Government by CSIS
Canada’s political elites and mainstream media are in the pocket of CSIS, now the lead servant of Canadian capital. The Canadian people will suffer dearly for this.
Left: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Right: A sign for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS)
Written by: Aidan Jonah
NDP Member of Parliament (MP) Jenny Kwan is the latest MP to cry ‘intimidation’ after having a classified briefing with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
Unproven allegations of Chinese government intimidation against Conservative MP Michael Chong came with constantly changing narratives about what was allegedly done to him (now it’s that “the PRC was looking for information on their [Chong’s] family in Hong Kong [a family which he hadn’t been in contact with for years, so the supposed value of pressuring them is non-existent]).”
The baseless claims around Chong, pushed by the Globe & Mail’s CSIS-loving duo, Robert Fife and Steven Chase, sparked Chinagate. Ever since, CSIS has gained significant amount of influence over MPs, Canada’s government and showcased its dominance of Canada’s mainstream media.
CSIS-led Chinagate produces more power and influence for CSIS
Fife and Chase have relied upon an anonymous CSIS “leaker” for a number of their Chinagate stories. Yet CSIS’ refusal to disclose communications with these two Globe & Mail reporters raises suspicion that the main “leaker” could be a CSIS operative.
In 2018, David Vigneault, the CSIS Director, began to focus CSIS on the supposed ‘China threat’ to Canada. CSIS ramped up its campaign to brief MPs about supposed Russian, Chinese and Iranian “interference” in Canadian politics, beginning in September 2021, after Conservative MP Kenny Chiu lost his seat in British Columbia. Chiu, without evidence, claimed Chinese Canadian organizing to defeat his candidacy, after he tabled a bill for the creation of a foreign influence registry in April 2021, only happened because of a Chinese government disinformation campaign.
In the following months of 2021, CSIS began to brief MPs about alleged foreign interference plots, by China in particular, in view of generating fear. This author’s July 2022 article on the CSIS campaign revealed to the public by a January 2022 Globe & Mail article, noted that:
“While CSIS redacted the names of MPs and the specific talking points crafted for them, the documents reveal that among those briefed were an unnamed Liberal cabinet minister and the Minister of Public Safety, Marco Mendicino. Interviews cited for Fife and Chase’s Globe and Mail article corroborate that Conservative MP Michael Chong and NDP MP Jenny Kwan were likely among the group of MPs briefed by CSIS.”
CSIS internal emails claimed that their briefings on supposed foreign interference threats “were welcomed by all MPs and received consistently positive reactions.”
In the present day, on May 12, 2023, CSIS had seen the political atmosphere to begin briefing even more MPs about ‘foreign interference threats’, after “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he told CSIS to share more information with the federal government about threats to members of Parliament following the reports about Chong and his family.”
A ministerial directive formalized this request by the Trudeau government soon afterwards.
The narrative of CSIS not briefing MPs tightly enough is incredible convenient for them. CSIS can claim they just didn’t do enough to warn MPs, so they can ramp up the campaign they’ve been pursuing since Fall 2021. Public Safety Marco Mendicino followed the line in a way formerly only possible in CSIS’ dreams:
“Going forward, CSIS will be required to inform the minister of public safety on any foreign interference threats that involve Parliamentarians or their families,".. “Furthermore, whenever possible, CSIS must brief Parliamentarians on these threats.”
Mendicino’s last line is laughable, since it infers that CSIS hadn’t been rushing and pushing to brief MPs about the dangers of “Russian, Chinese and Iranian foreign interference” for years.
The January 2022 Globe & Mail article on CSIS’ longstanding information campaign on foreign interference “promoted multiple voices who supported a ‘Foreign Influence Registry Act,’ and featured zero voices which would reject CSIS’ campaign to brief MP about supposed foreign interference dangers from enemy nations. The article read as an extended press release which CSIS was able to get into one of Canada’s most read newspapers.”
Emphasizing the shoddy reporting of that article was how co-author Robert Fife had emailed CSIS in January 2022, volunteering to uncritically reproduce the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s warnings about “foreign interference/influence operations”, making this article bound to be a CSIS press release from the start, which led a CSIS staffer to say that Fife’s interview request to CSIS “appears as good news to me!”
