espionage
Former Trudeau aide claims he missed warning about CCP agents targeting Conservative MP
From LifeSiteNews
Canada’s former national security advisor Mike MacDonald told the House of Commons Affairs Committee he didn’t keep ‘track’ of the intelligence memo. Two other political aides to Trudeau have also testified that they somehow missed the memo.
A former national security aide to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed he did not see a warning stating that agents of the Communist Chinese regime were directly targeting a Conservative MP.
As per Blacklock’s Reporter, Canada’s former national security advisor Mike MacDonald told the House of Commons Affairs Committee last Tuesday that he did not keep “track” of an intelligence memo warning of possible meddling by the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) in the nation’s politics.
“Where it went in the Privy Council Office when it was sent out and to what other offices, I don’t know,” said MacDonald.
MacDonald said, “The document, the intelligence assessment, did not come directly to me.”
The July 2021 memo in question comes from Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), when MacDonald was a national security advisor. This memo warned that Chinese spies were targeting and harassing Conservative Party of Canada MP Michael Chong.
MacDonald was asked when he first learned of the memo, to which he replied that he did not have the “exact date when I first read that memo,” but it was in the “spring or early summer of this year.”
Conservative MP Michael Cooper asked MacDonald when he first learned about Chong being targeted by agents of the CCP, asking if it was after a Globe & Mail report from May 1, 2023 on the matter.
“Yes, that is my recollection,” MacDonald said, but did not explain.
Cooper noted that to him, it seemed that what was going on was a “breakdown of communication” regarding “information that is about as serious as it gets involving the targeting of multiple MPs,” including the family of one whose “family is in Hong Kong in the immediate lead up to an election, information that ultimately resulted in the expulsion of a Beijing diplomat.”
NDP MP Rachel Blaney said the seeming security failure regarding Chong was a costly failure, and it meant losing “trust” in the “system.”
“When the fear begins to not have trust or faith in our system it can really lead to things, I don’t think any of us want to experience,” she noted.
Remarkably, two other political aides to Trudeau – now-retired national security advisor Vincent Rigby and current national security advisor Jody Thomas – and have testified that they also did not see the memo and somehow missed it.
On June 1, Thomas said she was sent the security memo relating to Chong, but as she was on holiday, she did not look at it.
“I acknowledge Mr. Chong should have been told,” she admitted.
Chong recently disclosed that he had been personally threatened multiple times by who he believed to be a diplomat named Zhao Wei, who was acting as an agent of Communist China. He said the threats were concerning enough that he had to call the police out of concern for his safety.
After the scandal broke, Wei was kicked out of Canada. The Communist Chinese government retaliated by expelling a Canadian diplomat shortly thereafter.
Former deputy minister said it wasn’t ‘his job’ to inform Chong that CCP agents were targeting him
Last Thursday, former deputy minister of public safety Rob Stewart noted to the House of Commons Affairs Committee that it was not his “job” to warn Chong that he was the target of CCP agents.
Stewart claimed that many agents target “many people in Canada,” who are on “ongoing basis being targeted by foreign interference and it was not my job to inform them.”
“There are processes and ways of doing so. In this instance I was not tracking what other people were doing,” he noted.
Stewart last week acknowledged that he had received in 2021 no less than two warnings from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that Chong was being targeted. Despite this, he did not warn Chong and stated he did not recall reading the warnings.
Stewart noted that foreign agents targeting Canadians is a “very serious problem.”
“There are clandestine and deceptive efforts to influence our democratic processes and society on an ongoing basis. We should take it very seriously,” he said.
The potential meddling in Canada’s elections by agents of the CCP has many Canadians worried, especially considering Trudeau’s past praise for China’s “basic dictatorship” and his labeling of the authoritarian nation as his favorite country other than his own.
Last month, LifeSiteNews reported on how leading Canadian computer scientist professor Benjamin Fung from McGill University said agents from China offered him a six-figure bribe if he agreed to become a stooge for the CCP.
This report followed another from early September that noted how despite a continuous stream of evidence suggesting that CCP agents have interfered in Canada’s last two federal elections, the nation’s elections commissioner omitted any mention of China from her annual foreign interference report to Parliament last week.
On September 7, 2023, the federal government announced it would be launching a public inquiry into potential foreign election interference, to be led by Quebec judge Marie-Josée Hogue.
The public inquiry came after Trudeau for months was opposed to the idea of launching a full public inquiry into CCP election meddling despite calls from the opposition to do so – and after a failed attempt to launch his own internal investigation.
His internal investigation was led by his “family friend” David Johnston, whom he tasked as “special rapporteur” in the inquiry process. Opposition Conservative MPs demanded Johnston be replaced over his ties to both China and the Trudeau family.
After Johnston concluded that there should not be a public inquiry into the matter, calls grew louder for him to resign. In June, Johnston quit as “special rapporteur.”
espionage
The Scientists Who Came in From the Cold: Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory Scandal, Part I
From the C2C Journal
By Peter Shawn Taylor
In a breathless 1999 article on the opening of Canada’s top-security National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, the Canadian Medical Association Journal described the facility as “the place where science fiction movies would be shot.” The writer was fascinated by the various containment devices and security measures designed to keep “the bad boys from the world of virology: Ebola, Marburg, Lassa” from escaping. But what if insiders could easily evade all those sci-fi features in order to help Canada’s enemies? In the first of a two-part series, Peter Shawn Taylor looks into the trove of newly-unclassified evidence regarding the role of NML scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng in aiding China’s expanding quest for the study – and potential military use – of those virus bad boys.
Crime
The US Canadian border: Greatest number of terrorist watch list individuals being apprehended at northern border
A Border Patrol agent standing watch at the Montana-Canada border in the CBP Spokane Sector. The Spokane Sector covers the U.S.-Canada border along the northwestern section of Montana, part of Idaho, and the eastern part of Washington.
From The Center Square
Lack of operational control at northern border poses national security threats
The northern border largely has been unmanned and understaffed for decades as federal reports issue conflicting conclusions about how much, or how little, operational control exists.
Some officials have suggested the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has just 1% operational control over the northern border after a 2019 General Accounting Office audit of U.S. Customs and Border northern border operations. But a December 2022 DHS report claimed, “The Border Patrol is better staffed today than at any time in its 87-year history,” noting no surveillance of extensive parts of the northern border existed prior to 9/11.
After 9/11, several federal agencies were combined to fall under the newly created Department of Homeland Security. Within 20 years, roughly 950 miles along the U.S.-Canada border from Washington to Minnesota, and roughly 200 miles along the northern border in New York and Lake Ontario, were under unmanned aircraft surveillance. None of these areas “were covered prior to the creation of DHS,” DHS says, meaning the northern border was largely unprotected since Border Patrol’s founding in 1924.
In 2012, DHS released its first unified department strategy for U.S.-Canada border security, prioritizing “deterring and preventing terrorism and smuggling, trafficking, and illegal immigration; safeguarding and encouraging the efficient flow of lawful trade, travel, and immigration; and, ensuring community resiliency before, during, and after terrorist attacks and other disasters.”
Within 10 years at the northern border, more than 2,200 Border Patrol agents were stationed between ports of entry; nearly 3,700 CBP officers were stationed at ports of entry; more than 35 land ports of entry were modernized; and thermal camera systems, mobile and remote video surveillance systems had been deployed.
Despite these improvements, “the northern border is under-resourced by far compared to the southwest border,” former Border Patrol chief Mark Morgan told The Center Square. “But at the same time, it still represents significant threats. Cartels are expanding their operations, flying people into Canada, which doesn’t require a visa, presenting an opportunity for terrorist watch-listed individuals to exploit. It’s much easier to get to Canada to come across.”
“Data from 39 months shows terrorist watch-listed individuals are coming here every day and they aren’t stopping,” Morgan added.
For years and prior to the current border crisis, there weren’t enough personnel to cover all shifts, and the infrastructure, technology and equipment afforded to them didn’t compare to those at the southwest border, he said. People can easily drive snow mobiles over frozen territory or boats across the Great Lakes in areas that are unmanned, Morgan said, with a previous policy of self-reporting to authorities.
“The northern border represents a threat,” Morgan said. Noting it only took 19 men to carry out the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Morgan has warned that a terrorist threat is already in the U.S. No one knows how many terrorist watch-listed individuals have illegally entered who weren’t caught, multiple officials have told The Center Square.
While much attention has focused on the southwest border, the greatest number of known or suspected terrorists to ever be apprehended in U.S. history were at the northern border in fiscal 2023, breaking fiscal 2022’s record, The Center Square first reported.
This fiscal year through April, the greatest number of KSTs (known or suspected terrorists) continue to be apprehended at the northern border, 143 so far, according to CBP data.
Potential terrorist threats are not new and have persisted for some time, federal reports indicate. One Border Patrol intelligence report says terrorist threats potentially come from “foreign violent extremists to exploit established alien smuggling routes and networks for the purpose of evading detection en route to the United States.”
Other threats include drug smuggling from Canada into the U.S., connected to “criminal groups with known ties to or hired by Mexican drug trafficking organizations” and human smuggling. In the last few years, human smuggling attempts and apprehensions have significantly increased, The Center Square has reported.
The Center Square first began reporting on northern border national security threats several years ago. Since then, apprehensions of illegal border crossers in the first six months of fiscal 2024 were the highest on record. In the busiest sector of Swanton, Border Patrol agents recently apprehended more people in one week than they did in all of fiscal 2021.
Last month, they apprehended more than 1,400 illegal border crossers, more than they did in fiscal years 2021 and 2022 combined, Swanton Sector Chief Border Patrol Agent Robert Garcia just announced, saying it was “another record-breaking milestone in northern border history.”
This is after they apprehended more than 6,700 in fiscal 2023, more than the apprehensions of the previous 11 years combined, The Center Square first reported.
The U.S.-Canada border is the longest international border in the world of 5,525 miles. Unlike the U.S.-Mexico border, there are no border walls or similar barriers along the U.S.-Canada border. Through DHS, CBP officers are tasked with border security at ports of entry and Border Patrol agents between ports of entry along 4,000 miles. The U.S. Coast Guard, working with CBP’s Air and Maritime Operations, covers maritime security.
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