In the Spirit of Honesty, Integrity, Transparency

"[We had a] constructive [discussion both agreeing to begin comprehensive negotiations on a new economic and security relationship between Canada and the United States] as sovereign nations [immediately following the 28 April federal election in Canada]."

"Look, the president says lots of things, but the essence of the [shared telephone] discussion and where we moved the conversation to was exactly what I said."

"We talked about lots of things, OK? And what's important is the conclusions of the call, the results of the call, and those are exactly the same on the American side and the Canadian side."

"And those were that it was very constructive."

"Who can stand up to President Trump, who can build Canada strong, who has the experience in order to do that?"

"That's the crucial choice that Canadians need to make."

Liberal leader, Mark Carney

U.S. President Donald Trump, left, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had their first phone conversation on March 28. Sources tell Radio-Canada that Trump raised the idea of Canada as the 51st state on the call. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters, Blair Gable/Reuters)

"I'm not their strategist, I'm not imagining wild conspiracies, but I can imagine that it serves them."

"Liberals are [juggling[ between pretending that Mr. Carney has extinguished the threat [of Trump annexing Canada] and regularly resurrecting that threat because fear has been their main argument at the start of the Liberal campaign."

Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet 

Mark Carney, smug and self-confident that he will win Monday's general election to become elected Prime Minister of Canada, is accustomed to manipulating the truth to his advantage. He evades the truth, preferring to replace it with his version of events that are likelier to portray him as he feels he should be viewed; superior, entitled and exceptional. In that way, as in so many others he is the mirror-image of the man he intends to replace, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. 

Mr. Carney has already established a track record of unethical behaviour; the most notable one to be brought to the attention of an electorate prior to the ballot, is his having ethically invalidated his doctorate by the expedient of casual plagiarism. More latterly, he denied having had any hand in moving Brookfield Asset Management headquarters from Canada to the United States, at a time when he was still its head. Nor seeking out a tax haven for Brookfield to avoid paying taxes directly in Canada. 

Now it has been revealed that in his March 28 telephone conversation with President Trump, the threat of annexing Canada to the United States had come up, even as Mr. Carney later claimed publicly that President Trump "respected Canada's sovereignty". Radio-Canada had reported that Mr. Trump had indeed brought up the idea of Canada as the 51st state during their exchange. Mr. Carney sought to exploit his version of events to portray himself as a strong leader whom the American President respected enough to avoid speaking of annexing the country.

 

Liberal Party Leader Mark Carney says his phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday morning was very ‘cordial’ between two leaders of two sovereign nations. Carney says Trump respected Canada’s sovereignty both in his private and public comments on Friday. CBC News

"To be clear, as I've said to anyone who's raised this issue in private or in public, including the president, it will never happen", Mr. Carney said at an election stop in British Columbia; that under his leadership the threat to annex Canada by economic force would never come to pass. What Mr. Carney also failed to reveal about the conversation with President Trump was his having alerted the American president that as part of his electoral campaigning, he planned to use the threats as fuel to inspire fear in Canadians to enhance his claims that he was the right person to lead Canada.

 

Accordingly, in a cooperative gesture, Trump's own read-out of the call with Carney saw him dial back talk of Canada as the 51st state. And nor has he spoken dismissively of Carney as the "governor" of Canada. He obviously finds more in common with Carney's business/banker approach to government than that of Justin Trudeau's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. If nothing else, Trump reacts to blustery confidence and he hasn't done his homework on Carney for whom DEI, a green agenda and a commitment to quash Canada's natural resources in energy are a driving force.

 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied a change of stance had occurred on the annexation of Canada; that President Trump still "believes that Canadians would benefit greatly from becoming the 51st state of the United States of America". During a signing ceremony at the Oval Office last week Mr. Trump said that Canada "would cease to exist as a country" if the U.S. stopped buying its goods and that Canada "as a state, it works great". 

"He has these things in his mind. This is not news."

"He raises it all the time. But then the question is, what's going to be done with it? And does he understand where we stand?"

"More particularly, where do I stand? He is under no illusions."

