The Ignomy of Incomplete Disclosure

"...But the minister’s latest disclosure was only made on June 4, just a few days ago."
"So did the minister disclose both mortgages when he was elected in 2015 or not?”
"[Canadians may bank all over the world], but there’s a big difference between a Canadian having a mortgage at a Chinese bank and Canada’s most senior diplomat being indebted to the PRC."
"Owing someone over a million dollars — that’s pretty big leverage."
Andrew Scheer, Leader of the Official Opposition, Parliament of Canada

Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Canada

"The arrangements of your private affairs should bear the closest public scrutiny.This is an obligation that is not fully discharged by simply acting within the law." Advice/guidelines clear enough in a mandate letter Minister Champagne received on his appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs. for any halfway intelligent individual to fully understand. Yet, a Minister of the Crown, serving Canada, allowed himself to be compromised in a very sensitive position, making him vulnerable, if not to blackmail, then at least gentle coercion.

This is a man who, as a private businessman operating out of London, England, bought two costly properties, and to finance their mortgages, he turned to the Bank of China, entirely state-owned, explaining that he hadn't been successful in trying for mortgages from British banks. When he left private life and ran for Parliament as a member in the House of Commons, representing Saint-Maurice—Champlain. 

There are two mortgages on the two London properties, totalling $1.2 million. Although the matter was not in the public domain, Minister Champagne, on his election as a Member of Parliament in 2015 divulged the matter to the Ethics Commissioner. At a time when he should have been seriously counselled to dscharge the debt, either by selling one or both of the properties, or financing one t the cost of the other, and ridding himself of the debt.

It is well enough known that Canada has an uneasy relationship with China, and that China is a belligerent state with a reputation of bullying its near neighbours in its determination to expand its territories on land and at sea. The Peoples Republic of China under the Chinese Communist Party spires to spread its influence the world over as a trading Goliath and a infrastructure investor in Africa and among other emerging economies, loaning out funds to countries that will never be able to repay them and will be forever indebted to China.

In his previous posts as infrastructure, then trade minister before taking on the most important and prestigious of the ministries, his financial indebtedness to a Chinese bank would not have elicited as much attention as it does at the present. The two properties in London, purchased in 2009 and 2013 while a temporary resident in London, await a solution. Previous statements of his have now come back to haunt him: "China", he said in 2017, is "a beacon of stability, predictability, a rules-based system, a very inclusive society".

The very fact that a Canadian minister, much less the most senior of minsters' portfolios is indebted to The Chinese communist Party to the tune of over a million, is as far from doing the right and the legal things as possible, leaving the unfortunate perception that, the man who must be found to be without blemish in character and rectitude may be anything but. Borrowing substantial funds from the domineering Peoples' Republic is ill-considered at the best of times, threatening to engulf this portfolio in deep discredit. 

"It is inconceivable that this is not at the back of his mind as he deals with the government of China, his most difficult file", stated Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, senior fellow at the China Institute at the University of Alberta, once a senior Ottawa bureaucrat herself, shaking her head in disbelief from her perspective as a senor diplomat with 37 years' experience of an issue more serious than she can recall ever having encountered.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Canada’s Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne attend the plenary session at the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Nagoya, Japan, November 23, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon