In this episode of the Full Comment Podcast, we discuss China's attempts to interfere in Canadian politics and other aspects of our society. Our guest is former CSIS officer Michel Juno-Catia, who spent years as a counter-espionage officer in the late 1980s and early 2000s. He is now the President of the Northgate Group, a group that monitors Chinese influence in Canada.
00:03:06.080For 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.
00:03:18.680Covert interference is totally different.
00:03:21.300Foreign 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.
00:03:42.380In this particular situation, when we talk about China, China is not unique in that field.
00:03:49.380China is not the only country performing an attempt to influence or to interfere to a certain extent.
00:03:57.300There's a long list of countries, including some friendly countries that we could name that do such a thing.
00:04:03.280What is singular with China is the amplitude of their work.
00:04:11.240They have such a long period of time and such a large quantity of people doing and performing at so many different levels.
00:04:20.120That'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.
00:04:35.700It 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.
00:04:46.020Currently, 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.
00:05:02.100I 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.
00:05:14.640That was a report that came out in the 1990s.
00:05:22.820Because that was something that was documenting this issue of China's attempts to interfere at all levels of society, but politics in particular.
00:05:41.940And 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,
00:05:54.360is the poor version of what we had written.
00:05:58.100It was a very, very, very poor translation of what was originally written.
00:06:04.920And I thank you to mention it, because way back in the late second half of the 90s, I was in charge of Asia Pacific,
00:06:14.400and 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.
00:06:25.340And that is something that I'd like to sort of bring to the attention of the listeners today,
00:06:31.680is 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.
00:06:43.540We have been sounding the alarm for the last 30 years.
00:06:47.480I 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.
00:06:58.680We were bringing evidence and they disregard, they disregard, to my point of view, for two reasons.
00:07:06.320One, because it was serving their purpose at that time.
00:07:10.440They 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,
00:07:18.180maybe like the way Mr. Trudeau saw it lately.
00:07:22.000And the second purpose is probably because the agent of influence that were capable to be planted close to the various level of government,
00:07:30.720which is municipal, provincial or federal, were doing a great job.
00:07:35.080They were capable to neutralize the warning shot that we were sending to the government.
00:07:41.220They were, when you say neutralized, they were able to say, oh, no, no, no.
00:08:50.100As someone that gave that warning so many years ago, how does it feel watching it come out and politicians try to say,
00:08:56.560no, no, no, there's nothing to see here?
00:08:59.860I think it's a double sweet or sweet and sour success.
00:09:06.180Sweet in the sense that finally we will be maybe capable to tackle the bull by the horn
00:09:12.880and being capable to finally do something for something that I've consecrated my entire life to protecting my country.
00:09:21.020But to do so, we need to break a certain political culture that exists in this country.
00:09:29.620And 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.
00:09:39.380And all political parties have practiced that thing.
00:09:42.980So they will prefer, they will favor their partisanry and their political advancement rather than to work on protecting our country like they should.
00:09:55.160And like I said, I stress it's very, very important.
00:09:57.420You know, I could give you tons of example under Harper government, you know, tons of example.
00:10:03.580I could give you tons of example under the Christian government.
00:10:06.240I could give you tons of example under Mulroney government.
00:10:09.200It goes as back as far as my knowledge and my experience at that period of time.
00:10:14.060So 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.
00:10:28.760I was watching a committee meeting on Friday morning.
00:10:33.140The Commons Ethics Committee was investigating this.
00:10:36.200They had two people appearing, a man named Chek Kwan, who's the co-chair of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China.
00:10:44.780And Mehmet Todi, who's the executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project.
00:10:50.700And they both showed up with the same message.
00:10:54.340We've been sounding the alarm on this.
00:10:57.320I mean, Chek Kwan said he got involved shortly after Tiaman Square.
00:12:07.420It is frustrating because we've been aware of this problem for a long period of time.
00:12:11.280We 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.
00:12:27.840This is why I'm extremely delighted to see this debate taking place as we speak.
00:12:35.240We 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.
00:12:55.840And 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.
00:13:09.840But in 2017, 2018, the Australian adopted a law specifically about stopping foreign interference.
00:13:22.260Their political and judicial legal system is the same as here in Canada.
00:13:30.200So definitely, we should inspire ourselves and rapidly because this will become a tool for the law enforcement.
00:13:37.520Because 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.
00:13:50.740Well, the problem is, is that even if you have the evidence, what are you going to charge them with?
00:16:10.160And they understand one thing, and there's tons of philosophy books that were written about this game,
00:16:14.760that 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.
00:16:26.360And that's exactly what those police stations are about.
00:16:30.840They go, first of all, in places where they look like nothing, but the word is passed in the community.
00:16:37.560We are there, we are watching you, and your government cannot protect you.
00:16:43.940We will reach out to you, and we will find you.
00:16:47.020And if we want, we can arrest, just like you said, arrest your relative back home.
00:16:54.940And that element of fear is typical of any autocracy that we know about, any totalitarianism that we know about.
00:17:03.180And it is working, it is working, because they wrote the book 2,000 years ago about how to use the influence.
00:17:13.740Influence is not control, but influence gives you a form of control by simply having somebody else doing the work for you.
00:17:22.380I 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,
00:17:34.640or want to say it's being overblown is, well, why would China care?
00:20:19.740I'm sure other provincial legislatures as well.
00:20:23.240And in some cases, it's been talked for over a decade that municipal politicians are targets as well.
00:20:30.300Why would they be looking to, I understand, trying to get five-eye secrets, trying to get NATO secrets, all of that.
00:20:37.180Why would they be trying to infiltrate, influence, interfere with provincial or municipal politicians?
00:20:44.360Because the Chinese are capable to look at the long game.
00:20:48.320And 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.
00:21:00.920So, 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.
00:21:12.000But at the same time, at the municipal, provincial or federal level, there's all sorts of activities that are taking place.
00:21:19.920Like, 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.
00:21:34.140Let, remember, like I said earlier, they have time on their site.
00:21:38.160They don't change the, the, the, the government will stay there so they can plan, you know, operations for a long period of time.
00:21:45.560So 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.
00:21:56.900Also, one thing that they need to have is a very, um, very positive image everywhere.
00:22:06.160If you're trying to sort of convince, let's say at the federal level to change the rules in order to favor China.
00:22:13.280But at the same time, you have the demonstration in front of the embassy by the Falun Gong people and everything.
00:22:21.880And, 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.
00:22:30.240So 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.
00:22:41.400And 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.
00:22:51.580So they work at various level being capable also to influence on various things.
00:22:56.640For example, provincial education is a provincial, uh, uh, jurisdiction.
00:23:01.740So 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.
00:23:15.600Despite 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.
00:23:25.980So 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.
00:23:40.460Um, they work on so many levels and so many front that it escaped the imagination of the Western agencies.
00:23:47.840We don't understand how they are thinking that way and how they can work so long, but that's part of their culture.
00:23:55.080And if you don't understand that, you'll never understand your opponent.
00:23:59.040They, uh, they worked, uh, deep enough to get into the Toronto district school board with Confucius Institute.
00:24:07.500Uh, 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?
00:24:18.120We'll talk about that when we come back.
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00:27:38.320And again, I use the word they want to secure.
00:27:41.320They don't know all the time exactly what they will achieve and what they can achieve.
00:27:45.760The 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.
00:28:15.920That's a lot of heavy weight in Alberta.
00:28:19.680When you're a $15 billion company, probably hiring thousands of employees and everything,
00:28:25.940if you give a call to the office of the premier and you need an appointment,
00:28:30.540you're probably going to get the appointment within the next five working days.
00:28:35.060If you are a Canadian like you and me and we call the office of the premier,
00:28:40.100we're likely to stay on hold for a long time.
00:28:44.360So that's the kind of influence they understand and they want to gain.
00:28:48.820And in order to get the permission to buy this company,
00:28:53.980when hell, we're not even capable to buy a corner store in China ourselves.
00:28:57.900In 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.
00:29:10.380And today that company is very, very, very successful in convincing the government in going in a certain direction.
00:29:19.460It might be about certain regulations or taxes or all sorts of things.
00:29:24.460But in order to favor other things with Sidewinder, we had already identified at that period of time,
00:29:30.740there were over 200 Canadian companies that were bought by Chinese government entities.
00:29:37.380They were immediately acquiring intellectual property.
00:29:41.780They were immediately acquiring also the profit, being capable to send it back to China, keep the strict minimum.
00:29:47.820And in some cases, they let the company die like a dry lemon.
00:29:52.880But 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.
00:30:02.540And that is the kind of influence that they are capable to obtain and to work for.
00:30:08.420So with the politician, they are capable to play that card and say, OK, you need this for the re-election.
00:30:15.460You need that as well, you know, and we will support you for your next election.
00:30:20.820Going 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.
00:30:29.540But 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.
00:30:39.100And my guess is that, you know, let's accept that argument at face value and maybe it's not true.
00:30:44.580But 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.
00:30:59.620Exactly. 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.
00:31:15.920And the government could have stopped it if they would have.
00:31:22.040They just used it as an excuse as often the case.
00:31:25.720But let's move forward as well in the same government.
00:31:28.900And 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.
00:31:36.500When the Harper government came to an end, five of his cabinet minister went directly to work for a Chinese company.
00:31:44.400And among them, Stockwell Day, which was public safety.
00:31:49.340And Mr. John Baird, that was a foreign affair.
00:31:53.460Heavy, heavy shooter, heavy cabinet members who had no restriction when directly worked for a Chinese company.
00:32:01.640And I could go on with others like this.
00:32:04.240This 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,
00:32:12.580when 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?
00:32:26.620Similar to what we have for lobbying laws.
00:32:29.420If you're a staffer in the government, you can't leave and go, you know, staffer at a certain level,
00:32:35.960well, you can't leave and go lobby the government for, I think it's five years at the moment, federally.
00:32:42.980Cooling off periods differ by provinces, but it's five years for the federal government.
00:33:11.560And this is the kind of element that needs to be sort of taken in consideration from, like, we have to be mature.
00:33:20.100And basically what we need to change in Canada, for lack of a better description, I say, our business culture is wrong today.
00:33:28.120We want to play internationally, but we play like a bunch of peewees.
00:33:31.000We 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.
00:33:39.040And these are the kind of element that needs to be reviewed.
00:33:42.400But 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.
00:33:56.440I'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.
00:34:37.200So, 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.
00:34:57.640Like, give us a sketch, and I'm not asking you to name names, get yourself in legal trouble.
00:35:03.040But how deep would this go with all of the parties?
00:35:10.240Like I said, in my living experience, I would go back to all the way to Mr. Mulroney.
00:35:16.480And I have hardcore evidence for all that period of time, for every single prime minister that passed by, the challenges that explained.
00:35:27.020This 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,
00:35:46.200listen, 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.
00:36:00.180We'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.
00:36:14.440They all listen and be talking behind closed doors because it is top secret what they will be talking about.
00:36:22.200And 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.
00:36:40.340And therefore, we'll kill the bird this way.
00:37:13.520Make 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.
00:37:28.200And if we discover, they will be prosecuted and stuff like that.
00:37:33.260So this is the kind of things that needs, and there's more initiative that needs to be given.
00:37:38.360But 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.
00:37:50.640So 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.
00:38:02.880Yes, I don't think that the public inquiry will reveal things that will be very useful as we speak.
00:38:12.040To 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.
00:38:35.220And commit to implement the recommendation that will come out, that would be a nonpartisan approach to all this.
00:38:44.860Because currently, as we speak, well, we see Mr. Poiliev trying to throw rocks.
00:38:49.360Mr. Poiliev, you live in a glass house, you know.
00:38:52.240We see Trudeau trying to avoid all things.
00:38:54.920Yeah, 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.
00:40:03.260I don't have enough to know if they did it in that.
00:40:06.640But if I was in charge, if I was there and I had the information, I would pass it along to my chain of command.
00:40:13.420So the chain of command goes and talk to the premier because that is very, very, very important.
00:40:17.800We 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.
00:40:33.840So I've spoken to people in various governments who have received that sort of information before.
00:40:49.820What did you do with that information?
00:40:52.360And they said, the person was elected.
00:40:55.800Not enough information to convict them of anything, but we could isolate them.
00:41:00.800In your experience, is that what happens?
00:41:03.840I 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.
00:41:28.540Because this is exactly what took place as well.
00:41:30.680Under the Mr. Grimald Roney government, Mr. Jason Kenney was given the responsibility to go and approach the...
00:41:38.920Under 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.
00:41:52.920Everybody does something like this because in certain writings, you have huge constituents, that huge group that are belonging.
00:42:02.260For example, totally in the different ballpark, but there's three writings in Toronto area that were dominated by the TAMO community.
00:42:11.680And at a certain period of time, the TAMO Tiger, a terrorist group, were dominating, were bullying the community.
00:42:20.300And 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.
00:42:33.580So it took like years before finally they did it.
00:42:38.140And the Mulroney government, then I will play in favor here of Mr. Mulroney, not Mulroney, sort of Harper, decided to call them terrorists.
00:42:49.140Within a week, the RCMP raided the place and broke the back of the tiger.
00:42:53.200And 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.
00:43:05.580So 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.
00:43:20.360Take another example, under, again, the Harper government, Mr. Dicker, Bob Dicker, you remember we covered that together.
00:43:29.220Bob Dicker was a state minister of foreign affairs, caught having an affair with a Chinese journalist who was known to be a spy.
00:43:42.860When 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.
00:43:50.360You know, she went back home because she was uncovered.
00:43:55.360And 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.
00:44:18.000That'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.
00:44:38.700We shall see if anything comes of this latest outrage, outpouring of information, but something tells me it won't be quite enough.
00:44:48.940Michel, thank you for your time today and thank you for everything you've done over the years in service to Canada.
00:44:56.620Thank you very much for having me and giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts.
00:44:59.780All right. Full Comment is a post-media podcast.
00:45:05.700This episode was produced by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall.
00:45:09.840Kevin Libin is the executive producer.
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00:45:29.300Until next time, thanks for listening.