As can be seen from this Globe & Mail article, CSIS had been angling for a foreign influence registry for many years before Chinagate. And wouldn’t you know it, when the CSIS ‘leaker’ began providing information to the Globe & Mail, their stories provided an impetus for the Conservatives to continue ex-MP Kenny Chiu’s push for a foreign influence registry. Before Chinagate began in full, the push for such a registry had stalled completely after the Conservative party (which was calling for a foreign influence registry) failed to form government in the 2021 federal election. The push sparked back to life as soon as Chinagate began, in February 2023.
CSIS got its way this year, as a Canadian government source confirmed that a foreign influence registry bill will be tabled by summer or fall 2023, with grassroots resistance to such a registry being ignored.
Over time, Chinagate built up steam, centred around the inconsistent and unproven claims of CSIS around MP Michael Chong, as opposition MPs rushed to jump on the story and demand ‘justice’. Ex-Governor General of Canada David Johnston, appointed by ex-Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was appointed by Canadian PM Justin Trudeau as the special rapporteur to investigate allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian politics. Opposition MPs and Conservative ideologues would soon begin pressing Johnston to recommend a public inquiry, leading many in Canada’s mainstream media to expect Johnston to recommend this course of action. This was important to the opposition, as PM Trudeau had promised to follow the recommendations of special rapporteur Johnston.
When Johnston instead rejected calls to recommend a public inquiry into alleged Chinese interference in Canadian politics, there was palpable rage from opposition MPs, Conservative ideologues and anti-China diaspora organizations, who instead chose to host a serious of country wide open hearings for diasporas to speak on their concerns on the ‘foreign government intimidation’ they face. Conveniently, these groups reject these open hearings and want a public inquiry; indicating a coordinated strategy among reactionary political forces in Canada seeking the ramping up of animosity with China.
Johnston did concede to the opposition in one big way, saying that there is intimidation of anti-China diasporas by the Chinese government. This wasn’t enough for opposition MPs however, who in the recent weeks have had some Liberal MPs jump in with them, to whip up demonization of China and demand a public inquiry.
The opposition and some Liberal MPs have ramped up their efforts after Johnston’s report, with MPs including NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, now calling for Johnston to resign as a special rapporteur, or for Trudeau to remove Johnston from his role. Childhood interactions between Johnston and Trudeau, from decades ago, communications from when Trudeau was entering federal politics, and around $7500 CAD in donations to the Liberal party over 15 years by Johnston’s legal advisor Sheila Block, is the supposed indisputable proof of bias and Johnston’s desire to protect the Trudeau government over the ‘public interest’.
In a debate on May 30, 2023, where parliament was debating a motion to call for special rapporteur Johnston to resign, Conservative MP Erin O’Toole pushed CSIS claims from a briefing they gave him about an alleged “orchestrated campaign of foreign interference”; a “misinformation and voter-suppression operation” in and around the 2021 federal election, that supposedly included payments to create the misinformation against O’Toole. Amidst the parliamentary opposition’s demands for Johnston’s resignation and pushing for a public inquiry, O’Toole’s pushing of CSIS claims showed why CSIS was so determined to create paranoia about China among individual MPs, and would be so happy about the so-called ‘government pressure’ to deliver more briefings, more often; in the hopes that briefed MPs would spread CSIS’ claims against China, and enable CSIS’ cold war drive against China.
CSIS’ history with China, and its long history of deceit
CSIS has been pushing paranoia about China in various ways since the 1990s, and would have much incentive to demonize China, and pressure the Canadian government to ramp up its aggression. As this author explained for The Canada Files in July 2022:
“Canadian intelligence scrutiny of Chinese-Canadians and Chinese institutions is a recurring theme dating back to the 1990’s, when a joint CSIS/RCMP counter-espionage report claimed that Chinese-Canadians are being used by the Chinese government to influence Canadian politics.”.. “As China’s global profile rose over the ensuing decades, CSIS’ interest in Chinese-related activities in Canada only grew.”
[In 2013, Qing Quentin Huang, a former naval engineer and subcontractor to the Canadian frigate program was charged by CSIS] in 2013 for stealing trade secrets for China.” Dere explained “For eight long years Mr. Huang stood alone, except for his lawyers, to fight the allegations. No human rights advocates, no civil libertarians came to his defense. When CSIS refused to disclose evidence against him, the case was stayed and then finally, the criminal charges were dropped in December, 2021. This was a blatant misuse of the court system by national security forces purely based on ideology.”
A 2013 CSIS ‘intelligence report’ claimed that Confucius Institutes were “spreading propaganda”, and were uniquely dangerous in comparison to other foreign language and cultural institutions such as the British Council and Germany’s Goethe Institute. ..
