Written by: Aidan Jonah

Canada’s ‘leading independent researchers’ are here to ‘help’ the government save Chinese Canadians from the big bad ‘PRC Proxies’, according to reporter Sam Cooper. They just need the ‘Ineffective Ottawa Agencies’ to let them help [WebArchived]. Let the celebrations begin, we are all saved! Are we though?

How independent are the ‘independent researchers’?

In fact, the only organization, Digital Public Square, who worked with the researchers claiming to “map out how Chinese agents target and attack critics on Canadian soil, and identify the perpetrators”, is one which has taken $7.6 million CAD from the Canadian government since 2020 [WebArchived].

Another researcher, Marcus Kolga, runs DisinfoWatch, which is part of a media research network funded by the Canadian government to the tune of $5.5 million. Kolga is also known for defending Estonian Nazis and claiming (in a Global Affairs Canada video endorsed by Canada’s $10 million ‘Protecting Democracy Unit’) that the USSR’s first leader, Vladimir Lenin, who died in 1924, was alive during the 1940s to “help Stalin ‘create’ the ‘disinformation’ tactic during the Cold War era”. In 2023, Kolga claimed the ‘far left’ has been ‘working with Moscow since Stalin’s days’, a time period that includes the collapse of the socialist USSR in 1991, the subsequent implementation of ‘shock therapy’ in Russia, and the banning of the Communist Party in Russia by former Russian President, Boris Yeltsin.

Sze Fung-Lee, a diaspora ‘HongKonger’ researcher who is independent presently, was a Data Analyst at Global Affairs Canada from 2022 to 2023 and before that, a Research Assistant at the US Army War College from 2021 to 2022. Lee’s Linkedin states their latest publications were at, among others, the “Jamestown Foundation, Global Taiwan Institute, Macdonald-Laurier Institute”.

Sarah Teich, a lawyer, while independent, is tightly tied into Canadian anti-China circles. Teich is the CEO of Human Rights Action Group (HRAG), which contains the “Canada-Tibet Committee who, while raging against supposed Chinese interference, took a $38k USD grant from the CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy, for a program focused on influencing Canadians’ views on Tibet separatism.” Teich is also a Senior Fellow at the MacDonald-Laurier Institute, known for taking money from the Taiwan area administration to bash mainland China and the Latvian government to bash Russia. Further, Teich is also a legal advisor for Uygur Rights Advocacy Project, which was founded and funded by the CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy, and recently given $1 million CAD to manage for incoming Uygur ‘refugees’, by the Canadian government.

Both HRAG and URAP got money from Canada’s government to help them fully participate in Canada’s Foreign Interference Inquiry.

And who’s platforming them? None other than Sam Cooper of The Bureau, a ‘China threat’ spreading, heavily reliant on North American security and intelligence sources, disgraced ex-Global News reporter caught using a film clip to falsely portray an ex-RCMP officer, Bill Majcher, as meeting “senior mafia figures in Macau”.

What do the ‘independent’ researchers want?

According to Cooper’s article [WebArchived], the researchers are working to map how ‘Chinese agents target and attack critics on Canadian soil’ and ‘identify the perpetrators’, which supposedly revealed “the growing reach of Beijing’s agents in diaspora communities”.

The researchers conducted a survey to help their efforts, which Cooper described as “its survey of diaspora leaders”. But who would Cooper, Fung, Kolga, and a think-tank think taking money from Canada’s government, think are ‘diaspora leaders’, except for anti-China separatists and those that seek regime change to bring Western ‘democracy’ to China.

To be exact, the researchers interviewed “25 Canadian community leaders from Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Falun Gong backgrounds.”

And to the greatest degree of shock humanly possible, anti-China activists will claim that China is harassing them. Cooper states that:

“They [the researchers] found 85 percent of respondents reported direct threats against Canadian activists, deployed by Beijing’s proxies to intimidate and control these communities. Eighty percent noted coercive threats targeting family members in China, 70 percent identified political pressure, and 75 percent observed financial incentives swaying community members. Nearly half of respondents experienced harassment—including threatening phone calls and online abuse—at least monthly.”

What evidence do they have of this? As this author noted back in 2021, the evidence available of threats or intimidation being directed by “Beijing’s proxies”, conveniently doesn’t seem able to be accessed by reporters reporting on the subject, nor by the targets of this supposed Chinese government-directed harassment.

Cooper himself uses “The Bureau’s national security sources” to claim that Chinese ‘police stations’ in Canada are “linked to Chinese mafia leaders in Toronto and Vancouver and Beijing’s security apparatus.” Sources, sources and more sources, along with ‘leaked’ CSIS reports (so regurgitating intelligence agency claims) are all Cooper seems to have in his arsenal.

And what do these researchers want from the Canadian government? To be “ultimately liaising with Ottawa’s underperforming enforcement and intelligence agencies to offer their expertise and implement a ‘kill chain’ framework to disrupt Beijing’s attacks before victims are harmed.”

Great ‘thinkers’ like Kolga, who said Lenin was alive in the 1940s, will defend Estonian Nazis and think the ‘far left’ cooperated with Yeltsin’s Russia during ‘shock therapy’, are the ones wanting Canadian government agencies to take their help.

The ‘kill chain’ framework is explained in Cooper’s article, in more detail:

“A comprehensive kill chain framework is proposed to systematically counter PRC operations, enabling government, law enforcement, civil society, and Canada’s democratic allies to both individually and collaboratively address threats at every stage of their development and execution.”

Cooper, anti-China diasporas and their McCarthyite friends: no defenders of Canadian ‘democracy’

The ‘kill chain’ framework would equal nothing less than a total rejection and repression of Chinese-Canadians’ right to dissent against Canadian hostility towards China, or even just to seek Canada-China cooperation while still regurgitating some false narratives about Chinese policy.

Cooper would surely love nothing more than to see this. This author noted in 2023 that:

“This faction’s [Canadian diaspora McCarthyites] favourite reporter, Sam Cooper, has even called for Chinese Canadian organizations against McCarthyism to be prevented from suing Canada’s Attorney General in regular courts - under the guise that their resistance is “CCP lawfare” – they should only be allowed to sue in special ‘national security’ courts. It’s very consistent with the mentioned desire to crush opposition.”

On December 18, 2024, Cooper said on X:

“Donald Trump and whoever is leader in Ottawa should be standing shoulder to shoulder saying we will together eradicate the PRC United Front networks in our cities — that’s my one sentence policy, we don’t need tariff threats.”

But the United Front network in Canada, and other countries, was created to assist Chinese development and the elimination of poverty in China. Many Chinese Canadian organizations, filled with ordinary Chinese Canadians are in this United Front. It’s not an organization focused on foreign interference, and fundamentally, Chinese Canadians are capable of dissenting to Canada’s China policies, without being directed by Beijing. The paranoia against organizations in or associated with the United Front, just for the connection, comes as part of a years long effort to tank Canadian cooperation and engagement with China.

To “eradicate the PRC United Front networks in our cities”, would equate to mass repression against Chinese Canadians and the effective crushing of their democratic rights.

Cooper’s claim to want to defend Canadian ‘democracy’ is a lie, just as he lied in his opening paragraph by claiming those involved in the report he covered were all ‘independent researchers’. Lies similar to those from the anti-China diaspora factions in Canada, who claim to be working to protect Canadian ‘democracy’, while working to forcefully assert control over the whole Chinese Canadian diaspora.

Think critically, and act accordingly.

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.

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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