Postmedia News May 7, 2015   
      
   The questions Canadian politicians don't want us asking about Chinese money   
       
   There are quite a few things that Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson and   
   Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney would rather not discuss about their   
   government's role in the handling of tens of thousands of jet-setting Chinese   
   multimillionaires and the    
   dilemma in dealing with the Beijing regime's increasingly long-armed,   
   vindictive and ferocious police-state apparatus.   
      
   There is an election coming up, after all.  The opposition parties, too, have   
   their own reasons for wishing it would all just go away.   
      
   But it won't, at least not for a  growing number of wage-earning Canadians.   
      
   The Canadian housing market is overvalued by 35 per cent compared to Canadian   
   incomes, and 89 per cent compared to rents.   Chinese money, of the hot and   
   cold type as well as the clean and dirty variety, is no minor factor in the   
   calamity.   
      
   In Vancouver, as much as half the dollar value of detached housing sales went   
   to Mainland Chinese buyers last year.  Most of the $3 billion poured into the   
   purchase of west-side Vancouver properties last year originated in China, a   
   reflection of the    
   spike in Chinese money that has entered Canada since China's ruthless Xi   
   Jinping took charge three years ago.   
      
   There is also the predicament of all those voters who have mortgaged   
   themselves to the hilt on the bet that their houses are going to continue to   
   rise in market value.   
      
   "The Conservatives want all of this to go away and not be noticed, and not   
   just the Conservatives, either.  Nobody wants to say anything that might cause   
   the property bubble to deflate a bit -- certainly not before the election,"   
   the veteran diplomat    
   Martin Collacott told me the other day.  A former Foreign Affairs   
   director-general for security services and a Chinese-speaking negotiator in   
   the lead-up to Canada's diplomatic recognition of China in 1970, Collacott   
   says Beijing has got us all over a    
   barrel.   
      
   The case of Vancouver property developer Michael Ching isn't helping to   
   quieten things down.   Ching is either some sort of big-money embezzler and a   
   fugitive from justice back in China, or an upstanding would-be Canadian   
   citizen of nearly 20 unblemished    
   years' standing who deserves the asylum he's seeking here.     
      
   The latest developments in Ching's story reveal him as a person of lavish   
   generosity in his political contributions, especially to Liberal Party   
   accounts, and his daughter has turned out to be none other than Linda Ching,   
   president of the Liberals' youth    
   wing in British Columbia.   
      
   Political hay is not easy to make of any of this.   
      
   A lot of it is bound up in the Immigrant Investor Program, a racket championed   
   by the previous Liberal government but avoided by the New Democratic Party for   
   reasons arising largely from twitchiness about insinuations of "Sinophobia"   
   and a bias against    
   foreign investment.   
      
   Before the scheme was shut down last year, the Conservative government had   
   issued permanent-residency certificates to more than 50,000 investor-class   
   immigrants, mostly from China.   
      
   These people were by no means all crooks.  But the IIP was a busy conduit that   
   allowed Canada to become a robber's roost for various kinds of swindlers and   
   corrupt officials from China.  Billions of dollars in rotten yuan got stashed   
   away in Canadian    
   real estate.  Now, President Xi is determined to get as much of that money   
   back as he can and to muscle Canada into handing over the culprits who have   
   been absconding with all the loot.   
      
   Ottawa is unlikely to respond by giving Beijing any backchat.     
      
   Three years ago, after Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared that CNOOC's $15   
   billion Nexen purchase was going to be China's last big oil-patch hurrah,   
   Beijing put the screws to us.   
      
   Within 12 months, Chinese investment in Canada dropped from $21.5 billion to   
   roughly $220 million.  So, this time around, Ottawa appears to be telling   
   Beijing that Canada will play along.     
      
   We'll just want a cut of the proceeds, is all -- and we'll throw in any   
   scoundrels that Beijing wants, too -- but we just need to deal with this   
   cultural pastime known as a federal election, first.   
      
   But how much money are we really talking about here?  How much should be   
   expected to drain out of the Canadian economy if we cut a deal with Beijing?    
   How much of it is really stolen money?   
      
   We already know that President Xi's own family amassed a fortune of about $400   
   million in tandem with his rise to power.   His regime's anti-corruption drive   
   is intricately bound up in a purge of out-crowd party bigshots and a rapid   
   retrenchment in    
   Central Committee power consolidation and general repression.   
      
   By what standards of evidence will Canada be sending President Xi's enemies   
   back to the farce of his regime's judicial system?   
      
   Last December, Canada's ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques, told the China   
   Daily that Beijing and Ottawa were enjoying "good collaboration," and that   
   Canada had returned more than 1,200 people to China during the previous three   
   years, including more    
   than 60 who were sought in China for criminal reasons.   
      
   Really?  So Canadian law-enforcement agencies are already collaborating with   
   Beijing?  We've already started sending these alleged looters back?   
      
   Blaney's office has told me is that 1,838 Chinese nationals were returned to   
   China in the four years leading up to December, 2014.   Almost all of them   
   were found to be in non-compliance with Canada's immigration laws -- which can   
   mean any number of    
   things, including failed refugee claims, overstays, and working without a   
   proper permit.     
      
   But 80 were sent back for "misrepresentation," and 81 were sent back because   
   they committed serious crimes or were involved in organized crime.  Were these   
   alleged crimes committed in Canada or in China?  I got no answer.   
      
   Ottawa requires commitments that returned Chinese nationals won't be executed   
   for whatever crime they are supposed to have committed, but beyond that there   
   is only the cockeyed and hollow 1994 Canada-China "Mutual Legal Assistance in   
   Criminal Matters"    
   treaty.   
      
   China wants a formal extradition treaty with Canada, but that looks like a   
   bridge too far, so President Xi is eager to clinch a deal with Ottawa through   
   the Sharing of Forfeited Assets and the Return of Property deal that John   
   Baird initialled when he    
   was foreign minister in 2013.   
      
      
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