Tristin Hopper
National Post, Mar. 6, 2023
“Pierre Trudeau had an open affinity for Communist China that would be strange even by the standards of 2023.”
Of the many CSIS leaks to hit headlines in recent days, one of the most explosive was an intelligence report claiming that Chinese agents have pursued an “influence” operation against Justin Trudeau since his earliest days as an opposition MP.
What’s less clear, however, is whether such an operation was even necessary.
When Trudeau was sworn is as prime minister in 2015, Canadians might have known that they were getting a leader who had spent his entire life enjoying a bizarrely personal relationship with the government of Communist China.
Trudeau was still a child when his prime minister father Pierre Trudeau was introducing him to intimates of Mao Zedong. Within months of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, a teenaged Justin was with his family on a VIP trip to China during which his father made great pains to avoid criticizing the actions of Beijing’s leadership.
Through it all, the elder Trudeau was explicit about framing the People’s Republic as a friend of Canada whose methods were not to be criticized.