Terry Glavin: The muddled and murky world of Michael Ma |
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Terry Glavin: The muddled and murky world of Michael Ma
The Liberal MP has repeatedly associated with groups affiliated with or linked to China's United Front
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You might have thought that the floor-crossing Liberal MP Michael Ma would have been political kryptonite after his March 26 performance at a parliamentary committee looking into the implications of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January invitation to China to annually export 49,000 electrical vehicles into Canada.
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Ma had badgered the expert witness Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, impugned the credibility of the China Strategic Risk Institute where she serves as a senior advisor, demanded to know whether she had personally witnessed acts of forced labour in China and appeared to suggest that Beijing’s persecution of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang was merely “hearsay.”
Terry Glavin: The muddled and murky world of Michael Ma Back to video
After days of dodging direct questions about his own views on the subject, Carney eventually responded by saying Ma had apologized, but Carney himself would only go so far as to claim that his government “takes issues of forced labor and child labour incredibly seriously,” and as for Xinjiang, “there are parts of China that are higher risk.”
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Ma’s apology consisted of a statement of regret that he “inadvertently came across as dismissive” about forced-labour practices and that in his exchange with McCuaig-Johnston, Xinjiang had gotten mixed up with the coastal manufacturing hub of Shenzhen.
Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson tried to smooth everything over by asserting that it was all simply a matter of Carney having promised Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping that public criticism was a red line he wouldn’t cross. “We don’t need to have public discussions about where we disagree,” Hodgson said. “We make that clear to our friends in China.”
But what this commitment also means is that Carney, his cabinet and his caucus shouldn’t be expected to come clean with Canadians about the Liberal party’s ongoing collusions with Beijing’s big-money operatives in Canada, either.
With the multifaceted “strategic partnership” Carney entered into with China in January, those intimacies are already becoming more deeply entrenched, even after several years of scandals involving clandestine Chinese interference operations and in-plain-sight subversions during Justin Trudeau’s decade in office.
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If we’re averse to upsetting “our friends in China,” Michael Ma’s circuitous political trajectory would have to be off limits too, along with any examination of his support base and associations within China’s powerful and politically hyperactive network of overseas proxies and astroturf organizations in the Greater Toronto Area.
Elected as a Conservative in Markham-Unionville in last April’s federal election, Ma defected to the Liberal caucus in an out-of-the-blue move in December, and within a month he was a key member of Prime Minister Carney’s delegation to Beijing.
For years, Ma has been something of a lower-echelon fixture within the latticework Beijing’s United Front Work Department has built up in the GTA. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service identifies the UFWD as the Chinese Communist Party’s primary influence-peddling and strongarming weapon overseas, the leading edge of Beijing’s “sophisticated, pervasive and persistent” threat activities in Canada. The controversy that erupted over Ma’s December floor-crossing, his immediate elevation to Carney’s circle of China advisors and his conduct on March 26 all suggest a closer look would be useful.
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We could begin with last Monday night’s $1,775-per-ticket Liberal Party fundraising jamboree at the posh Angus Glen Golf Club in Ma’s Markham riding last Monday night, where Carney embraced Ma and declared him to be a bona fide Liberal, a “results oriented individual” whose standpoints genuinely reflect “Liberal values.”
That much could be seen in a video obtained by Global News. The press was barred from the event, which took on some of the appearances of the lavish cash-for-access banquets with Chinese Communist Party billionaires in 2016 that marked the first in a long series of China-related scandals that followed Justin Trudeau through his time in office. An ethics commission inquiry concluded that no laws applied to party fundraising practices, but Trudeau was obliged to squelch the public uproars by pledging that fundraising would henceforth be open to the news media and the public. That policy appears to have fallen by the wayside.
Attending the Monday night Markham event were several cabinet ministers and Liberal MPs along with a cross-section of Chinese community and business interests, perhaps most notably several key figures from the Canada Confederation of Shenzhen Associations.
Ma’s connections with the Shenzhen groups had already come to the attention of Chung Ching “Glacier” Kwong, the Hong Kong Campaigns Coordinator at the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. Currently living in exile in Germany, Kwong noted in a lengthy series of posts on X that Ma was a special guest at a CSSA charity gala last September along with Beijing’s Toronto consul-general Luo Weidong, and a delegation led by CCSA chair Qi Jia (Jenny Qi) had visited Ma in his Ottawa office March 4 to discuss “systematically promoting China’s image.” Ma had paid a return visit to the CSSA’s offices in Markham on March 14.
Kwong noted that various intelligence agencies have identified “hometown” regional associations as key nodes in the United Front’s networks, and they are “frequently used to co-opt diaspora leaders, promote Beijing’s political narratives and facilitate state-backed economic and technological transfers.
