In this episode, Ezra talks to Sam Cooper, an independent journalist from afar, about Chinese Communist Party influence in Canada. They talk about how the Liberal Leadership Contest has been hacked, both electronically and in person, by the Chinese government.
00:03:00.280And finally, we rebelled against the media narrative, and not that there aren't excellent reporters in the mainstream media, but by nature, if you work for a news agency that is a mass-market news agency, either funded by the government, as the CBC is, or funded by a larger corporate conglomerate like CTV is, for example.
00:03:20.700It's owned by Bell Canada, or the Globe and Mail, which is part of the Thompson Empire.
00:03:25.540By definition, you will not be allowed to color outside the lines too much.
00:03:30.920Yeah, you can show a flash of independence here and there, but if you actually take a run at the establishment, there's just simply no way that a TV station owned by a massive company with a lot of pressure points could defend you.
00:03:45.240That's what being a citizen journalist provides.
00:03:48.020On the other hand, a lot of quality journalism, as is said, is done by the mainstream media.
00:03:54.500Those people simply have not gravitated to citizen journalism.
00:04:00.620Well, one guy who is bringing deep, quality, investigative journalism to the world of citizen journalism, who's making it on his own, is our guest today.
00:04:11.540His name is Sam Cooper, and he is doing world-class investigative journalism, the type that you used to expect from a CBC or CTV, but now you can find increasingly through citizen journalists on the internet.
00:04:25.520His website is thebureau.news, and Sam Cooper joins us now from Ottawa.
00:04:34.580I mean, I know I may have sounded like flattery, but I mean it in the past, you know, citizen journalism was a lot of YouTube pundits or even some on-the-street journalism like we do.
00:04:47.180But to have a subject matter expert going really deep, investigating Chinese interference in our democracy, investigating Iran's long hand in democracy, that really wasn't the domain of citizen journalism.
00:05:03.180But in the last couple of years, you start to see real experts.
00:05:06.620I think of Barry Weiss and the Free Press, and I think of what you're doing.
00:05:18.100Well, Ezra, I agree with pretty much everything you said.
00:05:21.200It's an exciting time where people that have been trained, like myself, for about 20 years now as an investigative journalist in corporate media that works with lawyers on all the big stories, works with the top editors in Canada, people with capacity learn from those skills and now are able to use those tools of citizen journalists.
00:05:44.100So as soon as I started the Bureau.news, I bought the highest-end MacBook I could get.
00:05:50.300I have now streaming capacity to compete with my former employers.
00:06:07.920I then decided journalism would have some of those same qualities and would also fit my sort of character, intellect, and what I wanted to discover.
00:06:18.120And as a young reporter, I really got my teeth into the Vancouver real estate story.
00:06:23.780This was just after the U.S. subprime crisis.
00:06:26.800I love following finance and economies.
00:06:29.040I knew from learning, the great U.S. investigative reporters, that there was something deeply wrong with the U.S. economy where fraud had taken over their real estate markets.
00:06:40.360It had wrecked the American dream for a few years at least because homes were out of reach of good, hardworking people from everywhere.
00:06:48.380And I found in Vancouver, for a young reporter like myself, a whole generation was being priced out.
00:06:55.060And to jump to the chase, I discovered what is known as the Vancouver model of international money laundering.
00:07:01.300That's how money, mostly from China and Hong Kong, massive amounts, was coming in underground and having incredible influence on the real estate market.
00:07:11.880Prices, and as I found over the years, organized crime, political corruption.
00:07:19.840And to your point about reporters that have those chops getting into citizen journalist avenues, a great reporter named David Baines at the Vancouver Sun was legendary.
00:07:32.500A lot of us young reporters looked up to him.
00:07:34.620He's the one that discovered that the Vancouver stock market essentially was very intertwined with organized crime,
00:07:43.040what can only be called organized crime corporate networks on the West Coast.
00:07:47.720I learned that, you know, his stories were unimpeachable, yet he was sued 20 times.
00:07:54.100And eventually, I think the news media industry on the West Coast, they loved his work.
00:08:00.880It was top notch, but they couldn't support it anymore.
00:08:03.120So that brings me to where, you know, my career has taken me down that path that you speak of, of a reporter that, you know, has those, I call myself sometimes a wannabe lawyer.
00:08:14.300I could have gone down that path, I believe.
00:08:18.340I also was, you know, just a lifelong reader and writer.
00:08:23.900So I found putting those worlds together, sometimes I think I use the skills of a hedge fund analyst connecting the dots, and I can do that in my reporting.
00:08:35.100You know, one of my frustrations, a lot of great editors I've worked with, but I was just hearing over the past few years that, you know, readers don't like to read lawn form, you know, keep it short.
00:08:46.160They're only reading, you know, two sentences on their iPhone now.
00:08:51.740I wrote a book called Willful Blindness of about 400 pages that launched at number one on Amazon in Canada, and by now is read in capitals around the world.
00:09:02.400So I've got a model, and I'm going to do it, and that's what I'm doing.
00:09:08.220One that stuck in my mind is talking about sort of Vancouver real estate being a kind of money laundering, especially for money that's trying to get out of China.
00:09:17.160And there's other parts of the world, like Cyprus.
00:09:19.880Money's trying to get out of Russia, and the oligarchs want to, like, it's one thing to earn your money in Russia or China, but where do you keep it?
00:09:27.500You want to get it out of the hands of the police in the states.
00:09:32.540Well, real estate in Vancouver is an obvious one.
00:09:35.780Talking about that story, though, I mean, think about the connections between real estate and the stock market you mentioned with the media.
00:09:43.260Who are the big advertisers, real estate, who are, you know, or even personal connections at the Rotary Club or whatever.
00:09:51.680To take on a major target like real estate, you're going to be goring a lot of people's oxes.
00:09:58.940And that's what I mean about it's tough for a mainstream media outlet to challenge sacred cows like that.
00:10:06.780And you mentioned David Baines sued 20 times, you know, that's a risk, too.
00:10:13.860I mean, you want to get your facts straight, but someone can sue you in a slap suit, strategic litigation against public participation, just to silence you.
00:10:23.500And a lot of bad guys, they would throw money at a lawsuit, even knowing that they're going to lose, just to silence you.
00:10:52.460That doesn't mean that people with really endless pools of illicit wealth could use Canadian courts and speech laws, essentially, unfortunately, in ways that can't really be done in the United States to silence a powerful journalist.
00:11:11.020And you mentioned, you know, work on the Vancouver real estate market.
00:11:15.340I'll tell you this story, Ezra, I was told directly multiple times that the so-called condo kings of Vancouver called up top editors at multiple papers and complained about myself, tried to get me fired.
00:11:29.940Look, I'll leave it pretty much at that, just to say that you're right.
00:11:34.300But if you're reporting on something that has become deeply important to an economy, and as I'm saying, I wasn't even reporting that it was all organized crime back then.
00:11:45.900I was just reporting that it was too influenced by foreign countries.
00:11:49.780That caused the most powerful people, who, by the way, also, you know, are supporters of Justin Trudeau, as we've read about in, I believe, Jody Wilson-Raybould, not to get off topic, talks about a meeting in the penthouse of a Vancouver hotel with Justin Trudeau and a bad conversation that happened.
00:12:09.260Look, that's the very same person that tried to get me fired, the owner of that hotel.
00:12:13.440So, yeah, you have to get your facts right.
00:12:15.300I've been through the fire so many times by now, Ezra, that I won't report anything that's wrong.
00:12:21.380I'll only report something of significant public interest.
00:12:25.440And, you know, if I do make a mistake, it has to be corrected.
00:12:30.040And I have good lawyers behind me that are ready to stand up if that happens.
00:12:45.140Hopefully, those will help defend you against the bad guys.
00:12:47.580Let's talk about the bad guys, because for the longest time, you weren't allowed to question the influence that the People's Republic of China has in Canada.
00:12:57.940I mean, you were called racist if you did.
00:13:00.240You were said to be challenging the loyalty of Chinese Canadians.
00:13:04.120Ironically, a lot of the victims of the People's Republic of China, or the Chinese Communist Party, are Chinese Canadians as well.
00:13:12.440Those who are maybe more freedom-oriented, more democracy-oriented, or simply don't want to be under control of the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party.
00:13:22.840Tell me a little bit about your work on Chinese government shenanigans.
00:13:29.300And that's a very lighthearted word, because it's actually deadly serious.
00:13:32.540Tell us a little bit of the state of the art of Chinese interference in Canadian democracy.
00:13:36.260Well, really, if you talk to people on the inside that know, so that would be some people well-placed in police, some people well-placed in intelligence, both in Canada and the United States.
00:13:49.900The influence of China in Canada, really, it knows no bounds.
00:13:54.140The image in my mind is, if we're looking at Canada as a jungle, the jungle grass covers the whole nation, and China sort of has these influence networks.
00:14:06.540Speaking to your point, very unfortunately, they have the capacity to control whole communities, and they do it by essentially gaining influence with the wealthier members of the communities,
00:14:19.360many of them that unfortunately have gotten wealthy in illicit means.
00:14:24.920And that leaves the vast majority of the community, the great, honest, amazing people that have fled a thuggish regime,
00:14:34.740fearing that they're under attack, essentially, from very wealthy and dangerous people with very, really pretty much overt connections to China,
00:14:46.600what it calls its United Front Work Department.
00:15:06.480It's the story of underground casino networks, which I've reported on at the Bureau.News,
00:15:12.940and how these connect to the very same people that allegedly fund election interference for China,
00:15:18.980the same people that are tasked to corrupt Canadian political candidates,
00:15:23.020the same people that are used as what's called in China white gloves or insulation to be stood up in the community
00:15:32.240and run these Chinese police stations where they're taking directions from essentially a high-level Chinese police officer in their home province in China.
00:15:42.920And they, on the ground in Canada, are tasked, whether they be a business person that owns grocery stores across Canada
00:15:51.320and launders money under the table, they're being tasked to monitor the community.
00:15:55.680Make no mistake, that is the story of China's interference in Canada.