The Moral of the Story: Beware, Take Care, Be Wise

"The Government of Canada [should] demonstrate stronger leadership on the issue of procurement and national security, including at the highest echelons -- the Prime Minister, ministers and senior officials."

"[Government should] prohibit Chinese state-owned enterprises, partial state-owned enterprises, including companies receiving undisclosed government subsidies, and technology companies from obtaining federal contracts related to information technology or security equipment or services."

"[The Privy Council Office should look] to develop, implement and oversee a policy to direct all government departments and agencies to review current contracts with China related to information technology or security equipment or services."

"The Committee heard that the federal government should not always choose a supplier based mostly on the lowest price when evaluating bids for security equipment."

"Where circumstances warrant, it should put greater emphasis on national security risks."

"Throughout its study, the Committee became concerned that federal departments and agencies did not collaborate to assess potential threats to Canada's national security when the government was procuring a replacement of security screening equipment in Canadian embassies."

"The Committee recognizes that closer collaboration among federal departments and agencies is required."

House of Commons Government Operations Committee

 

Government procurement infamously selected a Chinese company's X-ray machines to be installed at all Canadian missions abroad until the absurdity of awarding such a contract to a Chinese company was highlighted by an investigative journalist, in the wake of Beijing arresting and charging two Canadians with espionage and imprisoning them on those trumped-up charges in an effort to apply pressure to have Canada release Huawei's CFO who had been detained by the RCMP at a stopover in Vancouver honouring an extradition request by the U.S.Department of Justice.

Relations with China have since descended to their lowest pitch, with Beijing threatening repercussions should Canada decide not to permit Huawei to take part in Canada's 5G upgrade as the rest of the members of the Five Eyes group (an integrated, collaborative intelligence-sharing between members, U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) have done. Even under those strained relations, the Liberal government still decided to proceed in partnering with CanSino, a Chinese pharmacological company to joint-produce a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, which Beijing chose to cancel unilaterally.

The Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, tutored and mentored by former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, hungered for a free trade deal between Canada and China. Canadian corporations headquartered in Quebec see such a free trade agreement with China as a profitable venture, sitting on the Canada-China Business Council continuing to promote business with China despite Beijing's hostility and threats.

Canada's government under the Liberals refuses to take China's cybertheft proclivities, political and academic infiltration and influence-peddling seriously. It is only very recently that in public fora, Justin Trudeau has stated Canada's opposition to China as a growing threat to the world order in its focus on control, power, monopolistic trade, influence and its soft power working hand-in-glove with its hard power. Investing in vital infrastructure loans to developing countries while threatening Taiwan, Hong Kong, and abusing the human rights of Tibetans, Christians and Uyghurs.

Now, a parliamentary committee has released a report calling on the federal government to place greater consideration on issues such as national security in tendering contracts and favouring bids by Chinese companies, all of which must, by Chinese law, answer to Beijing's call. Apart from the fact that many are state-owned corporations. The concerns expressed go across party lines since the committee is comprised of Liberal, Conservative, Bloc Quebecois and NDP members.

Government officials testified before the committee, along with experts on China and national security. The committee reviewed a threat assessment from the Department of Foreign Affairs, describing the Chinese company selected to install and service its security equipment on contract to the Canadian government with the company in question characterized as "a Chinese state-owned enterprise with direct connections to the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party". 

The X-ray machines were not considered a security risk since their use was in a publicly accessible area, unconnected to embassy computer networks. The committee was informed however, by an official with the government's Centre for Cyber Security, that this view of X-ray machines was outdated; they now typically come equipped with hard drives and USB ports potentially useful to hostile actors "with malicious intent". And that certainly describes Beijing's attitude toward Canada.

The report released by the committee found no effective government strategy in place to manage security risks revolving around China and federal procurement. Stronger security measures were recommended, to focus on screening companies and employees who install and maintain equipment in sensitive federal facilities such as embassies. There is room for improvement at flagging potential security threats.

"We are being introduced in a very rough way to a new world where the rules of the road are decided by the strongest."

"We've always said in Canada that we needed a foreign policy that built on the international rules and regulations… but China is starting to play rogue."

Paul Heinbecker, former Canadian ambassador to Germany, representative to the United Nations 

"Relations between the two countries can't be reset until the two Michaels [Spavor/.Kovrig] are set free. Once that happens, relations should be reset in a different way."

"China is capable of acting aggressively against Canada. China is not our friend and we should stop treating it as though it is. We should form a relationship with China based on mutual needs."

"We should treat China with respect but always protect our own interests and push back when necessary. We also need to find allies who will help us retain our sovereignty in a world where China is trying to encroach on it."

