Canada scrutinizes China’s role in elections and mines
Ottawa is under more and more pressure to shield Canada’s elections and its critical minerals from Chinese influence. But these are big and complicated tasks that will likely further strain ties with Beijing.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he would appoint an independent special rapporteur to help investigate allegations of foreign interference in his country’s elections and democratic institutions.
In his speech, Trudeau emphasized that multiple reports have determined that the results of recent elections “were not impacted by foreign interference,” despite attempted efforts to do so. He added that Canada has long been aware of attempts by China, Iran, and Russia to interfere in its domestic affairs. “This is not a new problem,” he said.
Trudeau has come under intense public scrutiny and pressure from opposition parties over allegations that China tried to influence the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. Local media, citing unverified intelligence reports, earlier claimed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) orchestrated covert campaigns backing 11 federal candidates to ensure that Trudeau’s Liberal Party formed a minority government over the opposition Conservatives.
China’s embassy in Canada called the claims “pure slander and total nonsense,” while accusing the media of creating “false reports and spread[ing] all kinds of disinformation.”
Ottawa’s assurances of an interference-free election have done little to quell the rumblings from Canadian citizens across the political spectrum. Nearly two out of three Canadians believe that China attempted to interfere with recent elections, according to an online survey by the Angus Reid Institute. Meanwhile, 69% Canadians believe “the federal government is afraid to stand up to China.”
“Foreign interference is a complex landscape that should not be boiled down to sound bites and binary choices,” Trudeau stated. “It should certainly not be about partisan politics.”
In November 2022, a hot mic caught Chinese President Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 confronting Trudeau for leaking information about their discussion on foreign interference from their earlier meeting at the G20 summit in Bali. The awkward moment went viral.
Canada won’t purge existing Chinese companies out of its mining projects
Despite the growing suspicions about China, Ottowa will not force Chinese state-owned investors to divest their stakes in three of Canada’s largest mining companies, amid industry fears that doing so would cut off smaller mining firms from accessing a crucial source of capital.
“If you start looking backwards at investments, it will create all kinds of uncertainty about whether an investment is ever really an investment,” Canadian Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said, per Reuters.
The three Canadian mining giants include Teck Resources, Ivanhoe Mines, and First Quantum Minerals, all of which list Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as their biggest single shareholder.
In November 2022, Ottawa ordered three Chinese companies to divest their stakes in critical mineral projects in Canada over national security concerns. Western-allied economies have been ramping up their protections on who controls key resources, such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel, which are key ingredients in powering the batteries for electric vehicles.
Years of tense ties with China
Trudeau’s investigation, and the fallout over Chinese investments in Canada’s mining companies have further strained ties between Ottawa and Beijing.
Relations have been tense ever since Canadian police detained Mèng Wǎnzhōu 孟晚舟, the former CFO of Chinese telecom giant Huawei, in 2018. Beijing followed up by arresting two Canadians on spying charges. All three were freed in 2021.
China has also protested against being labeled a threat in Canada’s new Indo-Pacific strategy, accusing Ottawa of “being biased and exaggerating confrontation in the document.”
Meanwhile, Canada is among a number of democratic nations that have grown more concerned about Chinese espionage, after the U.S. shot down two high-altitude balloons hovering over Lake Huron and the Yukon, in Canadian territory. Results from the Yukon investigation showed it was a U.S. pico balloon, while authorities have called off the search for the downed object over Lake Huron.
