Université de Montreal and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation promised a total of $1 million in 2016
As part of what is said to be a plan by the Chinese government to influence Justin Trudeau, an $800,000 donation was promised to a university in Montreal. The university said that the promise came at a different time in Canada-China relations.
When the donation was announced in 2016, scientific and economic ties between the two countries were more open than they are now, Université de Montréal spokesman Jeff Heinrich said in an email Wednesday.
“At the time, the Université de Montréal had no reason to think that this donation might have been tied to political meddling by a foreign country,” he said.
The Globe and Mail published a report earlier this week that said a national security source who did not want to be named said that in 2014, a Chinese diplomat told Chinese billionaire Zhang Bin to give $1 million to Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s son as part of a plan by Beijing to influence his son.
In 2016, Zhang and another Chinese businessman, Niu Gensheng, gave $200,000 to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and promised $800,000 to the Université de Montréal, where the elder Trudeau studied law and taught before going into politics.
On Wednesday, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation said it would give back the $200,000
When asked Thursday if the university would do the same, Heinrich said that the school was looking at its options “based on the information we have.”
The Canadian Press hasn’t been able to get in touch with Niu and Zhang to ask what they think.
Scholarship money and a tribute to the former prime ministe
The news about the donations came at the same time that there were claims that the Chinese were trying to influence Canadian elections. In the past few weeks, the federal Liberal government has been under pressure because of reports in the media that say China interfered in the last two elections. These reports cite unnamed security sources and leaked intelligence.
National security agencies say that China has tried to mess with the last two elections, but not enough to change the results.
Heinrich said on Wednesday that the law school at the university got $550,000 to name a scholarship after the two Chinese businessmen, but that the final payment of $250,000 was never made.
He said that the donors had no say in which students got the scholarships, which were last given out in 2018 and were meant to help people from Canada and China get to know each other better.
A tribute to the elder Trudeau was supposed to be made with $50,000 of the donation, which Heinrich said would have been a piece of art.
“There are no plans to finish this piece of art right now,” he said.
Heinrich said that in 2021, the university will change its rules about accepting donations. “The University of Montreal does its due diligence to find out who people are and why they want to give a big gift. This includes international donors,” he said.
He said that the international scene has changed since 2016, and that the university follows all rules about international partnerships set by the government.
“Some programs that our law school set up with Chinese partners, like summer schools in China and training for Chinese judges, ended in 2019,” he said.
Universities must scrutinize donations, an expert says
Since Université de Montréal announced the donations in 2016, relations between China and Canada have gotten worse. In 2018, Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were arrested in China on espionage charges. This was a very public fight between the two countries.
The two Michaels were arrested a few days after Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies and the daughter of the company’s founder, was taken into custody by Canadian authorities at the request of the US.
Kovrig and Spavor were locked up in Chinese prisons for almost three years. In September 2021, they were freed after Meng made a deal with U.S. prosecutors about fraud and conspiracy charges related to American sanctions against Iran.
Daniel Stanton, who used to work for CSIS and is now the director of national security at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute, says universities need to look more closely at where they get their money, but it can be hard for them to figure out if donations are really from a foreign government.
He said that universities need to think about what they are being asked to do with the money and if any partnerships with universities in countries like China might touch on sensitive areas of research, like artificial intelligence or encryption technologies.
“Maybe it’s not such a big deal if it’s something like a law school or something that isn’t technical or sensitive,” he said in an interview.
“But if part of the donation is that students will go back to China and maybe do graduate work in an academy with ties to the [People’s Liberation Army] or something like that, that would make me wonder if this is a real donation or exchange.”