe a reset of the relationship is what’s needed right now.

Does it make sense to increase trade with China?

Does it make sense to enhance relationships?

Sure.

But it can’t be done entirely on their terms.

This isn’t just about current trade deals or Trudeau’s naivete about the ills of socialism and Communism. This is about what we want Canada to look like in the decades and even centuries to come.

There are a few things we can do right now to help reset the playing field in Canada’s favour:

• Follow the footsteps of our allies, and announce Huawei is banned from playing a role in our 5G grid.
• Commit to a permanent ban on Chinese state-owned enterprises buying Canadian resources and companies.
• Publicly denounce China’s Ambassador for his offensive comments.

It’s time to reorient things in our favour.

By: Lindsay Shepherd

It took less than 24 hours for Liberal Party candidate Karen Wang to resign from the Burnaby South by-election race after Wang was reported to be posting ethnicity-based comments on the Chinese social media app WeChat to mobilize voter support.

The English translation of what Wang wrote on WeChat reads, “If we can increase the voting rate, as the only Chinese candidate in this riding, if I can garner 16,000 votes I will easily win the by-election…My opponent in this by-election is the NDP candidate Singh of Indian descent!”

In her quickly-released statement of resignation, Wang said “I made comments online that also referenced Jagmeet Singh’s cultural background. My choice of words wasn’t well-considered and didn’t reflect my intent.”

Many denounced Wang as a one-off race-baiter who most certainly should have resigned. Conservative MP Michelle Rempel referred to Wang as a “racist”, and pundit Warren Kinsella said about the case “Suggesting that your race is superior to your opponent’s race should disqualify you from running for Parliament.”

Wang, however, was simply doing the expected political move of appealing to people with whom she shares a common language and background, and pointed out that her main competitor doesn’t share their language and background.

That is not suggestive of racial superiority or malignant racism.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, the most important person Wang would’ve needed to beat in the by-election, is indeed of Indian descent – why is it ill-considered to state that?

Jagmeet Singh said at a press conference Wednesday that he did not expect race to be an issue in the February 25 by-election. But is it not rather disingenuous for Singh to suggest that the by-election was going to be colour-blind in a riding where 68% of residents identify as a visible minority?

Particularly when articles such as this one in The Georgia Straight are published, which hardly mention any of Singh’s policies, but rave about how “Canada is ready for a brown prime minister” and how “it’s exhilarating for many of Indian origin to consider the possibility that [Singh] could be prime minister.”

Or this article in Flare titled “As a Person of Colour, Here’s Why I’m Celebrating Jagmeet Singh’s Win” which again largely bypasses Singh’s policies, but gushes about how he represents “the promise of multiculturalism.”

Some are not shy about the allure of ethnicity-based voting: Burnaby South resident Jesse Dhillon said to the National Post in October he doesn’t know much about Singh, but will likely vote for him “because he’s Indian.”

While Wang probably assumed her WeChat post would be no big deal, many Canadians suddenly decided they want to pretend ethnic-based voting is an aberration, and Jagmeet Singh has decided to act as if he had no idea ethnicity would be brought up in a majority-minority riding.

I, for one, feel sympathetic that Wang had to depart on these terms.

Wang was caught in a too-obvious act of appealing to her community – yet it is not uncommon to see politicians in the Metro Vancouver region translate campaign literature into Chinese. There is, after all, a large Chinese demographic in the Vancouver area.

And because we have not focused adequately on integration efforts, many of these voters communicate primarily in a language other than English. We should be honest with ourselves about the implications this has on voting, rather than performing a sort of collective outrage.

The Department of Finance is looking to seize unclaimed bank accounts, according to a recent proposal.

The plan from the government is to convert unclaimed accounts into a holding entity where the funds would be held for a period much shorter than the current grace period, then convert into revenue for the government.

The government claims the administrative costs of alerting people that they may have money in idle bank accounts may be more than the amount in those accounts, and therefore, many people with small claims may not be given the chance to have their money returned.

According to CBC, the Bank of Canada had $742 million in accounts waiting to be claimed in 2017 — money the federal government is itching to get its hands on.

The current laws make banks hand over unclaimed accounts to the Bank of Canada for safekeeping after a period of years.

Owners have 30 years to claim smaller bank accounts (less than $1,000) and 100 years to claim larger accounts (over $1,000).

But the proposal suggests new rules that would seriously limit Canadians’ right to recover assets that have gone idle in the past.

The Bank of Canada currently has a database for claiming these accounts, which allows Canadians to locate their hard-earned money. But the federal government is now signalling it wants to close these accounts and take the money for themselves. So, what will happen to the money?

According to the MaRS Centre for Impact Investing, an organization partially funded by the government who were interviewed by the CBC, Canada should invest the unclaimed money into “socially responsible funds that support the public good.”

If this approach was taken, the government may spend the money they seize from people’s idle bank accounts in whatever way they deem to be “socially responsible” — without consent.

For now, however, the money will be shown as “revenue” for the government.

In order to deal with massive debt accumulated over the last 3 years, the government is looking for another cash grab wherever they can find it.

One accountant interviewed by the CBC condemned the government for not doing more to help Canadians collect on forgotten money.

“It’s very un-Canadian for us not to help Canadians find unclaimed property balances when nobody loses their money on purpose,” said Brenda Potter Phelan, an Ontario-based accountant.

“It’s usually the result of an accident, a death. Increased longevity brings forgetfulness.”

Which raises the question, does the government try to locate the owners of these accounts?

The proposal does not give any details about the process.

One reason accounts might go unclaimed is that the owner has died and the next of kin is not aware of the account.

When the new rules come into place, many beneficiaries may find that the government took their inheritance without their knowledge and without making efforts to notify the family of the bank account.

This is theft, by any other name.

The proposal has now passed the consultation stage and is in the hands of the Department of Finance for the final decision.

A convicted terrorist currently in an American prison will be brought to Canada after his sentence is complete, thanks to a Canadian law introduced in 2016.

Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a convicted terrorist with dual Pakistani and Canadian citizenship, is currently serving his sentence in the U.S. until 2021.

Rana was charged in 2009 for plotting to kill a Danish journalist that published a cartoon of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.

He was also convicted of giving information to the Pakistani terrorist group that committed the 2008 Mumbai attacks — an atrocity that left 166 people dead.

After his sentence is complete, he will be extradited to Canada — as per American law.

In 2015, Canada was going through the process of revoking his citizenship, under a newly passed law that allowed the government to strip citizenship from dual citizens convicted of terrorism.

Rana was one of ten convicted terrorists who were set to have their Canadian citizenship revoked. Had his citizenship been revoked, Rana would have been Pakistan’s problem, not Canada’s.

Fast forward to 2019, however, and Rana still has Canadian citizenship. He could be on Canadian soil as early as 2021.

What happened?

In 2016, the Trudeau government enacted Bill C-6, a bill that protects dual-citizen terrorists from having their citizenship revoked.

Not only did this bill protect Rana, it also restored citizenship to other terrorists who had it stripped under the previous government.This includes Zakaria Amara, the Toronto 18 mastermind who was convicted of plotting terrorist attacks against Canadians.

Canada might catch a break, and not have to welcome Rana back at all. The government of India reportedly wants Rana extradited to their country to face charges related to his involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

The Trump administration has shown willingness to help India bring Rana to justice, but his extradition to India is not guaranteed.

Both the American and Indian governments have complicated extradition procedures, and they are “unwilling to cut down or speed up their own process when it comes to extradition.”

If the process is not sorted out by the time of his release, Rana will be deported to Canada.

One more convicted terrorist to “reintegrate” into Canadian society.