Full Comment - The agent who warned Ottawa about Chinese political infiltration years ago

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00:00:20.720 China's attempts to interfere in Canadian elections is very much in the headlines these days,

00:00:25.720 but it's not a new phenomenon.

00:00:27.260 In fact, China's interference in all aspects of Canadian society is not a new phenomenon.

00:00:33.520 It's something that has been going on for a very long time.

00:00:37.480 Hello, my name is Brian Lilly, host of the Full Comment Podcast.

00:00:40.520 And before we bring in our next guest who witnessed this decades ago and continues to monitor it,

00:00:45.960 I want to remind you that you can subscribe to the Full Comment Podcast on any podcast platform,

00:00:51.960 Amazon, Apple, Spotify, Google, wherever you're listening.

00:00:55.720 Make sure that you hit subscribe, leave us a review, share it on social media, and help spread the word.

00:01:01.800 Our next guest is someone who I've known for a very long time.

00:01:05.180 He's been an outspoken analyst in the media for a long time.

00:01:11.020 He's someone who spent years from the 1980s to the early 2000s as a CSIS officer,

00:01:16.480 including time, on the Asia-Pacific desk.

00:01:19.140 And he's someone who noted China's attempts to interfere in Canadian society long before most of us did.

00:01:26.600 Michel Juno-Catia is the president of Northgate Group.

00:01:30.420 He lectures at universities.

00:01:32.000 He's been involved in this for a very long time, and he joins me now from Ottawa.

00:01:35.960 Michel, thanks so much.

00:01:37.380 Thank you for having me, Brian.

00:01:38.500 It's a pleasure.

00:01:38.840 Let's step back and define what foreign interference is, and then we'll talk about what it means in the political sense,

00:01:48.060 because I think that people have maybe odd views on what this actually means.

00:01:55.320 No, it's right.

00:01:56.620 It's a good idea to start, because there is various forms of foreign interference.

00:02:00.880 There is a political form.

00:02:02.940 There is within the community, where you try to control and monitor the community.

00:02:07.320 There is within the business world, and there's the academic world as well.

00:02:11.800 The one that has been preoccupying us lately in the news, it's much more the political one,

00:02:17.400 and lately also the monitoring within the community with those clandestine police stations that have been done.

00:02:26.220 Foreign interference is different than foreign influence.

00:02:30.880 The distinction is very, very important.

00:02:32.800 To influence another country, another government, it's legitimate, it's appropriate, it's overt versus covert.

00:02:43.960 So it might be what a diplomat does, going and having meetings in the open, making representations to the government.

00:02:52.880 Here's why we think you should agree with us on this.

00:02:56.300 That's influence.

00:02:57.540 That's influence, and that's absolutely appropriate.

00:03:00.440 We influence through various means.

00:03:03.440 We influence through the work you do.

00:03:06.080 For example, Brian, as commentators in the media, we share thoughts, and eventually we try to sort of reach a common ground that makes us move forward.

00:03:18.680 Covert interference is totally different.

00:03:21.300 Foreign interference is covert most of the time, and seeks to basically take over the process of the decision process or the political process in order to favor covertly a foreign country.

00:03:42.380 In this particular situation, when we talk about China, China is not unique in that field.

00:03:49.380 China is not the only country performing an attempt to influence or to interfere to a certain extent.

00:03:57.300 There's a long list of countries, including some friendly countries that we could name that do such a thing.

00:04:03.280 What is singular with China is the amplitude of their work. 0.70

00:04:11.240 They have such a long period of time and such a large quantity of people doing and performing at so many different levels.

00:04:20.120 That's what makes it very, very challenging for any Western agency, plus the fact that, contrary to other countries, particularly democratic countries, China has time on its side.

00:04:33.560 It has a perennity.

00:04:35.700 It doesn't have to return to election every five years, where in our case, the wind might blow in a different direction in five years.

00:04:46.020 Currently, the Chinese government knows that it can plant an agent in place for five, 10, 15, 25 years ahead, and will harvest later the benefit of that operation.

00:05:00.460 That's very, very powerful for them.

00:05:02.100 I want to ask you about something that you and I have never discussed, despite knowing each other for a very long time, doing, I couldn't tell you how many interviews, but Operation Sidewinder.

00:05:14.640 That was a report that came out in the 1990s.

00:05:17.920 Correct.

00:05:18.640 I wrote it.

00:05:20.420 Okay.

00:05:21.220 Are you able to talk about that?

00:05:22.820 Because that was something that was documenting this issue of China's attempts to interfere at all levels of society, but politics in particular.

00:05:32.100 In the 1990s.

00:05:33.160 And I reread it the other day, the portions that are open public, and I looked and I thought, this all sounds really familiar.

00:05:40.520 Yeah, you're absolutely right.

00:05:41.940 And unfortunately, the version that was released by an informant in the RCMP who confessed to the McLean many years later that he was the one that leaked the document to the media,

00:05:54.360 is the poor version of what we had written.

00:05:58.100 It was a very, very, very poor translation of what was originally written.

00:06:03.820 But you are right.

00:06:04.920 And I thank you to mention it, because way back in the late second half of the 90s, I was in charge of Asia Pacific,

00:06:14.400 and we had discovered already the attempt by the Chinese embassy and the Chinese agent in place to try to manipulate the political process in Canada.

00:06:25.340 And that is something that I'd like to sort of bring to the attention of the listeners today,

00:06:31.680 is that what we are currently experiencing in the media and the debate that are taking place, which, by the way, delights me, is not new to us.

00:06:43.540 We have been sounding the alarm for the last 30 years.

00:06:47.480 I witnessed that myself when we went to the government, every government, name it, any color, any party, we went, we told them what was happening.

00:06:58.680 We were bringing evidence and they disregard, they disregard, to my point of view, for two reasons.

00:07:06.320 One, because it was serving their purpose at that time.

00:07:10.440 They found it useful and they thought that it was probably not a bad idea to let it run its course because it was serving their purpose,

00:07:18.180 maybe like the way Mr. Trudeau saw it lately.

00:07:22.000 And the second purpose is probably because the agent of influence that were capable to be planted close to the various level of government,

00:07:30.720 which is municipal, provincial or federal, were doing a great job.

00:07:35.080 They were capable to neutralize the warning shot that we were sending to the government.

00:07:41.220 They were, when you say neutralized, they were able to say, oh, no, no, no.

00:07:46.180 It's not what they're telling you.

00:07:48.480 Is that what you mean?

00:07:49.420 It's not that bad.

00:07:51.700 No, they're just chains bouncing things and stuff like that and succeeding.

00:07:57.900 I don't know which argument they brought all the time,

00:08:00.100 but definitely they succeeded in doing what we call them for, agent of influence,

00:08:07.040 the influence in the wrong direction.

00:08:10.000 So this report, which, you know, joint Sidewinder was a joint CSIS-RCMP reporter investigation, correct?

00:08:18.460 Right.

00:08:18.800 Okay.

00:08:19.060 This report described the desire of Chinese agents, agents of Beijing, to take over nomination meetings,

00:08:30.040 to work within the party system before you even, you know, they don't even have to influence us on election day.

00:08:39.980 They're influencing at nomination meetings.

00:08:42.960 Correct.

00:08:43.080 They knew enough to do that in the 90s.

00:08:45.740 This warning went out in 97.

00:08:47.420 Now we're seeing the same thing.

00:08:50.100 As someone that gave that warning so many years ago, how does it feel watching it come out and politicians try to say,

00:08:56.560 no, no, no, there's nothing to see here?

00:08:59.860 I think it's a double sweet or sweet and sour success.

00:09:06.180 Sweet in the sense that finally we will be maybe capable to tackle the bull by the horn

00:09:12.880 and being capable to finally do something for something that I've consecrated my entire life to protecting my country.

00:09:21.020 But to do so, we need to break a certain political culture that exists in this country.

00:09:29.620 And basically that political culture goes with the premise that if we are capable to do it and nobody knows about it, we'll be good, we'll be safe.

00:09:39.380 And all political parties have practiced that thing.

00:09:42.980 So they will prefer, they will favor their partisanry and their political advancement rather than to work on protecting our country like they should.

00:09:55.160 And like I said, I stress it's very, very important.

00:09:57.420 You know, I could give you tons of example under Harper government, you know, tons of example.

00:10:03.580 I could give you tons of example under the Christian government.

00:10:06.240 I could give you tons of example under Mulroney government.

00:10:09.200 It goes as back as far as my knowledge and my experience at that period of time.

00:10:14.060 So all government in that period have practiced the same sort of ignorance, blissful ignorance or willingful ignorance along the way because it was serving certain purpose.

00:10:28.760 I was watching a committee meeting on Friday morning.

00:10:33.140 The Commons Ethics Committee was investigating this.

00:10:36.200 They had two people appearing, a man named Chek Kwan, who's the co-chair of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China.

00:10:44.780 And Mehmet Todi, who's the executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project.

00:10:50.700 And they both showed up with the same message.

00:10:54.340 We've been sounding the alarm on this.

00:10:57.320 I mean, Chek Kwan said he got involved shortly after Tiaman Square.

00:11:00.980 That was 1989.

00:11:02.980 Mehmet Todi a bit later getting involved in Uyghur issues.

00:11:07.100 But they both said, we have been coming to government.

00:11:10.420 We have been coming to parliament.

00:11:11.760 We have both appeared before committees going back years.

00:11:15.860 And we've sounded the alarm and nobody has paid attention.

00:11:20.460 That has to be incredibly frustrating for everybody involved because, you know, they're both saying the same thing.

00:11:26.560 Kwan says, look, I'm Chinese-Canadian.

00:11:28.740 We're the victims.

00:11:30.680 And Mehmet Todi says, I'm a Uyghur Canadian.

00:11:34.360 I can't go visit a whole pile of countries because of the interference China does on me.

00:11:39.360 I can't go visit my relatives back home.

00:11:43.900 I can't go to countries in between to visit them because of Chinese interference. 0.96

00:11:48.580 We have abandoned a large chunk of our population to keep the people in Beijing happy.

00:11:56.940 And perhaps, you know, damaged our democracy in the process.

00:12:02.300 Absolutely right.

00:12:03.320 Absolutely right.

00:12:04.660 And it is frustrating.

00:12:07.420 It is frustrating because we've been aware of this problem for a long period of time.

00:12:11.280 We know, we have known for a long period of time also, that individuals, people, family have been suffering because of this ignorance and this attitude that various governments have taken for too long.

00:12:27.840 This is why I'm extremely delighted to see this debate taking place as we speak.

00:12:35.240 We still need to, the jury is still out to find out if the government will do the right thing, and the government includes the opposition in this perspective, if they will be capable to sort of put in place what is needed in order to start sort of standing on our two feet.

00:12:55.840 And one of the most important elements and key elements into this will be definitely to try to pass a law similar to what Australia has done, probably refine it because we can benefit of their experience.

00:13:09.840 But in 2017, 2018, the Australian adopted a law specifically about stopping foreign interference.

00:13:19.280 The American has done the same.

00:13:20.940 The UK has done the same.

00:13:22.260 Their political and judicial legal system is the same as here in Canada.

00:13:30.200 So definitely, we should inspire ourselves and rapidly because this will become a tool for the law enforcement.

00:13:37.520 Because today, even if we see the RCMP saying, please come and talk to us in order to help stopping, for example, those covert police departments, police station.

00:13:50.740 Well, the problem is, is that even if you have the evidence, what are you going to charge them with?

00:13:56.060 There's nothing.

00:13:56.840 The criminal call talks about harassment, but not in this way.

00:14:00.600 The criminal call talks about defamation, but not in this way.

00:14:04.400 So currently, as we speak, the law enforcement is powerless.

00:14:08.560 They have no tools to work with.

00:14:10.440 So we need to give them the right tools.

00:14:13.160 Then the population can go to them.

00:14:16.000 The brave one will be capable to share their experience, help them to collect evidence, and eventually do two things.

00:14:22.840 The fake diplomat that comes here, which are in reality spy, will be kicked out of the country.

00:14:28.100 And the Canadian that helps the foreign services will be prosecuted for their treason, basically, to us.

00:14:40.960 It's interesting that you brought up those police stations when that news broke last fall, I guess it was.

00:14:47.720 I got the addresses of the three in Toronto, and I went out and visited them.

00:14:51.680 And they're not what we think of as police station.

00:14:54.840 One was a convenience store.

00:14:56.640 Correct.

00:14:56.860 One was an office in one of these nondescript strip malls in an industrial park, and the other one was a home.

00:15:04.460 Correct.

00:15:05.280 And yesterday, the news broke about two in Montreal, one in Broussaint and one in Montreal.

00:15:11.760 And they're very much the same, right?

00:15:13.900 Like when I spoke to Richard Fadden about it, the former head of CSIS, he said,

00:15:18.580 not so much police stations as intimidation stations.

00:15:21.820 They're there not to lock somebody up.

00:15:24.260 They're there to go and say, oh, it's a really nice life you've got in Canada, but you know, your aunt back home.

00:15:31.220 You know, she could suffer if you do the wrong thing.

00:15:33.580 That's right.

00:15:34.020 If anybody wants to understand how the Chinese government used and deployed its strategy, learn the game of Go.

00:15:43.620 The game of Go, it's a millennium-old game that was fought in every court, every general, anybody with power in Asia.

00:15:54.800 And still today, one of the great games played from Asia.

00:15:59.820 The game of Go is a strategy game where you put black pedal and white pedal on the board, no cards, no dice.

00:16:07.540 It's very pure strategy.

00:16:10.160 And they understand one thing, and there's tons of philosophy books that were written about this game,

00:16:14.760 that on the board, if you put one pedal in one corner, it has influence on the entire game, even if it stands alone in this one corner.

00:16:26.360 And that's exactly what those police stations are about.

00:16:30.840 They go, first of all, in places where they look like nothing, but the word is passed in the community.

00:16:37.560 We are there, we are watching you, and your government cannot protect you.

00:16:43.940 We will reach out to you, and we will find you.

00:16:47.020 And if we want, we can arrest, just like you said, arrest your relative back home.

00:16:54.940 And that element of fear is typical of any autocracy that we know about, any totalitarianism that we know about.

00:17:03.180 And it is working, it is working, because they wrote the book 2,000 years ago about how to use the influence.

00:17:13.740 Influence is not control, but influence gives you a form of control by simply having somebody else doing the work for you.

00:17:22.380 I want to dive deeper into influence in a moment, but one of the lines of pushback I've had from people who want to make this story go away,

00:17:34.640 or want to say it's being overblown is, well, why would China care?

00:17:39.500 We're so small.

00:17:41.220 Do you think they really care about us?

00:17:43.680 My view is, yeah, I think they do.

00:17:46.500 It's a very, very good question, and I asked myself that question way back in the 90s when I was in charge of Asia Pacific.

00:17:54.620 Basically, the answer is that Canada is a knowledge-based society.

00:17:59.960 We have excellent research center.

00:18:02.440 We are at the forefront of the research in so many fields.

00:18:10.000 So the intellectual property that we produce through our R&D is really, really attractive.

00:18:15.520 Another element as well is we have access to all the major table that there is, NATO, NORAD, Five Eyes, et cetera.

00:18:27.460 So we are not only having to protect our secret, we need to protect our friend's secret. 0.97

00:18:32.580 But we are so welcoming and so naive, borderline stupid sometimes when it comes to sort of bring the people in, 0.99

00:18:41.120 is that we become the doorman that opens the door and access to other conduits. 0.98

00:18:47.540 And that's why we are so interesting for China.

00:18:51.700 We also have natural resources that are extremely precious.

00:18:55.240 Let's remember, we are our own makers of our destiny of having made or produced China as the manufacturer of the world.

00:19:05.460 They manufacture everything over there, but they need natural resources.

00:19:09.640 We have a lot of them.

00:19:11.560 So they need to come here.

00:19:13.520 Since we have a very poor legal system to protect us against those kind of activities,

00:19:20.340 we become a playground.

00:19:22.000 We become a playground.

00:19:23.020 They can do whatever they want.

00:19:24.180 I'll give you another example, just to give you an example how they were capable to plant so many things.

00:19:30.540 The biggest economic partner we have is the U.S.

00:19:33.380 Everybody's agree with that, okay?

00:19:35.460 With China, we have a trade deficit.

00:19:38.220 That means they don't give us as much as we give to them.

00:19:42.140 Well, diplomatic representation-wise, China has the double number of diplomats than the American has right here in our sword.

00:19:52.320 Why?

00:19:52.740 Why so many diplomats? 0.99

00:19:54.920 Because, bloody hell, half of them are spies. 0.97

00:19:58.060 They're not diplomats. 0.99

00:19:59.340 They're right here to try to do certain things that are inappropriate for their position.

00:20:03.820 Okay, so that answers the question of why they would be interested in little old Canada.

00:20:12.040 But I mentioned off the top, this goes down to provincial levels.

00:20:16.500 Definitely Ontario.

00:20:18.200 Definitely British Columbia.

00:20:19.740 I'm sure other provincial legislatures as well.

00:20:23.240 And in some cases, it's been talked for over a decade that municipal politicians are targets as well.

00:20:30.300 Why would they be looking to, I understand, trying to get five-eye secrets, trying to get NATO secrets, all of that.

00:20:37.180 Why would they be trying to infiltrate, influence, interfere with provincial or municipal politicians?

00:20:44.360 Because the Chinese are capable to look at the long game.

00:20:48.320 And when you go into politics, very often on the natural path, many politicians will choose to start at the local and climb their way to maybe get to the federal and stuff like that.

00:21:00.920 So, so it's, it's, it's one way to be capable to get access to other form of, of, of, of decision process and decision real ring.

00:21:12.000 But at the same time, at the municipal, provincial or federal level, there's all sorts of activities that are taking place.

00:21:19.920 Like, for example, uh, in Ottawa area, we have a lot of, uh, high tech companies, as you know, uh, and certain decisions and, and, and influence could help gaining access to those companies.

00:21:31.520 So you get access through one door.

00:21:34.140 Let, remember, like I said earlier, they have time on their site.

00:21:38.160 They don't change the, the, the, the government will stay there so they can plan, you know, operations for a long period of time.

00:21:45.560 So gaining access through, uh, uh, uh, uh, the, uh, uh, uh, the municipal, the provincial or the federal is working on several front at the same time.

00:21:56.900 Also, one thing that they need to have is a very, um, very positive image everywhere.

00:22:06.160 If you're trying to sort of convince, let's say at the federal level to change the rules in order to favor China.

00:22:13.280 But at the same time, you have the demonstration in front of the embassy by the Falun Gong people and everything.

00:22:20.500 It doesn't look good.

00:22:21.880 And, and, and, and it's in the news and it, it sort of slow down the process and the acceptance that the people will have the federal level.

00:22:30.240 So what you do, you go and you try to convince a mayor, like we had somebody convinced the previous, not the recently, but one of the mayors that Falun Gong demonstration should be bad.

00:22:41.400 And because it has a visual, uh, uh, uh, pollution did exactly the same thing with the mayor Campbell in, uh, uh, in Vancouver did exactly the same thing.

00:22:51.580 So they work at various level being capable also to influence on various things.

00:22:56.640 For example, provincial education is a provincial, uh, uh, jurisdiction.

00:23:01.740 So education, you want to have organization that will bring curriculum about the China in a certain angle, in a certain way in order to influence people to see China as the good guys, not the bad guys.

00:23:15.600 Despite the fact that, you know, throughout history, they kept killing millions and millions and millions of peoples and torturing and, uh, cutting them a piece for their, their, their organs and all sorts of things like this.

00:23:25.980 So you look at all this and you say, every phenomenal opponent and, and contrary to other age, other countries, which are trying to influence us or to, uh, send their, their, their, their, their foreign interference.

00:23:40.460 Um, they work on so many levels and so many front that it escaped the imagination of the Western agencies.

00:23:47.840 We don't understand how they are thinking that way and how they can work so long, but that's part of their culture.

00:23:55.080 And if you don't understand that, you'll never understand your opponent.

00:23:59.040 They, uh, they worked, uh, deep enough to get into the Toronto district school board with Confucius Institute.

00:24:05.120 So they go to the school board level.

00:24:07.500 Uh, we need to take a break, Michelle, but when we come back, I do want to ask you about, you know, when they get a politician under their influence, what does that mean?

00:24:18.120 We'll talk about that when we come back.

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00:26:18.440 So, we all know that China interferes in our elections, in our society in general. 0.95

00:26:24.920 Industrial espionage is everywhere.

00:26:27.000 I've literally witnessed it firsthand many years ago, watching someone be arrested at the Nortel building across from where I worked.

00:26:34.380 And that person was accused and charged of stealing technology on behalf of the government of China.

00:26:42.620 But if you were a politician under the influence, Michel, does that mean that you're stealing state secrets?

00:26:49.660 Are you an agent of the government of Beijing if there's someone that they've cultivated to vote a certain way?

00:26:56.680 What are they looking for a politician to do for them once they're elected? 0.86

00:27:02.420 Well, in parts, you're right.

00:27:04.620 It could potentially be used to steal or to share secret because of the position that they have.

00:27:12.860 And it depends if they succeed in achieving certain position.

00:27:17.000 What we're talking about here is more likely to be capable to, at the right time, influence the decision process,

00:27:24.320 influence decision makers, and guide the orientation of certain rulings or certain decisions that will be made.

00:27:34.340 That's what they want to secure.

00:27:38.320 And again, I use the word they want to secure.

00:27:41.320 They don't know all the time exactly what they will achieve and what they can achieve.

00:27:45.760 The general jest of what they're trying to do is to be capable to have a favorable reception on anything and everything that eventually China would like to have pass or receive.

00:27:59.340 I'll give you an example.

00:28:00.860 Under the Harper government, against the advice of CISUS, the Harper government decided to sell the Nexen company in Alberta.

00:28:11.460 It's an oil and gas company.

00:28:12.740 They sold it for $15 billion.

00:28:15.920 That's a lot of heavy weight in Alberta.

00:28:19.680 When you're a $15 billion company, probably hiring thousands of employees and everything,

00:28:25.940 if you give a call to the office of the premier and you need an appointment,

00:28:30.540 you're probably going to get the appointment within the next five working days.

00:28:35.060 If you are a Canadian like you and me and we call the office of the premier,

00:28:40.100 we're likely to stay on hold for a long time.

00:28:44.360 So that's the kind of influence they understand and they want to gain.

00:28:48.820 And in order to get the permission to buy this company,

00:28:53.980 when hell, we're not even capable to buy a corner store in China ourselves.

00:28:57.900 In order to get that, somebody within the government close to Mr. Harper had to convince Mr. Harper that that was a good idea and it succeeded and it succeeded.

00:29:10.380 And today that company is very, very, very successful in convincing the government in going in a certain direction.

00:29:16.960 It might be about environmental law.

00:29:19.460 It might be about certain regulations or taxes or all sorts of things.

00:29:24.460 But in order to favor other things with Sidewinder, we had already identified at that period of time,

00:29:30.740 there were over 200 Canadian companies that were bought by Chinese government entities.

00:29:37.380 They were immediately acquiring intellectual property.

00:29:41.780 They were immediately acquiring also the profit, being capable to send it back to China, keep the strict minimum.

00:29:47.820 And in some cases, they let the company die like a dry lemon.

00:29:52.880 But since the 90s, this number has probably tripled of the number of companies that has been sort of acquired now in Canada, if not more.

00:30:02.540 And that is the kind of influence that they are capable to obtain and to work for.

00:30:08.420 So with the politician, they are capable to play that card and say, OK, you need this for the re-election.

00:30:15.460 You need that as well, you know, and we will support you for your next election.

00:30:20.820 Going back to the Nixon issue, I remember covering that to some degree, but time's not on my side here and I don't have notes in front of me.

00:30:29.540 But I remember the Harper government saying, OK, we don't have the ability to stop it now, but we'll pass legislation to stop these sorts of things in the future.

00:30:39.100 And my guess is that, you know, let's accept that argument at face value and maybe it's not true.

00:30:44.580 But if it is true, my guess is that the people that China was trying to influence or did have influence over would then work to ensure that, OK, you can pass that legislation because the government's promised it.

00:30:57.260 But make sure it's not too strict.

00:30:59.620 Exactly. And at that period of time, just for the record, the law with Industry Canada allowed for national security to stop any transaction and still is functioning in effect today as we speak.

00:31:15.920 And the government could have stopped it if they would have.

00:31:19.280 So they had the power.

00:31:20.960 They had the power.

00:31:22.040 They just used it as an excuse as often the case.

00:31:25.720 But let's move forward as well in the same government.

00:31:28.900 And I'm not here trying to sort of do the trial only of the Harper government, but I'm just looking at sort of the pattern.

00:31:36.500 When the Harper government came to an end, five of his cabinet minister went directly to work for a Chinese company.

00:31:44.400 And among them, Stockwell Day, which was public safety.

00:31:49.340 And Mr. John Baird, that was a foreign affair.

00:31:53.460 Heavy, heavy shooter, heavy cabinet members who had no restriction when directly worked for a Chinese company.

00:32:01.640 And I could go on with others like this.

00:32:04.240 This is the kind of naivety and the kind of element that needs to be looked at by the government in order for the procedures to say, OK,

00:32:12.580 when you have been a cabinet minister, how long do you have to sort of be sidelined in order to sort of not be a danger for national security or be in conflict of interest?

00:32:26.620 Similar to what we have for lobbying laws.

00:32:29.420 If you're a staffer in the government, you can't leave and go, you know, staffer at a certain level,

00:32:35.960 well, you can't leave and go lobby the government for, I think it's five years at the moment, federally.

00:32:42.980 Cooling off periods differ by provinces, but it's five years for the federal government.

00:32:50.320 And you mentioned Stockwell Day.

00:32:52.220 I didn't realize that about John Baird.

00:32:54.560 Jean Chrétien has gone to work for Chinese companies.

00:32:58.100 Pierre Bourque, the former mayor of Montreal when I lived there, you know, he lost.

00:33:02.560 That's what he did.

00:33:03.140 It seems like China says, OK, you're an unemployed politician.

00:33:07.840 You have influence.

00:33:09.060 We've got a job for you.

00:33:10.760 Exactly.

00:33:11.560 And this is the kind of element that needs to be sort of taken in consideration from, like, we have to be mature.

00:33:20.100 And basically what we need to change in Canada, for lack of a better description, I say, our business culture is wrong today.

00:33:28.120 We want to play internationally, but we play like a bunch of peewees. 1.00

00:33:31.000 We need to sort of, if we want to step on the ice and play with professional, we need to act professionally and we have to give ourselves the tools to play professionally.

00:33:39.040 And these are the kind of element that needs to be reviewed.

00:33:42.400 But the problem is the guy who has the power to change things will benefit of this vacuum or this absence of regulation when they step out.

00:33:51.980 And like Mr. Chrétien, power cooperation need less to say anything else, I think.

00:33:56.440 I've been saying since this started to be a political headache for the Trudeau government that this is not a partisan issue, that this should concern all parties, that it will affect all parties.

00:34:12.020 And, you know, I'm not sure about the Bloc Québécois, but I guarantee you that if there were a full and independent public inquiry that the federal liberals would be hurt politically.

00:34:25.980 But so would the federal conservatives.

00:34:27.780 So would the new Democrats.

00:34:29.420 All three of those main parties in English Canada would be hit.

00:34:33.020 I'm not sure on the Bloc.

00:34:34.900 I can tell you that Bloc included.

00:34:37.200 So, but what we've got right now is a system where only the prime minister, who's the most recent beneficiary, can call this inquiry and refuses to do so and ends up looking like he's the only guilty one or his party's the only guilty one.

00:34:54.460 Correct.

00:34:55.140 How deep would it go, do you think?

00:34:57.640 Like, give us a sketch, and I'm not asking you to name names, get yourself in legal trouble.

00:35:03.040 But how deep would this go with all of the parties?

00:35:10.240 Like I said, in my living experience, I would go back to all the way to Mr. Mulroney.

00:35:16.480 And I have hardcore evidence for all that period of time, for every single prime minister that passed by, the challenges that explained.

00:35:27.020 This is why, to a certain extent, if Mr. Trudeau was well advised by his advisors around him, which are, to my point of view, not very bright, they would have gone into action and say,

00:35:46.200 listen, listen, guys, we have a problem, here's the action that we want to do, not a committee, not a consultation, not going around and thinking and bringing a reporter or something like this, because I can tell you what's going on.

00:36:00.180 We're going to have a reporter who will go and listen to the conversation that will take place in the two main bodies, the parliamentary committee and the office of the National Security and Intelligence Group.

00:36:14.440 They all listen and be talking behind closed doors because it is top secret what they will be talking about.

00:36:22.200 And then you will hear the chronology of things for this current government and say, holy shit, I cannot sort of let that come out and say, no, we cannot have a public inquiry because the information is too sensitive for our national security, read for our unity. 0.98

00:36:40.340 And therefore, we'll kill the bird this way. 0.97

00:36:42.400 What we need is action.

00:36:44.700 Forget because everybody has been guilty.

00:36:47.120 One after the other.

00:36:48.020 They have all been guilty.

00:36:49.380 Forget about it.

00:36:50.280 Today, we need to not hold the bull by the horn and being capable to make, take action.

00:36:56.320 Pass a law.

00:36:57.460 Have the registry for foreign agents.

00:37:00.120 Make sure that the MPs are known.

00:37:03.380 Make sure that we prosecute.

00:37:05.040 Make sure we reduce the number of diplomats, Chinese diplomats that we have here, which are half of them fake diplomats. 1.00

00:37:12.040 They are spies.

00:37:13.520 Make sure that we have also a review that every time we have an election, the candidates, when they submit their application, they sign an affidavit and they sign on their oath that they are not influenced by foreign agents.

00:37:28.200 And if we discover, they will be prosecuted and stuff like that.

00:37:33.260 So this is the kind of things that needs, and there's more initiative that needs to be given.

00:37:38.360 But as we speak, we are powerless because even our law enforcement cannot receive the complaints from the public and help them because we don't have a law to lay on.

00:37:50.640 So you're more in favor of action and passing new laws than saying, okay, what we need is a public inquiry that will spend millions, be half held in secret.

00:38:02.880 Yes, I don't think that the public inquiry will reveal things that will be very useful as we speak.

00:38:12.040 To maybe create a committee that will study this seriously, come out with recommendations, speaking with operational guys, guys like me who's been in the field, know exactly the challenges that we will have to investigate, that kind of things.

00:38:35.220 And commit to implement the recommendation that will come out, that would be a nonpartisan approach to all this.

00:38:44.860 Because currently, as we speak, well, we see Mr. Poiliev trying to throw rocks.

00:38:49.360 Mr. Poiliev, you live in a glass house, you know.

00:38:52.240 We see Trudeau trying to avoid all things.

00:38:54.920 Yeah, because the chronology doesn't look good for you and you're going to look really bad when we find out that you were told on time and you missed it intentionally.

00:39:03.140 So all this is not good.

00:39:05.940 The bit about CESIS going to the Liberals ahead of the 2019 election, some people have disputed that that would ever happen.

00:39:15.300 That there is, under no circumstances would CESIS go and warn a political party, one of your candidates seems to be compromised.

00:39:24.480 What's your take on that?

00:39:26.180 We've done it in the past.

00:39:28.180 We've done it in the past.

00:39:29.200 We've identified candidates or we've identified MPs that were compromised.

00:39:34.260 We had times, we had meetings, we had even a video of meetings of people that were under surveillance.

00:39:41.480 We have evidence.

00:39:42.640 We are capable to demonstrate what we're saying.

00:39:45.200 But would CESIS go to a party and say, this is a problem? 1.00

00:39:51.620 Or would they just sit on it?

00:39:53.080 They would go.

00:39:53.900 They would go.

00:39:54.360 It is their responsibility to go.

00:39:57.640 I'm not saying that automatically somebody did it in that particular case.

00:40:02.220 I don't have the evidence.

00:40:03.260 I don't have enough to know if they did it in that.

00:40:06.640 But if I was in charge, if I was there and I had the information, I would pass it along to my chain of command.

00:40:13.420 So the chain of command goes and talk to the premier because that is very, very, very important.

00:40:17.800 We know about a spy, a potential spy, or somebody who's under the control of a foreign intelligence service, and we don't inform the government, that would be sort of a big sin in my world.

00:40:33.840 So I've spoken to people in various governments who have received that sort of information before.

00:40:43.040 So I know it's happened.

00:40:44.960 And I said, well.

00:40:46.960 So you tricked me.

00:40:48.280 What did you do?

00:40:49.820 What did you do with that information?

00:40:52.360 And they said, the person was elected.

00:40:55.800 Not enough information to convict them of anything, but we could isolate them.

00:41:00.800 In your experience, is that what happens?

00:41:03.840 I think it is difficult to isolate somebody when you choose that person originally, especially if that person is represented and has been selected in amount of the things because of their representation or because they belong to a certain ethnic group that represent maybe a great number or a great percentage of voters in a certain writing.

00:41:28.540 Because this is exactly what took place as well.

00:41:30.680 Under the Mr. Grimald Roney government, Mr. Jason Kenney was given the responsibility to go and approach the...

00:41:37.680 Under the Harper government.

00:41:38.920 Under the Harper government, when Mr. Jason Kenney was the immigrant, the Minister of Immigration, he had the responsibility to go and sort of smooch with the Chinese community and bring them to vote eventually to the conservative.

00:41:52.920 Everybody does something like this because in certain writings, you have huge constituents, that huge group that are belonging.

00:42:02.260 For example, totally in the different ballpark, but there's three writings in Toronto area that were dominated by the TAMO community.

00:42:11.680 And at a certain period of time, the TAMO Tiger, a terrorist group, were dominating, were bullying the community.

00:42:20.300 And nobody, despite the fact that everybody around the world has recognized the TAMO Tiger as a terrorist group, nobody did anything because we didn't want to upset them because they could have brought somebody to vote for the other party.

00:42:33.580 So it took like years before finally they did it.

00:42:38.140 And the Mulroney government, then I will play in favor here of Mr. Mulroney, not Mulroney, sort of Harper, decided to call them terrorists.

00:42:49.140 Within a week, the RCMP raided the place and broke the back of the tiger.

00:42:53.200 And we were known to send an average $10 million out of Canada every year to support terrorist activities in Sri Lanka with the TAMO Tiger.

00:43:05.580 So the intelligence service in Canada, they do their job and they can bring the information, but it is to the discretion of the authority to decide to do something with it.

00:43:20.360 Take another example, under, again, the Harper government, Mr. Dicker, Bob Dicker, you remember we covered that together.

00:43:29.220 Bob Dicker was a state minister of foreign affairs, caught having an affair with a Chinese journalist who was known to be a spy.

00:43:42.860 When we brought to the attention of Mr. Harper, this is a private matter, I don't have to take care of this, and left the guy in position.

00:43:50.360 You know, she went back home because she was uncovered.

00:43:55.360 And this is this sort of very frustrating attitude that we have been served over and over and over and over because the culture of silence or secrecy that I was talking about that serves sometimes the government in power, all color aside, they're all the same.

00:44:16.760 They all acted the same way.

00:44:18.000 That's why we need to sort of implement now a certain mechanism embedded into the law that gives a chance for the law enforcement, which are supposed to be apolitical, to be capable to sort of become the safeguards of our democracy and the safeguard and the guardian of our way of life.

00:44:38.700 We shall see if anything comes of this latest outrage, outpouring of information, but something tells me it won't be quite enough.

00:44:48.940 Michel, thank you for your time today and thank you for everything you've done over the years in service to Canada.

00:44:56.620 Thank you very much for having me and giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts.

00:44:59.780 All right. Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:45:04.100 My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:45:05.700 This episode was produced by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:45:09.840 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:45:11.960 Remember, you can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, and Amazon Music and listen through the app or Alexa-enabled devices.

00:45:20.620 And you can help us out by leaving a rating, a comment, leaving a review, emailing it to your Aunt May in Red Deer, and telling your friends.

00:45:29.300 Until next time, thanks for listening.

Full Comment - March 13, 2023

The agent who warned Ottawa about Chinese political infiltration years ago

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