The News Rundown

This week here at Western Context we have a story that summarizes and confirms one of the largest chapters of Western Context news: China has infiltrated Canada.
Government officials including the Prime Minister were briefed in January regarding the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts and actions to influence and interfere in Canadian affairs.
This includes but is not limited to…
Chinese operatives working in MPs offices.
Influence being exerted on Canadian officials to gain leverage in Ottawa by China.
Potential interference in the 2019 election including that of campaign workers, candidates, and propaganda.
No one knows: were China’s efforts successful
No one knows: which candidates, ridings, and MPs have been influenced.
No one knows: what government officials.
And most importantly, no one knows, was China successful?
Let’s now break down some of what the new report says.
At least 11 candidates were infiltrated, including Liberals and Conservatives. The Chinese operatives worked as campaign staffers in these cases - and once again, we don’t know which ridings were targeted.
China’s threats to Canada increased in 2015 when the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front influence networks started working abroad.
United Front has appeared many times here on Western Context going back years to the beginning of Western Context.
The CSIS report identifies United Front operations including politicians, media, business, student and community groups, and are aimed at consolidating support for CCP policy as well as targeting critics and the causes of ethnic groups seen as “poisons” by the CCP, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans.
The United Front has been discussed extensively here on Western Context relating to Vancouver based real-estate, Vancouver retirement homes, natural resource companies, the Winnipeg lab, and the Meng Wanzhou case just to name a few.
At the time no one in Canadian media was reporting on these seemingly single stories where Chinese influence was sometimes a footnote. But now it looks like they were part of a larger plot orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party.
Why did this happen to us?
In the report the intelligence officials point to a lack of modern espionage laws in Canada. Our laws are designed to track the typical Cold War era operative.
Dan Stanton, a former CSIS officer who has studied Chinese influence said, “the sophistication of the threat: it is not the guy with the fedora and black coat, like the old days with the KGB. The whole point of influence networks is that anyone can be used by a foreign state as a co-optee, or agent, or source.”
The actions of our democratically elected Members of Parliament also played a huge role in what the Chinese operatives did.
Following the February 2021 House of Commons vote to declare China’s treatment of the Uyghur’s a genocide, Chinese agents conducted background research into MPs who voted in favour of the motion. The agents studied the ridings of specific, targeted MPs in order to learn what industries and companies were present and whether these companies had economic links to China. The objective was to judge whether China could leverage the local economies of Canadian politicians seen as the CCP’s enemies.
In the lead up to the 2021 election some MPs reported that they feared for their families and reputations and believed they were being targeted in operations to hurt their election chances.
One of the MPs who the Chinese Communist Party targeted was Kenny Chiu of Steveston—Richmond East.
Chiu was also pushing an effort to create a foreign influence registry but the Bill in question did not become law.
It is Chiu who was targeted and painted as a racist in WeChat and Mandarin language media reporting here in Canada during that race.
As the member from Steveston-Richmond, Chiu had advocated for transparent elections in Hong Kong, voted in favour of declaring China’s actions in Xinjiang a genocide, and tabled his April 2021 bill calling for a foreign influence registry.
The media reporting at the time said that this was as a result of Erin O’Toole’s more hostile stance on China from the Conservatives but now we know that there was likely foreign influence.
In the 2019 race it is suggested that operatives were in control of a Toronto area campaign staffer who was able to prevent the candidate from having meetings with representatives of Taiwan.
Fenella Sung, a Hong Kong Canadian community leader in Vancouver, said she has long believed that Chinese intelligence has infiltrated Canadian diaspora groups, by using business inducements and “subtle psychological warfare.”
She also believes that China’s United Front controls and funds an “interchangeable” network of candidates and nominations in some British Columbia and Ontario ridings.
And perhaps the most damning, this kind of interference happened with elected MPs as well.
There were operatives placed inside the offices of MPs in an attempt to control the policy choices of those MPs.
The briefings also confirm efforts to infiltrate and surveil the Chinese diaspora here in Canada.
Also confirmed is the suspected operation Fox Hunt which we just talked about recently on the podcast designed to target economic fugitives and have them return to China.
After the report dropped, Prime Minister Trudeau said, “we have taken significant measures to strengthen the integrity of our elections processes and our systems, and we’ll continue to invest in the fight against election interference, against foreign interference of our democracy and institutions.”
This is of course a boiler-plate press release from the Prime Minister and there is significant work to be done in our country.
As we close out this story we’ll say that neither the Prime Minister or CSIS has commented on whether or not they believe China was successful.
We also don’t know where the actions happened. There are so many unanswered questions with this story that it’s likely we’re only seeing the beginning of it.
Chinese influence in Canada is a story we’ve been covering intently here at Western Context since the beginning.
What started out as a series of one-shot stories about potential Chinese influence has turned into a wider web of coordinated influence.
At the time no one was talking about these stories but it underscores why the modern media and their focus on the big shiny stories of the week is detrimental.
Supplementals:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/07/china-weaken-canada-democracy-justin-trudeau

