‘Old Friends’ of Beijing: Dennis Molinaro on Trudeau and the Elite Networks That Rewired Canada–China Relations

OTTAWA — As British Columbia heads toward an October 24 snap election, I spoke with Jason James about something I believe is missing from much of the political analysis: the documented history of Chinese foreign interference in the province, and the unanswered questions surrounding Premier David Eby. My reporting at The Bureau has repeatedly examined intelligence concerning Beijing’s efforts to influence political contests in British Columbia—from Vancouver municipal elections to federal and provincial politics. One particularly sensitive Canadian Security Intelligence Service document I obtained, classified Canadian Eyes Only, describes a Chinese consular contact arranging a discreet meeting in a Canada-based consulate, with a candidate seeking the leadership of a provincial political party in 2022. The candidate, identified only as “CA3,” was expected to enter through a side entrance. In November 2023, I wrote: The report’s chief allegation – Chinese officials arranged in June 2022 to surreptitiously meet an elected provincial official only identified as “CA3” — suggests CSIS monitored a particular candidate in Alberta or British Columbia. This is because the B.C. NDP and Alberta United Conservatives were the only provincial parties reportedly selecting leaders in the June to October 2022 timeframe described by the Intelligence Assessment. Canada hosts four Chinese Consulates, in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal.

OTTAWA — In this episode with Jason James, we discuss how fast Mark Carney’s government is pivoting toward China: Dominic Barton’s return, Canada’s newly disclosed military talks with the People’s Liberation Army, the RCMP’s partnership with China’s Ministry of Public Security, and what all of it means for Canada’s standing with the United States as the world edges toward a collision over Taiwan. We start with the mood in the country. Jason puts it well. Canadians are sitting in the eye of the hurricane, unable to feel how fast things are spinning around them. I call it living in the middle of something akin to cognitive warfare. Conflicts from Ukraine to Iran are now playing out in Canadian cities. Cyber operations, criminal networks, weapons procurement, transnational repression, text-message scams, money laundering and hostile statecraft all point back to Beijing, Moscow and Tehran, yet most Canadians never see how they connect. Security experts do. People looking in from outside, including senior national security and finance figures I speak with in other governments, can see it plainly. I explain why the noise coming out of Washington, from renaming lakes to redrawing maps, feeds a Beijing narrative and a Liberal Party narrative at the same time, and why that leaves many Canadians confused about who the real adversary is. I also walk through how I reached my own assessment of Mark Carney. It took about a year of watching whether he would break from the Canada China Business Council and the Quebec business elites who have dealt with Beijing for decades. He didn’t. Then we turn to Dominic Barton, the former global managing partner of McKinsey and former ambassador to China, now appointed chair of Invest in Canada, the federal agency responsible for foreign direct investment. Barton appeared on the network map I published during the 2025 campaign, before the new government took shape. We revisit his record as reported by Michael Forsythe of The New York Times, his past testimony before House of Commons committees, and his well-known advice that business leaders should follow the Chinese Communist Party’s five-year plans. We also dig into the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s memorandum of understanding with China’s Ministry of Public Security, the same ministry that United States prosecutors have tied to secret Chinese police stations in New York. I explain why diaspora communities are alarmed, and why my upcoming reporting on scam compounds and the Sam Gor triad makes this partnership even harder to justify. Jason brings in Unrestricted Warfare, the 1999 book by two People’s Liberation Army colonels, and its idea of “military operations other than war.” We use it to connect stories that seem unrelated: the espionage case in Brussels involving a former Canadian public servant, the scam networks harvesting data from Canadian phones, and Iranian procurement networks that move American technology through Canadian and Chinese front companies. I explain how underground banking tied to the oil trade between China and Iran runs through Canada, and why that matters when China is sustaining the wars of both Russia and Iran. We close on Taiwan. I’m heading there this fall on a reporting trip. We talk about its democracy, its dominance in microchips, and why its fall would change everything for Japan, the Philippines and the West. Then Jason asks the hardest question of the episode: if the United States and China went to war tomorrow, whose side would Canada be on? I tell him that in Mark Carney’s Canada, I don’t know. The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

OTTAWA — In this episode, I sit down with Indo-Pacific researcher Cleo Paskal and frequent Bureau guest Chris Meyer to investigate a part of the world that rarely commands sustained Western attention — but could determine the outcome of the next global conflict. Paskal has testified repeatedly before the United States Congress and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. A former journalist, she has spent years travelling through the Pacific’s smallest and most strategically important states. The path that drew her into this subject resembles my own in Vancouver. As a travel journalist, she watched patterns of Chinese investment advance rapidly across smaller states, year after year, until they formed the unmistakable outline of a larger strategic objective. Her research examines how Beijing combines political influence, commercial activity, organized crime and intelligence-linked networks to alter conditions on the ground without firing a shot. Paskal explains that maritime geography is leverage in this contest of great powers. Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands — including Saipan and Tinian — are U.S. territories. Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands are independent nations linked to Washington through Compacts of Free Association. Together, they form an American-controlled corridor between Hawaii and the first island chain encompassing Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. If war erupts over Taiwan, those islands become the logistical spine for moving American forces west. Paskal argues that Beijing understands their importance far better than Washington often appears to. Meyer, a former U.S. official and veteran China analyst, connects what he has found in Saipan to the casino-based money laundering, underground banking and political influence networks I documented in Wilful Blindness. His assessment is blunt: Beijing sends its “A team” into Micronesia, while Washington too often treats the region as an afterthought. Their investigation focuses in part on Imperial Pacific International, the spectacularly troubled Saipan casino venture. Paskal and Meyer examine its reported financial volumes, its Chinese state-connected construction contractor and allegations involving illegal labour, human trafficking, money laundering and public corruption. In congressional testimony, Governor Arnold Palacios described the casino era as being marked by precisely those problems. The episode also scrutinizes a special, CNMI-only immigration pathway that currently permits eligible, pre-screened Chinese visitors to enter the islands without a conventional visa for stays of up to 14 days. Critics fear that such access, combined with direct flights and uneven enforcement, creates vulnerabilities close to Guam’s military installations. The most sensitive part of our discussion concerns Palacios himself. After taking office in 2023, Palacios pressed federal agencies to examine public corruption and the handling of enormous amounts of American funding. In April 2025, he reportedly asked the territory’s congressional delegate to carry a request directly to FBI Director Kash Patel for “intensive investigations of public corruption,” saying his administration possessed considerable evidence. Three months later, Palacios collapsed in his office. He was flown to Guam and died that night at 69. Paskal says some people in the Northern Marianas remain deeply suspicious about the circumstances, including questions surrounding the medical response and whether his transfer was delayed. She does not claim to possess proof that Palacios was killed. But she argues that this uncertainty produces its own strategic effect: If an official challenges entrenched interests, dies suddenly, and the unanswered questions are never resolved, other officials may decide that speaking out is too dangerous. That, she says, is cognitive warfare — the shaping of behaviour through fear, doubt and the appearance th

OTTAWA — This week, MPs on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security unanimously agreed to hold hearings this fall into Canada’s national-security clearance and vetting system. The probe follows the arrest of a Canadian intern who worked at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Belgium. Belgian prosecutors have charged her with espionage on behalf of a third country and participation in a criminal organization. Reuters has reported, citing a security source, that she is accused of spying for China. Last week—before Parliament agreed to investigate—I conducted my own examination of the case with Jason James. We broke down the known knowns, the known unknowns and the probabilities behind the competing explanations. Was this simply an extraordinary series of bureaucratic failures? Or could a political-access network have helped move this woman through Canadian institutions despite warning signs? I also explained what a former senior CSIS officer told me about the likely vetting process—and why my source believes investigators should look closely at Global Affairs Canada. So, what happened here? We have a young woman who came to Canada from China, moved through universities and Canadian government institutions, and was ultimately sponsored by Global Affairs Canada for a sensitive position at NATO. Yet before that placement, she had submitted applications to the Canada Border Services Agency using different names and different universities. The Public Service Commission found that she committed fraud during that appointment process, and the Federal Court later dismissed her attempt to overturn that finding. To me, the young woman’s persistence in attempting to overturn the negative finding, in itself, seems interesting. Her case information wasn’t in some hidden intelligence intercept. It is sitting in the public record. So how did she get through? A former CSIS officer told me that CSIS would have conducted security vetting—and, in this officer’s assessment, it is likely the service produced a concerning red-flag report. CSIS is a capable intelligence agency. It works with the CIA and other top allied services. As I tell Jason, I find it very difficult to believe that CSIS simply missed problems that were visible through basic open-source research. My source told me it would make sense to look closely at GAC. That fits previous intelligence reporting indicating that Global Affairs has prioritized trade and diplomatic relations with countries such as China and India over security concerns—a longstanding source of friction with CSIS. So, could it be the case that CSIS raised red flags and Global Affairs Canada effectively said, Nothing to see here? I don’t know. That remains a theory, not a proven fact. But I believe it is a serious and plausible theory—and one investigators must test. That means examining the institutional environment around senior GAC figures, including Mélanie Joly and David Morrison. Since 2018, as I have reported, Joly has led or participated in Beijing trade-lobby engagement involving the Canada China Business Council and prominent Eastern Canadian business figures. My reporting has also traced meetings involving some of the same CCP-linked entities that appear around the Markham illegal-casino network and political fundraising circles. I am asking whether an institutional culture—one heavily invested in trade, access and renewed engagement with Beijing—could have caused legitimate security warnings to be minimized or overridden. That question becomes even more important because the woman reportedly listed Liberal campaign volunteering on her résumé and appeared at a Justin Trudeau fundraising-style event in 2014. Research from the Jamestown Foundation and leaked intelligence records describe how United Front Work Department networks cultivate Western politicians, establish bonds of obligation and promote favoured individuals for positions inside government. In my reporting,

