FIRST READING: Erin O’Toole warns of ‘flirtatious’ woman who may have been a Chinese spy

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Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has told the Foreign Interference Commission that China’s attempts to sway Canadian elections may have included dispatching women to try to seduce him.

In February testimony that was made public this week, O’Toole recounted an incident in which a “young, ethnic Chinese woman” repeatedly harassed him at public events.

“Mr. O’Toole described the young woman as very flirtatious and as unprofessional and relentless in her attempts to obtain his phone number, to the point that he felt bothered and uncomfortable,” reads a summary compiled by commission lawyers.

The approaches from the unknown woman happened in “2018 or 2019” — just before O’Toole was elected as Conservative leader in 2020. According to commission documents, only after becoming leader did O’Toole reflect upon the incident and suspect that it “may well have been an overt attempt at gaining his influence.”

O’Toole, 51, was ousted as leader in 2022, and now works as an executive at the risk advisory firm ADIT North America. Nevertheless, O’Toole remains one of the central figures in the Foreign Interference Commission, an ongoing public inquiry looking into whether China, Russia or “other foreign states” were able to sway the results of Canada’s last two federal elections.

O’Toole was the main contender against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the 2021 federal election, and the commission was sparked in part by allegations that Chinese actors had worked to favour Liberal candidates over O’Toole’s Conservatives.

One odd detail that has emerged during commission hearings is that O’Toole’s name sounds similar to the Chinese word for “vomiting.” In a series of anti-Conservative social media posts with potential links to Chinese consulates, the Tory leader is referred to as “Vomiting.”

O’Toole also described another potentially suspicious incident involving young Chinese women — although this one lacked any sexual overtones.

During his first run at the Conservative leadership in 2017, he described his office being approached by two “lovely” young Chinese students offering their help in Chinese-language data entry and canvassing.

“He thought it strange for international students to follow domestic politics so closely and even stranger that they would volunteer in the context of an internal party leadership race,” reads a summary of his testimony.

O’Toole then told commission that he “regretted even suggesting that they may have had ill intentions,” but said it was an example of just how easy it would be for foreign agents to infiltrate a Canadian election campaign.

“In the context of a busy political campaign, harried front-line staff do not have the time, resources, or training to scrutinize ambiguous behaviour,” read commission documents.

Although O’Toole’s reported encounter with a flirtatious foreign national came to nothing, that has not always been the case among Conservative MPs.

In 2011, Conservative MP Bob Dechert was thrust into an embarrassing scandal in which it emerged that he had exchanged amorous messages with Shi Rong, an Ottawa-based correspondent for Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency.

“You are so beautiful. I really like the picture of you by the water with your cheeks puffed,” read one of the messages, which were reportedly made public by Shi’s husband.

Although the Shi affair lacked the usual hallmarks of a targeted Chinese operation, security analysts have noted that Xinhua is often used to move spies into foreign capitals. At the time, Dechert was parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.

In 2018, then senior Conservative MP Tony Clement revealed he had sent pictures of his genitalia to two West African men who had been posing as a female paramour. The motive in Clement’s case appeared to be a simple instance of financial blackmail, rather than an attempt at political interference.

But Clement had been sending the explicit photos at the same time that he was serving on the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, an elite body with access to top secret foreign intelligence.

When it comes to alleged Chinese “honey traps” (espionage operations that use sex to gain access), one of the most successful in recent years occurred in the United States. In 2020, Axios broke the story of Christine Fang, a Chinese intelligence operative who had initiated romantic relationships with two California mayors — in addition to establishing close ties with federal politicians, including Congressman Eric Swalwell.

So far in 2024, more than 13,000 foreign nationals who entered Canada on student visas have applied for asylum as refugee claimants. There’s a few reasons why it would be advantageous for a foreign student to do this: Refugee claimants can apply for work permits, their tuition often goes down and they’re immediately granted free health-care coverage. What’s more, if their visa is coming to an end, the refugee claimant backlog is currently so long that it would be at least two years before an immigration official even has a chance to see if they qualify as a refugee. This is why Immigration Minister Marc Miller is now accusing students of using the refugee system as a form of “backdoor entry into Canada.”

A safe consumption site in Nanaimo was recently the target of a drug and weapons trafficking bust, according to the RCMP. There are two political wrinkles to this drug bust. First, that it’s in the same B.C. city where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held his cabinet retreat only a few days before the bust. Second, the Conservative Party of BC made an election issue out of the raid, saying in a statement that it put the lie to NDP claims that harm reduction sites weren’t becoming hubs of criminality.

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