How I accessed Top Secret intelligence on PRC election interference in Canada
‘Confidential Source 3’ brought Privy Council Office documents and a BIC mini-lighter to our September 2022 meeting in Quebec
I woke about 5:30 a.m. and double-checked my backpack to make sure I had pens to spare and no electronic devices, left home and started pedalling towards Parliament Hill and the bridge over Ottawa River to Quebec.
It was September 10, 2022, a sunny morning, and I could see the hills of Gatineau to the north until I approached the river and a fog descended as I rode across the pedestrian bridge.
On the Quebec side I rode for a while, looking over my shoulder whenever I rounded a corner.
My mind was reeling with a sense of awe and burden.
I approached the Cenotaph at Notre Dame Cemetery and locked my bike. As usual, I guessed, Confidential Source 3 was watching from a distance to make sure I hadn’t been followed.
That summer I was accelerated into a world of tradecraft I never could have envisioned when I decided to become a journalist in the early 2000s.
It wasn’t my first time secretly meeting with government sources. I’d been doing that since 2017 when I started to investigate casino money laundering in British Columbia.
But I had never been so jolted with information.
And that is saying a lot, considering I authored a groundbreaking book in 2021 that revealed how Chinese Communist agents working with transnational Chinese mafias were infiltrating Canada.
Since writing that book, Wilful Blindness, I had learned it was read in CSIS, RCMP, and by hardened China hands that worked with the CIA and DEA and U.S. military.
My expertise on Chinese crime networks was the reason Canadian intelligence sources contacted me in 2022.
The first bombshell they shared with me involved a notorious illegal casino mansion in Markham, allegedly tied to “The Company” — a network of Triad bosses working with Chinese security agents.
The “news” for me was a massive underground casino probe in an affluent area of Greater Toronto involved more than Canadian police.
The casino investigation involved CSIS too, my sources said, and connected to Chinese election interference networks and the Chinese Consulate.
More on that later.
This foggy September morning I was going to see with my own eyes whether disturbing information I was hearing about Chinese efforts to influence Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and fix Canada’s recent federal elections could be substantiated by government documentation.
Confidential Source 3, a senior Canadian intelligence officer with broad access to high-level information from CSIS and the Privy Council Office arrived on their cycle and pulled a clear plastic bag from a waste pouch.
Inside I could see a wad of documents and BIC mini-lighter.
Confidential Source 3 explained they could face serious legal consequences for showing classified records to me.
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