Tag Archives: CSIS

Canadian intelligence warned PM Trudeau that China covertly funded 2019 election candidates: Sources

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Canadian intelligence warned PM Trudeau that China covertly funded 2019 election candidates: Sources

Toronto Chinese Consulate

By Sam Cooper Global News Published November 7, 2022 11 min read

Click to play video: 'China allegedly interfered in 2019 Canadian election'
WATCH: How China allegedly interfered in the 2019 Canadian election – Nov 7, 2022

Canadian intelligence officials have warned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that China has allegedly been targeting Canada with a vast campaign of foreign interference, which includes funding a clandestine network of at least 11 federal candidates running in the 2019 election, according to Global News sources.

Delivered to the prime minister and several cabinet members in a series of briefings and memos first presented in January, the allegations included other detailed examples of Beijing’s efforts to further its influence and, in turn, subvert Canada’s democratic process, sources said.

Based on recent information from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), those efforts allegedly involve payments through intermediaries to candidates affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), placing agents into the offices of MPs in order to influence policy, seeking to co-opt and corrupt former Canadian officials to gain leverage in Ottawa, and mounting aggressive campaigns to punish Canadian politicians whom the People’s Republic of China (PRC) views as threats to its interests.

CSIS told Global News it could not answer some questions for this story. But the service confirmed it has identified the PRC’s foreign interference in Canada, which can include covert funding to influence election outcomes.

 “The Chinese Communist Party … is using all elements of state power to carry out activities that are a direct threat to our national security and sovereignty,” CSIS stated.

The briefings did not identify the 2019 candidates. But the alleged election interference network included members from both the Liberal and Conservative parties, according to sources with knowledge of the briefs.

Global News was not able to confirm from the sources which cabinet ministers may have been privy to the briefs nor the specific timing that the information was reportedly shared.Click to play video: 'Canada ‘creating new tools’ to protect institutions against China, others seeking to influence elections' 2:21 Canada ‘creating new tools’ to protect institutions against China, others seeking to influence elections

Chief among the allegations is that CSIS reported that China’s Toronto consulate directed a large clandestine transfer of funds to a network of at least eleven federal election candidates and numerous Beijing operatives who worked as their campaign staffers. Advertisement

The funds were allegedly transferred through an Ontario provincial MPP and a federal election candidate staffer. Separate sources aware of the situation said a CCP proxy group, acting as an intermediary, transferred around $250,000.

The 2022 briefs said that some, but not all, members of the alleged network are witting affiliates of the Chinese Communist Party.The intelligence did not conclude whether CSIS believes the network successfully influenced the October 2019 election results, sources say.

CSIS can capture its findings through warrants that allow electronic interception of communications among Chinese consulate officials and Canadian politicians and staffers.

Sources close to this situation say they are revealing details from the 2022 briefs to give Canadians a clearer understanding of China’s attacks on Canada’s democratic system. Out of fear of retribution, they have asked their names be withheld.

In response to the briefing details, experts say the alleged interference points to weakness in Canada’s outdated espionage and counterintelligence laws, which sophisticated interference networks run by China, Russia and Iran are exploiting.

Still, the 2022 intelligence asserts that China conducts more foreign interference than any other nation, and interference threats to Canada increased in 2015 when Chinese president Xi Jinping elevated the CCP’s so-called United Front influence networks abroad.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) did not directly answer a series of questions from Global News, including whether or not Prime Minister Trudeau was briefed in 2022 on Canadian intelligence that alleged China had covertly funded a clandestine network of candidates in the 2019 election.

It also did not respond to a question on the need for tighter federal rules against foreign influence on Canadian politics.

“Protecting Canadians’ security is our top priority. Threats, harassment, or intimidation of Canadian citizens are unacceptable, and all allegations of interference are investigated thoroughly by our security agencies,” a statement from the PMO said. “As threats evolve, so must the methods used to address them. That is why the Prime Minister has given the Minister of Public Safety the mandate to improve collaboration between Canadian security agencies.”

