Tag Archives: CSIS

How Chinese Gangs Invaded Canada and How Canada’s Corrupt Politicians Helped Them by Dan Murray, Immigration Watch Canada –Watch Canada

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How Chinese Gangs Invaded Canada and How Canada’s Corrupt Politicians Helped Them by Dan Murray, Immigration Watch Canada – January 8, 2020 https://immigrationwatchcanada.org/2020/01/08/how-chinese-gangs-invaded-canada-how-canadas-corrupt-politicians-helped-them/

Canadian diplomat Brian McAdam was posted at Canada’s Hong Kong consulate between 1989-1993. He became Canada’s immigration control officer in Hong Kong. He soon uncovered evidence of what he believed was a major scandal. Both Canadian and Chinese consular staff were selling visas to members of Hong Kong’s and Mainland China’s mafia as well as to Communist China’s intelligence service. The price, he heard, ranged from $10,000 to $100,000 per visa.

According to Postmedia reporter Don Butler, “McAdam had evidence that members of Chinese criminal gangs, known as Triads, were applying to enter Canada as entrepreneurs under the country’s business immigration program. And many were getting visas.

“What was very, very disturbing to McAdam was that he kept seeing connections of these Triad members to Canadian politicians.

He started writing reports — ultimately 32 — documenting the names of the gangsters who were getting into Canada. His reports provided details on murderers, money launderers, smugglers and spies.

The reports caused panic in the immigration minister’s office and at headquarters in Ottawa. McAdam alleged, “I was exposing incredible negligence. I was exposing incredible corruption. And I was exposing the flaws in our whole immigration system.

“People in Ottawa didn’t want to investigate anything. They just shut their eyes to everything.”

According to an Ottawa Citizen report, McAdam received dozens of threatening calls (from the Chinese Mafia) with messages such as “Stop what you’re doing or you’re going to find yourself dead”.

What finally broke him down, he said, was “the incredible feeling of betrayal from my colleagues”. One day, a Hong Kong police officer told McAdam that a Triad member whose phone was tapped, told the Hong Kong police officer that the Triad member had complained to someone in Canada’s immigration department. The Immigration Department official reassured the Triad boss, “Don’t worry about McAdam and what he’s doing. We’ll take care of him.”

And, says Mr. McAdam, they did “take care of him”

Macadam was shocked at what the Hong Kong officer said to him. I’d worked with these people for years.” “It goes to your very soul,” he says. “It is a spiritual crisis. It is a psychological breakdown.”

Immigration Canada offered him a good new job in Ottawa, supposedly in a new organized crime unit at Foreign Affairs. But when he showed up for work in 1993, he discovered the job didn’t exist. The personnel manager urged him to take a retirement package, though he was just 51.

Days later, he went on sick leave and never returned to work. His 30-year career in Europe, the Caribbean and Asia was over.

McAdam started preparing details about his experiences. In an 850-page manuscript titled “The Dragon’s (China’s) Deception” He writes: “I was mocked, demeaned and threatened in a hostile environment while dealing with some of the world’s most ruthless criminals. Staff in both Hong Kong and in Ottawa gave copies of my confidential reports about some of the criminals to the gangsters themselves, and that greatly put my life at risk. I received death threats for a number of years but no one was ever concerned about my safety. My big question (was): Why did Canadian diplomats in Hong Kong and bureaucrats in Ottawa do whatever they could to destroy my work and myself?”

Around that time, he was formulating the idea of a formal investigation to verify and enlarge his findings in Hong Kong. By 1995, a dozen CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) and RCMP officers formally launched their first joint project. Its name was “Operation Sidewinder”.

In spite of dealing with his ill health, Mr. McAdam supplied the team with extensive documentation of China’s criminals and the Communist government’s ambitious program of acquisition, espionage and political influence in Canada and around the world.

The RCMP’s own more narrow investigation into Mr. McAdam’s discoveries — separate from “Sidewinder” — had begun in 1992. They probed incidents of corruption but limited themselves to locally engaged staff — not Canadians.

A seven-year investigation ensued. Seven RCMP investigators came and went. “As soon as one (Mountie) would (find something damning), they’d pull him off the case,” Mr. McAdam says. (That pattern continued.)

“I believe both probes (by the Sidewinder team and by the RCMP) had considerable political interference to shut them down,” says Mr. McAdam, “and it seemed to be coming from the highest levels.”

David Kilgour, then Liberal MP for Edmonton-Strathcona and secretary of state for Latin America and Africa, wrote persistent letters sympathetic to McAdam’s concerns. Mr. Kilgour sent his first letter directly to then-prime minister Jean Chrétien asking for a public inquiry — which Mr. McAdam had requested. Instead, the government ordered an RCMP probe.

Among the RCMP officers sent to Hong Kong was a 26-year veteran, Cpl. Robert Read, who, in 1996, spent months reviewing and corroborating many of Mr. McAdam’s findings. RCMP Supt. Jean Dubé pulled Read off the file in 1997 and later fired Read.

“They fired him to stop the investigation,” says Mr. McAdam.

In 2003, an RCMP external committee confirmed Cpl. Read’s findings. It found the RCMP “consistently demonstrated a reluctance to investigate” and ordered the force to rehire him. The RCMP refused. Cpl. Read sued.

Prime Minister Chretien ordered that all copies of the Sidewinder report be destroyed, supposedly to avoid alienating China and endangering trade and other relations with China. More likely, Chretien was concerned about the money the Liberal Party’s major donors (developers, speculators, banks, media corps) made from the influx of Chinese into Canada. Chretien feared that these people would not stand to have their cash cow interfered with.

One copy of the Sidewinder report survived.

According to Postmedia reporter Don Butler, documents released in 2001 (under access to information rules) state that the RCMP believed the spy agency shelved the report because it was uneasy with its message that Beijing’s spies were working with Chinese criminal gangs in Canada.

According to an updated Globe and Mail report of April 6, 2018, which focused on the testimony of Canadian agent Michel Juneau, the original Sidewinder team culled some of its information from a Mainland Chinese intelligence officer who defected in 1997.

The man, who was a member of the United Front Work Department, one of China’s five espionage arms, went public with allegations that he had been ordered to go to Hong Kong to engineer a pact between Beijing and criminal gangs known as triads.

Mr. Juneau also pointed out that at the RCMP’s request, the original Sidewinder team produced a binder, brimming with what is known in the intelligence business as facting. It provided documented evidence, culled from secret CSIS reports, other government departments and agencies and foreign intelligence agencies, that supported every single line in the original report, he said.

Mr. Juneau noted that other Western intelligence organizations and a bipartisan U.S. congressional committee have since produced reports that echoed many of Sidewinder’s conclusions. “We were ahead of our time and that’s what probably killed our report.”

According to UBC Professor David Ley, between 200,000 and 300,000 Chinese entered Canada through the Business Immigrant program. Many of them and their families still live in Canada. It is extremely probable that many continue their criminal activities.

For details, see https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/the-mcadam-file-bribery-chinese-gangsters-and-betrayal

http://www.david-kilgour.com/2008/Aug_18_2008_17.php

https://chinawatchcanada.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-mcadam-file-bribery-chinese.html

Canada Naive in the Face of China’s Infiltration and Disinformation Campaigns: Expert

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The downtown Vancouver skyline is seen at sunset, as houses line a hillside in Burnaby, B.C., on April 17, 2021. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

The downtown Vancouver skyline is seen at sunset, as houses line a hillside in Burnaby, B.C., on April 17, 2021. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press) Canada

Canada Naive in the Face of China’s Infiltration and Disinformation Campaigns: Expert

By Andrew Chen June 8, 2022 Updated: June 9, 2022 biggersmallerPrint 0:007:33

Canada has been naive about communist China its continued espionage and foreign interference campaigns, and as politicians willfully turn a blind eye to the threat, the country is also losing credibility among its democratic allies, an expert said at a panel discussion on June 7.

Sam Cooper, also an award-winning investigative journalist, said he was told by Canadian intelligence officials that Beijing had its spies collect information about him after his book, published last summer, exposed how corrupt politicians in the communist regime have been using gangs and casinos in Canada to launder dirty money made through the illicit drug trade, among other international criminal activities.

“Beijing wanted to know how the public was reacting to my book and whether it could damage the Chinese Communist Party,” Cooper said during the panel discussion, held on the occasion of the launch of the second edition of his book.

The event was hosted by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and featured panelists including Conservative MP Adam Chambers and James Cohen, executive director of Transparency International Canada, a Toronto-based global anti-corruption non-government coalition.

Cooper said he was shocked to learn that he was targeted by the Chinese Communist Party’s espionage activities, but “wasn’t surprised” that the regime’s United Front Work Department found his book a threat.

The book, titled “Wilful Blindness: How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons, and CCP Agents Infiltrated the West,” draws links between senior CCP officials and underground money-laundering suspects in British Columbia and shows how their criminal proceedings fuelled an opioid crisis in Canada while driving up real estate costs. It also reveals that Chinese state-backed companies donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s family foundation.

“Every parliamentarian and regulator should have the book, should read it,” said Chambers, who previously worked as a senior adviser to former finance minister Jim Flaherty.

The book also received praise on Twitter from Tory MP Garnett Genuis, who has been vocal against the CCP’s human rights abuses and violations of international law.

Misinformation in Canada’s 2021 Federal Election

A top priority of the CCP’s foreign infiltration campaign is to eliminate dissenting voices against the authoritarian regime and its questionable conduct, particularly those in overseas Chinese communities.

Cooper said one of his sources, who managed to get into some of Vancouver’s Chinese elite circles that are involved with the United Front, warned him about a CCP agent’s scheme to run a donation campaign to fund a lawsuit against critics of the regime based on claims that they are racially discriminatory against Asian Canadians.

“My source told me they want to make it an influential Chinese group to lobby and pressure governments, politicians, reporters, institutions, and incite national sentiment among Chinese Canadians,” Cooper said. “They want to promote lawsuits against anyone who dares to criticize China and elect more puppets into Canadian governments.”

He said the warnings became a reality during Canada’s 2021 federal election, when the same social media groups that had attacked him in 2020 for his previous reports on the United Front’s misconduct began to “amplify disinformation operations” against Conservative candidate Kenny Chiu, who was the incumbent MP seeking re-election.

Chiu, known for his pro-Chinese democracy stance and an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party, lost his seat in the B.C. riding of Steveston–Richmond East in the 2021 election. He told The Epoch Times in a previous interview that while he had been a target of misinformation before, what happened last year was “exceptional.”

Through his private member’s bill, Bill C-282, Chiu sought to increase political transparency by compelling those working on behalf of foreign entities to register as foreign agents. But he said that bill was “deliberately” misrepresented to mislead people in the Chinese community to believe it was against their interests.

“Chiu didn’t even name China in his bill,” Cooper said. “Yet he was smeared and labelled anti-Chinese.”

“Any defender of Canada is an enemy of Beijing. These forces succeeded in taking Chiu out.”

Cooper noted similar misinformation campaigns also targeted Alice Wong, Tory MP for Richmond Centre, Ontario. In total, the CCP interference network had targeted 12 ridings in the 2021 election, mostly in Vancouver and Toronto, he said.

Targeting Elites

Cooper said the CCP’s cash-for-access influence over Western political elites, or what is known as “elite capture,” as seen in Vancouver and Toronto is also carried out in other democratic societies.

He pointed to a report in early 2022 from the United Kingdom’s intelligence agency MI5, which showed how a Chinese agent, Christine Ching Kui Lee, established ties with a number of British parliamentarians on behalf of the CCP through political donations.

However, unlike the MI5, Canadian intelligence agencies cannot make public alerts about infiltration from foreign agents from China, Russia, and Iran, due to the country’s “strict privacy laws and the mysterious political shackles that Canadian intelligence operates under,” even when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has incredible intelligence showing the CCP’s United Front has targeted Trudeau and politicians in all Canadian parties, Cooper said.

“This isn’t a failure of the agency’s task with gathering intelligence. They ultimately report to their political masters. And if those political masters don’t want to heed the blaring alarms, the agencies have little recourse—reports will be buried, … and ultimately the intelligence agencies will stop producing these reports altogether,” Cooper said, citing an intelligence source.

