Good morning. Thank you very much for inviting me.
Today I hope to provide additional insights relevant to your investigation and understanding of foreign influence in Canadian elections and other spheres of Canadian society.
Today I will speak with two hats on. One is as CEO of Optimum Publishing, which has published multiple books on human rights abuses by the Chinese Communist Party, espionage operations by the MSS and the PLA, and triad organized crime and money laundering in Canada and other nations around the world. During this time, I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about foreign interference in Canadian affairs.
The second is as CEO of the China Democracy Fund, whose mission is to defend free speech by academics and journalists who fall prey to the United Front Work's disinformation and suppression operations in Canada and around the world. Countless people, from the Tibetans to the Uyghurs and the people of Hong Kong, have been oppressed and murdered and have seen their culture erased by the CCP. I stand in solidarity with their right to freedom and democracy.
I also stand as a defender of democracy here at home. Canada is at a crossroads. Will we continue to remain wilfully blind to Chinese infiltration into our elections, business, media and academia? Will we continue to abandon our fellow citizens in the Chinese diaspora to the threats, intimidation and manipulation, also known as transnational repression?
I put to you that we must exercise option two. If we do not, we risk becoming a captive state, losing our sovereignty and our ability to make decisions in the best interests of our citizens.
Today, I am going to talk about one of the most important threats and tactics used by the CCP. It is called elite capture. This is the co-opting of leading individuals and public figures to view the actions and goals of the CCP in a positive light and to advance pro-PRC positions within their spheres of influence. In some cases, these persons are bribed or blackmailed, but in most cases they are simply flattered, supported in their careers or befriended by CCP operatives or agents working on behalf of the United Front. Thus they become witting or unwitting agents of the CCP.
Targets for elite capture fall into three categories: those who are already friends, those who are neutral and could be positively predisposed towards the PRC, and enemies of the state. These would include people like Erin O'Toole and the suppression operation that was conducted against the Conservatives in the last election.
Former minister and ambassador to China John McCallum became a poster child for the regime—a dream politician who was successfully co-opted by the CCP. Like many, he fell victim to their special treatment and ultimately came to believe that he was a chosen emissary and only he could best relate the goals and objectives of the regime in diplomatic circles here in Canada. This was illustrated in Hidden Hand, which is published by Optimum.
If we cast our minds back to the 1980s, it is easy to see how western elites were taken in. Over two decades prior, U.S. President Richard Nixon famously visited China as part of an effort to engage the country and make it an ally. The west had a bigger enemy—the former Soviet Union. China was seen as both an economic and geopolitical opportunity. Western leaders either failed to see or wilfully ignored the fact that China had its own agenda, which it deployed not through military might, but through propaganda, economics and soft power.
Carolyn Bartholomew, the chair of the powerful U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in D.C., said that they sold them on a win-win and many business and academic leaders believed that China would reform its treatment of religious and ethnic minorities, liberalize its country and embrace democracy. This was the prevailing academic theory. They believed—apparently naively—that the CCP would indeed reform and embrace the ideals of a progressive democracy. She expressed this publicly in a human rights panel that was hosted by MLI, Optimum and the CDF in 2021.
If elites were blind, intelligence agencies were not. Starting in the 1990s, CSIS had identified the threats, but the Americans began their own operational investigations, including Operation Dragon Lord, which was an American operation focused not only on the U.S. but on Canada and Australia. Operation Dragon Lord was a multi-faceted agency probe by the U.S. intelligence agencies in the late 1990s. These investigations were, in part, in response to the work being conducted by the RCMP and CSIS here in Canada.
Garry Clement, Brian McAdam and Michel Juneau-Katsuya, as well as countless other intelligence agents were investigating and writing countless reports on the nexus between organized crime, Chinese business tycoons and the PLA and MSS operations in Canada. The executive brief was obtained by Optimum authors Ina Mitchell and Scott McGregor from a former federal and provincial government lawyer. The U.S. was concerned about national security and the threat emanating directly from Canada. Much later, agencies in Canada identified these linkages and determined that Vancouver had become the North American headquarters for infiltration operations by the Chinese Communist Party.
As part of my testimony today, I've submitted the first page of the Operation Dragon Lord memo. It identifies FBI and NSA case numbers. They were investigating the relationship between the Canadian business leaders Paul Desmarais and Peter Munk, former prime minister Jean Chrétien, the Canada China Business Council, the China International Trust and Investment Corporation, known heroin kingpin Lo Hsing Han and arms dealer Robert Kuok.