The upcoming election in the United States is drawing a great deal of attention from Canadians and has been dominating the nightly news coverage on CBC and CTV. Unfortunately, as a result, no one here is talking about the fact Canada is sleepwalking into its own elections where actual traitors and informants may potentially be on the ballot.

It’s unbelievable to consider that the scandal over foreign interference in this country started making headlines back in December of 2022. Yet as we quickly approach the 2-year anniversary of those sensational revelations, we still have at least eleven MPs who wittingly assisted foreign state actors.

For Canada, a G7 country and a member of The Five Eyes intelligence alliance, to permit this is appalling. Especially given the fact that CSIS has provided substantial evidence to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) outlining who was involved and their transgressions.

Yet despite the severity of the situation, which Liberal MP David McGuinty, the chair of NSICOP, described as “a pervasive national security threat”, nothing of substance has been undertaken to name or censure those involved.

This permissive idleness towards parliamentarians who’ve engaged in treason glares in stark contrast to the actions that the government recently undertook against the three majority shareholders of Wealth One Bank of Canada that were deemed vulnerable to coercion by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Government.

In a recent story by Robert Fife and Steven Chase in The Globe and Mail, court documents show that Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland aggressively pursued action against Mr. Xian, Mr. Ou Yang, and Mr. Chen who were determined to be using Wealth One Bank as a money laundering operation and as an avenue for funding foreign interference operations by the PRC in Canada.

The story outlined that Freeland prohibited the three men and their direct associates from accessing the banks data and entering Wealth One facilities. She also stipulated that any attempts to communicate with bank employees must be reported, and that the bank must move its headquarters from a building owned by Mr. Xian.

Regular readers will know that it’s not often that I offer praise for the actions of the incumbent government, but the efforts of Chrystia Freeland and the Finance Department in this particular case is worthy of applause. They identified a significant foreign interference threat and took concrete steps to isolate those involved to prevent further damage and secure the integrity of the institution.

So why the hell is it that our government can’t do the same thing with the eleven MPs who have been collaborating with foreign state agents and undermining Canada’s national interests and undermined its democracy?

Surely if this degree of action by the government is reasonable and warranted against those vulnerable to coercion in the private sector, then the same standard or stricter should be applied to those in government.

As far as I am aware, there is nothing technically stopping the Prime Minister from doing the very same thing with the parliamentarians who have been implicated by CSIS — aside from despotic indifference perhaps.

At a minimum, the incriminated MP’s and Senators should be banned from the grounds of Parliament, prevented from communicating with their staff, and have their access to government files, emails, and other sensitive materials restricted. This would go a long way to restore Canadians faith in its government and elected officials as well bolster the broader integrity of our democratic institutions.

While the time for the government to act was months ago, there should be an even greater sense of urgency to do so now. The increased necessity is born from the collapse of the supply and confidence agreement between the NDP and Liberals. It means that the probability of facing a snap election is a far more likely scenario than getting to the fixed election date set for October 2025.

And once the writ drops and Parliament dissolves, all parliamentary business, including anything focused on foreign interference, comes grinding to a halt. Which effectively means that traitors, turncoats, and spies will in all likelihood be on the ballot.

Maybe we can appoint a special rapporteur to look at how we allowed that to happen.

John Thomson