As International Condemnations Mount Over Liberal MP's Forced Labour Attack, Carney Plans $1,775-a-Head Fundraiser Co-Hosted by Michael Ma

The prime minister has issued no public statement in two days.

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney has gone to ground.

Two days after Liberal Member of Parliament Michael Ma used his time at the House of Commons industry committee to demand that a sanctioned China expert personally confirm she had witnessed forced labour before her evidence could be taken seriously — a performance celebrated by Chinese Communist Party state media as a propaganda victory and condemned by international Uyghur organizations as an affront to Canada’s own recognition of genocide — Carney has issued no public statement.

According to an event advertisement obtained by The Bureau, on Monday Carney will appear as the headline speaker at a $1,775-a-head fundraiser co-hosted by Ma at Angus Glen Golf Club in Markham, Ontario — in the Markham-Unionville riding held by Ma. The advertisement lists Ma as one of three hosts alongside Hodgson and MP Gary Anandasangaree. Tickets for those 35 and under are priced at $925.

Carney’s silence arrives at a moment that may represent the first genuine test of his government — and of his calculus in drawing Beijing closer as trade tensions with Washington add another layer of economic pressure.

Ma crossed the floor from the Conservative Party to join Carney’s Liberal caucus in December 2025, bringing Carney’s minority government one seat closer to a majority.

Carney subsequently chose Ma to accompany him on his January trade mission to Beijing — the first visit to China by a Canadian prime minister since 2017. As recently as the day before the committee controversy, CTV’s Vassy Kapelos and parliamentary reporter Graham Richards, discussing the fallout on her program, noted Ma had been seated beside the prime minister in the House of Commons.

“Is China actually going to go and show you this is how we institute forced labour in our manufacturing?” Richards said. “Of course not. I don’t think this is going to go away for a couple of reasons. Number one, it perhaps raises questions about the questions that the Conservatives were raising after the floor crossing about whether (MP Ma) is close or not (to China.)”

The March 26 committee hearing was examining Carney’s decision, made during the Beijing trip, to allow 49,000 Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles into Canada at a reduced tariff rate. Margaret McCuaig-Johnston — a 37-year veteran of the federal public service, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa, and a scholar sanctioned by Beijing in December 2024 — testified that Chinese electric vehicles are manufactured using materials produced by Uyghur forced labourers in Xinjiang.

Ma, a Hong Kong-born MP who was elected as a Conservative in Markham-Unionville before crossing the floor, referred to her testimony as a “claim” and pressed her on whether she had witnessed forced labour personally. “You claim about forced labour in Xinjiang. Have you witnessed forced labour in Xinjiang? Have you witnessed forced labour? Just a short answer — have you witnessed forced labour in Xinjiang, yes or no?”

McCuaig-Johnston replied that she works closely with Human Rights Watch, whose researchers had witnessed it directly. Ma’s response: “So did you get that from hearsay?”

After the hearing, McCuaig-Johnston offered Ma a copy of the Human Rights Watch report “Asleep at the Wheel,” which documents the use of Xinjiang aluminum in Chinese electric vehicles.

“He said, ‘I don’t believe in reports, I only believe in things that I can see with my own eyes,’” McCuaig-Johnston told The Canadian Press, adding that Ma then suggested the two of them travel to China together to see for themselves. McCuaig-Johnston noted she has been sanctioned by China and cannot travel there.

By Friday, the firestorm had crossed into rare territory for Ottawa’s parliamentary press gallery, which has shown limited interest in the possibility that Ma’s floor crossing carried foreign influence implications.

Chinese state-linked media published a studied biographical attack on McCuaig-Johnston — a scholar well known to Beijing, which sanctioned her as part of retaliatory measures against Canadian institutions active on Uyghur and Tibetan issues. The Observer Network framed Ma’s committee performance as a triumph: “Michael Ma launched a rapid-fire interrogation that sent tension through the room. The witness’s stumbling response sparked uproar.” The account was a direct inversion of what Canadian and international observers witnessed.

The outlet dismissed McCuaig-Johnston as someone who had repeatedly acted as an anti-China pawn under the guise of expertise, accused her of abandoning legitimate scholarship, and branded her a notorious hardliner with a long list of bad deeds. Forced labour accusations, the outlet declared, were an absurd lie fabricated by certain Western forces based on ideological bias.

