Beijing foots bill for Canadian senators, MPs to visit China

One of the biggest single users of the sponsored travel provided to Members of Parliament in recent years has been Canada’s ambassador to China, John McCallum.

Canadian MPs and senators have been accepting free trips to China paid for by the Chinese government and Beijing-friendly groups and meeting with agents of the Communist Party, whose goal is to win overseas support for the authoritarian regime’s political agenda.

Since 2006, parliamentarians have taken 36 trips to China sponsored by arms of the Chinese government or business groups seeking closer ties and trade with the one-party state and world’s second-biggest economy, according to travel records kept by the Senate and House of Commons.

There are no laws banning Canadian legislators from accepting such junkets, and other countries occasionally cover the travel costs of parliamentarians who visit their countries.

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But those countries aren’t trying to assert global influence for a dictatorial government. Australia and New Zealand have raised concerns about China’s attempts to gain influence, from paying for junkets of foreign politicians to making political donations.

Travel records show that the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA) is one of the key state agencies that regularly funds trips of foreign politicians. It finances 15 trips annually for U.S. politicians.

This institute answers to the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, the lead agency in charge of burnishing China’s image abroad and managing the Chinese diaspora overseas. Chinese officials have called the United Front its “magic weapon” to gain economic and political influence and quell dissent at home and abroad. It funds Chinese media, culture and business associations and has established Confucius institutes at universities and pays for trips by foreign politicians, including those from Canada.

One of the biggest single users of the sponsored travel provided to Members of Parliament in recent years has been Canada’s ambassador to China, John McCallum. He took trips valued at $73,300 from China or pro-Beijing business groups, such as the Canadian Confederation of Fujian Associations, during the years he was a backbench MP from 2008 to 2015.

Two parliamentarians who appear to have cultivated ties to the agents of Chinese “soft power” are rookie Liberal MP Geng Tan, a chemical engineer born in Hunan province who came to Canada in the late 1990s, and Ontario Conservative Senator Victor Oh.

Mr. Oh and Mr. Tan serve on the board of the Canada Confederation of Shenzhen Associations, along with five Toronto-area city councillors. The lobby group promotes business and cultural ties with China, but its mission statement advocates the reunification of Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.

Mr. Tan, the first Canadian born in mainland China to be elected to Parliament, was only a rookie when he managed to secure the job of co-chair of Parliament’s Canada-China Legislative Association in December of 2015, a group of MPs and senators who have an interest in building closer ties to Beijing. The group receives taxpayer funding to visit China.

But Mr. Tan and Mr. Oh have also taken private trips to China sponsored by the Chinese government and pro-Beijing business groups.

The two men have met with officials from the United Front, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a tool of the United Front, as well as the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, which is another organ employed to manage the ethnic diaspora living outside China.

In several instances, the trips were not declared to Parliament’s ethics officers. When The Globe and Mail raised the matter, both men explained that was because they had paid the expenses for these visits out of their own pockets.

During a visit to his home town of Changsha in July, 2017, Mr. Tan met with two top officials of Beijing’s United Front and key body, the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference (CPCC), which operate worldwide and often work through overseas Chinese associations.

He first denied ever taking the trip when approached by The Globe.

When The Globe pointed out that there were pictures of the MP in local Chinese newspapers with United Front and CPCC officials, Mr. Tan recalled that he had indeed been there but insisted he paid for the trip himself.

“It is my own trip,” Mr. Tan said. “I use that time to visit my mom and grandmom.”

During the trip, he took time for meetings with United Front representatives Da Bi Xin and Tian Huayu and CPCC chairman Wu Shuyuan and local Communist Party boss Qui Chuankai.

Asked about the meeting with United Front and its mandate to promote Chinese influence globally, Mr. Tan replied: “It is not my job to look into those factors because for me, my focus is our [Canadian] own business. I don’t care so much what they do. It is not part of my business.”

Mr. Tan said his role as an elected MP is to promote friendship between Canada and China and “mutual understanding and respect between two peoples.”

After visiting Changsha, Mr. Tan later met up with Liberals Rob Oliphant and Pam Damoff and Tory Michael Cooper, who also accepted a free trip to Beijing and Shandong, paid for by the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs.

The Prime Minister’s Office had no comment on parliamentarians accepting free travel from China, but an official said they must declare sponsored trips, as required by the ethics rules.

The Chinese embassy in Ottawa did not respond to requests for comment.