OTTAWA: A majority of Canadians want Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to respond more forcefully to alleged election interference by China, according to a poll published on Wednesday, as relations between the two countries again take a turn for the worse.
Some 53 percent of respondents said they felt Canada’s response following a string of recent events, including the arbitrary detention of two Canadians by Beijing and media reports of election meddling, was “not strong enough,” polling firm Angus Reid Institute said.
Another 41 percent said the federal government’s response was “about right” while 6 percent said it was “too strong,” the online poll showed.
“Canadians are indicating that they expect their government to take this seriously,” said Shachi Kurl, president of the institute, which surveyed 1,622 Canadian adults from Feb. 23 to Feb. 25.
Trudeau has acknowledged that there were attempts by the Chinese to interfere in the elections, but he has said that the outcome of both the 2019 and the 2021 polls were not altered. He has so far resisted calls for a broad public inquiry into the allegations.
The poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, comes amid ongoing tensions between Canada and China over election and other security concerns.
Canada this week banned the use of the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok on government-issued devices, citing privacy and security risks. A suspected Chinese spy balloon flew over the United States and Canada before being shot down last month.
Recent media reports have alleged ongoing Chinese interference in Canada’s elections, with Trudeau this week denying one article saying his office was told by Canada’s spy agency to drop a Chinese-Canadian candidate in 2019 because of his ties with Beijing.
On Wednesday, the Chinese embassy in Ottawa responded to the latest report in an email, saying the allegations were “baseless and defamatory.”
“We are not interested in meddling with Canada’s internal affairs, nor have we ever tried to do so,” the embassy said.
But most Canadians disagree with the embassy’s statement. Some 65 percent said they believe that the Chinese government “definitely” or “probably” tried to interfere in the 2021 vote, according to the survey.
While 69 percent said they believe the Canadian government “is afraid to stand up to China,” respondents were split over the potential economic fall out if Ottawa were to take stronger action, with 46 percent saying they were worried about potential financial consequences and another 46 percent dismissing such concerns, the Institute said.
Canadians say PM Trudeau should get tougher on China
https://arab.news/nhg6r
Canadians say PM Trudeau should get tougher on China
- 53% of respondents felt Canada’s response was “not strong enough”
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