“It seems that Michael Ma designed his rapid fire questions at me so they could be used by Chinese state media showing that he went up against a critic of the regime,” McCuaig-Johnston wrote on social media. “That’s what Chinese state media is reporting. It failed spectacularly here, but state media won’t report that.”

The broader context surrounding Ma’s political trajectory has been the subject of sustained investigative reporting by The Bureau.

The Chinese Canadian Conservative Association — of which Ma was listed as a director in 2019 — is identified in the Jamestown Foundation’s landmark study published this year as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas United Front influence network. The report names the organization explicitly among political party-focused United Front groups designed to ensure Beijing can address all sides of the political spectrum regardless of which party holds power. The same association orchestrated pressure campaigns calling for the resignation of two successive Conservative leaders — Erin O’Toole and Pierre Poilievre — over their stances toward Beijing.

Ma’s floor crossing in December 2025 came directly in the wake of the Paul Chiang scandal. Chiang, the Liberal incumbent in the Markham riding that Ma won as a Conservative, had been forced to step down as a candidate after acknowledging he had suggested Joe Tay — the Conservative candidate targeted during the 2025 federal election by Hong Kong national security authorities with online wanted-style campaigns and safety threats — could be handed over to Chinese diplomats in connection with a Hong Kong bounty. Ma was then elected as a Conservative in the subsequent contest before crossing the floor months later to become a Liberal, giving Carney’s government its near-majority footing.

The riding now held by Energy Minister Hodgson — who co-hosts Monday’s fundraiser alongside Ma — has previously been identified in The Bureau‘s reporting as among the ridings implicated in Beijing’s United Front election interference network in the 2019 federal election.

As The Bureau reported in December 2023, a January 2022 Privy Council Office Special Report concluded that a clandestine network of People’s Republic of China-linked individuals worked to covertly advance Beijing’s interests in the 2019 federal election, supported by a large transfer of funds from the People’s Republic of China Consulate in Toronto into an influence network that implicated at least 11 federal candidates and 13 campaign staff across the Greater Toronto Area.

That reporting also documented how, as recently as September 2024, Canada’s failure to enforce its own forced-labour import restrictions had become a direct sticking point with Washington. A bipartisan letter signed by then-senators Marco Rubio and Jeff Merkley warned that Canada had become a backdoor for goods produced with Uyghur forced labour, and hinted at consequences for Ottawa ahead of the 2026 review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.

The Campaign for Uyghurs, based in Washington, said it was deeply alarmed by Ma’s remarks, noting that his line of questioning ignored the deliberate nature of the Chinese state’s efforts to conceal the forced labour system and its use of propaganda to deny the Uyghur genocide. The organization noted that Canada’s enforcement of its own 2024 forced-labour import ban has been minimal — rejecting only two shipments — compared with thousands blocked by the United States under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The Campaign for Uyghurs said Ma’s conduct raised the question of whether the Carney government is abandoning Canada’s recognition of the Uyghur genocide.

The World Uyghur Congress, whose president Turgunjan Alawdun said it was troubling to see an elected official dismiss credible evidence of human rights abuses in a country that had formally recognized the genocide, dismissed Ma’s Shenzhen distinction as misleading — noting that Uyghur workers subject to forced labour have been transferred to factories across mainland China under coercive conditions, and are not confined to Xinjiang.

Canada-Hong Kong Link condemned Ma’s dismissal of documented forced labour evidence as hearsay, calling it an approach commonly used to undermine credible human rights evidence and avoid accountability. The organization said Ma’s apology — in which he claimed he had been talking about Shenzhen and that people misheard him saying Xinjiang — did not appear sincere.

The statement raised direct questions about Ma’s fitness to advocate for Hong Kong Pathway permanent resident applicants, stating that a Canadian Member of Parliament who amplifies narratives aligning with Beijing’s position cannot be entrusted to safeguard the rights and dignity of those escaping that same regime. The group issued three formal demands: that the government resource enforcement of forced labour supply chain guardrails; that the Foreign Influence Transparency Registry be properly resourced and disinformation denying documented Chinese human rights violations be actively countered; and that all political parties strengthen candidate vetting to ensure individuals seeking public office demonstrate a clear commitment to Canada’s human rights positions and democratic principles.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story stated the fundraiser at Angus Glen Golf Club was located in the riding held by Energy Minister Tim Hodgson. The venue actually falls within the federal boundaries of Markham-Unionville, the riding represented by MP Michael Ma. The story has been updated to reflect this correction.