Candace Malan and Sam Cooper join me on The Candace Malcolm Show to discuss China's interference in our election, and why it matters. Candace: Sam Cooper: The Chinese Government Is Interfering in our Election
00:01:52.920So today on the show, we are going to shine a light on this nefarious activity.
00:01:57.640I am joined by one of the best investigative journalists in the country who has been painstakingly outlying this and providing evidence and showcasing it to his followers and his readers.
00:02:16.680This is the most important election we can imagine, certainly, that I've ever experienced.
00:02:21.860Well, and the fact, I mean, this is just so frustrating to me.
00:02:24.420Like, we had a site intelligence officer come out this week and say what we all know to be true, that there are coordinated campaigns promoting Mark Carney.
00:02:35.180The legacy media covered it in the exact opposite way, right?
00:02:38.200We know that the Chinese government is out there promoting Mark Carney, pushing his message, saying that he's the best leader, trying to convince specifically people in the Chinese diaspora community, but also more broadly in other communities, saying we need to vote for Mark Carney.
00:02:52.600He's the one that will stand up to Donald Trump.
00:02:56.100The media say that Mark Carney is being targeted, that the liberals are being targeted as if they are somehow the victims of this coordinated campaign.
00:03:03.960We all know that if this was happening with the conservatives, say the Americans or the Russians were out there promoting Pierre Polyev, we know that this would be a huge scandal.
00:03:12.580The media would be tearing their hair out.
00:03:14.280It would be, you know, the number one story across the country.
00:03:17.260Everyone would be talking about how unacceptable it is that there were foreign interference.
00:03:20.820And yet, somehow, when it happens with China, when it happens with the liberals, again, there's just this sort of collective shrug of the shoulders.
00:03:30.180And Sam, I want to get you to react to this video.
00:03:33.140So Mark Carney was out in Delta, British Columbia on Tuesday.
00:05:04.380Why wouldn't he say this is unacceptable in Canadian democracy and it needs to stop?
00:05:08.800I mean, to me, that was just so unacceptable of an answer.
00:05:11.220What do you, what do you make of all this?
00:05:12.500Well, Candace, it was one of the weakest answers, frankly, I've ever seen from a national leader.
00:05:17.800One, I was at that press conference that disclosed that site breaking news intelligence, which,
00:05:24.560as you know, the only reason journalists are now getting that is because my work over the previous years put the spotlight on Canada's lack of action on these known threats.
00:05:34.300So Mr. Carney's answer, look, we as journalists in that site briefing on Monday, we were told by the government that Mr. Carney was targeted by PRC, rather, Communist Party networks with connections to the highest level of the state, promoting or boosting through WeChat some positive and some negative messages.
00:05:57.060But a very astute National Post reporter looked at the briefing package we got and said, I'm sorry, I only see very strong, positive messages.
00:06:08.220And what do you know, they were saying they were very glowing, a 2000 word story saying essentially the same thing the liberals are saying in their campaign.
00:06:36.040And so myself as probably the leading subject expert in Canadian journalism and a lot of the areas of government on Chinese interference, I can dissect that Chinese intelligence and indicate that, yes, not only is it focused on the millions of Chinese Canadians, millions of page views.
00:06:56.780But that same narrative is going across the liberal party campaign.
00:07:01.660And with my deep knowledge of how Chinese intelligence has access to Justin Trudeau's inner circle through staff positions, I think it's fair to ask, has that Chinese Communist Party messaging that at the end of the day seeks to divide Ottawa from Washington and has been trying to do that since Pierre Trudeau quite successfully with a lot of people in the liberal party?
00:07:25.800Making Canadians, making Canadians anti-American in their view, is that communist messaging that supports Mr. Carney making it into the liberal campaign?
00:07:34.100And my short answer is, yes, I believe so.
00:07:36.620I can see a lot of data points lining that up.
00:07:39.320But look, Mr. Carney's answer, he could have said there were messages that said that the liberals will be essentially, you know, the best to fight the United States.
00:07:59.000If I were a Canadian leader, if I ever go into politics, that would be my message.
00:08:03.280But Mr. Carney, Candice, I've reported in the weeks prior, Mr. Carney meets with Xi Jinping in 2024.
00:08:11.680Mr. Carney secures a $250 million Bank of China loan for his investment fund Brookfield while China's real estate market is crashing.
00:08:21.100So at a high level, I think Mr. Carney is very, very positive for Beijing in its growing economic war, if not threat of greater and broader war with the United States.
00:08:53.300But it was popping up everywhere as well.
00:08:55.560So this is at a conference, China Carbon Neutrality, where Mark Carney basically just praises China, says that China is at center stage in the new global sustainable financial system and really just cheerleading China.
00:09:11.660So it's no it's no wonder why China will be out there supporting Mark Carney.