OTTAWA – I joined Brian Lilley for a wide-ranging conversation that started with the machinery of Beijing’s foreign influence in Canada and Conservative leadership politics, then moved into MP Larry Brock’s departure and Brian’s explosive scoop: Brock disclosed to his party leaders that Mark Carney’s party had dangled a judicial appointment before him amid Carney’s floor-crossing campaign. I started with the documentary record on Beijing’s 575 United Front Work Department community groups in Canada, including a group that pressured two successive party leaders to step down. Drawing on Jamestown Foundation research into Chinese Communist Party influence operations in Canada, I explained how these United Front organizations are tasked with targeting local politicians and community leaders, mobilizing voters behind candidates viewed as supportive of Beijing, and applying pressure to political parties and institutions. This isn’t about one political party, and it doesn’t require us to assume that any individual politician understands or acquiesces to Beijing’s community networks. The broader picture is roughly 575 organizations, or 576, counting the organization led by a Canadian senator and now confirmed to The Bureau as having Beijing links, operating in Canada within systems that Beijing can mobilize to surround politicians, shape political narratives and, ultimately, try to influence elections and leadership contests. Brian then gave a striking example from his own experience. The morning after Erin O’Toole lost the 2021 election, Brian received a cold call from a man he had never heard of—and who, Brian said, had no obvious reason to have his number. The message was simple. O’Toole had to go. Brian’s interpretation was equally clear. O’Toole had been hawkish on China from the beginning. Beijing disliked him and, in Brian’s view, wanted him removed. I added what Canadian intelligence reporting has shown. In my reporting, I described intelligence intercepts involving Chinese consular officials discussing the need to push a message through diaspora communities that electing a leader like O’Toole would be comparable to electing Donald Trump. That brought us to the current leadership question. A leadership vacancy creates an opportunity. Members can be signed up. Networks can be activated. A preferred candidate doesn’t have to be Beijing’s ideal candidate—just somewhat “less bad” from Beijing’s perspective. My reporting showed that a Chinese proxy agent, according to CSIS reporting I obtained exclusively, attempted to influence a federal party leadership contest in 2022 by paying for memberships, recruiting CCP members to join the party, and seeking to make it less hawkish toward Beijing. While CSIS did not name the Conservatives, my sources inside the party and within the diaspora pointed to a network that sought a leader other than Poilievre, I told Brian. I also told him that we know the Chinese Communist Party studies Western political systems and individual politicians in extraordinary detail. The objective, as I put it to Brian, is fairly simple: they are trying to win inside our system. From there, I turned the questions back on Brian. On party operative Kory Teneycke, I pressed Brian on speculation that Teneycke had been working back channels to encourage a Jason Kenney leadership bid. Then we got into Larry Brock. Brock’s departure, Brian said, has nothing to do with dissatisfaction with the Conservative leadership. Brock had been on leave from his position as a Crown prosecutor and faced a September deadline to make a permanent choice. The more significant disclosure involves what happened earlier this year. According to Brian, the Liberals dangled the possibility of a judicial appointment in front of Brock. Brock declined and immediately reported the matter to the Conservative whip and House leader. Brian’s assessment is that nobody crossed the legal threshold for an inducement. But he believes the Liberals should still