Anyone who has read Claws of the Panda or Wilful Blindness knows that Canada has long tentacles in our country. Like this author, I believe that immigrants to Canada came to escape whatever they had in the old world or came for a better life. That was the story from the English, Irish, Africans and Eastern Europeans pre and post war but that has changed and not for the better. We have many who now come to promote their home arguments - a Sikh homeland for example. We have immigrants who don't want to become Canadians but would rather stay in a (pick your country) enclave in a large city and not learn English or French. We are kidding ourselves if we think that all immigrants are friendly to our way of life or that all countries are not wanting to influence us through their diaspora.
Our 'leaders' have allowed and encouraged this situation. Our leaders have turned a blind eye to money laundering in Vancouver, Toronto and other places. Our leaders have ignored the issue of anti-Jewish chants and activities. Our leaders have allowed themselves to be influenced by China - I'm looking at you LPC/Trudeau/Carney. All this has been done without a discussion with Canadians who deal with the issues at street level.
Don't get me wrong, we are a country of immigrants. My family is from the UK and my better half's from Eastern Europe. There are lots of hard working recent immigrant folks who want to be Canadian but a few bad apples are spoiling it for so many and we need to acknowledge the issue and deal with it.
And we wonder why the US doesn't trust us. Why don't we list or even register these agencies of foreign governments and make any receiving money from or working for such agencies ineligible to run in our elections at any level. How tough is that?
Not to undermine our own issues, but America isn't exactly immune to foreign interference either. Justifying American "distrust" of us on these grounds is a little like a billionaire with a tax haven condemning the local corner store owner for writing off the apartment above his store. JG
But we don't have ANY laws that allow us to keep track of foreign nationals who lobby our politician, or laws that effectively stop foreign interference, or the wherewithal to deal with banks that launder foreign criminal funds (compare our TD fine to the US) nor the laws to deal with the money laundering and international drug cartels. The US DEA has tried but can no longer trust RCMP.
"But at the 11th hour, the Conservative party abruptly relocated Tay to Don Valley North, replacing him with a candidate ostensibly more palatable to those aligned with Beijing."
The new CPC candidate there is Michael Ma.
Question to The Line editors: What is the basis for this statement that simply declares/assumes that Michael Ma is a "more palatable candidate to those aligned with Beijing?" That is a very serious allegation being leveled at a Federal candidate without providing any evidence.
I strongly believe that the post-modernist narrative that indicts western nations for settler-colonialism, racism, and the sins of capitalism has created a barrier to critical thinking when it comes to threats from other nations. We have been indoctrinated with the notion that there is nothing of value in the Canadian project to protect. In my opinion, our current "elbows up" moment is less about national pride and more about signaling our distaste for Trump who, in turn, represents all that is wrong with national pride. There is a middle road to national pride and concern for the well-being of our country without capitulating to the political extremes of the far left and far right, but I believe we are not equipped to think about these things critically... so we don't think about them at all.
You had me at "middle road" - your resonance is resonating with my resonator. In today's political storm nuanced, honest discussion with "healthy skepticism" is need more than ever, and yet we seem to get less and less of it.
The distortions we create in our minds by only engaging on algorithm-juiced platforms, rather than having opportunities to debate in real life with real people, have gotten us in a big mess.
I like the idea of discovering the essence of Canada. I can say with confidence that it's nothing like the idea of Canada that I held as a kid, where I used to sit in my desk and look at the picture of Queen Elizabeth, and think to myself - wow she's pretty; and she's on my money too!
We are aligned (in phase?), at least enough to argue. Like you, the Canada of my youth is long gone, though I had no Queen fetish. I believe there is a constancy that still defines the, ever shrinking, essence of Canada. It is not, what we are not, but what we are, and Americans are useful in contrast.
Here’s a starting point: what it means to be Canadian is to collectively have more land to share than anyone could ever imagine. Any commercial or spiritual or political theory of Canada would have include the immensity of the space.
I have a huge admiration for immigrants from anywhere. Been an immigrant twice - Quebec/Catholic Inquisition redux to British subjecthood in Canada and then to the US where I can die free at last. But my journey while lengthy was nowhere near as difficult as that faced by most newcomers.
