Ottawa is condemning Hong Kong’s announcement of arrest warrants and bounties for 19 pro-democracy activists, including several in Canada, as transnational repression that threatens this country’s sovereignty.
One of those targeted in Canada, Victor Ho, on Sunday warned Canadian politicians now urging closer ties with Beijing to be mindful of repression practised by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
On Nov. 6, 2024, Canada ordered TikTok’s local offices expelled but left its influence engine untouched. The result? Fewer Canadian jobs, no new oversight, and continued foreign control over our digital public square. It makes about as much sense as banning foreign diplomats while allowing their propaganda broadcasts to continue uninterrupted.
Canada’s shutdown order, issued after a national security review, eliminates TikTok’s 350 Canadian employees and halts cultural sponsorships worth millions. Yet the algorithm that shapes what Canadians see, share, and believe remains entirely in Chinese hands. We have managed to achieve the worst of both worlds: less accountability with zero additional protection.
OTTAWA / LOS ANGELES — In this discussion with Chris Meyer of Widefountain, we dig deeper into my findings on an explosive narcotics precursor case quietly dropped by Canadian prosecutors—and what it reveals about Canada’s growing vulnerabilities to foreign infiltration.
We unpack the story of a Chinese chemist, known here as Dr. X, who was charged with importing more than 100 kilograms of PMK ethyl glycidate—a key chemical used in the production of MDMA (ecstasy). Court records show Dr. X had direct ties to a bio-pharmaceutical firm affiliated with the University of British Columbia, and was reportedly recruited under Beijing’s “Thousand Talents Plan”—a program U.S. intelligence agencies warn is used to facilitate espionage and the transfer of dual-use technologies.
OTTAWA — Taiwan’s ambassador to Canada has dismissed a series of full-page newspaper ads taken out by the Chinese Embassy as little more than sabre-rattling over the communist regime’s claims over the east-Asian nation.
The country is a NATO ally and G7 member. While the U.S.-U.K. relationship is often touted as Washington’s most “special,” the Canadian relationship is arguably the most critical to the future of the U.S. economy and soft power. The projection of U.S. hard power abroad depends in part on positive global public perception of Washington’s leadership. This stems from the United States being a beacon of freedom and arsenal of democracy in World War I, World War II, crises across the Taiwan Strait, the Korean war, and others. If after all of that, we now treat Canada with a lack of foresight for short-term trade interests, we lose at least some of our moral high ground, which negatively affects our soft power, and as well our long-term national interests.
China is now importing record amounts of Canadian oil after slashing U.S. oil purchases by roughly 90 per cent.
As a result, imports of Canadian crude have surged, reaching a record 7.3 million barrels in March. This massive boon comes as Canadian negotiators are racing against the clock to make a trade deal with the White House.
The expanded Trans Mountain Pipeline has enabled China and other East Asian importers to access Canada’s vast crude reserves, which are relatively cheap and suitable for China’s advanced refineries that process dense, high-sulfur crude.
The Chinese model is disturbingly efficient.
Welcome to 2025, where China’s cyber strategy is no longer espionage. It’s pre-positioning — the digital equivalent of landmines buried deep in our networks, designed not to explode on contact, but to wait in silence until detonation serves strategic purpose.
In June 2025, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Chinese state-sponsored hackers, operating under the codename Salt Typhoon, had spent nine months infiltrating a U.S. state’s Army National Guard network. Not loitering. Not poking. Nesting. They extracted more than 1,400 configuration files, admin credentials, and communication archives tied to secure inter-state systems — a sweep confirmed in the Daily Beast.
A business coalition is raising concerns about calls from some of Canada’s premiers for Ottawa to strengthen trade ties with China in response to U.S. tariffs, calling the move short-sighted and contrary to Canada’s interests.
The Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses Canada (CCMBC) issued a statement on July 23, warning that the proposal overlooks China’s record of “unfair” trade practices, human rights abuses, and interference in Canadian democracy.
It’s a billion-dollar industry, illegal and controlled by Chinese mafia networks in quiet rural and suburban neighborhoods across America. If that weren’t concerning enough, it also involves drugs, money laundering, illegal immigration, slave labor, and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) extensive influence in the American heartland. It includes illegal marijuana cultivation in states where the drug has been legalized, and a major FBI bust of a grow house network in New England has shocked the nation with details of the massive scale of marijuana production used to generate profits routed back to China.
VANCOUVER — Canadian prosecutors have quietly dropped charges against a Chinese scientist in Vancouver accused of importing more than 100 kilograms of a narcotics precursor, raising serious questions about her connections to Chinese academic programs and networks suspected of links to espionage, foreign interference, and transnational crime, The Bureau has learned.
Media reports reveal that China is extending its military reach ever deeper into the Pacific. China is using its powerful naval fleet to remind nations throughout the region that it is the communist giant of the 21st century. Of particular note is that these ships include aircraft carriers that are challenging to build and operate. Mastering naval aviation is a sign of a competent, professional and well-armed navy.
Military analysts note that these Chinese assets sailed around the continent of Australia earlier this year. The expedition was an unmistakable message to democratic Australia that China will send its fleet where it wants, when it wants, and for whatever purpose it deems appropriate.
The Canadian military and possibly the coast guard appear to have been keeping tabs on a Chinese research vessel as it returns to Arctic waters off Alaska for the second year in a row.
Data compiled by an independent researcher and ship tracker, Steffan Watkins, shows a Canadian air force CP-140 surveillance plane was flying in the vicinity of the Xue Long (Snow Dragon) 2 as it exited the Bering Strait on Sunday.
The aircraft, according to Watkins’s research, relocated to Anchorage, Alaska, from its base in Comox, B.C., on July 9. It has conducted four patrols since then, including the most recent one involving the vessel, which is China’s first domestically built polar research ship.
On June 10, B.C. Ferries announced it would buy four new vessels from a Chinese shipyard. Unsurprisingly, the decision was met with disappointment and frustration.
And for good reason.
Despite the massive public investment, there is little benefit for B.C. workers, local shipyards and domestic steel producers.
Canada’s shipbuilding industry has been hollowed out by decades of offshoring.
We should be working together to counter China, not trapped in a harmful trade war.
When President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017, I was profoundly disappointed. In 2015, as Canada’s minister of international trade, I helped negotiate the ambitious agreement that set high standards for the global economy and countered China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region. It was more than a trade deal—it was a strategic blueprint for shared prosperity and security among like-minded nations.
That withdrawal signaled a larger shift. The Trump administration over its two terms has steadily retreated from the multilateral, rules-based order the U.S. had built since World War II. It has refused to appoint judges to the World Trade Organization’s appellate body, effectively paralyzing the system that enforces global trade rules. It has turned to tariffs as a blunt instrument of coercion, wielding them against strategic competitors like China and longtime partners such as Canada.
Canada is riddled with ChiCom interference, not sure the USA would risk its security any further than it has with Canada’s Liberal government.
NEW YORK — The upcoming trial of Linda Sun — also known as Wen Sun — may prove to be the most sophisticated and high-level political infiltration operation in the United States publicly tied to Beijing’s United Front system. A youthful, naturalized immigrant from China, Sun rose through New York State’s bureaucracy to become a senior diversity official. Now, she stands accused of secretly manipulating two Democratic governors — effectively scripting Andrew Cuomo’s praise of Chinese pandemic mask shipments, while blocking Governor Kathy Hochul from meeting Taiwanese officials and ensuring her silence on the Chinese Communist Party’s mass detention of Uyghurs.