While last week's BC story discussed the changes made by the BC government meant to attract and retain family doctors in the province, a long overdue move that only puts a few bandaids on an already failing system of healthcare; we now see that the government is trying to cover up just how broken that system is.
The BC media sure isn't trying to shed any light on it either, as local media has been very favourable to the BC government, especially as outgoing premier John Horgan, in his role as head of the Council of the Federation of Premiers, has been very vocal in his battle with trying to get Justin Trudeau's federal government to increase health transfers to the provinces to help fix the problem.
BC Health Minister Adrian Dix was also quick to put the blame on BC's failing healthcare system on the Prime Minister's unwillingness to negotiate with the premiers on the federal health care transfer, going so far as to say that "The prime minister is not a potted plant. He can defend his position if he wishes. But there needs to be a meeting...and the federal government has not been willing to do the work to come to the table and sit down, prime ministers and premiers, and talk about one of the central issues facing the country."
Dr. Alika Lafontaine, head of the Canadian Medical Association, said he is hoping the meeting of health ministers results in collaboration across Canada "because the crises are too big for any one jurisdiction. If we don't act, all of our systems will continue to deteriorate. And I think the impetus for action is now because of how severely patients are suffering."
That's the thing: most provincial healthcare systems in Canada are having a tough time right now. But because of BC governments of different stripes unwilling to make much change on the issue over the past decade or so, things have stagnated as the population of BC has exploded and the first of the boomer generation now reaches their late 70's.
We've talked to death about the issue in the past, but this week, the Ministry of Health made a procedural change that has gone unnoticed in all media articles except for one in the Vancouver Sun.
The Ministry of Health has changed the way it reports staffing levels at urgent primary care centres which critics say deliberately hides how understaffed the centres are with family physicians.
A document called the Primary Care Workforce Supplement, leaked by the B.C. Liberals in May, showed that most urgent primary care centres, known as UPCCs, had only a fraction of the family doctors they’re supposed to have. The document, which covered the period Feb. 4 to March 3, showed, for example, that the Westshore urgent primary care centre had one doctor out of the seven full-time doctors it was supposed to have.
In order to determine whether the province’s 30 centres are still facing a shortage of family doctors, an information request asked the Ministry of Health for the latest staffing figures. However, the information received back combined doctors in with all other full-time staff — which includes family physicians, nurse practitioners, licensed practical nurses, allied health workers, clinical pharmacists and Indigenous resources — into one single category. That makes it impossible to determine how many family doctors work at each urgent primary care centre.
The document shows primary care centres in the Island Health region continue to struggle with staffing: The region’s six centres have 88 full-time clinical staff, 46 positions shy of the 134 positions approved.
Interior Health needs another 20 clinical staff before it reaches its full staffing complement at its seven centres. Fraser Health has hired 69 of the 80 full-time clinical staff approved for the six centres.
Staffing in Vancouver Coastal Health has improved with 92 full-time clinical staff out of the 97 positions approved. Northern Health is just one full-time position short of the 13 approved for its two centres.
B.C. Liberal health critic Shirley Bond slammed the government for reducing transparency at a time when British Columbians without a family doctor want to know where to turn for urgent medical needs. The B.C. Liberals have called for a review of the primary care centres to determine if the health-authority run system of team-based care is working as it should.
Bond said: “To find out that now there is once again a lack of willingness to provide specific details about individual UPCCs is just par for the course for this government. British Columbians deserve to know the situation in UPCCs across the province.”
Health Minister Adrian Dix has touted these centres and the larger system of team-based primary care networks as a way for people without a family doctor to get same-day appointments for urgent needs. The goal is also for patients to become attached to a physician, nurse practitioner or other medical professional in the team who can provide continuing care. However, the centres have struggled to keep up with patient demand, often putting up signs early in the morning saying appointments are full for the day.
Chilliwack family physician Darren Joneson — who has raised concerns about the government spending millions in taxpayer dollars on the clinics without listening to family physicians on the best way to operate them — said staffing levels are an indirect measure of whether people are getting the care they need.
The urgent primary care centre in Chilliwack only has one doctor and Joneson has heard from family physicians who turned down jobs at the centre because there’s frustration with the way they’re being run by the health authorities. Joneson says that there's not much support for family doctors, even with the latest announcements, but that maybe the ministry is starting to realize that the lack of doctors is an actual problem.
That said, masking the data so that it's hard to see exactly how much progress is being made on the file, is not a good look for a government that has general been much more open and transparent than a federal government that had famously promised to do so, but has hidden behind redacted documents on more than one occasion.
It's up to the media to hold the BC government's feet to the fire on healthcare, even if they are beginning to make progress. If the media is silent on these issues, then the government gets away with ignoring them without any reprisal from a public that's left in the dark as to what's actually going on.
Supplementals:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/dix-health-ministers-meeting-funding-trudeau-1.6642405