Sure some of the people who come here bring back the battles they faced back home and that they fled from but this has been the case since day one - look up early American pioneer history - and the hostility usually disappears in a generation or two. (Or a century or two longer in the case of my Irish Catholic mother who always brought up the battle of the Boyne until the day she died 😆).
During my career I had to get security clearances and one of the criteria for denial was having relatives in a hostile state - any communist country at the time. This was to prevent you from being blackmailed by said foreign powers.
But now it seems new immigrants can no longer escape the evils they fled from since the Canadian government allows the agents of foreign oppression to operate more or less unscathed through the land. And elected officials seem to be quite content with the situation as it exists.
Thank you for this piece — it voices something many Canadians have been quietly worrying about for a long time. Foreign interference isn’t some abstract, geopolitical game played in backrooms; it’s a direct intrusion into our communities, our elections, and our sense of national trust. And when political parties — of any stripe — sidestep the hard conversations or make choices that seem, at best, shortsighted and, at worst, compromising, it chips away at something foundational. Not just institutions, but the belief that those institutions are still ours.
The Liberal handling of the Markham–Unionville seat feels especially hard to square. After Paul Chiang’s bizarre and deeply troubling comments about the bounty on Joe Tay, the decision to replace him with someone reportedly linked to groups with ties to the Chinese regime sends a message — whether intended or not — that these warnings about foreign meddling are negotiable. It would be one thing if this were an isolated misstep. But it doesn’t look that way. And when people who fled authoritarian states see their new home casually entangled with the same tactics they once escaped, trust frays. Maybe not overnight, but steadily.
Still, if we’re going to point fingers, we have to look around the room, too. The Conservative Party had a chance to take a stand with Joe Tay — a candidate who’s lived the cost of dissent and whose nomination could have been a symbol of moral clarity. Instead, the nomination was yanked and reassigned. Maybe there were strategic considerations, or concerns we don’t know about. But from the outside, it looks a lot like expediency winning out over principle. And that’s the part that stings: not that mistakes are made — politics is messy — but that the same story plays out over and over with no real reckoning.
There are legitimate pressures on parties to appeal broadly, to avoid alienating powerful donor communities or influential blocs. But that’s exactly why this moment matters. We can’t afford to play nice with authoritarian entanglements while pretending we’re standing up for democratic ideals. Justice Hogue’s inquiry was meant to be a wake-up call, and we’re already hitting snooze.
So no, this isn’t about scoring partisan points. It’s about a quiet erosion that becomes dangerous not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s gradual. And unless we treat it like the threat it is — not just in words, but in who we nominate and what we tolerate — we may look back one day and wonder when we stopped steering the ship.
Bravo to Matt and Jen for putting this column up after Matt's 'we need to do more on this file' column a couple weeks back - a much appreciated follow through on that declaration.
Please continue. Sam Cooper and Terry Glavin could use the support to keep this issue, which should be at least as concerning as the Orange Man, out there in weekly discussion, in the (waning) hopes that someone, somewhere in authority in the country will have the garumba to take steps to stem this relentless slide towards the CCP.
Good one. Now all we need is for other media - the subsidized, self-styled defenders of democracy - to actually do that. But they don't. They wander along, naive, spineless and inadequately supervised.
Ah, Peter, you conclude with the phrase, "... inadequately supervised."
And just whom do you think should be doing the supervision? I presume that you don't think that the payors in Ottawer should "supervise" their "employees" so to whom do your direct your admonition?
This is not a cranky comment but a serious question; I am interested to receive your answer as I expect that your (well reasoned, to be sure) answer will be quite instructive to me.
As always, thank you for your intelligent commentary.
Why do I feel like Cassandra here? I've written about this before, and as frustrating as it is, I'm going to keep writing about it.
The problem is certainly people, i.e. those in positions where we expect them to know better, but more importantly, IT'S THE SYSTEM! Yes, the electoral, party/tribalism based, "democratic" system.
What would avoid the problem of would be representatives doing whatever they think they need to do get elected is ... DON'T ELECT ANYBODY!
