Bob Mackin
The week after high-ranking Chinese Communist Party official Lu Kang visited Ottawa, one of the politicians he met is in China.
Kang, vice-minister of International Development of the Central Committee of the CCP, met with ex-Prime Minister Jean Chretien, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Parliamentary Secretary Kody Blois and Liberal-appointed Senators Yuen Pau Woo and Clement Gignac.
Gignac is on the annual Canada-China Legislative Association co-chairs visit to China. For the March 16-20 junket, he is accompanied by rookie Liberal MP Zoe Royer and an aide from the Library of Parliament. They are travelling to Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
A similar trip in March 2025 cost taxpayers $38,224.06. Gignac, Sen. Pierrette Ringuette, MP Majid Jowhari and staffer Michael McPherson travelled to Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
Royer was elected in 2025 in Port Moody-Coquitlam after she had been elected in 2022 to the board of School District No. 43 (Coquitlam).
B.C.’s third-biggest school district operates a Chinese government-funded Confucius Institute, part of China’s foreign influence and propaganda program.
Royer and Gignac attended the Year of the Horse Lunar New Year reception at the Chinese Embassy and embassy-sponsored events at the Senate of Canada.
In 2024, NATO called China the “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war on Ukraine, “through its so-called ‘no limits’ partnership and its large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base.” Iran’s foreign minister told MSNOW that China and Russia are providing military co-operation to Iran in the war with U.S. and Israel.
