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Originally Posted by Firebot
Which part of the leak are you contesting?
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Based on the report, the following isn't backed by the evidence even though it was alleged in the articles:
-The PRC covertly provided $250K in funds to 11 campaigns
-The PRC would funnel money to people to reimburse them for the net costs of political donations (after the tax deduction)
-The government was explicitly warned that Chinese agents were assisting candidates running for office in the 2019 election
-Dong tried to delay the release of Spavor and Kovrig
Those make up the most explosive of the allegations, but they don't seem have happened.
So what does that leave? They collected information on sitting MPs to see if they could pressure them to benefit China? Yeah, the fact that the MPs weren't notified is an intelligence and government failure.
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Let's say for hypothetical sake, that Han Dong did not actually request for the Michaels.
What does this change? Chong was targeted, that we know. We now know that O'Toole was targeted. we also know that Han Dong was under intense suspicious, so much so that he had a call name "scarecrow". Outside of the bus loads of Chinese students and the Michael question, everything else from the leaks that could be easily validated has been admitted to.
The meeting between Han Dong and the Chinese diplomat did occur, Han Dong was under surveillance by CSIS. The only details put in question are the very same details that are not publicly available, and are not being made available unless CSIS divulges it, or a public inquiry occurs. So until that occurs, it can be denied and you just have to trust Johnston.
This is akin to asking the wolf what happened to the sheep it was guarding, and taking the wolf's word because he was guarding the sheep after all.
Remove the Han Dong related technicalities that cannot be verified without the transcripts and public inquiry, and you are still left with a web of foreign interference that has targeted our democratic system which requires a public inquiry.
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None of that really matters as it relates to Dong. There's nothing wrong with him talking to Chinese consular officials, and CSIS being suspicious means little to me without any evidence (or even allegations) about what he's doing wrong.
As for the evidence, it's classified so it's unlikely a public inquiry is going to reveal anything either. It's still going to remain under wraps and you're going to just have to trust whoever has security clearance to view and analyze it.
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A Chinese diplomat was expulsed from our country for their action, something that would not just be done on a whim, it was initially deemed not a concern by Trudeau and apparently that has already been forgotten.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/csi...port-1.6831920
The only reason we learned of Chong and O'Toole being targets, of which we know 100% that the PMO was briefed on in regards to Chong, is due to the leaks, and subsequent revelations.
The public inquiry must happen
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I don't know, to me the most likely explanation is what's in the report. If Trudeau knew that his government had been provided with that information, I'm skeptical he would have said it never left CSIS. He's not the brightest person, and he's totally capable of lying through his teeth, but he's not
that dumb. Remember, it was his own National Security Advisor that told Chong that it was shared outside CSIS. If Trudeau was aware of that, it would have been extremely easy to throw lower level government staff under the bus and claim it never got to him, rather than looking like an idiot and hurting himself politically by saying it never left CSIS, only to be contradicted by his own Advisor soon after.
Call me naive if you want, but so far this has played out how I thought it probably would based on the original reporting. Some of the allegations simply made no sense if you thought about them critically, and those are the ones that seem to fall apart under scrutiny. Others seemed more plausible, and they're the ones that seem to have real evidence behind them. To me it looks more like a poorly run government where important intelligence slips through the cracks, rather than corruption or malice. That's not to say there shouldn't be a public inquiry, but I just don't share your outrage based on the evidence so far. To me this seems like pretty standard operations; superpowers have always interfered in other countries' internal affairs in order to benefit themselves. That's a pretty far cry from the narrative of Chinese agents being planted in the Canadian government with the willing cooperation of the Liberal party that people were talking about a couple of months ago.