Guy Saint-Jacques, who was Canada’s ambassador to China until October, 2016, said Mr. Zhang had told him before the 2015 election that he planned to make donations in Canada in memory of the senior Mr. Trudeau.
Mr. Saint-Jacques said that during this period of time Chinese officials would often tell him they wanted Mr. Trudeau to become prime minister.
The beautiful Mao-Trudeau vision would have become a statue.
The politically connected Chinese donors who pledged $1-million to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and the University of Montreal did not only want to build a statue of the former prime minister.
They also sought to erect a statue at the university’s law school of chairman Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader who brought his country under Communist control and, in his decades as the Great Helmsman, oversaw policies that led to huge numbers of deaths from famine and violence.
“They suggested one of Trudeau and Mao together,” Geneviève O’Meara, a spokesperson said.
The rollout is just beginning. Conservatives are pressing for the CSIS documents. And the Globe and Mail has been professional and effective at getting the story, nailing it down and dispensing it step by step. American conservatives who wonder why Biden scandals don’t get any traction could learn some lessons here. This is old-school journalism without the memes or the hollow posturing and it’s proving to be effective.
