中国历史上曾有”莫须有“，文革，没有真凭实据就对人进行迫害。五十年代，美国也曾经出现麦卡锡主义。今天，有主流媒体将此评论麦卡锡主义(McCarthyism)的回潮，并用司法部长马凯的名字命名，McCarthyism。——
The spectre of foreign influence in Ontario: CohnIs someone betraying Queen’s Park, Queen and country by consorting and conspiring with the enemy?
If you haven’t heard of him yet, meet Michael Chan, the Chinese-born politician who has penetrated the highest reaches of Ontario’s cabinet.
Is he Canada’s Kim Philby, the notorious double agent unmasked by British counter-intelligence and unveiled by a fearless media?
Has Chan been aiding and abetting his homeland — you know, his motherland, the People’s Republic of China? And betraying Queen’s Park, Queen and country by allegedly consorting and conspiring with the enemy?
Federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay put out word this week that CSIS is on the case. With a flourish of 1950s-era McCarthyism — call it MacKayism — the justice minister proclaimed an “ongoing investigation” by Canada’s spy agency of Chan’s activities as a provincial cabinet minister.
The allegation? All I know is what I read in the papers.
This week, front-page stories in the Globe and Mail declared that the provincial trade minister has met repeatedly (and I repeat — repeatedly!) with China’s consul general in Toronto. Why is it newsworthy when a trade minister meets a foreign diplomat to discuss trade matters of mutual interest?
Five years ago, it was a story. Then CSIS chief Richard Fadden blurted out that the spy agency was keeping an eye on two unnamed provincial cabinet ministers who might be falling under the influence of foreign governments. For the record, Fadden said at the time the ministers were unaware of whatever it was the foreign governments were up to.
End of story? Full disclosure: Journalists at the Toronto Star and various other media learned long ago that Chan was one of those provincial politicians being eyeballed by CSIS, but there was nothing to disclose beyond innuendo — innocuous and innocent activities.
Fuller disclosure: I have met with Chinese diplomats in Toronto. Also Taiwanese envoys. (Note to CSIS: The Star paid for lunch.) I have travelled to countries hostile to Canada — Iran, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea and Taliban Afghanistan. I lived in Hong Kong for seven years and my two children were born on Chinese soil (oh, and we gave them Persian names).
Happily, CSIS has never taken note of me or my daughters. Let’s hope the justice minister doesn’t one day smear any of us with MacKayism.
Chan, however, isn’t so lucky. Curiously, he is now front-page news five long years later.
We no longer throw Japanese Canadians into detention camps on suspicion of aiding the enemy by virtue of their heritage. Why assume someone who left China’s Communist dictatorship as a teenager would now be their lackey?
“Ontarians deserve the truth,” cried Progressive Conservative MPP Steve Clark this week, demanding that Premier Kathleen Wynne come clean on Chan. Odd that Clark wouldn’t put that question to his fellow Tories in Ottawa, given Mackay’s reference to a five-year-old supposedly “ongoing investigation” that has not resulted in any charges against Chan, nor even a personal interview by the RCMP or CSIS. Goodness knows what state interests might have been compromised in all this time.
In an open letter Wednesday denouncing the Globe’s “ludicrous allegations,” Chan made a key point: Despite being a cabinet minister for the past eight years, he has remained — like most provincial politicians — virtually invisible and unknown.
Now all that has changed: “For many, their first impressions of me will be from the headlines in the recent Globe articles.”
Chan’s statement makes the case that newer Canadians should not automatically come under undue suspicion. The canard of divided loyalties has long plagued ethnic or religious groups — not just the Japanese, but the Jews, as history tells us.
There is nothing wrong with CSIS sleuths keeping an eye on foreign diplomats and agents plying their trade on Canadian soil. There is every reason to be vigilant about the well-documented “United Front” tactics of the Chinese government in trying rally support and suppress criticism overseas — I wrote about it while posted in Hong Kong.
The challenge, as with all surveillance and reconnaissance, is to put it in context. When a provincial trade minister of Chinese descent meets Chinese diplomats to discuss upcoming trade missions to China, or fans out into the local Chinese Canadian community for fundraising or vote getting, it’s hard to fathom how that rises to the level of actionable intelligence, or front-page news, or ammunition for the opposition PCs.
Another mistake is to assume that soft power — the way the Chinese try to wield disproportionate influence — means targeting only so-called “overseas Chinese” such as Chan. Beijing is far shrewder in its tactics, identifying white people in power as potential “influencers” and “friends of China.” That ranges from free trips and sumptuous banquets for MPs and journalists (nope, not me) to buying controlling stakes in major Canadian corporations.
Let’s not get fixated on Communist China and a Red under every bed. After all, CSIS has also identified India as a foreign power seeking information and influence on Canadian soil.
Will our counter-espionage service open a file on Ontario’s new PC leader, Patrick Brown, who boasts of visiting India more than a dozen times and winning an endorsement from its prime minister, Narendra Modi? Has a future PC premier fallen under the sway of India?
No, that would be the worst kind of McCarthyism — and MacKayism seems not to apply to fellow Tories. Might it also be because Brown is white, while Chan looks Chinese?
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楼主: 泥人国
狗仔卡
发表于 2015-6-21 08:21:09
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