Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
Well my post said her three points were basic...so I'm not sure why you seem to imply that I think she's figured something amazing out. But more to the point, when was the last diplomat that Canada expelled for these reasons? Obviously it's what we should be doing...but are we actually doing this?
In that piece, she explains that CSIS documents show that the CCP was providing money and volunteers for campaigns. They obviously have something to base this on...clearly something has to happen, right?
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Your post said that she pointed out some basic things that you thought most Canadians would agree with. I merely pointed out that while that may be the case, it doesn't necessarily solve the issue due to the complexity of intelligence organizations like CSIS. Just because something seems like a basic idea doesn't mean it's actually logical or will be successful.
Similar to my point about how some people call for the banning of guns because some criminals use them. Sure, we can ban guns (it seems like a basic idea that lots of people might agree with), but it won't stop the bad guys from getting them anyways. Sure, we can ask foreign spies to sign up for a registry like she proposed, but it likely won't work for obvious reasons. Or we could solve poverty/homelessness by providing everyone with a universal basic income. That's a nice basic idea that lots of people might agree with too, but it doesn't mean that it's logical in the complexity of the economy.
She comes across as someone who has an opinion about a topic that she knows almost nothing about, which is what I suggested in my first post. So, why would we listen to the ideas of someone who seems to have so clearly missed the mark with these 'basic' ideas?
As for expelling diplomats, I found this:
https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affa...d-kingdom.html
It's not for the same reasons as in her article, but it's obviously something we already do and are capable of doing, for a variety of reasons. So her call to expel diplomats is a bit like "Yeah, okay, we already do that". Though, the nature of intelligence operations is such that it can be quite easy for CSIS to know that foreign influence occurred, but it can be quite hard for them to prove definitively that it was carried out by a certain person/diplomat. So, expelling diplomats is a bit a tough thing, plus it has other foreign relations implications.
Regardless, my point stands, that we already do it. Besides, expelling diplomats is the least of our worries because the real heavy lifting of foreign interference isn't done by diplomats, it's done by covert spies/agents. Those people get expelled all the time, and you'll never hear about it. But, as I said in my previous post, due to the nature of China versus Canada, China likely has a ton more covert spies than we even have CSIS agents, so its a losing game for our country.
Finally, other posters in this thread questioned the legitimacy or whatever of the article. So I went and read it and gave my thoughts. I never implied you thought her points were amazing, but you seemed to agree with them. I simply suggested that her points were from someone who seems not to know what she's talking about. This wasn't some hard-hitting investigative journalism piece. This was literally someone who popped out 1000 words on a topic as quick as she could, and it shows.