‘Confidential Source 3’ brought Privy Council Office documents and a BIC mini-lighter to our September 2022 meeting in Quebec
I woke about 5:30 a.m. and double-checked my backpack to make sure I had pens to spare and no electronic devices, left home and started pedalling towards Parliament Hill and the bridge over Ottawa River to Quebec.
It was September 10, 2022, a sunny morning, and I could see the hills of Gatineau to the north until I approached the river and a fog descended as I rode across the pedestrian bridge.
On the Quebec side I rode for a while, looking over my shoulder whenever I rounded a corner.
My mind was reeling with a sense of awe and burden.
I approached the Cenotaph at Notre Dame Cemetery and locked my bike. As usual, I guessed, Confidential Source 3 was watching from a distance to make sure I hadn’t been followed.
That summer I was accelerated into a world of tradecraft I never could have envisioned when I decided to become a journalist in the early 2000s.
It wasn’t my first time secretly meeting with government sources. I’d been doing that since 2017 when I started to investigate casino money laundering in British Columbia.
But I had never been so jolted with information.
And that is saying a lot, considering I authored a groundbreaking book in 2021 that revealed how Chinese Communist agents working with transnational Chinese mafias were infiltrating Canada.
Since writing that book, Wilful Blindness, I had learned it was read in CSIS, RCMP, and by hardened China hands that worked with the CIA and DEA and U.S. military.
My expertise on Chinese crime networks was the reason Canadian intelligence sources contacted me in 2022.
The first bombshell they shared with me involved a notorious illegal casino mansion in Markham, allegedly tied to “The Company” — a network of Triad bosses working with Chinese security agents.
The “news” for me was a massive underground casino probe in an affluent area of Greater Toronto involved more than Canadian police.
The casino investigation involved CSIS too, my sources said, and connected to Chinese election interference networks and the Chinese Consulate.
More on that later.
This foggy September morning I was going to see with my own eyes whether disturbing information I was hearing about Chinese efforts to influence Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and fix Canada’s recent federal elections could be substantiated by government documentation.
Confidential Source 3, a senior Canadian intelligence officer with broad access to high-level information from CSIS and the Privy Council Office arrived on their cycle and pulled a clear plastic bag from a waste pouch.
Inside I could see a wad of documents and BIC mini-lighter.
Confidential Source 3 explained they could face serious legal consequences for showing classified records to me.
I had found Confidential Source 3 to be highly educated, conscientious and careful.
At other times we would sit in my car reading and discussing documents, and they cautiously wiped the passenger door handles with Wet Naps as they entered and exited.
More on that later.
We met in the Quebec cemetery to review a January 2022 “Special Report” on Chinese interference produced by the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat, a division of the Privy Council Office. This high-level document was sourced from 100 CSIS reports.
The Privy Council Office and its intelligence arm give the Prime Minister and his Cabinet non-partisan advice on serious matters of national security.
Confidential Source 3 explained the “Special Report” was a rigorously vetted distillation of extremely sensitive CSIS intelligence, essentially meant to warn Justin Trudeau and his power circle of China’s increasingly pervasive attacks on Canada’s democracy.
It was heady stuff. My government sources were telling me Canada was deeply vulnerable. They were risking a great deal to inform me of growing dangers. And I faced risks by accessing classified information too.
But I never considered turning a blind eye to the Privy Council Office report.
Some people may argue I was wrong to even read it. Probably because they are inveterate partisans or simply ignorant of metastasizing risks to Canada’s democracy.
Think about it.
Fifty years ago when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein started to hear from FBI sources that President Richard Nixon and a shady cabal of political operatives were involved in broad assaults on democracy including clandestine funding schemes and secretly attacking political opponents and breaking into Democratic Party headquarters to benefit Nixon’s election chances, would that pair of young reporters close their ears and shut their eyes and walk away?
Furthermore, if given the opportunity to take notes from a separate government department report that affirmed the FBI’s deepest concerns, would Woodward and Bernstein turn away from those documents?
No way.
And if Woodward and Bernstein hadn’t doggedly pursued the Watergate Scandal while weathering attacks from the President’s office the United States would not be the same proud nation it is today.
So yes.
I did my duty as a Canadian and hunkered down among some headstones in the Notre Dame Cemetery with Confidential Source 3 and read the January 2022 Privy Council Office document for a long time, all the while taking notes and asking questions that I believed could be important to Canada’s future.
As it turned out this particular document became central to my Chinese interference reports that started from November 2022 before the Globe and Mail started to access similar information months later.
It follows that Ottawa’s Foreign Interference Commission would not have resulted unless I accessed and reported on the Privy Council Office documents and other classified records.
But for inexplicable reasons — this same Special Report that confirms Prime Minister Trudeau and key ministers were directly warned of central allegations that I will list in this story including multiple clandestine funding operations directed from China’s Toronto Consulate — is not being considered in the Commission’s schedule of documents.
Nor did “Special Rapporteur” David Johnston value this Privy Council Office “Special Report” or the 100 underlying CSIS reports and other crucial Canadian government records that I accessed.
Why?
Canadians must come to their own judgments.
In Johnston’s case the question could be is there a conflicting relationship with Beijing’s United Front?
But here is what occurred to me back in September 2022. And I’ve thought about it a lot since.
My job on this Chinese interference story did have parallels to the circumstances Woodward and Bernstein faced.
I was hearing from government investigators that Canada’s elections are being undermined and Justin Trudeau’s party was especially implicated.
Part of my job was to learn whether it could be true that Trudeau’s government was ignoring serious foreign threats to our democracy and Chinese influence that touched his own office for electoral reasons.
There were smaller things that reminded me of Watergate too.
I had read Woodward and Bernstein’s account of a bit of tradecraft in their book All the President’s Men. It was an arrangement between Woodward and Mark Felt, his most important source. Felt was a senior FBI official.
When Woodward urgently needed to meet Felt to confirm information, the book says he would move a flowerpot on his apartment balcony.
And Felt would see this signal and know to attend a meeting in a particular underground parkade at a certain pre-designated time.
Confidential Source 3 and I had a modern variation of this.
I could make a small typographical adjustment on my Twitter account. Confidential Source 3 monitored my account every day. They would see the change and the proposed meeting would be on at a set time and place.
Before getting into the salient details of the January 2022 Privy Council report that I read and recorded on September 10, 2022, it’s a good time to explain that I later used my Twitter signal for an urgent follow-up meeting.
In December 2022 I sat with Confidential Source 3 and read a December 2021 CSIS report that noted a Chinese Consulate in Canada believed mainland China immigrants had successfully influenced the 2021 federal election.
The Chinese Consulate believed this influence would grow in Canada’s next election because Chinese diplomats found the mainland diaspora easy to influence and it was becoming more populous in Canada’s voting base.
This particular December 2021 CSIS document also revealed that Chinese diplomats said Chinese ethnic voters in Canada should be informed that the Conservative Party is against them and “the Liberal Party of Canada is becoming the only party that the People’s Republic of China can support.”
While I read this CSIS report with Confidential Source 3, they commented that CSIS officers thought federal Liberal Party leaders were not responding to election-interference threats because China was attacking the Conservative Party while the Liberal Party was gaining voters and support from China.
As shocking as this must sound, this is what I heard from all my significant intelligence sources.
January 2022 Privy Council Office “Special Report”
Here are some of the details that Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue could consider if she requests access to the January 2022 Special Report that was provided by the Privy Council Office to Prime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet ministers.
The report that I took notes from says no single nation is doing more Foreign Interference than China, and the current levels in Canada started in 2015 when President Xi Jinping elevated the united front in Chinese Communist Party operations abroad.
The report noted China’s United Front Work Department is separate from Chinese intelligence agencies, but ensconced within United Front networks, are intelligence agents involved in operations.
In Canada, the report said, the Chinese Communist Party develops clandestine networks to surround our elected officials, sometimes through “co-optation and corruption” of former officials, in order to gain leverage over Canada’s policy and decision making.
The report did not name these former officials.
The only Canadian politician named in the document I read was former Liberal Party minister and ambassador to China John McCallum.
The Privy Council Report said McCallum may have been “pushed” to hold two press conferences in 2019 to argue the view that the detention of Meng Wanzhou was illegal.
And after McCallum resigned a senior Chinese diplomat in Canada said McCallum would have a “happy ending” because China “would never treat righteous friends poorly.”
The chief allegation I read in this report on September 10 was tersely expressed and devoid of names.
It said a “clandestine network of PRC linked individuals” worked together in loose coordination to “covertly advance PRC interests related to the 2019 Federal Election in Canada.”
It added this election interference network included “at least” 11 candidates and 13 campaign staff.
Most importantly, the Privy Council Office document said: “A large clandestine transfer of funds earmarked for the Federal Election from the PRC Consulate in Toronto was transferred to an elected Provincial Government official via a staff member of a 2019 federal candidate.”
The report also noted that two separate meetings occurred between two 2019 federal candidates and China-based officials of the United Front Work Department.
And there was more on clandestine transfers.
This is very important. Remember, this Special Report was prepared especially for Justin Trudeau and his key ministers.
The report noted that China’s Foreign Interference inside Canada uses proxy groups to create the illusion of public opposition to Canadian policies that the Chinese Communist Party opposes. And sometimes “this activity of using proxies” includes the transfer of funds from the Chinese Communist Party.
Next, a bombshell piece of evidence with specific funding amounts.
The report said that in 2014 the Chinese Consulate in Toronto transferred “CAD$1 million to unidentified proxies in Toronto to arrange allegedly ‘public’ protests against the Toronto District School Board’s impending decision to ban PRC-funded Confucius Institutes in Toronto schools.”
I will keep my explanation simple.
I cannot see any reason why Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue would not probe the 2014 and 2019 Chinese Consulate clandestine transfer cases in combination, starting with a thorough review of the January 2022 Privy Council Office report and the underlying 100 CSIS reports.
For me, the 2014 allegation was detailed and specific. The Privy Council Office was accusing the Chinese Consulate in Toronto of interfering in important Canadian political events with significant funding, prior to doing this again in 2019.
Sources in the Chinese diaspora know that the 2019 clandestine transfer allegation and the 2014 clandestine transfer allegation involve the same United Front community proxies in Toronto.
The 2014 case actors can be easily identified in open source media. They can be connected to meetings with Xi Jinping in China. I won’t get into the evidence in this particular story.
But Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue could very easily collect evidence from Chinese community sources with direct knowledge of these crucial clandestine funding cases and CSIS investigators, too.
Let’s see what happens.
But let’s not forget “Special Rapporteur” David Johnston.
Canadians were led to believe the former governor general was mandated to independently examine Chinese interference allegations reported in 2022 and 2023 by Canadian media.
I reported on the Privy Council Office Special Report and the allegation that the Chinese Consulate transferred $1-million and used proxies to fund fake protests in support of PRC-funded Confucius Institutes.
I think most people would agree that this specific allegation would be an important one for Mr. Johnston to examine and address.
But Johnston didn’t.
And his report avoids the central role of the United Front Work Department in diaspora meddling, Hong Kong Canadian community leader Fenella Sung told me.
“David Johnston is not just giving the United Front a pass, he has been using the Chinese Communist Party’s arguments throughout his report,” Sung told me after Johnston’s report came out. “That’s scary. There are more often than not infiltrating and covert operations underneath the usual interactions between politicians and the Chinese community and groups. Basically, he is just reiterating the government’s usual stance.”
And here is something else not widely understood in Canada.
According to the U.S. State Department, Confucius Institutes are part of Beijing’s United Front, guided and directly funded by the United Front Work Department.
Among Johnston’s significant entanglements with Beijing, including his fostering of scientific exchanges with Chinese institutions, the most direct tie between Johnston and the United Front Work Department is that Johnston oversaw the establishment of Confucius Institutes while he was president of University of Waterloo.
I’m suggesting the perception of a conflict.
So when Canadians try to understand how Canada’s scientific capacity was appropriated by China in the Winnipeg Lab scandal, how Chinese students are used in espionage and election interference, and how Parliament Hill has been saturated with subtle Chinese intelligence operators, David Johnston’s career and social networks should come to mind first.
