Written by: Aidan Jonah

The Chinagate farce continues on ever so fiercely, and irony abounded this week. The Globe & Mail itself proudly reported that their reporters, Robert Fife and Steven Chase, had won the “Ross Munro Award” for their “coverage of foreign interference in Canada”.

Without shame, the newspaper mentioned the award’s presenter: the CDA Institute, founded in 1987 by the Conference of Defence Associations. The CDA itself was founded in 1932 with then-Minister of Defence Donald Matheson Sutherland’s backing. As Yves Engler explains, the CDA is a creature of the Canada’s Department of National Defence (DND):

“Since its inception CDA has been directly or indirectly financed by DND. Initially, member associations paid a small part of the funds they received from DND to CDA. But, three decades later the role was reversed. CDA received a block grant from DND and parcelled out the money to its various member associations.”

The CDA functions to produce imperialist propaganda in favour of funding the military more heavily, and to back Canadian military missions with propaganda, such as Canada’s role in the occupation of Afghanistan. CDA’s ‘Strategic Partners’ include Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, infamous weapons manufacturers, while its only ‘Premier Partner’ is one of Canada’s largest banks, the Royal Bank of Canada.

It is then little wonder why the CDA’s think-tank would seek to elevate and praise Fife and Chase’s Chinagate reporting, which is being used to further drive the Canadian people’s animosity against the People’s Republic of China. That animosity is being transferred already to increasingly militaristic attitudes against China, including when Canada’s Chief of the Defence Staff, General Wayne Eyre, claimed that China and Russia were already at war with Canada, last fall. Ironically, Fife and Chase were pictured with General Eyre after receiving their award.

The CDA Institute award was given to Fife and Chase for both their Chinagate coverage and coverage of alleged Indian interference in Canada, but Chinagate coverage is clearly the more important factor. While India – a country the West wants good relations with - is a target to be used as an anti-China bulwark in Asia, triggering conflict with China is an aim of the US, the country which Canada’s elite takes most of its orders from.

The Chinagate reporting itself shows Fife, Chase and the Globe and Mail in general to be bootlickers of CSIS. The bootlicking on this file started from January 2022, when documents showed Fife was asking over email for the chance to spread the word about CSIS’ campaign of making Canadian politicians, federal and then both provincial and municipal, afraid of enemy nations’ supposed interference in Canada. The bootlicking behaviour continued into their coverage of the initial special rapporteur on foreign interference, David Johnston, who was pressured into resigning because he didn’t call for a public inquiry. They’ve accelerated even further (#1, #2) in coverage of the foreign interference public inquiry which was announced initially in Fall 2023, rushing to cover every outburst from anti-China diaspora groups. This included when two groups left because they couldn’t force the inquiry’s commissioner – Justice Marie-Josée Hogue - to follow their demand of preventing political figures from having the necessary standing to ask critical questions of them.

The interests of the Globe & Mail in maintaining its elite journalism status by licking the boots of the Canadian state apparatus by pushing a foreign interference panic about China, and the interests of the CDA in continuing to be funded by Canada’s DND – which means pushing for increased military spending – align perfectly.

It’s the Canadian people who get hurt by this farce of ramping up militaristic attitudes and imperialism towards China. For our elites, that’s exactly what they want the Chinagate farce to ensure.

Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.

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Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.

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