Instead, select RANDOM citizens as representatives. People who can vote with their conscience and intellect after due deliberation with their colleagues on any given topic, without interference from a party whip. Random selection (of a sufficient number of people) will still produce a statistically valid representative sample, which is the whole point of elections isn't it? And without the baggage and cost of party and pork barrel politics.
Clearly there are details to be worked out, like length of term, executive (cabinet) positions, who gets to be in the pool (potential filtering for proxies for capability, like age, life experience, education etc., not that any of these are necessarily a good idea, but that's what needs to be worked out), but I'm convinced that getting rid of the problems that come with elections and parties would be well worth the effort.
Selection by lot is what was used in ancient Athens. (Elections for officials were deprecated as leading to oligarchy, not democracy.)
The idea is also regaining acceptance today. The process is called "sortition" now. There’s a lengthy Wikipedia article on it. Or you can look up Brett Hennig's videos on YouTube if that's more your style.
What you can't do is expect current politicians (or the media) to give this idea any oxygen. Their current livelihoods are too much dependant on the discord generated by elections.
Remember the old definition of insanity? Keep doing the same thing while expecting different results? It's time we recognize that's what's happening with respect to elections.
Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn't get better results if we did more things by random lottery. Job applications and interviews are another - verify basic credentials then pick someone out of a hat. Fire them if they don't work out.
But there would be a lot of problems to create elected offices this way. It it were mandatory it really would be painful "jury duty" for a lot of people - anyone with a successful business or professional career might not want to participate and would do just about anything to avoid a 4-year hiatus, removing some of the most capable people from contention. Also the average Canadian is basically so poor they depend on government so they would likely vote themselves more stuff. I hate whipped votes as much as anyone but this would be like herding cats. There would be whole new forms of bribery and coercion to get everyone under control. Also how would the PM get selected and how would foreign policy work? PM Rando BoBando may or may not be equipped to avoid starting a shooting war with Brazil by accident.
We could do wonders for democratic reform by requiring that parties hold open riding-level nominations, controlled by Elections Canada, and remove nomination veto by party headquarters. This would drastically reduce Prime Ministerial power without making any other changes. I'd also make the Reform Act mandatory and reform party leader races to be a ballot by sitting MP's of a party - done in minutes not months.
“…in which he shockingly suggested that Canadians could claim a $184,000 bounty placed on his Conservative rival, Joe Tay, by the Chinese government — by turning him in to the Chinese consulate”
It was a joke. A joke. Pearl clutching is always annoying. It’s annoying when people on the left describe jokes as serious, and it’s annoying when Conservatives do it.
The accurate way to describe the incident is “… in which Chiang made a shockingly insensitive joke about turning his Conservative rival, Joe Tay, into the Chinese consulate to claim the $184k bounty … proof that Chiang does not take such foreign-interference threats seriously”
That would have the benefit of being accurate while not downplaying the seriousness of the lack of judgement here. But please do not insult us by pretending that this was some serious call for audience members to, what, grab the opposing candidate and bodily haul him to a foreign consulate?
How do you know this? Easy for you to say, being someone who is not himself likely to be grabbed off the sidewalk and stuffed into a black Mercedes with tinted windows.
Mr. Kolga cannot know that what was in Mr. Chiang's mind as a joke, nor who in his audience might take him up on it. He reported it fairly as an uttered suggestion.
"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" (attributed to King Henry II, about Thomas à Becket who was duly murdered by Henry's knights shortly after.)
I will accept Mr. Gurney’s admonition on the other thread where I was arguing for nuclear energy and not treat this as Twitter. I’ve made my point on how we should treat what are obviously jokes and won’t repeat it.
I will raise one related point, which is that this entire thing is such a good example of how the online communications medium cheapens discourse; makes it more shallow.
A video conversation loses half the communications value of an in-person conversation (all the body language and subtle facial cues); a voice-only conversation half again; a text conversation or a text-only discussion of something, half again. Taking an obvious joke and describing it as if some random MP candidate has the power of Henry II is something that only works by text, because in an in-person conversation the audience would laugh out loud.
I won’t reply anymore because I kind of regret posting the parent comment. I stand by it, but it’s a distraction from the main point of the article about foreign interference. It just grabbed me the wrong way when the article opened without calling Chiang’s comments an ill-considered joke.
