Ottawa: Canada announced Monday the expulsion of a Chinese diplomat accused of having sought to intimidate a Canadian lawmaker critical of Beijing, plunging the two nations into a new diplomatic row.
“We will not tolerate any form of foreign interference in our internal affairs,” Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said in a statement declaring the diplomat “persona non grata.”
“We remain firm in our resolve that defending our democracy is of the utmost importance,” she said, adding that foreign diplomats in Canada “have been warned that if they engage in this type of behavior, they will be sent home.”
The move aggravated already strained Sino-Canadian relations, with China “strongly condemning” the decision it said was based on “groundless” accusations and vowing repercussions.
In a statement posted on its Ottawa embassy website, China said it had filed an official protest over breaches of international law and diplomatic norms, and accused Canada of “deliberately undermining relations” with its second largest trading partner.
According to a source familiar with the matter, Zhao Wei, an official at the Chinese consulate in Toronto at the heart of this affair, has been asked to leave Canada within five days.
His expulsion followed an outcry led by parliamentarian Michael Chong over allegations revealed by local media that China’s intelligence agency had planned to target Chong and his relatives in Hong Kong with sanctions for voting in February 2021 for a motion condemning Beijing’s conduct in the Xinjiang region as genocide.
This was “almost certainly meant to make an example of this MP and deter others from taking anti-PRC positions,” the Globe and Mail newspaper last week cited a Canadian Security Intelligence Service document as saying, using an acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
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