Senator Oh has made the most sponsored trips to China among MPs in the past decade
Senator Victor Oh has made more sponsored trips to China in the past decade than any other Canadian senator or member of parliament, parliamentary documents show.
Since his appointment to the Senate in January 2013, Mr. Oh made seven trips to China with expenses paid for by various sponsors, including three provincial governments in that country.
Mr. Oh made his first visit to China as a senator September 2013, six days in Northeast Jilin Province to attend the 9th China-Northeast Asia Expo in Changchun City. The trip was sponsored by the Jilin provincial government, according to data from the Office of the Senate Ethics Officer (SEO), as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter. Other accounts of Mr. Oh’s travels thereafter are available at the SEO website.
On his second visit, Mr. Oh traveled with a Canadian delegation to China’s southernmost province, Hainan, in December 2014, announcing the trip as promoting cultural exchanges between Canada and Hainan. The Hainan government paid for accommodation, ground transportation and meals for the first leg, December 20 to 27, 2014while Hainan Airlines sponsored ground and air transportation for the second leg, December 28, 2014 to January 3, 2015.
Hainan Airlines is a civilian-run airline that is majority owned by the state facts of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
In May 2015visited mr. Oh the city of Wuhan, Hubei Province, to attend a trade and investment fair, with the trip paid for by the Hubei provincial government.
Mr. Oh’s next four trips to China were paid for by individuals or organizations.
According to the SEO’s records, he traveled to China three times in 2016, sponsored by Ontario Sheridan College in July; the China International (Dalian) Seafood Culture Festival in Dalian City, Liaoning Province, in August; And Sichuan airlines in November. Sichuan Airlines is also partly state-owned, according to ICAO facts.
SEO data shows that Mr. Oh made his last sponsored trip to China from December 27, 2016 to January 12, 2017. During that trip, the president of Kent School, a high school in Niagara Falls, Ontario, paid for hotels, some meals, and transportation for Mr. Oh and his wife in Jiangsu Province where Mr. Oh “educational cooperation between Canada and China.” Kent School lists four sister schools in China.
The Epoch Times contacted Mr. Oh for comment, but didn’t hear back.
Code of ethics
Mr Oh may have traveled to China more times than parliamentary records indicate. Reporting the trip to the Office of the Senate Ethics Officer is only required if it is sponsored.
Mr Oh reportedly made seven trips to China in 2016, according to one article published that year by chinaqw.com, a subordinate media from the Chinese state spokesman China News Service.
The Senate Ethics Officer, Pierre Legaultpreviously expressed concern about Mr. Oh to China and said he violated the upper house code of ethics four times by an all-expenses paid trip to China in 2017reported The Canadian Press in 2020.
Mr Legault also said Mr Oh withheld information and deliberately misled an investigation into the trips, for example by blurring the line between his private and public affairs during his visit to China.
a Globe and Mail article from 2017 said that during the visits of Mr. Oh to China met with officials from the regime’s United Front Work Department — Beijing’s main agency involved in foreign interference, according to A study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) cited by Public Safety Canada. The article also said that Mr. Oh also met with officials from the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese. According to the ASPI study, both organizations are tools used by the United Front to control Chinese diasporas living outside China.
Parliamentary Archives show that Mr. Oh ranks second in terms of number of paid visits to China when the time frame goes back to 2007 – the earliest record on the SEO website.
Mr Oh succeeds former Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis, who made eight free trips to China in between 2009 And 2012. John McCallum, former Liberal MP and Canadian ambassador to China, made five trips to China in between 2008 And 2015 and was especially criticized for one trip in September 2010 that cost more than $28,000.
In addition to traveling to China, Mr. Oh also a frequent guest of the Chinese Consulate in Toronto. He has been invited by the consulate to celebrate the establishment of the communist-led People’s Republic of China every year since 2013according to online open-source information from 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021And 2022.
Opposition to the Register of Foreign Agents
Some democracy activists have expressed concern about Mr Oh’s affinity for communist-ruled China, particularly in light of his recent call against the establishment of a register of foreign agents in Canada.
Mr. Oh has repeatedly argued that such registration would be “unfair” to Chinese Canadians. He started a protest on Parliament Hill on June 24 that was advertised to mark the 100th anniversary of China’s immigration law, also known as China’s exclusion law, as it resulted in the halting of Chinese immigration.
He attended a series of events in Chinese communities to promote the event, along with a petition, e-4395, against the foreign register. At an event on June 12 in Montreal, Mr. Oh that the registry would become a modern version of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Gloria Fung, President of Canada-Hong Kong Link, one of more than 30 members of the Canadian community group Coalition for a Foreign Influence Registry, Mr. Oh’s allegations against the registry as “baseless” and “frightening”.
She also criticized his plans to create a foundation to raise money to sue Canadian media outlets for their coverage of Beijing’s alleged influence activities. Mr. Oh called them attempts to “smudge” the Chinese, referring to news reports in recent months about the Chinese regime interfering in the last two federal elections and operating secret police stations on Canadian soil.
“In Canada, the charter protects the freedom of the press, of our news industry. So Senator Victor Oh’s proposal to create a foundation, in my opinion, is to silence the voice of the media,” Ms. Fung to The Epoch Times in Chinese. “This goes against the spirit of Canadian charter rights.”
“As Canadian citizens, we have a right to be informed, and we must fully support those journalists who dare to do so [report the truth] and the media organizations they represent, as they continue to do [defend] the freedom of the press.”
In October 2018, Mr. Oh co-sponsor of a parliamentary panel discussion on how to view China’s foreign interference in Canada. While acknowledging this reality, the panel concluded that Canada should “avoid the excesses that have characterized the debate over Chinese interference in the US and Australia”, adding that other countries’ foreign policies in this area are “based on exaggeration or fear”.
The United States, Australiaand the UK all have a register of foreign agents, requiring those acting on behalf of a foreign state or entity to register their activities.
Legislation
The federal government has recently closed a public consultation on setting up a register of foreign influences.
Bill S-237, legislation sponsored by Senator Leo Housakos aimed at creating such a registry, is currently on second reading in the Senate. Former BC Conservative MP Kenny Chiu had introduced an earlier bill, C-282.
Neither bill focuses on specific countries. Mr. Chiu told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview that neither “China” nor “Chinese” is mentioned as a register of foreign influence is intended to comprehensively address meddling attempts by all authoritarian regimes.
Mr Chiu, who lost his chance for re-election in 2021, previously said he was targeted by pre-election disinformation campaigns on Chinese-language social media platforms such as WeChat.
On March 29, 2022, Mr. Housakos raised the issue in the Senate, saying that the disinformation against Mr. Chiu and his bill C-282 was “clearly related to a foreign power”.
Mr Oh continued to respond narrate Mr. Housakos that Mr. Chiu had “lied to you” that he had been a victim of disinformation set up by pro-Beijing groups. Mr. Oh later apologized to Mr. Chiu for this claim.
Donna He, Grace Dai, Isaac Teo and Peter Wilson contributed to this report
