The issue of foreign influence in Canadian politics has once again hit the headlines in a big way.
David Johnston, Canada’s former governor general, appointed as a third-party investigator into foreign interference in this country’s politics, recently announced Canada does not need a public inquiry into the matter.
Canada may not need such an inquiry, but opposition parties certainly want one – even after Johnston explained he intends the matter of foreign influence to be investigated in an open and public manner, not discussed behind closed doors.
This is the latest fallout since it became public knowledge Conservative MP Michael Chong’s family members living in Hong Kong had been threatened by the Chinese government.
Most Canadians were not shocked by the information – angry, yes, but not surprised. We are well aware foreign fingers have been poking into our elections for quite some time, in the form of disturbing stories on social media about certain candidates, awkward campaign donations, and possibly robocalls redirecting voters to the wrong polling stations.
The concept is not new, and not limited to secret branches of the Russian and Chinese governments. Western powers have been known to pour cash into propping up or knocking down certain regimes – or, in the case of Al-Qaeda, both, although at different times.
Encyclopedia Britannica describes “dollar diplomacy” as a deliberate policy of using money to interfere in other countries. In the early 1900s, the administrations of U.S. presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft implemented a policy of using American financial investments to control other countries’ governments, including overthrowing the government of Nicaragua. It was also used in China and Mexico.
The idea of dollar diplomacy was to protect American interests. Even in the early 1900s, there was a realization that, to paraphrase a modern term, “what happened in Vegas did not necessarily stay in Vegas.” A political disruption a thousand miles away could indeed cause problems at home.
Modern communication was already making the world smaller, and every technological step forward over the years has continued the process. Any incident anywhere in the world creates ripples that spread much faster than the proverbial speeding bullet. Any one of those ripples has the potential of becoming a tsunami.
The Chinese cannot be blamed for using the “dollar diplomacy” techniques they learned from western powers. They can, however, be called out on it, and they have been. They know that we know. So does everyone else.
The moral of the story, as far as ordinary Canadians are concerned, is awareness.
If candidates at the federal and provincial levels can be targeted as subject to coercion through family members in Hong Kong or mainland China, especially in ridings where the Chinese government wants influence, what about a municipality located in an area where there is a huge nuclear power plant, or key suppliers for it?
Political candidates at every level, including municipal, have to be scrupulous about keeping track of campaign donations.
It goes further than that. All of us need to be on the alert, especially during election campaigns, for fake social media postings.
If something seems outrageous, bizarre or totally out of character for a candidate, party or major supporter of either, we need to put the item to the test. If it is genuine news, the story will be in mainstream news publications, not just by authors with no verifiable credentials, in journals and blogs no one has heard of.
As a point of interest, it is not only foreign agents who use intimidation, fake news and other sneaky and sometimes illegal tactics to mess with our government.
We need to ask ourselves if a lobby group or delegation has an agenda that is somewhat different from what they claim.
There seems to be a move afoot, on both sides of the 49th, to “protect” society by banning information that does not meet some group’s narrow definition of what is right.
Ignorance is not bliss, it is simply ignorance.
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Pauline Kerr is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter with Midwestern Newspapers. For question or comment, contact her at pkerr@midwesternnewspapers.com.