In a civilized society, there are certain things that we all recognize are not jokes and should never be jokes about. You can face criminal charges for yelling fire in a crowded theatre, or for saying “bomb” in an airport. Whether you are serious or not is besides the point in those situations.
Just like if someone says they want to kill themselves and it’s believed to be serious they can be held on a 24 hr hold without any recourse, even if an hour later they claim it was “just a joke”.
Some words have consequences. Whether said seriously or jokingly. Defending something this serious as a joke says a lot more about you than what you may realize. I’d suggest serious self reflection. It’s not pearl clutching when others may act on it and put someone’s life at risk. It’s pure inappropriate and should be roundly rejected no matter who is saying it.
It is no joke about the acceptable level of Chinese influence and interference so many federal politicians have shown. It's no joke that Chinese fan boys hold important public offices and sit on various public committees and have influence over intelligence and law enforcement concerns. It's no joke that a replacement candidate has similar close ties to the ruling party in the CCP. Nor is it a joke that so many Canadians seem to care so little about the rising tide of Chinese totalitarian influence in Canadian not just over the diaspora but in politics and policies (and advocate for ever greater economic alliance, reliance, and dominance from this hostile foreign power).
The joke seems to be on those who do care and think their concerns and voices will be met with anything other than business-as-usual. Yeah, pearl clutching. What a joke that description is. But on whom?
As long as it's not Donald Trump pulling our strings we're happy I guess. "Elbows up, eh!" What are we going to do in four years, though, when he's gone and the CCP is still here?
Anyone who has read Claws of the Panda or Wilful Blindness knows that Canada has long tentacles in our country. Like this author, I believe that immigrants to Canada came to escape whatever they had in the old world or came for a better life. That was the story from the English, Irish, Africans and Eastern Europeans pre and post war but that has changed and not for the better. We have many who now come to promote their home arguments - a Sikh homeland for example. We have immigrants who don't want to become Canadians but would rather stay in a (pick your country) enclave in a large city and not learn English or French. We are kidding ourselves if we think that all immigrants are friendly to our way of life or that all countries are not wanting to influence us through their diaspora.
Our 'leaders' have allowed and encouraged this situation. Our leaders have turned a blind eye to money laundering in Vancouver, Toronto and other places. Our leaders have ignored the issue of anti-Jewish chants and activities. Our leaders have allowed themselves to be influenced by China - I'm looking at you LPC/Trudeau/Carney. All this has been done without a discussion with Canadians who deal with the issues at street level.
Don't get me wrong, we are a country of immigrants. My family is from the UK and my better half's from Eastern Europe. There are lots of hard working recent immigrant folks who want to be Canadian but a few bad apples are spoiling it for so many and we need to acknowledge the issue and deal with it.
To "Claws of the Panda" and "Willful Blindness" I would add "The Mosaic Effect" by Scott McGregor and Ina Mitchell.
Going on my list - Thanks!
John, you write "... Canada has long tentacles in our country ..."
Perhaps you mean something else? After all, how is it that Canada has tentacles in Canada?
Good catch Ken, should have said China has long tentacles' but you likely guessed that
And we wonder why the US doesn't trust us. Why don't we list or even register these agencies of foreign governments and make any receiving money from or working for such agencies ineligible to run in our elections at any level. How tough is that?
Not to undermine our own issues, but America isn't exactly immune to foreign interference either. Justifying American "distrust" of us on these grounds is a little like a billionaire with a tax haven condemning the local corner store owner for writing off the apartment above his store. JG
But we don't have ANY laws that allow us to keep track of foreign nationals who lobby our politician, or laws that effectively stop foreign interference, or the wherewithal to deal with banks that launder foreign criminal funds (compare our TD fine to the US) nor the laws to deal with the money laundering and international drug cartels. The US DEA has tried but can no longer trust RCMP.
"But at the 11th hour, the Conservative party abruptly relocated Tay to Don Valley North, replacing him with a candidate ostensibly more palatable to those aligned with Beijing."
The new CPC candidate there is Michael Ma.