Mark Carney, aspirant to the leadership of Canada

U.S. President Donald Trump has warned that 25 per cent tariffs against Canadian-made cars could go up. He also expressed his desire to make Canada the 51st state after a period of relative quiet on his annexation threats. CBC News

 

 The latest and newest revelations of Mr. Carney's failure to respect the truth and relay it to the public at a time when voters are entitled to know exactly what it is they are voting for and for whom as a candidate most likely to act in Canada's best interests during an economic slowdown of recession proportions, during a time of provincial alienation in response to the Liberal government's decision-making impeding their decision making on energy extraction, when society in general has been politically fractured, and the country's social services and universal health care network is facing collapse, marks a failure of leadership.

 

Instead, during the campaign Carney has portrayed himself as a Canadian hero during the economic downtown of the 1980s when as Governor of the Bank of Canada, he lead Canada out of a recession; when in fact it was not he but then-Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and the Canadian banking system that saved Canada. During a recent press conference, the man who has never been elected to public office, but who aspires to govern a nation, when asked about the need for ethics and transparency laws in government, responded that he would have no problems distinguishing between rules and conduct:

"If there were specific proposals, obviously we would look at them."

"But what's important is bringing that spirit of honesty, the highest integrity, and my track record is consistent with that, but also that commitment that goes with it to transparency."

Liberal leader Mark Carney 

"I wasn't there [so cannot verify the heads-up Carney gave to Trump]."

"But what's clear is that we will stand up for our sovereignty, we will never be an American state, and we will focus on what we can control, which is to reverse the disastrous Liberal economic policies that Mark Carney advised Justin Trudeau to take."

Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, when asked about a Radio-Canada report saying U.S. President Donald Trump mentioned ‘51st state’ during a call with Prime Minister Mark Carney, said his Liberal rival will have to explain, and he reiterated his call to defend Canada’s sovereignty and focus on things Canada can control. Carney previously said Trump ‘respected Canada’s sovereignty’ during the conversation.   CBC News

Charming Beijing Captivates Liberal Loyalty

"[These comments] deeply offended, [demonstrating a] terrible lapse in judgement [however, the episode could serve as a] teachable moment."

"This is a person of integrity who served his community as a senior police officer for ... more than a quarter of [a] century. He's made a terrible lapse in judgement."

"He's made his apology. He's made it to the public, he's made it to the individual concerned, he's made it directly to me, and he's going to continue with his candidacy."

"He has my confidence." 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney

 

"[The response by Mr. Carney is indeed a] teachable moment."

"It teaches us that Mark Carney will never stand up for Canada."

"If Mark Carney won't stand up for a Canadian against this foreign hostile regime now, how could we ever expect  him to stand up for Canada after the election?"

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre

 

"He is a police officer, and he ought to know that when the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] went out and put a bounty on anybody, including Canadians, that cannot be acceptable."

"That is intimidation at its worst."

NDP MP Jenny Kwan

 

"What we saw was the news of the bounty was sort of re-upped, but we're just watching the open space for anything related to that." 

"That alone, I think, is a form of coercion."

"Spreading, again, the information about the bounty is precisely how malign foreign states seek to silence, harass and coerce."

Rapid Response Mechanism head Larisa Galadza, Global Affairs Canada

Paul Chiang is seeking re-election in Markham-Unionville, a riding he took from the Conservatives in 2021 by a margin of fewer than 2,500 votes. Justin Tang The Canadian Press file photo

"If  you can take him to the Chinese Consulate General in Toronto, you can get the million-dollar reward", advised Liberal electoral candidate Paul Chiang to an news conference comprised of Chinese-language media, in reference to Conservative candidate Joe Tay who had been charged under the Hong Kong national security law as a threat to Beijing for his Canada-based YouTube channel critical of the Beijing-dominated CCP government.

 

When the comment hit headlines in the legacy media in Canada, calls for the Liberal party to disown Mr. Chiang and remove him as a Liberal candidate for the April 28 federal election expressed the disgust of most Canadians. Derisory statements by opposing political party candidates are not uncommon during election campaigns, but seldom do they cross the line into currying to foreign interference in Canada's affairs and certainly never to the extent that one candidate incites to violence against another.

 

Pressure came fast and furious even within the Liberal party for Mr. Chaing to be removed as a candidate in view of his comments last week. The bounty in  question, in Hong Kong dollars $1 million, transcribes to $183,000 in Canadian currency. Any taker could be assured of earning themselves a reward for luring the Conservative candidate to appear at the Chinese Consulate General in Toronto where he would be spirited to China and imprisoned as a traitor to Beijing -- but certainly not to China.