Former Canadian ambassador to China David Mulroney (2009 to 2012) 

China's President Xi Jinping and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are shown at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan on June 29, 2019   (KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP via Getty Images)

Israel's Righteously Unblemished Critics

"[The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] rejects and disapproves] of the new State of Israel proclaiming Israel a "Jewish" state by legislation which contradicts international law]."
"[The international community should] confront such a law and or other Israeli attempts, aimed at perpetuating racial discrimination against the Palestinian people."
Saudi Foreign Ministry 

"[The new law is] racist [it] enshrines the racism of this entity [Israel] through an apartheid system that goes beyond the former apartheid system in South Africa."
"This Israeli law would not have been issued without the unlimited support provided by successive U.S. administrations to this rogue entity. [The Trump administration’s recent relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem] came as a green light [for Israel] to pursue its aggressive policy and racism."
Syrian Foreign Ministry

"[Adoption of the law] reflected the regime of racism and discrimination against the Palestinian people."
"[Israel clearly means to obliterate the Palestinians'] national identity and depriv[ing] them of their legitimate civil and human rights on their occupied homeland."
GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] secretary general Abdullatif al-Zayani

Israeli flag.. (photo credit: REUTERS)

Amazingly, unpredictably, there are others in the Arab world of diplomatic niceties who politely and vehemently feel threatened that a clearly Jewish state which freely celebrates its home-coming in the re-establishment of its heritage lands as a place of comfort, security and haven for persecuted Jews worldwide, finally asserting its preeminent position as the only country in the world where being Jewish is not a reason to fear being yet again persecuted, oppressed, threatened and violated adamantly presents itself in legal terms, as Jewish.

The chorus of Arab condemnation of the new Israeli legislation that now enshrines the country as "the national home of the Jewish people", has sung its outrage in a choir including the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, comprised of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Israel, must be feeling utterly devastated, disappointed, outcast and alone; its neighbours, in a totally new move will surely now exclude the Jewish state from the friendly and civil relations that prevail among all countries in the Middle East.

How can Israel possibly live with this rejection and the loss of comradely relations between it and its Middle East neighbours? Possibly if it explains that the thousands of years of Jewish yearning to return to its ancient homeland, to escape the recurring deadly hostility that Jews have been subjected to; culminating from endless pogroms, humiliations, expulsions, scorn, and victimization, Jews have felt worn out from being forced to find a place for themselves where no country would accept them.

Turning as a bright alternative to the ageless pledge to one day return to Zion, they did, after the world extracted an exorbitantly horrendous price, tasking the Angel of Death to hover over the Jews
of Europe while they were tormented and vilified, ghettoized and anguished in preparation for mass annihilation as the ultimate assault and insult to the existence of that people collectively refusing to vanish from the face of the Earth.

Proclamation of Nationhood is read by Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.   Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

In the State of Israel, which considers itself the final refuge for Jewish life, non-Jews were welcome to remain, and they did. Arabs constitute 17.5% of the eight million population, with the Jewish presence estimated at over six million, hosting as well Druze, Kurds, Armenians, Africans and Bedouin among others such as European Christians. Hebrew will now legally represent the only official language of the Jewish state; Arabic downgraded to special status.

Saudi Arabia guards its citizenship, awarding it to Saudis exclusively; it recognizes no religion other than Islam, and its concern for the welfare of Palestinians has not excited it toward offering either haven nor citizenship to them. It considers the Shiite sect of Islam false and results in accusations of a heretical nature, leading to violent enmity. The conflicts that result from sectarian hatred and violence creates gross destabilization, military assaults, mass murder of civilians, starvation, deprivation, refugees.

Syria's Shiite regime has waged an unrelenting war against its sectarian majority population, viewing them as 'terrorists' for the unsupportable crime of protesting against the unjust treatment meted out to them by their dictator-president Bashar al-Assad. Millions of Sunni Syrians have become both internally displaced and external refugees, crowding for safety from the regime into Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, flooding Europe for asylum.

Iran has mustered the strength in numbers of the minority Shiites, supporting their armed militias, creating non-state militias as terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, with an agenda focused solely on the destruction of the State of Israel, with a side-issue of promoting Shiism over Sunni Islam, with all the attendant fury of accusations, venom and threats that accompany a power struggle of one over the other, each reaching to attain the coveted status of ultimate power.

Israel, seeking to live in peace and security in its ancient homeland, cradled in a geography that once held disparate indigenous populations, all of which jockeyed endlessly for territory, has brought modernity and democracy to the Middle East in a geography to which both were foreign in a world stilled in the amber of quaint medievalism and backwardness. Viewing Israel as an usurping intruder, the Arab world shudders at the progress and civility Israel represents, challenging the brutality and ignorance that suffuses their culture.

After an Arab air raid, bodies of dead Jews lie in the rubble along the Tel Aviv waterfront.
Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images