Question to The Line editors: What is the basis for this statement that simply declares/assumes that Michael Ma is a "more palatable candidate to those aligned with Beijing?" That is a very serious allegation being leveled at a Federal candidate without providing any evidence.
Please provide clarification.
I strongly believe that the post-modernist narrative that indicts western nations for settler-colonialism, racism, and the sins of capitalism has created a barrier to critical thinking when it comes to threats from other nations. We have been indoctrinated with the notion that there is nothing of value in the Canadian project to protect. In my opinion, our current "elbows up" moment is less about national pride and more about signaling our distaste for Trump who, in turn, represents all that is wrong with national pride. There is a middle road to national pride and concern for the well-being of our country without capitulating to the political extremes of the far left and far right, but I believe we are not equipped to think about these things critically... so we don't think about them at all.
You had me at "middle road" - your resonance is resonating with my resonator. In today's political storm nuanced, honest discussion with "healthy skepticism" is need more than ever, and yet we seem to get less and less of it.
The distortions we create in our minds by only engaging on algorithm-juiced platforms, rather than having opportunities to debate in real life with real people, have gotten us in a big mess.
I like the idea of discovering the essence of Canada. I can say with confidence that it's nothing like the idea of Canada that I held as a kid, where I used to sit in my desk and look at the picture of Queen Elizabeth, and think to myself - wow she's pretty; and she's on my money too!
We are aligned (in phase?), at least enough to argue. Like you, the Canada of my youth is long gone, though I had no Queen fetish. I believe there is a constancy that still defines the, ever shrinking, essence of Canada. It is not, what we are not, but what we are, and Americans are useful in contrast.
You start the conversation, I will follow.
Here’s a starting point: what it means to be Canadian is to collectively have more land to share than anyone could ever imagine. Any commercial or spiritual or political theory of Canada would have include the immensity of the space.
That’s why it was easy for that crowd to go from “flags down” to “elbows up” in a flash — it’s all along the same continuum.
I have a huge admiration for immigrants from anywhere. Been an immigrant twice - Quebec/Catholic Inquisition redux to British subjecthood in Canada and then to the US where I can die free at last. But my journey while lengthy was nowhere near as difficult as that faced by most newcomers.
Sure some of the people who come here bring back the battles they faced back home and that they fled from but this has been the case since day one - look up early American pioneer history - and the hostility usually disappears in a generation or two. (Or a century or two longer in the case of my Irish Catholic mother who always brought up the battle of the Boyne until the day she died 😆).
During my career I had to get security clearances and one of the criteria for denial was having relatives in a hostile state - any communist country at the time. This was to prevent you from being blackmailed by said foreign powers.
But now it seems new immigrants can no longer escape the evils they fled from since the Canadian government allows the agents of foreign oppression to operate more or less unscathed through the land. And elected officials seem to be quite content with the situation as it exists.
Thank you for this piece — it voices something many Canadians have been quietly worrying about for a long time. Foreign interference isn’t some abstract, geopolitical game played in backrooms; it’s a direct intrusion into our communities, our elections, and our sense of national trust. And when political parties — of any stripe — sidestep the hard conversations or make choices that seem, at best, shortsighted and, at worst, compromising, it chips away at something foundational. Not just institutions, but the belief that those institutions are still ours.
The Liberal handling of the Markham–Unionville seat feels especially hard to square. After Paul Chiang’s bizarre and deeply troubling comments about the bounty on Joe Tay, the decision to replace him with someone reportedly linked to groups with ties to the Chinese regime sends a message — whether intended or not — that these warnings about foreign meddling are negotiable. It would be one thing if this were an isolated misstep. But it doesn’t look that way. And when people who fled authoritarian states see their new home casually entangled with the same tactics they once escaped, trust frays. Maybe not overnight, but steadily.
Still, if we’re going to point fingers, we have to look around the room, too. The Conservative Party had a chance to take a stand with Joe Tay — a candidate who’s lived the cost of dissent and whose nomination could have been a symbol of moral clarity. Instead, the nomination was yanked and reassigned. Maybe there were strategic considerations, or concerns we don’t know about. But from the outside, it looks a lot like expediency winning out over principle. And that’s the part that stings: not that mistakes are made — politics is messy — but that the same story plays out over and over with no real reckoning.
