Canada's spy agency is so anti-Chinese, it harms all sides
Written by: Nury Vittachi
Canada's authorities are refusing to allow a Hong Kong SAR-based western man to return home, even though he is undergoing cancer treatment and his family are in the city on the southern coast of China.
But anti-Chinese hysteria fostered by Canada's spy agency is now so extreme that Canadians of different backgrounds have been criticizing the hostile position.
Here's the story. Retired Canadian police officer William "Bill" Majcher was living and working in Hong Kong when he heard bizarre rumors from friends in Canada that he had been labelled a "communist agent". This was in summer of last year.
Majcher had been working mainly in finance, but he also did some Interpol-style work, and helped a Canadian investigator run a check on a possible Chinese economic fugitive.
In July 2023, Majcher told Hong Kong friends he was returning to Canada to clear his name. On arrival, he was charged with conspiracy and "committing preparatory acts for the benefit of a foreign entity".
An anonymous source in the position to know, says Canada's Department of Justice told the judge at a bail variance hearing that Majcher should not be allowed to return to Hong Kong because of the city's National Security Law, which enabled ‘arbitrary detentions’.
That 2020 law is described in the West as banning dissent and introducing arbitrary detentions, even though neither subject is mentioned in the text.
'Smuggling guns to China’
Majcher's case became even more bizarre this week when the Canadian press reported that he had been recruited by Canadian spies to help smuggle guns from Hong Kong across the border into Mainland China to build a weapons cache, according to La Presse, a Canadian newspaper.
The wild allegation appears to be derived from a misreading of notes referring to a 2011 conversation he had with an agent working for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
Another anonymous source, in the position to know, said when discussing Afghanistan and other countries ending with the suffix "-stan", the CSIS agent asked Majcher if he would be able to "arrange the establishment of weapons caches, and assist in the movement of sidearms across borders", with the best location being in the vicinity of the Indian Ocean. Majcher spoke with a US contact who was involved in providing armed security to ships in high risk regions, with Sri Lanka being a pick up point. After the Hong Kong SAR man provided this information, the subject never came up again.
'Chinese fugitive’
Sources close to the investigation say Majcher also laments the fact that he responded to requests from a Canadian private investigator who was looking into the background of an ethnic Chinese man living in Canada. The investigator asked Majcher to see if the man might be an economic fugitive from China, and whether there was any civil claim they could follow up on from that country.
"Ultimately there was no legal pathway for us so in 2017 we dropped it," Majcher said at the time. But he was then shocked to read reports that said he had threatened a Canadian citizen at the direction of the Chinese government.
Analysis
China had long been recognized as friendly to western nations until 2018. After a year-long series of meetings of "five eyes" agents (that's intelligence staff from US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand), a program of heavy demonization of China began, and has never stopped.
The Canadian spy agency, working with the media, has pushed out stories that are clearly ludicrous – asking people to believe that Chinese leader Xi Jinping, busy governing a country containing 18 per cent of humanity, had an interest in the result of specific local district elections in Canada.
The wave of "reds under the bed" hysteria hit others, too.
A security expert called Paul McNamara, who worked at American and Canadian embassies, travelled to Guangzhou in China, in October 2019, to buy an above-ground swimming pool for his daughter who hoped to represent Canada at the Olympic Games. The trip, which had been cleared by his employers, included a casual phone conversation with Majcher in Hong Kong. On his return, McNamara had his security clearance revoked by the US State Department, and found himself out of work.
In another case, Peter Merrifield, a celebrated former Mountie with a stellar career, lost his security clearance and his job after merely admitting to having had a beer with Majcher in the past.
Spies feed tales to reporters
Many journalists in Canada, just like their equivalents in UK and Australia, are happy to take anti-Chinese smears churned out by intelligence services and print them as news.
One particularly hostile journalist in Canada is Sam Cooper. Last month, he published an image of Bill Majcher with Chinese people at a casino as evidence that he met "triad leaders".
But it was actually a scene from a Chinese action-comedy film called From Vegas to Macau II, in which Majcher played a minor role. When caught, Cooper blamed China for his reporting failure.
Recently, Cooper called for Canada to run a "foreign interference" investigation into a movement by Chinese Canadians and others to commemorate the horrific Nanjing Massacre committed by Japan.
Calling for less hostility
But some Canadians have been fighting back against the fearmongering by their country's intelligence service.
Andrew Mitrovica, a respected Ontario journalist and professor, wrote in Al Jazeera about the victims of disinformation:
"They are victims of a dangerous hysteria gripping Canada over the scope and nature of Chinese interference in Canadian elections and society, ginned up by scoop-thirsty reporters and timorous spies who do not give a damn about the human costs of their sinister handiwork."
Another voice who has spoken out is Matthew Berens of Rabble .ca, who called for a public inquiry into the spy agency's blatant fearmongering. He wrote that its history includes "racial and religious profiling" and "exaggerated threat assessments meant to promote bigger budgets".
A judge complains
Even courageous people in the judiciary have spoken out. Federal Court Judge Patrick Gleeson criticized Canada's department of justice and spy agency for “a degree of institutional disregard for — or, at the very least, a cavalier institutional approach to — the duty of candour and regrettably the rule of law.”
The judge's comment about disregarding the rule of law is interesting. Some court papers filed in Montreal refer to Canadian spies having to work alongside MI5 officers in Hong Kong. Why? Because, until recently, there was a clear policy difference between Canadian spies and those of the UK and the US.
Literally above the law
Canadian spies were obliged to follow the rule of law. But the US and UK have a different position: a scam. While their governments talk about the "rules-based order" and the "rule of law", their spies have transnational "black op" status, meaning they assume the right to break laws anywhere in the world.
Canadian spies have traditionally worked with US and UK spies, so they can also break the law. Now they have demanded the same right to act outside the law.
At the heart of all this, Majcher told friends, is needless hostility to China – and to him, personally, as a Canadian citizen with a friendly relationship with that country.
The ultimate loser, of course, is humanity as a whole – as the "five eyes" work with western mainstream journalists to create artificial division between two of the geographically largest countries in the world, just at a time when harmony is most needed.
Nury Vittachi is a writer in Hong Kong and editor of fridayeveryday.com
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