Conservative Party leadership did not respond to Global News questions by deadline for this story.Click to play video: 'China responds to Trudeau, Global News investigation, says it has no interest in ‘Canada’s internal affairs’' 0:37 China responds to Trudeau, Global News investigation, says it has no interest in ‘Canada’s internal affairs’

“We simply don’t have a prosecutorial end game to deal with foreign interference,” said Dan Stanton, a former CSIS officer who studies Chinese interference, but isn’t privy to recent CSIS reporting. “The sophistication of the threat: it is not the guy with the fedora and black coat, like the old days with the KGB. The whole point of influence networks is that anyone can be used by a foreign state as a co-optee, or agent, or source.”

Stanton and other experts told Global News that CSIS benefits from modernized counter-terror laws that have enabled the service to mitigate terror planning and funding networks since 9/11, but Canada’s espionage laws are stuck in the Cold War era.

“So, until we make legislative changes on interference,” Stanton said, “it’s just CSIS telling our politicians, ‘Hey, be careful out there.’”

In April 2021, a private members bill in the House of Commons called for a foreign influence registry, but it did not become law.

Kenny Chiu, the B.C. Conservative MP who wrote the bill, was subsequently targeted by the CCP’s election interference network, sources said. Chiu says his law would have compelled anyone working for hostile regimes, such as Russia and Iran and China, to declare their interests, and this transparency would protect Canada’s democracy.

The Toronto Consulate and Chinese officials in Ottawa did not respond to questions from Global News about allegations in the 2022 briefs.

Money and influence

Interference on Canadian soil is orchestrated by the CCP’s powerful United Front Work Department, which mobilizes large sections of society abroad to fulfill Chinese Communist Party objectives, according to the 2022 briefs.

United Front operations can include politicians, media, business, student and community groups, and are aimed at consolidating support for CCP policy as well as targeting critics and the causes of ethnic groups seen as “poisons” by the CCP, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans.

Several federal candidates from Canada’s 2019 federal election met with China-based United Front Work Department officials, the intelligence alleges, but did not identify the politicians. Advertisement

While Xi’s United Front is not itself an espionage agency, intelligence briefs allege its networks in Canada facilitate interference operations by China’s foreign espionage service, the Ministry of State Security.

The briefs also reported that Xi’s United Front operates through Chinese consulates in Canada, from which officials direct funds into Canada’s political system, using CCP proxies.

The CSIS briefs also point to the 2014 imbroglio over Toronto District School Board’s partnership with the Confucius Institute, China’s controversial state-funded, culture-education program. Many parents, teachers and students opposed the involvement of these schools, which are guided by the United Front Work Department, according to the U.S. State Department.

According to the briefs, the Toronto Chinese Consulate allegedly transferred $1 million to unidentified proxy groups, which in turn organized protests to support the continued integration of the program into Toronto’s district school board system. That effort ultimately failed when the TDSB voted to sever its ties to the organization.

But China’s alleged United Front campaigns extend beyond financing to the co-opting of politicians and harassment of critics.

One of the more dramatic allegations from the briefs pertained to a pivotal February 2021 vote in the House of Commons, in which members would either support or reject a United Nations resolution declaring China’s treatment of the Uyghur people a genocide.

The intelligence also alleges that, in the aftermath of the House vote, Chinese intelligence agents conducted in-depth background research into MPs who voted in favour of the resolution, declaring China guilty of genocide.

The agents studied the ridings of specific, targeted MPs in order to learn what industries and companies were present and whether these companies had economic links to China.

The objective was to judge whether China could leverage the local economies of Canadian politicians seen as the CCP’s enemies, sources said.

In addition, it was alleged that before the September 2021 federal election, a small number of MPs reported they feared for their families and their reputations and believed they were being targeted in operations to hurt their election chances.

One of the MPs whom the CCP allegedly targeted, MP Kenny Chiu, said he believes Chinese agents succeeded in smearing him as a racist in WeChat and Mandarin-language media reports. As the member from Steveston-Richmond, Chiu had advocated for transparent elections in Hong Kong, voted in favour of declaring China’s actions in Xinjiang a genocide, and tabled his April 2021 bill calling for a foreign influence registry.

“The CCP didn’t have to send me a death threat, they just tried to kill my political career,” Chiu said in an interview.

“So ahead of the 2021 election, I was given a distancing treatment by Chinese-language media. And during the campaign people were shutting the door in my face. The messages I was getting were, ‘Kenny Chiu is a racist. Kenny is Anti-Asian.’”

Some pundits, however, argued that Chiu swung his riding for the Conservatives in 2019 and the riding simply reverted to the Liberals two years later.

Chinese intelligence in the field

The 2022 briefs alleged that one official in Toronto’s Chinese Consulate directed a 2019 federal election-campaign staffer to control and monitor their candidates’ meetings. These efforts included preventing meetings with representatives of Taiwan, a democratic country that Beijing claims is a renegade province.

This kind of interference extends to elected officials as well, according to the briefs, which referred to instances in which clandestine operatives were placed alongside elected officials in an attempt to control the policy choices of federal MPs.

“I’m not surprised at all,” said Harry Tseng, Taiwan’s deputy minister of foreign affairs and top diplomat in Ottawa. “This type of activity is directed from Beijing in many consulates abroad. I think China can be that coercive because they have a very comprehensive list of Canadian politicians.

And when they can find a connection to China, they can pull a string to influence the Canadians.”

The 2022 briefs also detailed Chinese intelligence efforts to infiltrate, surveil and “mess with” Chinese diaspora communities.

Fenella Sung, a Hong Kong Canadian community leader in Vancouver, said she has long believed that Chinese intelligence has infiltrated Canadian diaspora groups, by using business inducements and “subtle psychological warfare.”

She also believes that China’s United Front controls and funds an “interchangeable” network of candidates and nominations in some British Columbia and Ontario ridings.

Turnisa Matsedik-Qira, a Uyghur-Canadian activist, said many in her community believe Chinese agents monitored and harassed them. She provided photos from her December 2021 Facebook posting that showed one alleged incident. In the post, Matsedik-Qira says she was protesting outside the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver when a van pulled up, and two men jumped out. Advertisement

“One of them spit on me and said, “I wish all your people died,” she said.

“I’m scared and worried for my safety. I think he is connected to the Chinese Consulate, for sure. The Consulate has many people in Canada working for China.”

Coerced Repatriations

The 2022 briefs also shed light on the PRC’s so-called Fox Hunt, a high-profile international campaign in President Xi’s efforts to battle corruption and persuade economic fugitives to return to China.

National security experts argue the Fox Hunt is less about battling corruption and more about the CCP extending tentacles of repression into diaspora communities abroad and clamping down on rivals and dissidents.

The 2022 briefs alleged that one of China’s Fox Hunt targets in Canada had connections to the Politburo, the CCP’s elite inner circle of leaders.

Concern was raised in 2020 when a Chinese police agent worked with a Canadian police officer to repatriate an economic fugitive. In another coerced repatriation, Chinese police brought a Fox Hunt target’s brother and father into Canada and would not allow them to return to China unless the economic fugitive also agreed to return, the 2022 briefs alleged.

A new report from the Spanish human rights NGO SafeGuard Defenders bolsters these suspicions, identifying three alleged secret Chinese police stations in Toronto, among 50 similar worldwide, which are used to repatriate Fox Hunt targets. SafeGuard Defenders cited Chinese state records that connect the Toronto locations to police bureaus in Fujian province.

Dan Stanton, the former CSIS official, and David Mulroney, Canada’s former ambassador to China, said that Canada is more exposed than other Western democracies to China’s interference, and yet as the United States, UK and Australia strengthen their counter-interference laws and ramp up investigations into Xi’s United Front networks, Ottawa remains strangely inactive.

“The two most worrying aspects of this are direct interference in our electoral process, and we’re now seeing evidence of this,” Mulroney said, “and harassment of people in Canada of Uyghur and Tibetan origin who have vulnerable relatives back home.”

Global News also described some of the allegations sources say were briefed to Trudeau in 2022, including China’s election interference and targeting of MPs and diaspora communities in Canada, to Dennis Molinaro, a former senior CSIS analyst and expert on foreign interference, who now teaches legal studies at Ontario Tech University.

Molinaro said if the CSIS intelligence warnings sources say were provided to Trudeau are confirmed as accurate, they raise concerns about why the government hasn’t yet responded by tabling new legislation to counter the threats.

“The level of foreign interference activity you describe is serious and alarming,” Molinaro said. “And if confirmed, the level of interference you describe says to me that foreign adversaries understand the legislative loopholes that exist in Canada and are taking full advantage of them.”

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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
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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.

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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.

 

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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.
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