There are legitimate pressures on parties to appeal broadly, to avoid alienating powerful donor communities or influential blocs. But that’s exactly why this moment matters. We can’t afford to play nice with authoritarian entanglements while pretending we’re standing up for democratic ideals. Justice Hogue’s inquiry was meant to be a wake-up call, and we’re already hitting snooze.
So no, this isn’t about scoring partisan points. It’s about a quiet erosion that becomes dangerous not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s gradual. And unless we treat it like the threat it is — not just in words, but in who we nominate and what we tolerate — we may look back one day and wonder when we stopped steering the ship.
Bravo to Matt and Jen for putting this column up after Matt's 'we need to do more on this file' column a couple weeks back - a much appreciated follow through on that declaration.
Please continue. Sam Cooper and Terry Glavin could use the support to keep this issue, which should be at least as concerning as the Orange Man, out there in weekly discussion, in the (waning) hopes that someone, somewhere in authority in the country will have the garumba to take steps to stem this relentless slide towards the CCP.
Good one. Now all we need is for other media - the subsidized, self-styled defenders of democracy - to actually do that. But they don't. They wander along, naive, spineless and inadequately supervised.
Ah, Peter, you conclude with the phrase, "... inadequately supervised."
And just whom do you think should be doing the supervision? I presume that you don't think that the payors in Ottawer should "supervise" their "employees" so to whom do your direct your admonition?
This is not a cranky comment but a serious question; I am interested to receive your answer as I expect that your (well reasoned, to be sure) answer will be quite instructive to me.
As always, thank you for your intelligent commentary.
Why do I feel like Cassandra here? I've written about this before, and as frustrating as it is, I'm going to keep writing about it.
The problem is certainly people, i.e. those in positions where we expect them to know better, but more importantly, IT'S THE SYSTEM! Yes, the electoral, party/tribalism based, "democratic" system.
What would avoid the problem of would be representatives doing whatever they think they need to do get elected is ... DON'T ELECT ANYBODY!
Instead, select RANDOM citizens as representatives. People who can vote with their conscience and intellect after due deliberation with their colleagues on any given topic, without interference from a party whip. Random selection (of a sufficient number of people) will still produce a statistically valid representative sample, which is the whole point of elections isn't it? And without the baggage and cost of party and pork barrel politics.
Clearly there are details to be worked out, like length of term, executive (cabinet) positions, who gets to be in the pool (potential filtering for proxies for capability, like age, life experience, education etc., not that any of these are necessarily a good idea, but that's what needs to be worked out), but I'm convinced that getting rid of the problems that come with elections and parties would be well worth the effort.
Selection by lot is what was used in ancient Athens. (Elections for officials were deprecated as leading to oligarchy, not democracy.)
The idea is also regaining acceptance today. The process is called "sortition" now. There’s a lengthy Wikipedia article on it. Or you can look up Brett Hennig's videos on YouTube if that's more your style.
What you can't do is expect current politicians (or the media) to give this idea any oxygen. Their current livelihoods are too much dependant on the discord generated by elections.
Remember the old definition of insanity? Keep doing the same thing while expecting different results? It's time we recognize that's what's happening with respect to elections.
Wow, interesting. Seriously. But there's a Hunger Games vibe to it, wouldn't you think? "Hey my name is in the jar... oops my name got picked."
I guess jury duty is a better analogy:
"Wow, my name got picked. Now my life is on hold for the civic good. Let's do this."
'mgonna check out the Wikipedia article you mentioned.
Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn't get better results if we did more things by random lottery. Job applications and interviews are another - verify basic credentials then pick someone out of a hat. Fire them if they don't work out.
But there would be a lot of problems to create elected offices this way. It it were mandatory it really would be painful "jury duty" for a lot of people - anyone with a successful business or professional career might not want to participate and would do just about anything to avoid a 4-year hiatus, removing some of the most capable people from contention. Also the average Canadian is basically so poor they depend on government so they would likely vote themselves more stuff. I hate whipped votes as much as anyone but this would be like herding cats. There would be whole new forms of bribery and coercion to get everyone under control. Also how would the PM get selected and how would foreign policy work? PM Rando BoBando may or may not be equipped to avoid starting a shooting war with Brazil by accident.
