Treason's High Bar

Global Better Be Right

I know I’m speaking from the cheap seats when I say this, but if I were a reporter for a major news organization, I think I’d be a little more careful accusing elected politicians of treason than Global’s been, and it’s weird that nobody’s calling them on this.

It’s bad that Pierre Poilievre accused Justin Trudeau of working in China’s interest and not Canada’s in the House this week, but hyperbole from political leaders is explicable, if not particularly healthy. That said, my high school World Issues teacher referred to Stephen Harper as “Emperor Harper” my entire Senior year, so partisanship is a hell of a drug. But Global News has now declared both a Liberal MP and a PCPO MPP participants in this ring of Chinese interference, and I can’t get beyond that.

When they called Han Dong a “witting” accomplice to foreign interference, that was bad enough given the (in my view) paucity of actual evidence against him, but yesterday they reported that Vincent Ke, the twice-duly elected Provincial Member for Don Valley North (the same seat Dong represents) was allegedly the conduit for $250k of money emanating (again, allegedly) from the Chinese government that was disbursed to either him or to candidates for both the CPC and the LPC in the 2019 federal election.

The allegation is that Ke was the point person for a funnel of money, that was then spread out in nominally legal ways to candidates that would be pro-China. The allegation is that he did so as an elected MPP, and that he funneled money to both Liberals and Conservatives. (I should note these allegations have been forcefully denied per Global’s report.)

Here’s my thing about this, knowing precisely fuck all about this MPP before yesterday – if he did what he is alleged to have done, he committed treason. Actively aiding a foreign power to circumvent Canadian election law – let alone a foreign adversarial power – is treason. It is as clear and obvious a case of treason as can exist, if we’re being honest.

And Global ran the story based on unconfirmed documents we can’t see, and while actively confirming that they did not independently confirm the allegations around the money and whether it was disbursed as alleged.

That seems really fucking bad.

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I’ve had issues with the way the media has covered all of this this whole time, and I think in a lot of ways it’s been pretty thin gruel that’s been passed off as meaningful. The Globe reporting that Chinese Canadians gave money to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation as if that would hurt the Justin Trudeau government was particularly bad, because the Globe knows as well as anyone that Justin doesn’t have anything to do with the foundation in Pierre’s name.

Is it notable that the Chinese tried to do this? Sure, but it’s notable because it shows how unsophisticated their attempts to interfere were – they thought because it had Trudeau in the name those donations would act as a form of bribe. The concept of actual arms length independence is foreign to them, and this shows that. It also probably makes the point that if China was so unsophisticated in 2013, do we really believe they managed to fix all those problems in 6 years, but your mileage may vary there.

What doesn’t seem to be particularly arguable to me is that Global has appointed themselves judge and jury of whether or not Chinese-Canadians have been sufficiently loyal to us or not, and while they’re not using the explicit language of treason, the accusations they’re making about the conduct of both Dong and Ke are accusations of treason. Accusing someone of working with a foreign power to evade and circumvent Canadian law and Canadian interests is the highest crime you can accuse someone of. And Global is doing it without being able to independently confirm any of the allegations.

What Global has reported is innuendo, but it’s formal innuendo – it’s in some document, therefore it’s true. There’s no proof for it – no attempt to piece together a paper trail or to show their work, no leak of the documents themselves, just a news organization that wrote an article without specifying exactly what the relevant documents actually were and potentially misleading us on how high up that report ever would have gotten.

The problem with all of this is that there’s a very real and inarguably bad problem that needs to be solved around Chinese interference in marginal seats that may or may not have cost the Conservatives seats in 2021, and that’s being co-opted into a frankly bullshit narrative that includes a lot of accusations that plainly don’t stand up to scrutiny. What we have now is a news organization that has decided it’s judge, jury, and executioner, and a reporter who’s watched All The President’s Men too many times.

The thing about Watergate, which the Global reporter leading these stories invoked as a comparison himself today, is that Woodward and Bernstein had it before they started a wild goose chase. They didn’t run more than what they had, they didn’t make allegations they couldn’t stand up, and when they did publish key stories, they made sure they were right. This is not that, because all Global is doing isn’t journalism, it’s CSIS stenography.

Han Dong is a CSIS person of interest because he’s friends with a former provincial cabinet minister who was first a subject of CSIS investigation in 2010. In 13 years, CSIS has been unable to get anything on this guy, but of course, the fact he’s of interest to CSIS still matters. Dong “emerged suddenly and suspiciously” as a candidate in Don Valley North in 2019 when the incumbent Liberal retired according to CSIS, don’t forget, an assessment so pathetically divorced from reality to be comic. But sure, they’re really on the ball.

What Global is doing stopped being journalism and started being client stenography – a news report openly admitting they didn’t independently verify any of the claims in their article isn’t news reporting any more, it’s glorified gossip. If any of this information from CSIS could hold up as evidence, why wouldn’t the RCMP have it, and not Global?

At some point, there needs to be a conversation about CSIS and its value, or lack thereof, as an objective source of facts and truth on this issue. This is not one whistleblower leaking against a government, this is a coordinated set of leaks on multiple fronts. CSIS is leaking documents to a reporter and a news organization that has decided in their own heads the outcomes.

We need an investigation into whether the Liberals knew China was helping them and let it happen. We also need to have an honest conversation about CSIS and the journalists who decided that they don’t have to verify intelligence claims before accusing politicians of treason. Because if we allow news organizations to do this and keep their reputations intact, our democracy will suffer for it.