Politicians including a Liberal MP and a senator say they fear allegations of Chinese interference in the 2019 federal election will lead to anti-Asian racism.
But opposition critics, including some who say they have borne the brunt of such racism themselves, are accusing them of deflecting legitimate questions that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must answer.
In an interview with The Canadian Press, Liberal MP Han Dong suggested that claims of Beijing's interference have been light on detail.
"If it's so vague, then I think a lot of Chinese Canadians feel that they might be targeted," he said.
"I have a big target on the back."
Global News reported last month that after the 2019 election, senior officials had briefed Trudeau about a "vast campaign of foreign interference" allegedly waged by China's consulate in Toronto.
The allegations, which The Canadian Press has not been able to verify, involve the Chinese Communist Party flowing funds to a pro-Beijing network in Canada that included at least 11 Liberal and Conservative candidates who ran in that election.
Non-partisan officials, including the chief electoral officer, have stressed that they believe the election was conducted fairly. Bill Blair, who was federal public safety minister at the time, confirmed last week that he had seen the 2020 memo that Global based its reporting on, but would not discuss its contents.
Dong argues the reporting has left unanswered questions that could cause people to make assumptions based on anti-Asian tropes.
Advocacy groups have documented a disturbing spike in racist incidents against Asian Canadians since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The worst of vagueness is (that) it's very easy to trigger another round of anti-Chinese racism or anti-Chinese hate we saw during the pandemic," said Dong, who immigrated to Canada from China in his youth.
"I'm worried that the outcome of it will negatively hurt the Chinese Canadian community here."
Dong said that he has not been accused of being under Chinese influence. He said he is also not aware of allegations against any other MPs he knows.
But he said he is concerned that if China did indeed attempt to distribute funds, MPs and unsuccessful candidates might not have a way of knowing whether the alleged network sent them money, and under which names in Elections Canada donation records.
"The candidates may have no idea. Like, most likely, they have no idea," said Dong, who represents the riding of Don Valley North in Toronto.
"The perpetrator is really whoever is plotting this."
Dong said he discussed his concerns with Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, whose office said he was unavailable for an interview.
In spring 2021, the Conservatives had objected to a suggestion Trudeau made that their questions about Chinese interference could wade into intolerance. At the time, they were pressing him on reports that scientists at Canada's main infectious diseases laboratory in Winnipeg had been collaborating with Chinese military researchers.
Former Tory MP Kenny Chiu, who was born in Hong Kong, had compared Trudeau's response to the communist regime's tactics of conflating dissent with anti-Chinese sentiment.
In an interview this week, Chiu said that Dong's argument follows the same logic, whether intentionally or not.
"It's just preposterous and ridiculous," he said.
Chiu pointed to allegations in Australia that China was supporting candidates who could replace politicians critical of Beijing, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds.
"Why is Han Dong trying to portray that the 11 candidates are Chinese?" Chiu asked, saying the focus on their ethnicity is "not good."
"China is far more sophisticated than that," he said.
Chiu lost his seat in the 2021 election, during which he was the subject of a Chinese-language disinformation campaign that he suspects was linked to Beijing, although authorities have never confirmed this.
NDP MP Jenny Kwan said the Liberals need to take the allegations of interference more seriously.
"What has created a vacuum on the details of the information, in my view, is not the media but the prime minister himself," the Vancouver MP said in an interview.
Kwan, who was born in Hong Kong, said the allegations "go to the heart of our democratic system" and argued that Trudeau and his ministers have given contradictory statements about them.
She noted that security officials have briefed Vancouver's former mayor about possible Chinese influence in last fall's municipal election.
"The threat is real. Something is happening; we don't know exactly what," she said. "If the Liberals persist in hiding this information, they are not helping to clear the air."
And while Dong and Chiu said Canadians need to remember the difference between Canadians of Chinese origin and the communist regime, Kwan said the media and most Canadians already make that distinction.
Kwan said she's been the victim of "disgusting and gross" anti-Asian acts, such as instances of people referring to COVID-19 as the "Jenny Kwan virus," but she said this shouldn't hold people back from asking questions about Beijing.
"We have a Liberal MP and a senator trying to redirect the focus of the issue to the media and their reporting," she claimed.
She was referring to comments last Thursday by B.C. Sen. Yuen Pau Woo, who called the Global News story "an egregious example of disinformation" — despite Trudeau's national security adviser saying she didn't know whether or not the reporting was accurate.
"There is a witch hunt going on for the names of the 11 candidates as well as the identities of an unspecified number of campaign workers and political staffers," Woo said in the Senate chamber last Thursday.
"It is no surprise that Chinese Canadians are among those who are most likely to be put under a cloud," said Woo, a member of the Independent Senators Group appointed under Trudeau.
Since then, Global News published a highly redacted intelligence assessment that found the 2019 election was subject to "an active foreign interference (FI) network."
Woo stood by his earlier argument, noting the media outlet has not published the document that claims 11 candidates were targeted.
Woo, who was born in Malaysia and raised in Singapore, has been accused by Tories in the past of being pro-Beijing. The accusations followed instances such as Woo voting against a motion to condemn the treatment of Uyghurs and saying that Ottawa should take more constructive steps to draw attention to the issue.
In an email, Woo pushed back on Dong and Kwan's remarks, saying the issue isn't a lack of information but a lack of corroboration of the allegations made in the reports.
International Trade Minister Mary Ng wouldn't comment on whether the allegations surrounding the 2019 election are having a negative effect on Asian Canadians, but said everyone shares a responsibility to prevent that from happening.
"There is an absolute commitment for us to take (this) seriously, and to work to make sure that there is no foreign interference," Ng said.
"But we must also do that in a way that does not give rise to racism of any sort," she added.
"We have to be very careful about our words."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 23, 2022.
— With files from Laura Osman
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