The Bureau Podcast

OTTAWA – I told Jason James something shortly after the B.C. provincial election that I suspect exit polls may not capture. David Eby didn’t lose British Columbia only because voters were tired of him playing the Trump card, or because of the wreckage of fentanyl decriminalization and a safer supply that ended up feeding the gangs. Underneath those issues, I believe, was a deeper anxiety that few people would say out loud. Under DRIPA, the province’s law binding British Columbia to the United Nations declaration on Indigenous rights, title and land deals were being worked out at the highest levels while most of the province, including private landowners, was left in the dark. People stopped trusting that they knew what their government was giving away, or who stood to gain.Canada’s long and unresolved history of colonialism has left a patchwork of jurisdictions. Some First Nations hold almost national-level control over their lands while operating as subnational governments. I believe foreign states and transnational crime groups have learned to work the gaps between Ottawa, the provinces and those lands. China, but also Mexican cartels, Iranian networks and Indian transnational groups. Some of the land bordering the Port of Vancouver, which I consider the most exploited port in North America for the Chinese Communist Party and transnational crime, is Indigenous-controlled, and it has seen development by figures with open ties to the United Front. In Ontario, the Six Nations lands near Hamilton and Buffalo, and Akwesasne, the Mohawk territory straddling Ontario, Quebec and New York, form what I see as some the most exploited stretch of the northern border.I also told Jason about the scale my law enforcement sources describe. Some crime leaders operating on Indigenous lands, they say, could buy Ryan Wedding a few times over. The man Kash Patel called a modern-day Pablo Escobar would rank below them in wealth. Just last week, the U.S. Treasury said Ryan Wedding has laundered billions of dollars through currency exchanges in Vancouver and Toronto, sanctioning eight Canadian firms it said served Iran, many of them dealing with addresses tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Canada cannot be a safe haven,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. The Bureau has led the coverage of that nexus for years, and it’s now on the American record.In this discussion with Jason James, I say Indigenous lands are another major under-recognized piece of the financial and jurisdictional platform in Canada that enemy states and entities are exploiting. My sources talk about cartel operations hosted on reserve land, contraband tobacco, weapons, and cannabis grows of white Quonset huts stretching for acres. I tell Jason I’m cautious in this area as well. I’ve met Indigenous police officers who are among the best I know, working cartel cases on the northern border with little support from the RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police or Ottawa. But some leaders, I believe, may use their status as a shield. Some are acting, I hate to say it, like hostile foreign interference forces on Canadian soil. And after botched operations in the past, Canadian police are, I think, afraid to act.That’s the jurisdictional and historical backdrop of the criminal superstructure I’ve been calling the Canadian platform. David Luna, a former State Department official, counts 698 known crime groups in Canada, 48 of them connected to foreign states. The groups at the top now have state-like capacity, tied to China, Iran, Mexico and increasingly to India. Tony Soprano looks quaint beside them.Jason and I walked through how the pieces connect. In the Heather Zhang case in California, Chinese state security tasking, a real estate cover in Arcadia and a home a past DEA probe tied to Sinaloa Cartel money laundering all turn up in the same file. Which raises the question I keep asking: who’s really the boss of the Sinaloa Cartel? In Operation Hard Ball, the FBI’s case against the Dhanda network in Vancouver, Indian transnational crime linked to the Bishnoi group is accused of running cartel cocaine and methamphetamine through a trucking industry it has largely captured, with alleged help inside the Canada Border Services Agency.We also discuss Huawei, which I believe is the most important criminal trial in America in decades. In a Brooklyn courtroom, jurors have seen what prosecutors describe as a bounty list paying employees to steal technology, and FBI charts tracing money from an Iranian telecom through Skycom and HSBC in Hong Kong into the payroll of Huawei’s American subsidiary. Iranian witnesses were allowed to testify under protection. And the American government told the court that China, too, could target witnesses. To me that echoes the 2019 CSIS assessment I obtained, which found Beijing’s security ministry was tasked to stop Meng Wanzhou from ever testifying. Huawei denies all wrongdoing.The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe

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.The document does not name Eby, who won the BC NDP leadership that year. When I put its contents to his office, it strongly denied any involvement in such a meeting or anything untoward. I have not established CA3’s identity, and the intelligence does not prove Eby was involved. But for me, the question remains unresolved—and it hangs over his decision to call a snap election.The same intelligence document describes three community organizations acting as proxies to support a candidate in a 2022 mayoral election, as well as efforts to influence the federal Conservative leadership contest that year.In this podcast, I tell James that all three alleged operations could have been run through networks connected to the Chinese consulate in Vancouver. While this has not been proven, and CSIS has never publicly confirmed such a connection, I explain why I consider it plausible. The intensity of Beijing’s influence networks in British Columbia, together with other documented CSIS concerns—including those involving the current municipal contest in Richmond, as I have previously reported—strengthens that assessment, in my view.And there are other questions surrounding Eby’s government.In recent reporting, The Bureau examined heavily redacted Public Safety Canada records identifying national security concerns involving BC Ferries’ plans to purchase new vessels from a Chinese shipyard, backed by $1 billion in federal financing. The records flag the vessels’ proximity to sensitive Canadian military and signals intelligence facilities, as well as their importance to British Columbia’s supply chains. In my conversation with James, I explained why these previously documented cases matter as British Columbians prepare to vote—and why any serious examination of the province’s political upheaval should consider the established record of foreign interference without assuming that every political controversy is evidence of Beijing’s involvement.In my November 2023 story, I also interviewed former Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart about intelligence pointing to municipal politics in the city.I wrote:Under the heading “Community Networks” the October 2022 Intelligence Assessment explains Beijing’s interference is woven throughout Canadian democracy in hidden social webs consisting of Consular officials, “leaders of local Chinese Canadian community groups,” political staffers and targeted “political candidates/officials themselves.”This system “enables an adaptable, resilient approach to extending and enabling PRC covert influence,” the document says, adding “the role played by each component varies by location and campaign.”It continues, saying “CSIS intelligence from November 2021 and late April/early May 2022,” found a People’s Republic Consulate was “clandestinely supporting a particular mayoral candidate” in an upcoming municipal election.“The Consulate has mobilized the leadership of three co-opted Chinese Canadian community groups to provide material and financial support for this candidate,” the Intelligence Assessment says.“It is noteworthy that the PRC Consulate supported this same mayoral candidate in the 2018 municipal election, and used the same community groups to clandestinely channel this support.”“I don’t know if this interference, which I am now almost certain occurred, was enough to tip the balance in 2022,” Kennedy Stewart responded, in 2023. “But it looks like it almost worked in 2018 too, which is shocking.”More recently, as The Bureau has reported, Stewart has disclosed he received further information from federal lawyers about alleged Chinese interference against his campaigns in Vancouver. Stewart asserts that he also confirmed with governmental sources an investigation into one of Eby’s cabinet members, in connection with allegations of Chinese interference.“It’s come to my attention and I’ve reported it and in fact was interviewed for about four hours by lawyers working for the federal government about a B.C. cabinet minister under investigation for collaborating with the Chinese government,” Stewart told Global News anchor Jas Johal, a former Beijing-based reporter for the network.Stewart has not disclosed the identity of the elected official, citing his concern about lawsuits. Stewart told podcaster Aarron Pete that he isn’t convinced by Eby’s response to questions about the alleged case.Pete told Stewart he had put the allegation directly to Eby when the premier appeared on the program. “He says neither CSIS nor the RCMP have raised concerns with him about his cabinet or his caucus,” Pete said. “How do you interact with that claim? Do you think that that’s true? What’s going on here?”Stewart’s answer was that Eby is a lawyer, and should be read like one.“I would listen very carefully to what lawyers say to you,” Stewart said, “because they’re going to phrase it in a way that’s not confirm or deny without saying anything.” He continued: “when you say, ‘I have not been briefed by CSIS or the RCMP about this,’ full stop, it doesn’t mean [Eby] doesn’t know.”In my discussion with Jason James, for American listeners, I offered a comparison: the political stakes in British Columbia are comparable to those in California, given the province’s strategic geography, Pacific trade routes and national security significance.And this conversation came just days before an explosive new alleged Chinese intelligence case emerged in California, where the FBI arrested Irvine real estate agent Wanying “Heather” Zhang, accusing her of secretly working for Beijing to surveil the U.S.-based son of Taiwan’s president and his family. Federal investigators allege Zhang collected photographs, video and vehicle information for Chinese government officials. The case raises further questions about the reach of Beijing’s intelligence operations across North America.The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to clarify Stewart’s claim that governmental sources confirmed to him information regarding an investigation into a B.C. elected official, and that Stewart believes Premier Eby is aware. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe

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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe

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 that democratic institutions cannot protect those who defend them.The conversation then moves to the Marshall Islands, home to the critical U.S. missile-testing facility at Kwajalein and one of Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners. There, Cary Yan and Gina Zhou pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal case to conspiring to bribe Marshallese officials. Prosecutors said they sought legislation establishing a semi-autonomous zone on Rongelap Atoll, with relaxed tax and immigration rules that could benefit their commercial interests.Paskal sees that case as a warning. Corruption in a remote island legislature can become a matter of global security when the territory involved sits beside indispensable American military infrastructure.This is not a story about a conventional warfare. It is about strategic terrain being softened through money, access, intimidation and elite capture. From Saipan to the Marshall Islands, Paskal and Meyer argue that the laws already exist to confront much of this activity. What is missing is consistent enforcement — and the political recognition that defending these islands may be inseparable from preventing China’s aggression against Taiwan, and the West.The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe

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, I have identified hundreds of Canadian community organizations connected to the CCP’s United Front system.The Jamestown reporting presents a blueprint: surround politicians across party lines, provide campaign and community support, develop access—and then advocate for selected people to receive positions inside government institutions.Importantly, we recorded this conversation before this week’s reporting on declassified FBI material concerning Fang Fang and Congressman Eric Swalwell. That material reportedly examined whether an alleged Ministry of State Security affiliate leveraged a campaign-donation network to help place interns inside Swalwell’s office.Even before that news surfaced, I told Jason that this is precisely the type of methodology the Jamestown Foundation says the United Front and Chinese intelligence services use in Western democracies.That does not prove the NATO case followed the same playbook. But it makes it a plausible hypothesis that demands serious investigation.Conservative national-security critic Dane Lloyd tied the NATO case to what he described as a broader pattern of security failures:“Yesterday Conservative members forced hearings this fall on Canada’s national security clearance vetting processes,” Lloyd posted to X.“This comes in the wake of troubling allegations involving a Canadian intern at NATO headquarters accused of espionage.“This isn’t an isolated incident and comes in the wake of several high-profile security failures. The minister of public safety needs to take responsibility and ensure the integrity of our national security clearance system.”The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe