I really dislike these “if you’re criticizing China, why aren’t you criticizing X” articles.
international corporate lobbyists, the US government, and international political coalitions influence Canadian politics in ways that are equally–if not more–concrete than the alleged interference of the PRC. But neither the government nor the media has reacted to them with the same vigour.
Investigate them all. I’m not aware of any mainstream commentator who has suggested excluding any of those groups.
We should be afraid of China. China is a superpower that doesn’t believe in our way of life. That doesn’t mean we should be afraid of Chinese Canadians, but we should still be wary. China is absolutely invested in swaying our political environment to their favor, and they’re willing to promote their interests by using migrants.
It’s an unfortunate reality that Chinese Canadians who are just going about their lives will see some collateral damage from our reactions to China’s meddling. We need to minimize this collateral as much as possible, but we are under genuine threat.
One thing we need to keep in mind is that Caucasian politicians can be bought just as easily, if not more so, as installing Chinese assets in our institutions.
The same thing is true for the US (who, while more similar to us, are still so far from our way of life that a documentary on “what if the US invaded Canada” could be made by a leading US media outlet).
The same thing is true for Russia.
The same thing is true for India.
The problem is that we are focusing SPECIFICALLY on Chinese foreign interference because it’s an easy target to point at. We are under threat by many different countries around the world because of our massive swathes of natural resources and our tendency to somehow produce technologies that no one can compete with (Blackberry, Nortel (milked by Huawei), Bombardier (completely fucked over by Boeing through the US DOJ)).
We need better protection against all foreign interference. Attacking a boogeyman today is just leaving us vulnerable to everything else. It’s harming our international reputation and it’s doing very little to actually protect Canadian democracy or the economy.
