Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne and her Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and International Trade, Michael Chan : hard at work.

Up here in the land of the Canadian Sunset a George Soros article in the July 9, 2015 issue of the New York Review of Books offers evidence that the Harper government’s ongoing harassment of Ontario’s Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and International Trade, Michael Chan, is not just “a flourish of 1950s-era McCarthyism – call it MacKayism.”

It is also part of a deeper early 21st century debate, here in North America and beyond.

To start with, Canadian federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay has recently “said there is an ‘ongoing investigation’ involving Ontario cabinet minister Michael Chan, suspected by Canada’s spy agency of being too close to the Chinese government at a time when Beijing has been accused of trying to exert foreign influence.”

George Soros (with ghost of Karl Marx looking on – odd bedfellows indeed!).

Yet the George Soros article is called “A Partnership with China to Avoid World War.” It urges that “the future course of history will greatly depend on how China tackles its economic transition from investment and export-led growth to greater dependence on domestic demand, and how the US reacts to it. A strategic partnership between the US and China could prevent the evolution of two power blocks that may be drawn into military conflict.”

Mr. Soros qualifies as “one of the thirty richest people in the world” today. (Donald Trump take note!)  His views on US-China partnership nonetheless flow from a progressive view of relations between the rising Chinese giant and the West. The conservative view is more sceptical. At worst, it sees some kind of military conflict with China as inevitable. And it still believes the ancient adage that if you want peace you should prepare for war.

At the same time, one of Mr. Soros’s most convincing arguments turns around the future of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Those were the days --- someone’s idea of a pretty stupid joke?

Soros actually agrees with Stephen Harper about Russia today : “Putin’s Russia has challenged both the prevailing world order, which depends on the Western powers for support, and the values and principles on which the EU was founded. Neither the European nor the American public is fully aware of the severity of the challenge.”

At the same time, George Soros worries that a too negative and sceptical Western approach to China will just push China into the waiting arms of Russia. And Stephen Harper should worry about this too. Soros agrees that China itself certainly bears watching – especially with its current “aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea and elsewhere.” He just thinks that reaching out and working with China rather than confronting it is the wisest Western policy in 2015. (And that, it seems, is exactly what Michael Chan is trying to do for Kathleen Wynne’s Ontario government!)