A new poll finds that more than half of Canadians see China as the biggest security threat facing Canada; most believe a global war of attrition involving the communist country is already underway.
The poll, released March 10 by pollster Maru Public Opinion, found that 52 percent of respondents see China (the Communist Party of China) as the biggest security threat to Canada, followed by Russia (42 percent), North Korea (39 percent) and Iran (33 percent).
In addition, 55% of respondents said that a global war is already underway and that a number of countries are destabilizing rival countries and undermining their sovereignty and political systems in different ways.
The poll was conducted on February 12-13 of this year among a random sample of 1,506 Canadian adults. At this point, the Chinese Communist authorities had been detaining two Canadian citizens for more than two years and two months.
In December 2018, Canada arrested huawei‘s finance director Meng Wanzhou, who was charged with fraud and other crimes in the United States, as provided for in the Canada-U.S. Extradition Treaty. A few days later, Chinese authorities detained Canadian citizens Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor on charges of “endangering national security” and demanded that Canada release Meng.
In January 2019, Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian citizen serving a 15-year sentence on drug charges in China, had his death sentence commuted on short notice. Subsequently, Chinese Communist authorities began blocking some Canadian agricultural products from entering the Chinese market.
According to the National Post, John Wright, executive vice president of Maru Public Opinion, said the poll results may indicate that the Canadian public is becoming increasingly hardened in its views of China because of ongoing tensions between the two countries.
In contrast, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken a lower profile on the Chinese side. Parliament recently passed a motion deeming what the Chinese Communist regime did to the Uighurs in Xinjiang as genocide, but Trudeau and his cabinet abstained from voting on the motion en masse.
Wright said the public drew its own conclusions without looking at the government’s policies. “They (the conclusions) are based on what they themselves have seen, read, heard or personally experienced. So no matter what the government does, no matter what the diplomatic envoys communicate, the public has made the complete decision that China (the Chinese Communist Party) poses a significant risk to Canada’s security.”
He said respondents to the poll are likely to be aware of the “accumulation of attacks” from China and other countries in recent years. In recent years, the Chinese Communist regime has taken a belligerent approach to expanding its global economic and political influence.
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