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The bill is stuck in second reading stage and it won’t come up again until February. Last week, Senator Yuen Pao Woo, the Beijing-friendly former president of the Asia Pacific Foundation who Trudeau appointed to the Senate in October last year, spoke against Frum’s bill: “In our zeal to defend the right to make decisions ourselves, let’s not go down the road of parochialism that privileges nationality or place of residence over reason.”

Woo leads the Senate’s “Independent” group, but he has never voted against the Senate’s government representative — Peter Harder, the former president of the Canada-China Business Council who led Trudeau’s transition team following the 2015 federal election. And the government hasn’t shown any enthusiasm for Frum’s bill, either, so S-239 may well be doomed.

I think the Liberals are just trying to run the clock on legislation, Frum said

“I think the Liberals are just trying to run the clock on legislation that interferes with their winning formula, and their winning formula includes being the beneficiaries of foreign money that comes into the country via third parties that is then used to assist the Liberal Party in their political agenda. We don’t know how much Chinese money came into the country for the purposes of influencing the last election, but I don’t think the number is zero,” Frum said. “How much is going to come in in 2019?”

Then there’s all that money in between elections, besides, and it’s not as though sleazy cash-for-access gambits involving Chinese billionaires will get you into any serious trouble in Canada. Prime Minister Trudeau survived almost wholly unscathed after offering himself up at $1,500-a-plate dinners last year. The glamorous attendees included Benson Wong of the Chinese Business Chamber of Commerce, insurance tycoon and banker Shenglin Xian, and billionaire Zhang Bin, who donated $1 million to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and the University of Montreal on top of his $1,500 fee. Such a nice man.