Former Liberal Minister opposes Hong Kong’s democracy movement
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
170.50787
Summary
The protests in Hong Kong have entered their 10th week, and the Chinese government is cracking down even more on the protesters. One Canadian politician, Michael Chan, seems to be on the wrong side of the protest movement, but is it really?
Transcript
00:00:00.000
The protests in Hong Kong have entered their 10th week. People are not backing down, whether
00:00:15.740
they're students or lawyers. So many people from all walks of life and all professions are taking
00:00:21.240
to the streets and saying, we want more liberty, we want more freedom, we want more democracy.
00:00:26.720
All of this spurred by those extradition bills that could have seen them shipped over to mainland China,
00:00:32.100
but now it's become about so much more. Now the police in Hong Kong are cracking down on this
00:00:37.820
even more, and we know that mainland China, the voices in Beijing, they are very unhappy about this.
00:00:43.880
Now I have been saying as much as I can here and on social media, on radio, in print, that Canadians
00:00:49.820
have to talk about this more, speak up about it more. This is one of the defining stories of our
00:00:54.760
time, this rising global superpower, and what it wants to do in other jurisdictions, how it wants
00:01:00.380
to push people to be more like them, to become more like the authoritarian communist regime in
00:01:06.040
Beijing. And it's a cautionary tale for Canada as well, given our problems with China. The stuff
00:01:11.340
happening in Hong Kong, the stuff happening in Taiwan, it matters to us here. So I've been saying,
00:01:16.760
why isn't Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Christy Freeland saying more and doing more about this?
00:01:20.880
Well, one Canadian politician is now saying more about this. Unfortunately, he's not saying the
00:01:28.200
things that a lot of people had in mind. Michael Chan is a former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister
00:01:34.040
in the previous governments before Doug Ford came to power. He attended a protest in Markham,
00:01:40.020
Ontario, that is a city in the GTA just north of Toronto. It was a protest on this subject,
00:01:46.340
but it wasn't one backing the protesters. It was pretty much one opposing the protesters.
00:01:53.340
Now this comes from a Mandarin language news media report. Translated, Michael Chan said something
00:01:58.340
along the lines of, unity is better than violence, stability is better than violence, and prosperity
00:02:03.220
is better than violence. Hong Kong police severely deal with unrest. The Hong Kong government strictly
00:02:09.840
upholds the rule of law. The Chinese government is seriously concerned about Hong Kong. So there,
00:02:16.520
Michael Chan is seeming to suggest, well, it's okay that the police are really trying to push down
00:02:21.580
this people's movement and that, well, hey, maybe they should just stop doing it and let all of this
00:02:26.860
happen. Now, Michael Chan is no newcomer to this either. There were media reports a few years ago
00:02:32.420
that intelligence services in Canada had told the government they were concerned that Michael Chan
00:02:38.600
was too connected to Chinese officials in the consulate here in Canada. Now, he responded by
00:02:45.380
threatening a lawsuit, a libel suit against the Globe and Mail, and he also made threats against Jason Kenney for
00:02:51.420
comments related to all of this. So he's tried to mount legal defenses about these claims, but it still tells you that that
00:02:57.960
conversation is out there and that there have been questions arisen about Michael Chan's ties. So there
00:03:04.540
you have it, a Canadian politician speaking up on the Hong Kong issue, speaking up, it seems, on the wrong side.