I'll be making my remarks in English. I've given them to the translators and I've sent them to the clerk.
I'll start off by saying that the remarks will probably be much more valuable to you if you have a copy of the Ottawa Magazine article I sent to the clerk earlier this week. It really has the full story. Four minutes certainly can't do it justice.
With the clock running, I'd like to thank you for inviting me.
As you can see in the 2012 email record I gave to the clerk's office, I had hoped for this opportunity some time ago. I believe my experience with the Xinhua News Agency might give the committee some useful background and context, as it examines China's attempt to extend its influence into Canada's political system.
I've been a practising lawyer for five years, but I started writing for newspapers in the late 1970s. I was quite young. I wrote for several daily papers when I was a student. I spent 13 years as a freelancer in the Georgian Bay area of Ontario writing for The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star.
I came to Ottawa in 1994 and joined the press gallery as a freelancer. Between 1994 and 2007, I wrote for the Toronto Star, the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, The Hill Times, the Law Times, Canadian Lawyer and a bunch of other publications that you can see in my CV. In 2004, I started working on my Ph.D., which was on the press censorship system in the Second World War, and in 2007 I accepted a limited-term teaching appointment at Concordia University in Montreal. In 2009, I finished my doctorate, my teaching contract was over and I was back in the press gallery.
Most of my freelance work had been divided up by my colleagues or the publications had cut back on what they were buying, so there was some adjustment needed. At the same time, there were interesting things happening in media. Experiments like BuzzFeed, VICE, Canadaland, iPolitics, Blacklock's Reporter and other non-traditional media were trying to take the place of dying media. Away from the media landscape, there seemed to be a real thaw in Chinese-western relationships.
Here are some things to remember for context when you're listening to what I'm going to tell you.
In 2009, Hu Jintao was still president and leader of China, and there were still term limits for his positions. China had just come off a successful summer Olympics. Relations between China and Taiwan seemed to be improving. Canada had sent trade missions to China for years, and all recent governments had tried to get a deal. The Harper government succeeded in 2014.
In 2009, representatives of the Chinese news agency Xinhua asked me to write some freelance pieces for them. I had concerns and tried to get advice from CSIS. There was considerable suspicion about Xinhua's operation in Canada among my colleagues and people on the Hill in general, and I reached out to CSIS for guidance and never heard back. Most of my interactions with Xinhua are documented in the Ottawa Magazine piece I sent to the committee clerk and in the email material I also forwarded to you.
Xinhua was trying to accomplish two things that seemed mutually exclusive but it turned out were not. It wanted to make money and expand to become a wire service feeding content to credible news organizations throughout the world. It made deals with large outlets like the Associated Press and with Chinese media in Canada and other places. It also wanted to give credibility to Chinese institutions and the regime.
Xinhua was apolitical. I saw no attempt to push the interests of one Canadian political party over another, but then my experience was limited. Xinhua did not want to offend political actors here, and the articles of that time are I believe still online. Xinhua covered lavish social events at the Chinese embassy that drew in Liberal and Tory MPs and senators. It refused to run any criticism of the Conservative government.
However, it turned out that Xinhua's bureau chief collected intelligence for China, and he asked me to spy for him. He wanted information on the private meeting between Prime Minister Harper and the Dalai Lama in April 2012, so I quit and I told him why.