UCP planning flood of Danielle Dollars to Albertans, with election to follow

This week started with election night both in the US to the south and in southern Alberta with the Brooks-Medicine Hat by-election.
Danielle Smith took the victory with 54.5% of the vote cast. This is lower than the riding’s history and lower than previous leaders running for election in the province.
She was up against former Mayor of Brooks Barry Morishita running as leader for the Alberta Party. The Alberta Party took 16.5% of the support.
The NDP ran Gwendoline Dirk who garnered 26.7% of the vote. The NDP did do well in Medicine Hat.
This is potentially a warning for the UCP going forward since Medicine Hat is certainly not Calgary and is certainly not Edmonton yet the NDP was able to do well.
We also have to realize that folks are motivated differently for by-elections. The UCP needs to not forget that they are now running for the votes of the entire province and not the party base.
What this race does show is there can be an appetite for a middle of the road party that has proper messaging and can actually be heard.
If the Alberta Party was able to get its message out and gain traction, something interesting could happen in Edmonton or Calgary.
This means that at the end of the day the focus needs to be purely on affordability.
Following the by-election messaging from the Premier started coming out about what the government was going to be doing.
In a speech to the Rural Municipalities of Alberta convention on Thursday Premier Smith said, “We can certainly balance the province’s books as well as help Albertans cope with the worst financial pressures… our government is going to ensure Albertans have more money in their wallets right away to meet the rising costs of life’s necessities at this critical time.”
At this point in time there’s no way of knowing what the government will do to increase affordability for Albertans.
In 1982 the Lougheed government announced monthly payments to cut the interest rate to an effective 12% from 18% on any mortgage up to $60,000.
In 2005 Ralph Klein sent $400 cheques to every Albertan to spread around the cash from the era’s record surpluses. These were known as “Ralph Bucks” and even somehow managed to draw criticism.
The UCP will also stop collecting the 4.5c fuel tax that was reinstated in September.
Progressive Conservative governments of Alberta’s past have a trend of sending money to the population when the treasury is doing well or times are tough. We’ll have to see how far the UCP government goes.
What we do know is that the government will re-index AISH and seniors benefits to inflation. This is something that was stopped in 2019 in an effort to balance the budget and has been the NDP’s biggest talking point over the last 8 months.
This brings us to the mandate letters to Ministers. Previously Mandate letters were controversial but in the last half decade or so they started being released publicly.
Almost all Mandate letters focus on affordability and addressing inflation in any way Alberta can.
The Minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services will be responsible for ensuring programs like AISH as mentioned previously will be adjusted for inflation.
The Minister of Affordability and Utilities will implement a relief package focused on affordability and cost of living. This includes the cost of utility payments and electricity pricing with respect to transmission and distribution.
Minister Mickey Amery of Children’s Services is to focus on a review of the foster care system with the aim of reducing the number of moves and minimizing disruption for children.
He will also work on implementing Bill C-92 which provides Indigenous communities with jurisdiction over child care.
Education Minister Adriana LaGrange will work on expanding mental health supports and work with the Infrastructure Minister on building a proposal to increase the number of schools in growing communities. *PC Promises under Redford.
Municipal Affairs Minister Rebecca Schulz’s mandate letter tasks her with improving the delivery of stable, predictable funding through the Local Government Fiscal Framework and reviewing the feasibility of changes to the Education Property Tax to help municipalities retain more funding.
Schulz will work with Nixon on engaging large and mid-sized cities to ensure the province is appropriately funding issues of homelessness, and mental health and addiction services.
Minister of Culture Jason Luan’s mandate letter outlines his task of working with the technology and innovation minister and jobs, economy and northern development minister on growing Alberta’s cultural industries. He will also work with Tanya Fir, parliamentary secretary for the status of women, on women’s participation in the economy and focus on a strategy to support victims of domestic violence.
Another mandate letter that didn’t get much coverage was Minister of Energy Pete Guthrie’s which includes a plan for supporting industries goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 and furthering development of small modular reactor nuclear technology in cooperation with other provinces.
Most of the mandate letters focused on affordability but Justice Minister Tyler Shandro’s mandate letter in addition to affordability has the big promises from Smith’s leadership run: the Sovereignty Act, make legislative or regulatory changes to “prohibit discrimination on the basis of COVID-19 vaccination and/or booster status”, and make a final decision on the Alberta Police Service among other things.
These mandate letters show us many things but what they show us is simple: the UCP’s focus is going to remain jobs and the economy utilizing the levers of affordability.
Smith utilized the Sovereignty Act and recrimination of COVID measures to draw media attention but it looks like with the exception of the Sovereignty Act it’s going to be all hands on deck for the economy once the UCP’s fall session begins later this month.
It doesn’t look like the media caught on to this but here we are.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

Chrystia Freeland backs away from ‘out of touch’ comment about Disney+

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has made the mistake this week that her boss Justin Trudeau often makes - using a tonedeaf personal anecdotes that just insult a public that are struggling through multi decade high inflation numbers. Freeland, in an effort to show that she views tackling inflation as a high priority, has said that she personally looks at her household finances and decided to cut her monthly Disney Plus subscription in order to save money, and touted this as proof that she's taking the inflation crisis very seriously.
No joke. That's actually what she said in an interview following the government’s economic update last week. Freeland was asked if Ottawa is open to reviewing programs for wasteful spending; she said the government announced in April it was looking for $9 billion in savings in the federal budget. She added the fall economic statement revealed that more savings were found than the April budget had anticipated.
To drive her point home, Freeland cited an example of her family’s own living choices: cancelling the children’s Disney+ subscription to save $13.99 per month. She said: “I personally, as a mother and wife, look carefully at my credit card bill once a month. I said to the kids, ‘You’re older now. You don’t watch Disney anymore. Let’s cut that Disney+ subscription. So, we cut it. It’s only $13.99 a month that we’re saving, but every little bit helps. I believe that I need to take exactly the same approach with the federal government’s finances because that’s the money of Canadians.”
As Warren Kinsella writes: "She personally didn’t rely upon one of the 30-plus staff members assigned to her to break the heartbreaking news to the kids. She, the minister of finance of all of Canada, did it herself. She, personally. There she was, squinting at her credit card statement all on her own, personally, and wrestling inflationary spirals to the ground. With a stroke of a red pen — there’s a lot of red pens to be found in Ottawa, in the Justin Trudeau era — voila! No more Disney Plus! Problem solved."
At a time when all sentiment polls show that cost of living is the #1 priority for Canadians right now, this just shows why Chrystia Freeland’s Disney+ gaffe was so egregious: It reminds everyone how utterly and completely out of touch the Trudeau regime is. They are tired, they are old, and they just don’t get it, any more. Half of Canadians are trying to figure out how to properly feed themselves, says one of the government’s own pollsters. And the minister of finance thinks cutting some Disney cartoons will help?
First off, knowing Freeland was paying monthly for Disney+ instead of the cheaper annual rate is distressing seeing as how she is in charge of the country’s budget. Secondly, cutting Disney+ amounts to a yearly savings of $167.88, which wouldn’t even cover a family’s natural gas bill for one month.
Inflation is weighing heavy on all of us and perhaps you have already made cuts to monthly spending or made other financial sacrifices in order to keep the bills paid and mouths fed. Freeland has since retreated from her flippant remark, admitting her privilege and the hefty salary it comes with, but it shows how out of touch some elected officials are to the struggles of ordinary Canadians when they think cancelling a TV channel subscription is all that stands in the way of going to bed on an empty stomach.