“Bureaucrats don’t want to end their careers by delivering unwanted medicine to uncooperative patients.”

He said that according to Chiu, in Greater Vancouver, with its “three-dimensional control” of political candidates, culture, and businesses, China has gained sway over even the traditional pillars of society.

“People that are supposed to speak the truth, China has brought them down to their knees,” Cooper said.

As for politicians in Ottawa, they have been “naive at best about the threat China poses,” and many parliamentarians are near-sighted, focusing on microscopic concerns, while still others who do see the big picture “enrich themselves through sweet insider deals with Beijing,” he said, citing Chiu and his intelligence sources.

“Canada is faltering as a middle power,” Cooper said. “The nation isn’t taken seriously in the Five Eyes anymore. Canada isn’t a leader in the growing battle between democracy and authoritarianism.”

Issac Teo contributed to this article.

Would You Invite a Rattlesnake Into Your Home? Canada Did!

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Would You Invite a Rattlesnake Into Your Home? Canada Did!
May 29, 2018
PART 1

If Trudeau and his government need more evidence of China’s sinister intentions in Canada, here is a summary of the evidence that a joint RCMP-CSIS report gave Ottawa about 20 years ago. This report is even more relevant today.

(1) The report was sub-titled “SIDEWINDER”. That is a comparison of Mainland China to a rattlesnake. It is another way of saying that it was foolish to have allowed a rattlesnake into Canada. The purpose of the joint RCMP-CSIS project was “to assess the extent of the threat posed by the acquisition and control of Canadian companies by members or associates of Chinese triads (organized crime) and those with affiliations to Chinese Intelligence (Spy) Services”. (P.3)

(2) When Deng Xiaoping took over China in the late 1970’s, he introduced his economic reforms with the slogan “To get rich is glorious”. However, he and his regime knew nothing about how the West and capitalism operated, so they went to the richest Chinese in Hong Kong and to Chinese organized crime (triads) for advice. In return, Deng gave these groups privileged access to China’s economy. Triads were involved in illegality: gambling, extortion, prostitution, human trafficking and even political assassinations. Deng referred to the triads as “patriotic groups”.

(3) A significant presence of organized crime was detected in “investor” immigrants from Hong Kong to Canada from the mid-1980’s on. This presence consisted of two groups (A) Very rich Chinese business people who had been known to be co-operating with the Mainland Chinese government for years and (B) Associates and relatives of China’s leadership and the Chinese Intelligence (Spy) Service (ChIS). Co-operation between Hong Kong tycoons, triads and the Beijing leadership raised the level of the threat. Mainland China was looking for Canadian technology and for ways to interfere in Canada. In order to understand what Mainland China intended, Canadians had to be made aware of unique Chinese concepts such as “debt of honour”, “duties” “Hou Tai or backers, and “Guanxi or connections”. These concepts placed cultural obligations on Chinese to one another vs to Canada.

(4) As of 1997, over 200 Canadian companies were under the direct or indirect control of China. Many Canadians will be shocked to learn that one of those 200 companies is the CIBC, one of Canada’s five largest banks. Another major bank in Canada under Mainland China’s control is the Hong Kong Bank of Canada



(5) Also as of 1907, examples of other Chinese-controlled “Canadian” companies were CITIC, Norinco, Husky Oil, Grand Adex Properties Inc., Merril Lynch, Gordon Capital Inc., Tai Foong International, Ramada Hotels, China Vision, and Semi-Tech Corporation). (Editor’s Note: Because Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s government ignored the recommendations of Sidewinder and even ordered it to be destroyed, the number of companies now controlled by Mainland China is almost certainly exponentially higher.)

(6) The Chinese government has gained influence in Canadian politics by maximizing their presence over some of this country’s economic levers. The steps in Chinese strategy were as follows : (a) Buy a “Canadian” company so as to obtain a “local identity”, legally concealing their foreign identity. (b) Under the “Canadian” banner, the Chinese-Canadian company then invests or buys other companies in various Canadian economic sectors. Control lies in Hong Kong or Beijing. The financial benefits of research, often paid for by Ottawa or the provinces are likely to go to Asia. The financial network of Chinese entrepreneurs (connected with triads or Beijing) has grown exponentially and very rapidly in Canada. Their influence over local, provincial and national political leaders has also increased. Chinese entrepreneurs have offered company board positions to Canadian politicians. Many of these company boards are China-owned.

