Michael Chong reveals why his story should concern Canadians

OTTAWA-A friend, a man of honour, a man who embodies all that is best" about the House of Commons.

That's how not just party colleagues but even partisan rivals described Conservative MP Michael Chong this week as shock rippled through Parliament with revelations he and his family were targets for Chinese state interference in 2021.

But when Chong himself first heard the news, via a Globe and Mail report last Monday, shock wasn't what hit him.

In an interview with the Toronto Star, the 51-year-old father of three said his first response was profound disappointment."

Disappointment the government knew but didn't tell him a Toronto-based Chinese diplomat was trying to gather information on his family to use for intimidation purposes in response to Chong's support for Uyghur minority rights.

Disappointment that when that 2021 intelligence assessment was compiled, portions of which he finally saw this week, no action was taken against the diplomat.

The disappointment stems in part from a theme running through Chong's nearly 19 years as the MP for Wellington-Halton Hills: a profound belief in and commitment to the need to protect and safeguard the institutions of democracy.

He's the architect of a piece of legislation that gives MPs the right to remove their leader - used for the first time in 2022 to dethrone his former boss, Erin O'Toole.

He's among the few in modern-day Canadian political life who have resigned a position of power on a point of principle.

In 2006, he quit his job as intergovernmental affairs minister over a motion recognizing the Quebecois as a nation inside a united Canada: he said it implied the recognition of ethnicity and I cannot support that."

I do not believe in an ethnic nationalism. I believe in a civic nationalism."

In 2017, he ran for leadership of the Conservative party because of what he perceived as a civic duty - to give back to a country that had given his family everything: Canadian soldiers fought for both his parents' families freedoms during the Second World War.

So where his disappointment over the revelations this week shifts to concern it is on this point: to him, Canada's democratic institutions are under attack and his view the government is indifferent.

He points to reports Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told allies Canada simply won't meet the two per cent spending target on defence.

He points to a recent story about a case against a scientist accused of taking illegal payments from China falling apart because it took too long to get to trial.

And he also points to the fact the dossier with intelligence about him was in fact circulated around government agencies, though as Trudeau and his ministers say it was never presented to them.

Chong said that piece of information came to him via Trudeau's national security adviser Jody Thomas, who called him after she had made him a promise to find out what happened to the information gathered on him in 2021.

But even as that revelation raises questions about why no senior government officials saw fit to brief the political level, Chong said it is not them he is angry at.

To him, the blame lies squarely at the feet of the prime minister.

It reflects the prime minister as a prime minister who does not see national security as serious and needing attention," he said.

He points to all of this because of another point he wants to make:

I'm just one case of the foreign interference activities taking place in Canada," he said.

What I think about is all the people whose stories never get told."

Chong's story begins with a choice his father Paul made in 1952: to leave Hong Kong and head for the University of Manitoba.

Paul Chong eventually made his way east, and through medical school, becoming an internist.,

Paul married Cornelia de Haan, who'd left the Netherlands in the 1960s, and had four children, with Michael the oldest.

They kept in touch with extended family still in Hong Kong; when Chong rose in the House of Commons to reflect on the death of Queen Elizabeth II - he called her the most important person he'd ever met - he talked about exchanging letters with his cousins there.

Both had stamps of the Queen and it struck him as a point of connection.

These stamps made me realize as a young boy that what bound us together between Canada and Hong Kong was not just family ties, but also institutions based on freedoms, liberties and the rule of law," he said in the Sept. 15, 2022 speech.

But as China cracked down on Hong Kong and its institutions begin to deteriorate - and as Chong decided to ramp up his own criticism of the regime in Beijing - he made a choice: to cut his family in Hong Kong off.

He was worried that by virtue of being related to a Canadian, and especially a Canadian politician, his family could be targets of Chinese retaliation and he wanted to protect them.

He still does - he didn't want to divulge any details to the Star about his family in Hong Kong.

But he hopes his story serves as a wake-up call.

I keep thinking about all the people who suffer in silence," he said.

My hope is the high-profile stature of the PRC targeting MPs results in a more serious approach to countering foreign interference, to protect all Canadians."

Stephanie Levitz is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @StephanieLevitz