Freeland admitted her own privilege Monday as she acknowledged Canadian families’ struggles with the skyrocketing cost of living, after facing criticism over her family’s cost-cutting decision to cancel its Disney+ subscription. She said: “I am a very privileged person, for sure. Like other elected federal leaders, I am paid a really significant salary. I really recognize that it is not people like me, people who have my really good fortune, who are struggling the most in Canada. They are people across the country who earn a low income, who really do find that today’s high prices mean they have to make difficult choices about what food to buy, about whether to buy groceries or pull together the money to pay the rent. It is that recognition that the people in Canada who are struggling for whom inflation really is a direct, personal challenge.”
Conservative MP Jasraj Singh Hallan, the party’s finance critic, said “The finance minister, just like the prime minister, is out of touch with the realities of the hardships they have caused and continue to cause for Canadians. Many Canadians are cutting back on basic necessities and don’t need a tone-deaf lesson from the finance minister on how to stretch a dollar. Canadians are struggling because of the Trudeau government’s greed and their out of control inflationary borrowing and spending.”
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Freeland’s admission shows how disconnected the Liberal government is from ordinary Canadians. He said: “It is clearer than ever that Minister Freeland and her government don’t understand what families are going through. Asking families to cut costs, instead of asking billionaires to pay what they owe, shows how out of touch the Liberals are with Canadians,” Singh said.
The NDP leader said the government “chose not to” make things easier on families by waiving the GST on home heating and putting in place a windfall tax on the oil industry and big grocery chains — both of which are making record profits. However, the NDP is still committed to propping up the minority Trudeau government, rather than hold their feet to the fire more, just to pass legislation on dental care.
Many on social media took issue with Freeland's gaffe, describing it as tone-deaf and out of touch, considering her salary is in the six digits. A satirical GoFundMe has even been created, titled "Help Chrystia Freeland's Kids Keep Disney+ Subscription". Others were more pointed, making allusions to a quote attributed to Marie Antoinette just before the French revolution where she allegedly said "Let them eat cake". Marie Antoinette probably never said, “Let them eat cake.” But history says she did, so that’s that. History remembers what it will, and a decade down the line, Trudeau's government will likely be remembered for how much they put the country in debt.
Chrystia Freeland, taking into account her own words, suggested that cutting back on cartoons would help to put bread on the table. You want cartoons? Watch the Trudeau government. They’ve become one.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

"The prime minister is not a potted plant. He can defend his position if he wishes. But there needs to be a meeting...and the federal government has not been willing to do the work to come to the table and sit down, prime ministers and premiers, and talk about one of the central issues facing the country." - BC Health Minister Adrian Dix on Trudeau’s unwillingness to move on meeting about provincial health transfers

Word of the Week

Infiltrate - to enter or gain access to an organization or place, surreptitiously and gradually, especially in order to acquire secret information.

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Show Data

Episode Title: Nobody Knows

Teaser: Reports show Chinese government infiltration into Canada, the BC NDP is hiding information on doctor shortages, and the UCP plans to give money to Albertans to tackle inflation. Also, Chrystia Freeland cancels her family’s Disney+ subscription.

Recorded Date: November 12, 2022

Release Date: November 13, 2022

Duration: 56:51

Edit Notes: Mickey Amery

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX