Chinese government officials tried to influence Canadian MPs to vote against a 2021 motion condemning China’s genocide of Uyghurs and even looked to build “profiles” on certain parliamentarians after the vote.
The document reveals that People’s Republic of China (PRC) officials made “initial” efforts to influence an unspecified number of MPs to vote against the motion recognizing the country’s treatment of its Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim minorities as “genocide.”
The motion ultimately passed unanimously in the House of Commons. But after the vote, the document states the PRC began efforts to “build profiles on a number of MPs” who supported the motion.
“This research may have informed the PRC’s decision to impose economic sanctions on some of those MPs or may have informed other actions,” reads the unclassified summary of intelligence produced for the inquiry.
Those were just some of the examples of suspected or confirmed foreign interference efforts by China against Canadian MPs brought up during Michael Chong’s testimony on Wednesday.
The Conservative MP also revealed that in October last year he was approached by an individual in the street offering him “political support, assistance with elections, and political advice here on (Parliament Hill),” he told the inquiry.