(7) These companies are eligible to receive Canadian government subsidies for research or to bid on classified contracts from Federal Departments. The risks to Canada were that : (A) After the research is done, it can be transferred to China. and (B) Access gained to classified contracts is gained for China. Two examples of noticeable risk: (a) A Canadian company under Mainland Chinese influence competed for a contract to set up and run a classified communications system that linked the main agencies of the Canadian Intelligence community!!! This would enable the Chinese to obtain access to sensitive information. (b) A Chinese multinational bought a Canadian company that specialized in video surveillance. Both of these companies may have installed security systems for various Canadian government institutions or Canadian research industries. China thus had access to information it would never have obtained directly.

 

Sidewinder – Exposing The Poisonous Snake of China’s Infiltration into Canada Part 1

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Sidewinder – Exposing The Poisonous Snake of China’s Infiltration into Canada Part 1

 By David Barswell

The return of Hong Kong to China by the British resulted in a mass migration (prior to the handover date in 1997)  of Chinese entrepreneurs who did not want to live under Communism.   This stream of political and economic refugees to the West provided cover for criminals and for members of China’s intelligence services to penetrate Canada.  (1)

The joint RCMP-CSIS investigation into this massive threat to Canada’s economic and military  security, known as “Operation Sidewinder”, culminated in 1997’s Sidewinder report on “Chinese Intelligence Services and Triads Financial Links in Canada.”  (2)

 

The word “Sidewinder” was used deliberately. The Sindwinder is a  venomous pit-viper species found in the southwestern United States,. The word referred to the serious danger that a significant number of Chinese posed to Canada.

The targets in this on-going enterprise were largely military and economic, chosen to obtain financial and political influence in the Canadian economy and government, and to obtain high-tech information of use to the People’s Liberation Army.

The Sidewinder Report explored the extent to which the People’s Republic of China had succeeded in  penetrating Canada.  It was never released because of the explosive political implications, and the fear of a backlash from the hundreds of thousands of Canadian citizens of Chinese origin.

Sidewinder was ignored, and all copies destroyed – except for one, which a disgruntled analyst leaked to the press in a traditional brown envelope.

Sidewinder addresses the People’s Liberation Army’s use of the cover provided by the Hong Kong emigrants into Canada to insert intelligence operatives who set up businesses for a variety of purposes.

Canadian Forces defence contracts could be awarded to companies controlled by the People’s Liberation Army, and companies under Chinese government control could obtain research grants from the Canadian government, then ship the fruits of the research to China after we had paid for it.

Canada’s generosity, business-friendly policies and research subsidies, made us a sitting-duck target for China to exploit and to take almost unlimited advantage of.

And, of course, companies under Chinese government control routinely obtain political influence in Canada by making donations to our major political parties.

Here are two other examples of Mainland China’s sinister infiltration.

The Teck corporation, for example, which describes itself as “Canada’s largest diversified mining company”, donated $2.3 million to the B.C. Liberals in 2015, and interestingly enough, in July of this year, Dermod Travis of Integrity BC drew attention to Teck’s appointment of a “Chinese government official” to Teck’s board of directors in April.  Mr. Travis stated : “You have an official with a foreign government who is sitting on the board of a public company in Canada… There are a lot of people in China they could have chosen, and the fact this individual is a member of the government should set off alarm bells.” (3).

In 2012, a recently-arrived Chinese “temporary worker” hired by HD Mining International Limited filed a human rights complaint against the United Steelworkers over their campaign to stop the bringing-in of temporaries (Temporary Foreign Workers)  to work for HD, saying that union leaflets and content on the union’s website were “likely to create contempt for Chinese people” (4).

The corporation itself also threatened to sue the federal government for damages over public statements made by Ministers of The Crown about the company.