We could do wonders for democratic reform by requiring that parties hold open riding-level nominations, controlled by Elections Canada, and remove nomination veto by party headquarters. This would drastically reduce Prime Ministerial power without making any other changes. I'd also make the Reform Act mandatory and reform party leader races to be a ballot by sitting MP's of a party - done in minutes not months.
“…in which he shockingly suggested that Canadians could claim a $184,000 bounty placed on his Conservative rival, Joe Tay, by the Chinese government — by turning him in to the Chinese consulate”
It was a joke. A joke. Pearl clutching is always annoying. It’s annoying when people on the left describe jokes as serious, and it’s annoying when Conservatives do it.
The accurate way to describe the incident is “… in which Chiang made a shockingly insensitive joke about turning his Conservative rival, Joe Tay, into the Chinese consulate to claim the $184k bounty … proof that Chiang does not take such foreign-interference threats seriously”
That would have the benefit of being accurate while not downplaying the seriousness of the lack of judgement here. But please do not insult us by pretending that this was some serious call for audience members to, what, grab the opposing candidate and bodily haul him to a foreign consulate?
How do you know this? Easy for you to say, being someone who is not himself likely to be grabbed off the sidewalk and stuffed into a black Mercedes with tinted windows.
Mr. Kolga cannot know that what was in Mr. Chiang's mind as a joke, nor who in his audience might take him up on it. He reported it fairly as an uttered suggestion.
"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" (attributed to King Henry II, about Thomas à Becket who was duly murdered by Henry's knights shortly after.)
I will accept Mr. Gurney’s admonition on the other thread where I was arguing for nuclear energy and not treat this as Twitter. I’ve made my point on how we should treat what are obviously jokes and won’t repeat it.
I will raise one related point, which is that this entire thing is such a good example of how the online communications medium cheapens discourse; makes it more shallow.
A video conversation loses half the communications value of an in-person conversation (all the body language and subtle facial cues); a voice-only conversation half again; a text conversation or a text-only discussion of something, half again. Taking an obvious joke and describing it as if some random MP candidate has the power of Henry II is something that only works by text, because in an in-person conversation the audience would laugh out loud.
I won’t reply anymore because I kind of regret posting the parent comment. I stand by it, but it’s a distraction from the main point of the article about foreign interference. It just grabbed me the wrong way when the article opened without calling Chiang’s comments an ill-considered joke.
In a civilized society, there are certain things that we all recognize are not jokes and should never be jokes about. You can face criminal charges for yelling fire in a crowded theatre, or for saying “bomb” in an airport. Whether you are serious or not is besides the point in those situations.
Just like if someone says they want to kill themselves and it’s believed to be serious they can be held on a 24 hr hold without any recourse, even if an hour later they claim it was “just a joke”.
Some words have consequences. Whether said seriously or jokingly. Defending something this serious as a joke says a lot more about you than what you may realize. I’d suggest serious self reflection. It’s not pearl clutching when others may act on it and put someone’s life at risk. It’s pure inappropriate and should be roundly rejected no matter who is saying it.
It is no joke about the acceptable level of Chinese influence and interference so many federal politicians have shown. It's no joke that Chinese fan boys hold important public offices and sit on various public committees and have influence over intelligence and law enforcement concerns. It's no joke that a replacement candidate has similar close ties to the ruling party in the CCP. Nor is it a joke that so many Canadians seem to care so little about the rising tide of Chinese totalitarian influence in Canadian not just over the diaspora but in politics and policies (and advocate for ever greater economic alliance, reliance, and dominance from this hostile foreign power).
The joke seems to be on those who do care and think their concerns and voices will be met with anything other than business-as-usual. Yeah, pearl clutching. What a joke that description is. But on whom?
As long as it's not Donald Trump pulling our strings we're happy I guess. "Elbows up, eh!" What are we going to do in four years, though, when he's gone and the CCP is still here?
Love to share this on my FB page, but low and behold…due to Canadian government…