(OTTAWA) Secretary of State Mélanie Joly has reportedly confronted her Chinese counterpart over allegations that Beijing envoys may be interfering in Canadian politics.
Posted at 5:30 p.m
Dylan Robertson The Canadian Press
Ms Joly met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang during the G20 ministerial meeting in New Delhi this week. The Canadian minister signaled to her Chinese counterpart that Canada would not accept Beijing’s interference in Canadian democracy.
“Canada will never tolerate that [une] any form of foreign interference in our democracy and internal affairs by China,” Ms Joly reportedly said, according to a report her cabinet posted on Twitter on Friday after media coverage of the call.
“We will never accept that [une] any attack on our territorial integrity and our sovereignty. We will never accept [une] any violation of the Vienna Convention by Chinese diplomats on Canadian soil,” the Canadian minister reportedly told her Chinese counterpart.
“The allegations are not credible,” says Beijing
The Liberal government has been under pressure in recent weeks to explain what it is doing about alleged foreign interference in the last two federal elections, in 2019 and 2021. Alleged instances of interference have come to light in recent news reports, which point to leaks from security sources.
Canadian officials who were in New Delhi during the call said Ms Joly approached Mr Qin and their discussion lasted about 20 minutes.
China’s Xinhua News Agency reported that Minister Qin berated Ms. Joly for not condemning Global News and The Globe and Mail, which reported on the interference.
Chinese state media report Mr Qin told Ms Joly the allegations were not credible and that she should not allow “rumours” to derail bilateral ties between the two countries.
According to the Canadian minister’s office, Joly told her counterpart Qin that Ottawa will not allow Chinese diplomats to violate international agreements that prevent envoys from interfering in the politics of the state where they are based.
In her statement, Joly said she was “direct, firm and unequivocal” in her remarks, based on the Indo-Pacific strategy the Liberals released last fall. This new strategy involves forging ties with other countries to offset China’s growing influence.
Ms Joly said in her statement that this was their first meeting since Mr Qin was appointed to the post last December and that the two ministers agreed to “keep the channels of communication open”. Minister Joly had previously spoken to Mr Qin’s predecessor during the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Bali, Indonesia last November.
Russia
The talks took place this week on the sidelines of the foreign ministers’ meeting of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing countries. The ministerial meeting ended on Thursday without a consensus on the war in Ukraine.
According to a report released by India on Thursday’s meeting, G20 members China and Russia have objected to two paragraphs of the statement from the previous Bali summit.
These two paragraphs state that the war in Ukraine is causing immense human suffering while exacerbating the vulnerability of the global economy. It also recalled the need to enforce international law, reiterating that “the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons” was “prohibited”.
Ms Joly’s office said that during the closed-door meetings she punished Russia for its invasion and the havoc it had wreaked on global food and energy supply chains – amounting to an “assault on domination of the world’s most vulnerable populations”. .
According to her cabinet, Ms Joly urged her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to “stop taking hostages of the world’s most vulnerable people”.