“This type of direct parliamentary access aligns with United Front ‘people-to-people’ diplomacy, utilizing diaspora trade groups to lobby host-country officials, build political capital, and influence mainstream narratives on behalf of Beijing.”
Only a week before the eruption at the House committee, Ma joined Beijing’s Toronto consul-general Zhang Chaofeng among the speakers at a meeting of the Pingtan Association of Canada, one of most militant “hometown” outfits among Canada’s UFWD-aligned groups in its objection to Taiwanese independence. The Pingtan Association was established 18 years ago by grocery tycoon Yuansheng Ou Yang, one of the three founding investors of Wealth One Bank. The bank was ordered by the Superintendent of Financial Institutions in 2023 to cut all ties with the trio. Ou Yang, Toronto insurance executive Shenglin Xian and Vancouver real estate developer Morris Chen were ordered to divest themselves of all their holdings in the bank, owing to suspicions about allegedly clandestine links to the Chinese government.
While the Liberals may have to expend some ongoing energy to tidy up Ma’s reputation, Poilievre’s Conservatives might want to have a look at their own candidate-vetting processes: Michael Ma was a leading member of the UFWD-linked Chinese Canadian Conservative Association, a group unaffiliated with the Conservative Party of Canada that has a proven record of pro-Beijing hostility towards the party.
Last month, the Jamestown Foundation released a bombshell report with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute that detailed more than 2,000 organizations in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany that fall within the UFWD’s ambit. In Canada, the report’s authors identified 575 UFWD-affiliated organizations. “Identity-based organizations” amounted to 182 groups, along with 109 business and trade associations, 97 educational and student organizations, 76 cultural and “friendship” associations, 42 professional organizations, 18 organizations focused on political parties and policy and 51 media platforms of various kinds.
One of those 18 politically-focused UFWD-aligned groups is the Chinese Canadian Conservative Association. While Michael Ma was on the CCCA’s governing national board, the organization had actively campaigned for the ouster of Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, specifically because of O’Toole’s unapologetic opposition to Beijing’s growing influence in Canada, the Chinese Communist Party’s dismal record on human rights, Beijing’s demolition of democracy in Hong Kong and its persecution of Chinese minorities.
O’Toole told the Foreign Interference Commission that the Conservatives lost as many as nine seats in the 2021 election specifically because of Beijing-influenced campaigns against his candidates, his party and himself, personally. Richmond East—Steveston Conservative MP Kenny Chiu was subjected to a vicious campaign against him waged by pro-Beijing interests in 2021. NDP MP Jenny Kwan was also singled out for punishment by pro-Beijing groups in Vancouver.
The operation targeting Conservative shadow foreign minister Michael Chong was particularly brazen — the Toronto consulate put out feelers to determine whether Chong had any relatives in Hong Kong that the regime could lean on. The operation eventually forced Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly to expel Wei Zhao, a Chinese Ministry of State Security operative working out of the Toronto consulate.
Last October, Ma was on hand for the 15th anniversary gala of the Canada Fujian Friendship Association and the Fujian Cultural Exchange and Community Association of Canada. This includes the leadership of the openly pro-Beijing Canada Toronto Fuqing Business Association, which was set up under the guidance of the United Front, according to its own website, and has been linked to at least one illegal Chinese police station in Markham. At the gala, Ma was photographed raising a glass of wine in a toast with Wei Chengyi, honorary chair of the business association, who has long been considered a kingpin within the GTA’s United Front networks.
The “permanent honorary chairman” of the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations (CTCCO) and the “permanent honorary chairman of the Canada Toronto Fuqing Business Association (CTFBA), Wei has also served as president of the Canada Confederation of Fujian Associations. An overseas member of the 12th National People’s Congress of China in 2014, Wei is also a former director of the China Overseas Exchange Association.
The Foody Mart grocery titan and property developer has consistently denied allegations that he was at the centre of Beijing-orchestrated election interference operation that CSIS uncovered involving a $250,000 “slush fund” in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election. It was only two years ago that the existence of the widely-reported slush fund was disclosed by CSIS in submissions to the Hogue Commission on Foreign Interference. The money reportedly originated in China’s Toronto consulate and it was distributed to organizers prior to and during the 2019 federal election.
This was the source of the reports about “11 political candidates and 13 political staff members” who were involved in underground Chinese election interference. The Hogue Commission was told that the funds were likely not meant to fund political campaigns directly, but the beneficiaries were seven Liberal candidates and four Conservative candidates.
Wei has called allegations of his involvement in any such operation involving China’s Toronto consulate as “nonsense” and hogwash.”
It’s unlikely that the dark cloud shadowing Michael Ma will give way anytime soon, however, no matter how much Carney would want to avoid crossing red lines laid down by the Liberal government’s “friends in China.”
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