Conservatives are calling on the defence minister, the chief of the defence staff, and expert witnesses to be summoned to testify before a House committee regarding a report that members of the Canadian Armed Forces trained Chinese troops in the summer of 2023 and the recent holding of military talks between Beijing and Ottawa.
Three specialists with the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) were approved by then-Defence Minister Anita Anand, who is now foreign affairs minister, to train members of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during Exercise Khaan Quest near Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, between June 19 to July 2, 2023, according to newly released government documents. This was first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.
Bezan said that Conservatives will move a motion at the House Committee on National Defence when Parliament resumes next week calling for the defence officials to testify as well as for a study of the reports of CAF members training Chinese military and military talks between Beijing and Ottawa.
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According to government documents, three CAF members from 4 Engineering Support Regiment took part in Exercise Khaan Quest, with one assisting in a command-post exercise and the other two specialists in counter-IED (improvised explosive device) response providing training to military personnel.
The documents note that the field-training exercise included personnel from China and contain a June 22 draft media response stating, “There is no confirmation that CAF members will be directly training PLA personnel at this time.” An unnamed internal reviewer with the initials “BCDP7” commented on the side of the document that the denial of cooperation with the PLA should be removed, stating: “That is not true. We know we will be training and we now have MND, DM/CDS approval to do so.”
The references appear to correlate to Minister of National Defence, Deputy Minister of National Defence, and Defence Staff.
The Epoch Times reached out to CAF regarding details of Canada’s participation in Exercise Khaan Quest but did not hear back by time of publication.
Canada–China Military Talks
“This is especially ridiculous given that the Beijing regime has interfered with Canadian elections, kidnapped our citizens, set up secret police stations on our soil, dropped surveillance buoys in our Arctic waters and flown spy balloons through our airspace,” Bezan wrote.
“Even Minister Champagne has remarked several times that the China of today ‘is not the China of 2016 or even of 2018,’” he added, referencing past comments by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne.
The talks are the first China–Canada military discussions since 2018, when relations worsened between Beijing and Ottawa after Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wazhou on an American extradition request in December 2018, followed by China’s detention of Canadian citizens Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig.
According to Beijing, the military talks included a willingness by both sides to “strengthen practical exchanges and cooperation between the two militaries, and enhanced mutual understanding and trust.”
Ottawa has not posted an official confirmation of the meeting, but a spokesperson for CAF told The Epoch Times the meeting was done in order to support “ongoing military-to-military communications at the functional level.”
“There are specific areas in which we will seek deeper cooperation with China and areas where we will not, which includes on defence,” the spokesperson said. “This meeting is consistent with Canada’s broader defence engagement with partners across the Indo-Pacific region and is anchored in our commitment to protecting the safety of Canadians and the strategic interests of Canada.”