00:09:16.540The momentum behind this agenda is now tremendous and it'll be important that China is center stage to shape this new global sustainable financial system.
00:09:28.000And we see a lot of these kind of clips circulating of Mark Carney.
00:09:33.860This one was from all the way back in August 2016.
00:09:37.680But here's Mark Carney speaking at a Toronto region board of trade, praising China, saying that they're ambitious and basically saying that their greatest strength is their perspective.
00:10:02.620So we see that Mark Carney has a history and a career of wanting to promote China, wanting to work with China.
00:10:08.260You mentioned that he took that state loan from state government bank in China for a quarter of a billion dollars back when he was also advising Justin Trudeau.
00:10:31.920Trump's tariff response, the countries that are trying to negotiate with the Americans.
00:10:35.960And you can see the flags of those countries.
00:10:37.740So we have, let's see, Japan, South Korea, the U.K., Switzerland, Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil, Colombia, Turkey and Australia, countries that have offered concessions, India, Israel and a handful of others.
00:10:51.080And then the countries that have retaliated, there are only two.
00:10:53.700We are in a league unto ourselves, along with the Chinese.
00:10:57.060Canada and China are the two countries that are actually wanting to go to war against the Americans, countries that want that may possibly retaliate, haven't decided yet.
00:11:06.040That would be the European Union, pardon me.
00:11:08.940And then the country that is having no retaliation whatsoever is Mexico.
00:11:13.500So when you look at Mark Carney praising China and then when you look at his leadership and what Canada is doing, it looks like we are aligning ourselves away from the United States.
00:11:25.440And along with China, I'm sorry, China is not the company that we should be keeping on the international stage.
00:11:31.440No wonder China is promoting the liberal government and Mark Carney because they see Canada as an easy mark, an ally in their war, in their Cold War against the United States.
00:11:42.500It's unbelievable that this is where we are as a country under the liberal leadership.
00:11:50.420And, you know, Candace, I can give insight into records that the Night of the Globe and Mail, CBC or anyone else in Canada had access to.
00:11:58.760So people can go to the Bureau and see that I reported on CSIS documents that I obtained through leaks because people judged it so important.
00:12:07.960In 2019, the documents say during the Mun Wanzhou case, these documents say that People's Republic of China intelligence employed a massively sophisticated operation targeting Canada's election and they calibrated their support.
00:12:26.080This is key. The document says they favor the Liberal Party leader, Justin Trudeau, and the Liberals, but they calibrated their support among other parties.
00:12:37.260And it was to secure the release of Mun Wanzhou.
00:12:40.800So think about what happened. Mun Wanzhou indeed was released back to China.
00:12:45.540China, as we know from my reporting in the Globe and Mail, indeed interfered pretty deeply.
00:13:35.500Justin Trudeau should be back in 2016, raise some eyebrows with his admiration of the basic, you know, dictatorship of China and what they can achieve with that sense of government.
00:13:49.620Who is benefiting from Canada going up against the United States?
00:13:55.280China is benefiting and Mark Carney is benefiting because the Liberal campaign is based upon really what is messages of anti-Americanism.
00:14:05.960And Candace, you know, I'll be very refined in my answer.
00:14:09.660I think it's egregious that Canadians are facing tariffs.
00:14:16.100And yet, I do think, unfortunately, Mexico and Canada are being used in a very sophisticated way by China to transship its products around the world.
00:14:27.320And that includes fentanyl precursors.
00:14:28.660So Washington and President Trump do have a deep state level concern, whether they're whether they've said a lot of things that, frankly, messed up our election.
00:14:50.440Well, it feels like we are on the wrong side of this dispute.
00:14:53.500I wonder, though, Sam, so you see that your evidence and your research shows that there is deep interference.
00:14:59.440And yet the Hogue report and the Hogue inquiry sort of tried to brush it under the rug or downplay it.
00:15:05.620That's what it seemed like from my perspective.
00:15:07.760And then we had this this report, this briefing earlier this week from SITE, where they emphasized that it was both sides, that it was positive and negative.
00:15:17.460And yet you and your colleague found that there was no negative campaign against the Liberals.
00:15:22.340So my question is, how deep is this corruption or how deep is the connection with China that even our own intelligence reports, even the people tasked with protecting Canada's institutions and exposing this kind of nefarious activities that they have to equivocate and pretend that it's not as bad as it is or pretend that it's coming from both sides when the evidence clearly shows that that is not the case?
00:15:47.580Should we be worried about our very agencies that are tasked with protecting Canadians and protecting our elections and our democracy?
00:15:57.480In short, what I do hear from highly connected officials and experts in America and Canada is that people of the greatest integrity in Canadian law enforcement and intelligence and their counterparts in the U.S.
00:16:13.940have had some concerns about senior government figures in Canada meeting with known suspected Chinese threat actors of the type that are involved in organized crime, of the type that are involved in the money laundering, which the U.S.
00:16:29.900government is concerned with, that moves, you know, fentanyl, marijuana, human trafficking proceeds around the world.
00:16:37.480And sure, look, we've got, as some said, a baby step.
00:16:42.780Actually, I can say proudly, at least Canadians got disclosure this week that China, at the highest level, is targeting communities with disinformation that does favor, or if you take the government's view, target Mark Carney.
00:16:58.720But you're right, I and others that are very expert in this field say Canada's government and intelligence agencies at the bureaucratic level very certainly are watering down what their agencies know about the liberals being favored.
00:17:14.120And you just have to be a smart reader and look at the data points to line up that very clearly, China does favor Justin Trudeau, Mark Carney, and a lot of politicians around them.
00:17:26.040And, you know, Candace, to your point, I mentioned, you know, I broke the story of this liberal candidate that stunned the world saying his conservative, suggesting his conservative rival could be turned over to the Toronto consulate.
00:17:40.680And, you know, I don't need to tell you about that story, but what does it reveal?
00:17:45.560After the Hogue Commission says, not too much to see here, we're on top of it, here we have a candidate come out and shock the world, suggesting his rival can be turned over to the very consulate that I know is at the center of the Chinese police stations, is at the center of money laundering networks, is at the center of supporting certain candidates.
00:18:05.080And in the Ontario and Toronto area, people that are very expert on, you know, reading Chinese media, looking at photographs, can see that the replacement of Paul Chien is very connected to the very same networks that are very friendly with the Chinese consulate and so-called community leaders with ties to Beijing and with ties I'm alleging and asserting with confidence, unfortunately, ties to organized crime.
00:18:33.860Well, it's so unbelievable that not just a liberal candidate, right?
00:18:38.060This person was an elected member of parliament.
00:18:48.500He has been part of Justin Trudeau's liberal caucus for the past four years, right?
00:18:52.420And it isn't until the middle of the election that it comes out that not only did he say this, you know, originally, Sam, I thought that maybe he had made the comments in a Chinese interview, like a Chinese language interview in one of those papers.
00:19:06.360And that's why it didn't make the press.
00:19:45.640So they replaced Paul Chung with a candidate that might be even more extreme, Peter Yuan.
00:19:51.320And you've done some research to expose his connections with a Chinese international school that has been connected to Chinese election interference.
00:20:00.300I mean, both of these individuals are police officers in Canada.
00:20:04.100I think this might be the most troubling part, that these are both Paul Chung and Peter Yang were police officers in Canada before getting into politics.
00:20:16.120And then, of course, there is this video of this new liberal candidate singing, at my Chinese heart, a communist propaganda song, wearing his full police regalia.
00:20:28.040So in Canadian uniform, making a complete mockery of our country, of our uniform, of our system, praising a Chinese communist regime in a propaganda song.
00:20:37.880Let's play a bit of that clip so that viewers remember what that looked like.
00:20:41.420I mean, when I see this kind of thing, I just feel like Canada is a fallen country, that it is just an absolute farce at this point.
00:21:23.100But for experts with intelligence agency-level knowledge like myself, you look at that video,
00:21:29.720and you know that the community association that hosts that gala event in 2017, along with the Chinese Consul General,
00:21:40.280who speaks to all the gathered politicians, I've reviewed the event, I've reviewed the Consul General report.
00:21:47.780A number of the politicians alleged by CSIS to be involved in Greater Toronto Election Interference Networks are there.
00:21:54.960This is what's called United Front Community Groups that work together with the Chinese Toronto Consulate to interfere in Canada.
00:22:03.060And so this police officer, Mr. Yuan, who there's no evidence that he's done anything wrong,
00:22:08.800but he is standing on stage, Candice, with a person that is investigated by the RCMP in alleged Chinese police station activity in Toronto and Vancouver.
00:22:21.520And for, you know, we don't need to name that person's name, but I've certainly done a lot of work on this community leader.
00:22:30.260People could go on a video and find this fellow shaking hands with Xi Jinping at a high-level United Front Work Department meeting in Beijing in 2019.
00:22:41.120All of this is known to the Canadian government, RCMP, CSIS.
00:22:45.620Of course, it's known to our American counterparts.
00:22:47.980And here we have this elite Toronto police officer singing a patriotic ode.
00:22:54.680And the key message of the ode, I don't want to get too into the weeds,
00:22:58.500but it talks about how even though an individual lives far from China,
00:23:03.340they are still connected, you know, emotionally to China.
00:23:06.840And, Candice, this is what China tries to instill in its united front networks around the world.
00:23:13.900And this is what interference and diaspora repression is about.