William Dere explained that in 2014, “CSIS agents visited the director of a Confucius Institute in Quebec shortly after the CI was launched. According to the CBC, the agents ‘only left her alone after she threatened to file a human-rights complaint.’”
CSIS itself should be heavily scrutinized, having been created in 1984 to replace the RCMP’s Security Service after its abuses prompted the creation of a parliamentary committee focused on investigating it.
For Spring Magazine, David Bush explained that CSIS soon had its own controversies:
“In June 1985, Flight 182, departing from Montreal and heading to London, was destroyed over the Atlantic Ocean by a bomb, killing all 329 people on board.”.. “CSIS knew of the plot beforehand and failed to act. They had multiple informants and one of the ringleaders under surveillance, and even observed them test run the bomb. One of the suspects in the bombing plot, Surjan Singh Gill, was revealed to be a CSIS agent.”
Three-quarters of the wiretaps recorded before and after the bombing, a clear as day cover-up, with CSIS claiming “the destruction of the tapes to protect their sources and known agents.”
Grant Bristow was recruited as a CSIS undercover agent in 1988, forging relationships focused on the far-right Nationalist Party of Canada. Bush explained that:
“Bristow and others on the right of the party broke off to form the Heritage Front, an overtly fascist organization. From the beginning, Bristow was one of the leaders of the Front, helping to organize its actions and recruit members. Not only did CSIS support this, but they provided vital funding to the Front that helped pay for their hotline, their main recruitment method. He also used CSIS funds to bring prominent American neo-nazi Tom Metzger for a speaking engagement in Canada.”
CSIS spied on postal workers throughout the 1990s until former “undercover CSIS agent, John Farrell, revealed the extent of CSIS’ dirty trick operations conducted in Canada.” Bush notes: “Farrell’s revelations also included breaking into vehicles of former CSIS agents who they suspected of whistleblowing and funnelling funds for other collegiate activities.”
CSIS’ deceit carried on into the new millennium, as “in the lead-up to the 2003 war on Iraq, CSIS fed the government false intelligence about the capabilities and motives of the Iraqi government. They produced “intelligence reports” which claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that he was aiming to acquire nuclear weapons.” They pushed false intelligence “in the hopes of pressuring the government to join the invasion.”
CSIS’ history of pushing false intelligence is especially relevant since they are the force behind Chinagate.
Bush explains “Almost immediately following 9/11 CSIS ramped up its sustained and mass spying and harassment program on the Muslim community in Canada” and “played a large role cultivating Islamophobia. They treated the Muslim community as a threat, and they operated with little to no accountability.”
As Bush explains, CSIS has a love for breaking Canadian law:
“In 2006 CSIS created the Operational Data Analysis Centre (ODAC). Through the ODAC they collected not only the data of individuals targeted by CSIS surveillance but also the data of anyone who interacted with them. This massive data collection of mostly third-party individuals was kept hidden from the public and courts for nearly ten years. In 2016 the courts ruled the ODAC was an illegal spying program and that CSIS was breaking the law. Despite the court findings, CSIS continued to harvest data to spy on Canadians illegally.
In 2020, it was again revealed by a watchdog group that CSIS was illegally using peoples’ digital geolocation data without a warrant. Also, in 2020, a federal court released a judgement that found that CSIS was routinely engaging in illegal operational activity. Justice Gleeson found not only a pattern of illegal activity by CSIS but that they also had routinely lied to courts. CSIS was found to have obtained warrants based on known illegal activities.
CSIS not only has engaged in systematic illegal spying, but it has also aimed to rewrite Canada’s history by destroying hundreds of thousands of files relating to the RCMPs sustained illegal activities in the Cold War era.”
CSIS has also spied on land defenders, activists which support them, and continued RCMP spying operations on both peace groups and left-wing organizations, along with diaspora communities in Canada.
The very CSIS elites which perpetrated their numerous crimes against the Canadian people, and have spent years spreading smears about China and Chinese Canadians are now viewed as trusted figures about the “China threat”.
Back in 2010, then head of CSIS, Richard Fadden, engaged in “a drive-by shooting style of innuendos claimed that Chinese Canadian politicians including cabinet ministers and elected municipal officials in BC are under the influence a ‘foreign government’, i.e. China. No evidence against the unnamed politicians was ever produced but the damage was done.” Fadden now regularly appears on Canadian mainstream media panels and gets to write op-eds as a serious figure on foreign interference threats.
