{"id":192685,"date":"2018-12-06T04:43:30","date_gmt":"2018-12-06T09:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=192685"},"modified":"2018-12-06T04:43:30","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T09:43:30","slug":"closed-meeting-between-mps-and-chinese-officials-planned-then-cancelled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/12\/06\/closed-meeting-between-mps-and-chinese-officials-planned-then-cancelled\/","title":{"rendered":"Closed meeting between MPs and Chinese officials planned, then cancelled"},"content":{"rendered":"
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FILE: Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario (Photo<\/a> By Shawn Nystrand\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA \u2014 An all-party committee of elected MPs planned a closed-door meeting with a delegation of Chinese politicians and diplomats this week, but abruptly cancelled it on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

A former Canadian ambassador to China said the meeting was a bad idea in the first place because holding it in-camera meant a lost opportunity for Canada to show Beijing how a democracy really works.<\/p>\n

The meeting was cancelled one day after Canada’s new top spy told a business audience that interference by hostile states has now become a greater threat to Canadian national security than terrorism.<\/p>\n

The Commons foreign-affairs committee had planned to meet in-camera for one hour on Thursday with Lu Shaye, Beijing’s ambassador to Canada, and four visiting members of the National People’s Congress of China.<\/p>\n

The congress is China’s legislature, consisting of nearly 3,000 deputies.<\/p>\n

William Spotton, a spokesman for committee chair Michael Levitt, a Toronto Liberal, said Wednesday that the \u201cChinese cancelled that meeting for tomorrow\u201d but he said he did not know the reason. Asked why the meeting was initially closed, he replied: \u201cthey’ve cancelled so there’s nothing really to comment on.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Mulroney, who has served as a Canadian ambassador to China as well as a national-security adviser, said it was a \u201cdumb\u201d idea for elected MPs to agree in the first place to meet in private with the Chinese delegation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find this surprising and unfortunate,\u201d said Mulroney.<\/p>\n

\u201cParliament should be taking every opportunity to show how a democracy works. Instead, it’s being more Chinese than the Chinese, effectively shielding the ambassador from public and, possibly, critical scrutiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada and China had a diplomatic dust-up last month when the foreign ministry in Beijing criticized the Canadian ambassador for spearheading a letter-writing effort by 14 fellow envoys. They expressed concern over the jailing of hundreds of thousands of its Muslim minorities in re-education camps in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

Beijing is also unhappy with the Liberal government for a decision earlier this year that cited national-security concerns to block the $1.5-billion purchase of the Canadian construction giant Aecon by a Chinese state-owned company.<\/p>\n

Mulroney, who served as Canada’s envoy to China from 2009 to 2012, has been a vocal critic of China’s efforts to meddle in the affairs of foreign countries, including Canada’s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a multi-party briefing, not a negotiating session. We should be wary of creating another channel for the Chinese, who are skilled practitioners of divide and conquer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, David Vigneault, the new head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told the Economic Club of Canada in a speech that the \u201ccorporate secrets\u201d and \u201cintellectual property\u201d of Canadian companies are being targeted by \u201chostile foreign intelligence services.\u201d He said those state actors are now a greater threat to national security than terrorists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe national security community \u2014 of which I am part \u2014 and the business community \u2014 of which you are part \u2014 have a shared interest in raising public awareness of the scope and nature of state-sponsored espionage against Canada, and of its potential effect on our economic growth and ability to innovate,\u201d Vigneault said in his speech.<\/p>\n

That followed a 2016 warning by CSIS that Russia and China were targeting Canadian government officials and systems, as well as classified information and advanced technology.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday morning, the foreign-affairs committee’s website showed that an in-camera meeting with Lu and the four visiting Chinese deputies was to take place at 10 a.m. Thursday in a federal government building in the parliamentary precinct.<\/p>\n

The committee’s website listed the meeting as \u201cIn Camera \u2014 without audio recording\u201d as of late Wednesday morning. By early Wednesday afternoon, the meeting status was updated to \u201ccancelled.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parliamentary committees are allowed to meet in-camera to discuss draft reports or other administrative or planning matters. They can also meet in-camera if their chairs and their members agree to do so.<\/p>\n

The same committee heard open testimony from two Somali government officials on Wednesday, and recently hosted an open session with a visiting Finnish delegation.<\/p>\n

Erin O’Toole, the Conservative vice-chair of the committee, said it is \u201cnot irregular\u201d for visiting delegations to be heard in-camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have concerns today about discussions about ‘in-camera, no recordings,’ these sorts of things,\u201d said O’Toole, but he added he didn’t know who made the request or why.<\/p>\n

O’Toole said the only time he could recall an in-camera meeting not being recorded was during a discussion about foreign hostages, so witnesses felt at ease sharing sensitive information with MPs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA \u2014 An all-party committee of elected MPs planned a closed-door meeting with a delegation of Chinese politicians and diplomats …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":98364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","mauthors-mike-blanchfield","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}