 

Mr. Chaing informed the Chinese-language media that given Mr. Tay's position on China and Beijing's response, should Mr. Tay be elected to Parliament, the Hong King criminal charge would be a cause of "great controversy", according to the Ming Pao newspaper. And no doubt it would, since the Liberal Party goes out of its way to pacify Beijing, and continues to build on its relationship through trade, despite the assaults on Canadian sovereignty where Canadians have been falsely imprisoned, Canadians have received the death penalty in China, and Chinese interference in Canadian affairs is deeply troubling.

 

Liberal Leader Mark Carney says Paul Chiang will remain a candidate under his banner, despite calls to drop the Markham-Unionville incumbent for suggesting people turn in a Conservative candidate to the Chinese consulate and collect a bounty.   CBC News

Even so, even when Canadian Intelligence has warned government on many occasions through updated reports that China is among those countries -- foremost among those countries -- that have used their expatriate Chinese-Canadian community originally from Mainland China to act as agents for Beijing, as well as instructing all expats that it is their ancestral patriotic duty to infiltrate and capture whatever advances in technology, science, medicine, and military news helpful to be conveyed to China's possession.

 

Mr. Chiang himself saw fit to apologize soon after  his comments were publicized:

"The comments I made were deplorable and a complete lapse of judgement on the seriousness of the matter. I sincerely apologize and deeply regret my comments."

"I will always continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Hong Kong in their fight to safeguard their human rights and freedoms."

 

And while unelected PM-incumbent Mark Carney is satisfied to let the matter lie there and continue to approve Mr. Chiang as a Liberal candidate, the man himself took the initiative to resign from the Liberal candidacy. Whether his apology is sincere is debatable. He still took the right course in apologizing and taking himself out of the election. There is no debate that Mr. Carney, on the other hand, has often engaged in dishonourable conduct. He has bent the truth to suit his fabricated explanations.

 

And on this occasion he has spectacularly failed to act with conscience and integrity. Canadians should hold him to account for this, yet another lapse in judgement on his part. On the other hand, government officials tasked with identifying and responding to foreign threats during the election period acknowledge they are monitoring the situation closely. Moreover, the RCMP has opened an investigation in the matter. While the man aspiring to be elected Prime Minister of Canada succumbed to his own lack of moral integrity.

 

Mr. Tay has been left uneasy and concerned over his safety, given the obvious nature of the threats against him posed by a foreign government whose record on human rights is abysmal. He has stated that the situation left him fearing for his safety. Spurring him to get in touch with the RCMP for his personal protection, and demanding that Carney fire Chiang. A demand that thirteen pro-democracy groups in Canada linked to Hong Kong produced a statement urging the Liberal Party to "send a clear message" in removing Chiang's candidacy, making it clear they cannot accept his "insincere apology".  

"I want to be clear: no apology is sufficient."

"Threats like these are the tradecraft of the Chinese Communist Party to interfere in Canada."

"And they are not just aimed at me. They are intended to send a chilling signal to the entire community in order to force compliance to Beijing's political goals."

Conservative federal election candidate Joe Tay 

"[Foreign interference, including instances of transnational repression, continue to be a] pervasive threat in Canada [and the federal police takes all reports and allegations seriously]."

"The RCMP is looking into the matter, however no specific details can be provided at this time."

"To ensure the integrity of our investigations, the RCMP typically does not disclose information relating to investigations unless criminal charges are laid, rendering it a matter of public record."

RCMP spokesperson Kristine Kelly 

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, speaking in New Brunswick, says Liberal Leader Mark Carney’s decision to stand by candidate Paul Chiang, who called for people to turn in Conservative candidate Joe Tay for a Chinese bounty, ‘teaches us that Mark Carney will never stand up for Canada.’ Poilievre added that he spoke to Tay and he is ‘very, very rattled.’   CBC

"It is a teachable moment. It teaches us that Mark Carney will never stand up for Canada."

"The Chinese government literally wants to kill Joe Tay because he’s a political dissident. And this candidate said that that should happen."

"I have never in my life seen a prime minister unwilling to protect a Canadian citizen against a foreign government that wants to take his life through a bounty."

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre