Juno News - Carney UNDER FIRE as looming China trip raises security concerns

00:00:00.000 Well, Canada's economy continues to spin its wheels as far as job creation goes.

00:00:10.180 It created 8,200 jobs last month, not enough to keep the unemployment rate from rising,

00:00:17.060 especially among young people.

00:00:19.340 Canada's unemployment rate rose in December to 6.8%.

00:00:23.100 The private sector lost jobs while government hiring went up.

00:00:28.020 The number of jobs for young people fell by 27,000.

00:00:33.700 Full-time jobs rose by 50,000, while part-timers lost 42,000 of them.

00:00:39.800 Prime Minister Carney is heading to China next week,

00:00:42.480 hoping to warm up relations with a country he once called our biggest threat,

00:00:47.440 a country that interfered with our affairs.

00:00:50.320 Here's what Carney said about China during last year's election campaign.

00:00:54.400 We didn't have a chance to talk about anything internationally.

00:00:56.820 I think the biggest security threat to Canada is China. 0.99

00:01:00.020 China, you say?

00:01:00.820 Mr. Singh.

00:01:01.660 Freelance, last night at the debate, you said the single greatest threat facing Canada was China.

00:01:06.920 I'm hoping you can expand on that a little bit.

00:01:08.980 And tell me a bit about how our current relationship with the U.S. impacts that threat,

00:01:14.340 and specifically how you would stand up for the sovereignty of Taiwan,

00:01:17.760 given the current chaos and uncertainty.

00:01:20.040 Well, there are several aspects to China.

00:01:25.560 I'm very clear-eyed about China.

00:01:27.700 It is the second-largest economy in the world.

00:01:30.260 It is our second-largest trading partner.

00:01:32.940 It is also, and I'll choose my words carefully,

00:01:36.900 given that I'm briefed on these matters and have my security clearance and do that,

00:01:40.840 but it is one of the largest threats with respect to foreign interference,

00:01:48.520 which we have to counter, and we are countering.

00:01:53.540 So why would we want to have a closer relationship with one of the world's bad actors,

00:01:58.860 a country that interfered with our elections, stole our intellectual property?

00:02:03.340 Well, for one thing, our trade relations with the United States have soured,

00:02:07.600 and so Kearney wants to lessen our dependency on the U.S. market.

00:02:11.880 But is there a security risk to improving our relations with a country that spies on us?

00:02:17.300 There are an estimated 2,500 undeclared foreign agents in Canada.

00:02:22.600 There is no doubt some, if not many of them, are from China.

00:02:27.180 And Sam Cooper will be joining us shortly to talk about that.

00:02:30.640 This headline in the Globe and Mail is reporting that Ontario has urged Kearney

00:02:35.580 to keep levies on Chinese electric vehicles.

00:02:39.800 If he does, China may decide to keep its tariffs on Canadian agricultural products like canola,

00:02:46.520 and nothing will have changed.

00:02:48.840 The PM will travel to China January 13th and wrap things up on the 17th.

00:02:53.660 He'll be taking along a former Conservative MP for the ride.

00:02:56.980 This post by the Globe and Mail's Steve Chase.

00:03:01.140 Liberal MP Michael Ma, who defected from the Conservatives in December,

00:03:05.460 will be among those accompanying Mark Kearney to Beijing next week.

00:03:10.180 The Prime Minister's office said,

00:03:13.520 Question, was that one of the goodies the Liberals dangled

00:03:16.580 in order to convince Ma to cross the floor last month?

00:03:20.680 Sam Cooper is our guest today.

00:03:22.420 He's the author of Willful Blindness, Election Interference, Elite, and State Capture.

00:03:28.240 You can also check out his terrific journalism at thebureauatsubstack.com.

00:03:34.560 Welcome to the show.

00:03:36.140 Good to see you, Mark.

00:03:37.700 Sam, Prime Minister Kearney, as you know, is off to China next week

00:03:41.100 looking to normalize relations with a country that has spied on Canada,

00:03:46.000 interfered with our elections, and stolen our intellectual property.

00:03:50.020 What could possibly go wrong?

00:03:51.360 It's a terrible move.

00:03:54.880 Nothing could go right there.

00:03:56.280 And let's add to that list,

00:03:58.560 President Trump extracting Chinese ally Nicolas Maduro over the past week.

00:04:05.680 And the U.S. Congressional Committee on the CCP said

00:04:09.480 that was a victory against Xi Jinping's influence in the Western Hemisphere.

00:04:14.820 That committee will continue to investigate Xi's influence across the Western Hemisphere with its allies.

00:04:23.260 This is a powerful U.S. committee saying she's the real bad guy in that picture.

00:04:28.100 And here we have Canada's government going off to make nice with what it calls its strategic ally.

00:04:34.760 I can't see any good for any Canadian in that. 1.00

00:04:38.280 Yeah, what a great point, because, of course, they were spanked when the United States went into Venezuela

00:04:45.260 to grab Maduro and bring him to justice.

00:04:48.620 I mean, really, apart from Maduro, the biggest loser, I think, was China.

00:04:52.540 And so they're going to be looking for someone else to cozy up with in the Western Hemisphere.

00:04:56.700 And here's Carney, you know, Johnny on the spot going over there saying,

00:05:00.420 we want to normalize relations.

00:05:02.280 It seems to me like he's walking into a trap.

00:05:05.860 There's no question in my mind he's walking into a trap.

00:05:08.900 But as an expert on this subject, I've seen the timeline that's concerned me

00:05:13.540 ever since Mark Carney ran against Chrystia Freeland to be the Liberal nominee.

00:05:20.280 He won.

00:05:20.940 And as you know, as I've reported, Canada's election threat monitor said Chinese propaganda

00:05:27.620 was against Freeland.

00:05:30.460 It was supporting Carney as a tough fighter, quote unquote, against President Trump and his,

00:05:37.080 you know, tariffs.

00:05:38.940 And look, I reported along with The Globe and Mail that Mark Carney met with the Toronto Chinese

00:05:45.860 Chamber of Commerce.

00:05:46.900 He denied that meeting, but the notes on that meeting from the Mandarin sources said China

00:05:52.980 was looking for a reset.

00:05:54.920 China believed Mark Carney was the person to do it.

00:05:58.600 And look, he won the election.

00:06:00.540 And this is exactly what we see happening.

00:06:03.200 So I think election interference helped Mark Carney.

00:06:07.100 And look, Michael Ma, the conservative, crossed the floor.

00:06:11.200 We just learned yesterday from Stephen Chase of The Globe and Mail.

00:06:14.200 Michael Ma will be traveling with Mark Carney to Beijing.

00:06:18.140 Mark, as you know, I reported that the Michael Ma floor crossing looked suspicious.

00:06:23.160 I reported that he had been meeting with pro-Beijing community leaders in his riding of Markham.

00:06:29.180 I can tell you and your viewers, Mark, that the people that Michael Ma was meeting with

00:06:33.480 are of concern to Canadian and American intelligence.

00:06:37.980 It looks horrible.

00:06:39.280 It already looked horrible.

00:06:40.520 But now this man is traveling to Beijing with Mark Carney.

00:06:44.620 It's just a laundry list of bad moves by Canada that will not help us at all.

00:06:51.860 Yeah.

00:06:52.040 Some people were saying that that meeting that he had with Communist Party officials, everybody's

00:06:57.100 got to do that.

00:06:58.360 You know, it's part of doing politics in that part of the country.

00:07:02.800 But it sounds to me like you're not buying it.

00:07:04.900 I'm not buying it all, Mark.

00:07:07.080 I will put myself on the line here and say the people that Mark Carney was meeting with

00:07:12.300 and then denied meeting with, I had been investigating myself for a while.

00:07:16.860 This Chamber of Commerce has overt acknowledged ties to Beijing's foreign influence arm, the

00:07:23.100 United Front Work Department.

00:07:25.060 Full stop.

00:07:25.840 These people that Mark Carney shook hands with, signaling to the Chinese diaspora that he's

00:07:31.040 the good guy to vote for in the election, these people should be on Canada's foreign agent

00:07:37.040 registry among the estimated 2,000 entities in Canada that should disclose themselves as

00:07:44.080 related to foreign actors.

00:07:46.900 That's what the United Front is.

00:07:48.240 So I'm not buying the argument that Mark Carney has to meet with what should be, you know,

00:07:55.240 agents of the Chinese Communist Party.

00:07:57.300 And again, this gets to another point.

00:08:00.380 We don't have that registry in place yet.

00:08:02.840 And by Mark Carney going over and shaking hands with Xi Jinping, I think we're fair to ask the

00:08:08.500 question, will China want some concessions in terms of any intelligence or investigative

00:08:14.960 actions Canada will take against its proxies in Canada in return, you know, for a trade deal

00:08:22.560 or better trade between Canada or Ottawa and Beijing.

00:08:26.820 I'm certain that that will be on Xi Jinping's wish list.

00:08:30.720 And speaking of that registry, Sam, of course, you know that Gary and Anandas Andri is watering

00:08:36.920 it down, you know, trying to suggest that a $50 fine might be good enough.

00:08:42.460 You know, I mean, that's not even a slap on the wrist.

00:08:46.960 That's like, go ahead and spy on us.

00:08:48.880 I mean, that's outrageous.

00:08:50.680 There's no question in my mind that they have been dragging their feet just as the Trudeau

00:08:56.780 government dragged its feet on Huawei and I believe had to have their arms twisted by

00:09:01.900 Washington, rightfully, that we know Huawei is a Chinese intelligence spying platform.

00:09:08.140 There's no question.

00:09:09.560 We know how Huawei relates to the detention of Manwanzhou and the, you know, the imprisonment,

00:09:17.520 the kidnapping of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

00:09:20.960 So, look, you cannot get away from the fact that China has many active spy platforms, human

00:09:29.400 and technological, going in Canada.

00:09:31.600 And Mark Carney traveling over there, again, I can't stress enough that this will set Canada

00:09:38.540 back farther than it already was.

00:09:41.040 There's so much we could talk about, including, of course, Chrystia Freeland, the fact that

00:09:46.420 she's gone as of today.

00:09:48.580 She's no longer a member for Rosedale.

00:09:50.980 And this came after accepting this offer to do work as an economic advisor for Mr. Zelensky

00:10:02.360 in Ukraine.

00:10:03.880 Then, of course, that came just after the $2.5 billion in aid that was signed over to

00:10:11.260 Ukraine.

00:10:11.940 I mean, the whole thing kind of stinks.

00:10:13.500 And I think Carney told Chrystia Freeland, you better go now, because he didn't want

00:10:20.440 the stench of that scandal hanging over his government for weeks, which was the original

00:10:24.700 suggestion by Chrystia that she was going to hang around, continue collecting her salary 0.98

00:10:28.960 as an MP, even after she'd already accepted the position.

00:10:32.820 Does any of that bother you?

00:10:34.980 The whole thing, I can see so many angles in that that bother me.

00:10:39.180 You know, the first one, Chrystia Freeland, rightly should have signed, if we had that

00:10:45.520 foreign agent registry that was promised, I believe now it's 19 months ago, that we're

00:10:50.980 going to get one.

00:10:51.820 It's been implemented as law, but it hasn't been implemented in fact.

00:10:56.000 She should be on that registry.

00:10:57.700 Not only is it just a conflict of interest that's the easy one to see, you can't be working

00:11:02.580 even for an allied government that we should be supporting probably in some ways against

00:11:07.120 Russia.

00:11:07.540 You can't be working for them and working for the citizens of Toronto at the same time

00:11:12.660 as an elected official.

00:11:14.260 She's a foreign agent, no question. 0.94

00:11:16.040 She's been acting as one under the table. 0.97

00:11:19.100 And there's a bigger picture there.

00:11:20.600 Remember, I, as well as my colleague Brian Lilly and others, have been covering the story of

00:11:25.360 how Mark Carney and his team have been trying to induce conservatives across the floor.

00:11:31.260 Now, in hindsight, it looks like they were not only trying to get a slim majority, but probably

00:11:36.800 to protect those seats that they knew would possibly be leaving Christia Freeland among

00:11:42.580 those seats that they're about to lose.

00:11:45.160 And so I just think there's so much stench going on in domestic politics and international

00:11:50.880 politics, with China being the biggest problem for the Liberal Party.

00:11:54.360 And it always has been.

00:11:56.240 Again, you know, I want to add right now, Michael Kovrig, now that he's back on Canadian soil,

00:12:02.000 is becoming a good analyst and critic of what's happening in Ottawa.

00:12:05.860 He points out that Jean Crescent, a week before Mark Carney is going over to shake hands with

00:12:12.100 Xi Jinping, Jean Crescent, who is an admitted old friend of China, as I and others have pointed

00:12:18.760 out, with deep business dealings, deep political ties with the Chinese Communist Party elite.

00:12:24.240 He's over there smoothing the way, as Michael Kovrig says.

00:12:28.140 So, I mean, Mark Carney, this is on Mark Carney, but in my assessment, there's a deeper, bigger

00:12:34.360 picture, and that is the Liberal Party of Canada and the business industrialists surrounding

00:12:39.740 it, many of them in Quebec, want deeper, they want to go deeper in bed with China, and that'll

00:12:46.040 be bad for the rest of, you know, almost every Canadian that knows at the end of the day that

00:12:52.420 our prosperity depends on trading with our natural ally, the United States, no matter if they're

00:12:58.180 using very tough and kind of offensive rhetoric under Donald Trump.

00:13:03.160 Yeah, I think he's playing a dangerous game as Carney.

00:13:05.540 Now, maybe he's trying to play one off against the other, but I'm not sure he's that smart enough

00:13:09.740 to do that.

00:13:10.680 In other words, go to China, you know, maybe get some concessions in terms of the current

00:13:16.100 tariffs on canola, 100%, and, you know, make nice with Xi Jinping, and then try to send

00:13:23.600 the message that, you know, if we don't get this deal, if we're unable to get some kind

00:13:28.620 of renewal of the USMCA slash KUSMA, you know, China is just waiting to do more and more 0.62

00:13:34.820 business with us.

00:13:35.460 I think he's trying to play that game, but I'm just not sure he's able to play 4D chess

00:13:40.080 with a guy like Trump.

00:13:41.420 What do you think?

00:13:42.440 I agree exactly.

00:13:43.840 I think he's trying to play that game.

00:13:45.940 You know, let's give him the credit of being more experienced and smart than Justin Trudeau.

00:13:51.920 So, in a standard negotiation, yeah, you try to use leverage.

00:13:57.440 You go to the competitor so that the person you want to do a deal with sees they've got

00:14:02.060 other options.

00:14:03.020 But this isn't an ordinary game.

00:14:05.460 What happened in Venezuela this week shows that it's not an ordinary game.

00:14:09.540 It's not an ordinary time.

00:14:11.540 And, Mark, I'll go further.

00:14:12.600 I know because I talked to senior US officials that they know very well that Chinese Communist 1.00

00:14:20.420 Party spies, many of them, as I know, connected to organized crime that have surrounded and

00:14:27.520 supported mainly Liberal Party politicians that are connected, I'm asserting, to those

00:14:33.360 same business chambers that met with Mark Carney earlier this year prior to his election.

00:14:38.480 The US government knows there's bad Chinese actors in Canada, and I think they're at the 1.00

00:14:45.540 end of their rope.

00:14:46.600 They're not playing this game anymore.

00:14:48.260 Their policy very clearly is not in our backyard.

00:14:52.200 Look, they know Canada is our backyard, too.

00:14:54.540 But when they say not in our backyard, they're saying no more Chinese influence in the Western

00:15:00.380 Hemisphere.

00:15:01.280 And if Xi got beat in Venezuela, he's still trying to play his cards in Canada.

00:15:06.600 And I just think, I agree with you, Canada, Mark Carney are playing a very dangerous game.

00:15:12.560 And in my view, it's bound to fail.

00:15:14.700 It's bound to fail.

00:15:15.980 And he's already served, notice as Trump, served notice to Canada that, you know, we

00:15:20.740 know that some of the drugs are coming in through your country.

00:15:24.720 And so he's kind of already flagged us as kind of being in the same bundle of bad actors

00:15:30.160 when it comes to drugs, fentanyl, and et cetera, as the likes of Venezuela and Mexico.

00:15:38.060 I think he sees us kind of in that little club of countries that have to be dealt with.

00:15:43.980 And it's kind of troubling to have, you know, to be tarred with that brush, if you know what

00:15:48.840 I mean.

00:15:49.140 I believe so.

00:15:51.060 You know, and a few years ago, this would sound like, you know, tinfoil stuff.

00:15:55.260 But we can point to actual facts that Marco Rubio talking about the Panama Canal and how

00:16:03.200 China will not be allowed to control that through their business proxies.

00:16:07.900 Mark, those very same shipping and, you know, banking business proxies are active in Vancouver's

00:16:14.460 port.

00:16:14.740 You know, I could go on and on and on and get into the weeds and talk about how the United

00:16:19.800 Front and organized crime entities have very deep access to Vancouver's port.

00:16:24.740 This is why FBI Director Cash Patel and my sources that I can't name privately say, look,

00:16:31.100 China is shipping fentanyl precursors into Mexican ports controlled by these very same Chinese 1.00

00:16:37.120 tycoons in their containers.

00:16:40.260 And, you know, they're shipping it up to Vancouver's port.

00:16:43.080 So you're right.

00:16:44.220 The Trump administration has overtly pointed to Vancouver, British Columbia as a problem

00:16:50.260 for Chinese Communist Party and Mexican cartel fentanyl traffickers.

00:16:55.240 And so, you know, when you're hitting Venezuela, when you're hitting fast drug boats, when you're

00:17:01.300 hitting port facilities, when you're extracting narco presidentes and you're pointing to Vancouver, 0.91

00:17:07.680 I agree, Ottawa is playing a dangerous game, very dangerous game in not cracking down on those known

00:17:14.980 vulnerabilities.

00:17:16.200 With the time we've got left, I mean, complicating everything else as if it wasn't complicated

00:17:22.400 enough.

00:17:22.780 We have Greenland and Canada setting up a consulate office there, as I understand it, almost as

00:17:29.120 a way of kind of pointing fingers at Trump and saying, you know, not on our watch.

00:17:33.220 Are you taking over Greenland?

00:17:34.720 And I mean, do you have any thoughts about that?

00:17:37.700 I do.

00:17:38.080 I read it the same way.

00:17:39.680 I read it as a passive aggressive poke at President Donald Trump, much like Doug Ford's,

00:17:48.600 whatever you think of it, Doug Ford's editing of the Reagan ad, if you remember, which appears

00:17:56.040 to have been, according to the Trump administration, election interference.

00:17:59.400 And the reason that they pulled out of trade negotiations with Mark Carney, look, I think

00:18:06.280 it wasn't just Doug Ford.

00:18:07.760 I'm quite sure that Mark Carney at some level approved of that ad.

00:18:11.560 And Mark, by the way, it was a similar message run by the Chinese Communist Party, who also

00:18:16.820 focused in a sort of a dishonest way on Reagan's speech about tariffs.

00:18:22.240 And so my point here is that passive aggressive games have not have fake elbows up or passive

00:18:31.420 aggressive ads are not working.

00:18:33.500 And Mark Carney talking about putting a consulate on Greenland, whichever way you look at that

00:18:38.560 issue.

00:18:39.220 I just want to be clear.

00:18:40.820 There's enough solid American politicians saying they will never support a military movement

00:18:46.300 on Greenland.

00:18:47.800 America should not be a bully.

00:18:49.080 But that that rhetoric is being used.

00:18:51.940 And Mark Carney is is not going to help anything by saying he's going to put a consulate up there

00:18:57.780 right now.

00:18:58.280 That's another Ron move.

00:19:00.260 Brilliant analysis.

00:19:01.460 Thank you so much, Sam.

00:19:02.640 How do people find you online?

00:19:04.520 You can go to the bureau.news.

00:19:07.100 My platform is almost three years old now, getting close to thirty five thousand subscribers.

00:19:12.820 So you're going to read this breaking news on Canada, the United States and our increasingly

00:19:18.180 dangerous world pretty much every day at the bureau.news.

00:19:22.520 Fantastic.

00:19:23.780 Terrific work, Sam.

00:19:24.980 Thank you.

00:19:25.940 Thanks, Mark.

00:19:27.380 And that is it for this edition of the show.

00:19:30.060 Appreciate you tuning in, my friends.

00:19:31.380 Let's do it again real soon, shall we?

00:19:33.080 Bye bye for now.

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Juno News - January 09, 2026

Carney UNDER FIRE as looming China trip raises security concerns

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