All the while, history repeated itself; from former Ontario Liberal MPP Michael Chan being targeted in 2010 by CSIS, to now-independent Liberal MP Han Dong being smeared in 2023 by Global News reporter Sam Cooper (reporting claims by another ‘leaker’/CSIS agent) as calling on China to keep detaining the two Michaels to supposedly benefit the Liberals, allegations which even the Globe & Mail wouldn’t report on, as they couldn’t verify the claim, which Dong firmly denied. Cooper and Global News are being sued by Dong.
Ex-CSIS operatives such as Michael Juneau-Katsuya bandy around the word ‘traitor’ regularly, and even have testified in Canadian parliament, calling for jail time for alleged foreign collaborators. Others, like Dan Stanton, “a former CSIS officer and manager”, and Artur Wilczynski, a “former assistant deputy minister with the Communications Security Establishment [CSEC]”, speak more lightly, but still demand a public inquiry.
(CSEC has its own dubious history, being called the “espionage arm of corporate Canada” by Asad Ismi in the CCPA Monitor. CSEC has repeatedly committed economic espionage on behalf of the Canadian government and corporations, and had listening posts in a number of embassies or consular posts according to Spyworld: Inside the Canadian and American Intelligence Establishments. One NSA document, released by Edward Snowden, claimed CSEC operated clandestine surveillance activities in “approximately 20 high-priority countries.”)
Chinagate, the resulting pressure on the Trudeau government to be even tougher on China, and the attacks on Johnston for not recommending a public inquiry, are all events which significantly benefit CSIS. Missed by most, is the Canadian government’s breaking of its One-China policy on May 18, 2023, by treating Taiwan province as an independent state capable of joining the World Health Organization. Canada had remained vague on Taiwan province involvement around the WHO, and in the midst of Chinagate, made a major change in Canadian policy which is hostile towards China. Without Chinagate, this policy change may not have happened, or would’ve been delayed by at least one to two years.
Canada’s relations with China are going down the drain at an incredibly rapid pace. Chinese Canadians have already paid the price with rapidly increasing hate crime rates; that price will keep growing heavier at this pace.
An unaccountable, untrustworthy, criminal intelligence agency owns the Canadian government
David Bush describes CSIS well, in his article for Spring Magazine:
“Since its creation in 1984, Canada’s spy agency has repeatedly used illegal means to spy on people in Canada. It has lied to the courts, destroyed evidence, and engaged in entrapment and rendition. It has fomented Islamophobia using its vast resources to violate the rights of the Muslim community en masse. At every turn CSIS has used its powers to further the interests of capital and the state. From Indigenous land defenders to union activists, there is no right they are not willing to violate, no law they are not ready to break.”
It must be emphasized again that CSIS has a history of intentionally pushing false intelligence. This being done to pressure the Canadian government to more actively participate in US imperialist warmongering. CSIS is the definitive driver of the Chinagate hysteria, an agency happy to lie to the government for its aims. Let that sink in.
CSIS now has effective control over the Canadian government, usurping our elected parliament as the primary tool of Canadian capital. CSIS has used the compliant Canadian mainstream media to launder the claims of its agents, which sparked a massive political scandal in Chinagate, that forced the Canadian government to give it more powers to boost its ongoing ‘information campaigns’/paranoia spreading campaigns against enemy nations targeting MPs, who now are going public in Canada’s parliament with CSIS claims about the Chinese government in China. These MPs can now be seen by the general public as the drivers of the push to oust special rapporteur David Johnston for daring not to call a full public inquiry, which would’ve created even more opportunities for CSIS to pretend it wasn’t working efficiently enough to combat foreign interference and be handed more powers which it has wanted for years.
The charade is set to go on, and CSIS will keep racking up the gains at this pace. It has the Trudeau government in the palm of its hand and can keep using ‘leakers’/CSIS agents to push out whatever claims it likes, to assist its ongoing campaigns without dealing with the pesky ‘democracy’ they hate so dearly. CSIS is an enemy of the Canadian people, and it runs the show now.
We have a Canadian government by CSIS. Will ordinary Canadians rise up to fight back against CSIS, or limply watch and complain as our CSIS overlords drag us into active participation into a potential Western war against China?
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 has broken numerous stories, including how the Canadian Armed Forces trained neo-Nazi "journalist" Roman Protasevich while he was with the Azov Battalion, and how a CIA front group (the NED) funded the group (URAP) which drove the "Uyghur genocide" vote in parliament to pass this February. Jonah recently wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
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