Canada’s foreign minister Mélanie Joly drew heated criticism for her surprise visit to China recently, especially after a stunning damage-control interview in which the Montreal Liberal MP shared that Ottawa doesn’t really have concerns with Beijing’s conduct but “it’s more Canadian perceptions toward China, which are negative right now. And it’s important for China to understand that.”

However, a close analysis of players involved in Joly’s precursor under-the-radar junket to China in 2018, and a similar trip two decades ago by her mentor Prime Minister Jean Chretien, suggests Joly’s comments should come as no surprise.

Indeed, for Canadian analysts knowledgeable on the nation’s ongoing Chinese-interference scandal and the underlying, decades-old business and geopolitical relationships between elites in Montreal and Beijing, Joly’s remarks make perfect sense, and echo statements from her party seniors including Chretien and former ambassadors including John McCallum and Dominic Barton.

To start with, online records from a People’s Liberation Army entity called China Cultural Industry Association show that in 2018, Joly led a delegation to China.

Chinese and Canadian businesses met to “promote the deepening cooperation between Canada and China in the fields of international trade,” CCIA’s website says.

This April 2018 meeting was arranged by a notorious Chinese tycoon named Bin Zhang and the CCIA, the website says.

CCIA and its nominal head, Bin Zhang, are central to the scandal of a massive donation to Pierre and Justin Trudeau’s family foundation in 2016, reportedly part of an effort by Beijing to financially influence Prime Minister Trudeau.

Regarding the meeting between CCIA members and Joly, CCIA’s website says “in April 2018, Mélanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage, led a creative industry and trade delegation of more than 30 companies to visit China. The purpose was to promote China-Canada cultural trade and investment cooperation and strengthen cooperation in practical projects between the two countries by establishing closer ties.”

The Canadian companies traveling with Joly are not named, but CCIA’s website says Joly’s delegation and its “business matching session … [was] jointly hosted by the China Cultural Industry Association and the Canada-China Business Council.”

Canada-China Business Council’s founding members include Montreal’s Power Corporation and Beijing’s CITIC, the council’s website says.

Former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien — one of Joly’s sponsors — worked for Power Corp. before becoming Liberal leader and married into the Montreal Desmarais family behind the sprawling empire, valued around $48-billion U.S. according to the Wall Street Journal.

Pierre Trudeau has also worked with Power Corp., along with a number of elite Liberal Party members.

The Journal’s 2016 profile of Power Corp. cites André Desmarais — who married Chretien’s daughter — as recalling “taking his children on business trips to China and allowing them to participate by signing deal papers for ventures their father was negotiating.”

The story reports that Chretien’s grandson Olivier Desmarais was among the family members being groomed to lead Power Corp.

CITIC according to Canadian intelligence and media reports is also a dynastic empire controlled by Beijing’s Red Princelings, including scions of Deng Xiaoping.

One of the China Cultural Industry Association’s current members is China Poly Culture — according to its website — a “joint venture trading company [that] was founded by the PLA General Staff Department and CITIC.”

Both CITIC and Power Corp. attracted controversial attention when the Panama Papers scandal broke in 2016.

Until 2015 Power owned stocks in CITIC, “a Chinese company that regularly used the services of Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based law firm at the centre of the data leak scandal that exposed the tax-avoidance practices of the rich and famous,” CBC’s Radio-Canada found.

“Annual reports reveal that André Desmarais, a director of Power Corporation, the international management company built by his father, was also a board member of CITIC Pacific from 1997 to 2014,” CBC’s story said.

The story noted no information “compiled by Radio-Canada indicates any illegal activity concerning CITIC Pacific and its subsidiaries.”

Deeper questions remain however, relative to Canada’s ongoing Chinese-interference scandal and the donations and interactions of China Cultural Industry Association and Liberal elites including Justin Trudeau.

CCIA’s nominal head Bin Zhang was among a delegation of four representing the Chinese state-linked industry group that met with Trudeau in 2016 prior to donations to Trudeau’s party and his family’s foundation.

The CCIA delegation included other men named Xin “Richard” Zhou and Wei Wei.

Xin Zhou, a campaign and financing official for Trudeau in previous elections, is the Liberal Party’s top “ambassador” to wealthy Chinese-Canadian businessmen according to the Globe and Mail.

Wei Wei, as reported by The Bureau, has been investigated by CSIS as a Liberal-tied United Front leader in Toronto, and an alleged principal of a notorious underground commercial casino in Markham, that was raided by York Regional Police in 2020.

In 2016 Bin Zhang and China Cultural Industry Association forwarded a massive donation to fund the Trudeau Foundation and the erection of a statue honoring Prime Minister Trudeau’s father, Pierre.

The scandal was noted with concern in a Nov. 2023 U.S. Congressional report called “China’s United Front and Propaganda Work.”

Citing the testimony of former CIA analyst Peter Matthis — an expert on the intersection of United Front and Chinese intelligence networks — the Congressional document says according to reports CSIS “intercepted a 2014 conversation between a Chinese consular official and Canada-based billionaire Zhang Bin in which the official instructed Mr. Zhang to donate $1 million to the Trudeau Foundation and told him the Chinese government would reimburse him for the entire amount.”

The Congress report says China’s “Party-state also aggressively seeks to access and incentivize sitting officials in foreign countries to support policies that favor China, frequently relying on financial contributions distributed by its proxies to further these goals.”

And according to Mattis, wealthy Chinese businessmen are a common type of proxy that work on the Party-state’s behalf to “move money quickly outside of China … without generating the alarm that comes with more direct state activity.”

Meanwhile, there is Canadian government reporting on concerns surrounding CITIC and Poly Corp.

Global Affairs documents gleaned from Access to Information show that back in 2016, bureaucrats from Trudeau’s government were looking into dealings with CCIA’s member Poly Culture Group in British Columbia, and they reviewed a report that might have given some pause.

The article form Public Radio International said “picture the China Poly Group Corporation as the first of a set of Russian nesting dolls. Each of the larger wooden baubles represents a new line of diverse subsidiaries that shield its cloistered, princeling-controlled core.”

The report continues to say “Poly Group started in 1983 as a subsidiary of China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC), a state-owned investment company. Set up at the behest of Deng Xiaoping in 1979, CITIC soon became one of China’s most influential financial and industrial conglomerates. A 1997 report by Rand Corporation, a global policy think tank, called the investment firm “a front company for the PLA” (the Chinese People’s Liberation Army) and chastised Poly for illegally importing 2,000 AK-47 assault rifles into the US in 1996.”

Meanwhile, twenty years ago, the Globe and Mail reported on a trip to China involving these same players and Mélanie Joly’s mentor, Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

“The Globe and Mail has learned that much of Mr. Chrétien's tour of Beijing and other Chinese cities over the coming week is being organized by state-owned China International Trust and Investment Corp.” reporter Geoffrey York wrote from Beijing.

“Established in 1979 and accorded the status of a ministry, CITIC began moving into global ventures in the mid-1980s,” the report continues, pegging CITIC’s assets at about $48-billion U.S.

“Mr. Chrétien is expected to hold meetings with CITIC's top executives, who plan to visit Canada this year,” York wrote. “He'll be accompanied by his son-in-law, André Desmarais, the president of Power Corp., who is a director of CITIC Pacific Ltd., the Hong Kong affiliate of the CITIC group.”

sam@thebureau.news