News
Featured Image
Jennifer Lynn LalondeYouTube/Screenshot

OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) — The communist government of China expelled a Canadian diplomat in a direct retaliatory measure after Canada ejected a Chinese consul who was implicated in a spying scandal involving Conservative MP Michael Chong and his family.

“On May 9, the Canadian government declared a diplomat of the Consulate-General of China in Toronto persona non grata,” the Chinese Comnunist Party (CCP) Foreign Affairs Ministry said yesterday in a press release.

“China strongly condemns and firmly opposes this and has lodged serious démarches and strong protest to Canada.”

The CCP said that as a “reciprocal countermeasure in reaction to Canada’s unscrupulous move,” it declared “Jennifer Lynn Lalonde, consul of the Consulate General of Canada in Shanghai, persona non grata.”

She has been told to leave China by May 13.

The CCP also said that “China reserves the right to further react.”

The Canadian embassy for Communist China had before issued a veiled threat that the country will “play along” until the “very end” should its representative be expelled.

On Monday, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly issued a statement saying Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei is a persona non grata and was ordered to leave Canada.

“Diplomats in Canada have been warned that if they engage in this type of behaviour, they will be sent home,” Joly said.

Last Thursday, Joly said that she had summoned Ambassador Cong Peiwu in light of a harassment scandal involving Chong, whose family was the target of a Chinese diplomat Wei.

Last week, Chong was finally told by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) that he and his family were the targets of a spying and intimidation tactic campaign by Wei, who is an agent of the CCP. CSIS head David Vigneault confirmed with Chong in an in-person meeting in Ottawa that the spying came about because the MP supported a motion in parliament in 2021 that condemned the CCP’s actions in Xinjiang as genocide.

A CSIS report, dated July 20, 2021, shows that the CCP’s own intelligence agency, Ministry of State Security (MSS), “has taken specific actions to target Canadian MPs” who in February 2021 voted for a motion that condemned China’s oppression of Uyghurs and other minorities, calling them an act of genocide.

The Chinese embassy said that Canada was trying to “attempt to make political gains and draw attention, driven by ideological bias, and some Canadian politicians and media have been manipulating China-related issues, attacking and discrediting China.”

On Monday, Canada’s House of Commons in a majority vote passed a Conservative Party motion condemning Communist China’s “intimidation campaign” against MPs as well as calling for known “diplomats responsible” for such tactics to be expelled.

Last week, Chong revealed to the House of Commons that staff from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Privy Council Office (PCO) knew two years ago his family was the targets of the CCP intimidation tactics.

Trudeau has claimed he did not know about Chong being spied on, saying that CSIS did not send the top-secret report about Chong up the chain of command, because the agency felt it “wasn’t a significant enough concern” and did not meet a “threshold that required them to pass it up.”

Opposition parties, notably the CPC, have been for weeks demanding that Trudeau launch a full independent public inquiry into the Chinese election meddling scandal.

However, he recently appointed former governor general David Johnston as an “independent special rapporteur” to investigate the allegations.

Johnston was listed as a member of the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation, whose entire board of directors and CEO and president resigned last month after a report surfaced detailing how the non-profit group received a $200,000 donation that was alleged to be connected to the CCP.

After the scandal broke, his name disappeared from its website.

To date, Trudeau has denied that he was involved with the foundation’s work.

2 Comments

    Loading...