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Long Ignored Criminal Infiltration of Canadian Ports Lead Straight to Trump Tariffs

Published

9 months ago

16 minute read

Sam Cooper

Briefings to Liberal Government on Chinese Infiltration of Vancouver Port and Canada’s Opioid Scourge Ignored

Trump Tariffs Loom as Critics Decry Ottawa’s “Fox in the Hen House” Approach to Border Security

As President Donald Trump readies sweeping tariffs against Canada on Saturday—citing Ottawa’s failure to secure its shared North American borders from fentanyl originating in China—The Bureau has obtained a remarkable December 1999 document from a senior law enforcement official, revealing Ottawa’s longstanding negligence in securing Vancouver’s port against drug trafficking linked to Chinese shipping entities.

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The letter, drafted by former Crown prosecutor Scott Newark and addressed to Ottawa’s Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), urged the body to reconsider explosive findings from a leaked RCMP and CSIS report detailing the infiltration of Canada’s “porous” borders by Chinese criminal networks.

Titled “Re: S.I.R.C. Review in relation to Project Sidewinder,” Newark’s letter alleges systemic failures that enabled Chinese State Council owned shipping giant COSCO and Triads with suspected Chinese military ties to penetrate Vancouver’s port system. He further asserts that federal authorities ignored repeated briefings and warnings from Canadian law enforcement—warnings based on intelligence gathered by Canadian officials in Hong Kong, who initiated the Sidewinder review.

Newark also warned that Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s decision to dismantle Canada’s specialized Ports Police and privatize national port control had left the country dangerously exposed to foreign criminal networks, noting he had personally briefed the Canadian government on these concerns as early as 1996.

Addressing his letter to SIRC’s chair, Quebec lawyer Paule Gauthier, Newark wrote:

“As the former (1994-98) Executive Officer of the Canadian Police Association, I was assigned responsibility for dealing with the issue of the federal government’s changes to control of the national ports and policing therein.”

“This involved close examination of matters such as drug, weapon, and people smuggling through the national ports and, in particular, both the growing presence of organized criminal groups at ports and the ominous hazard control of those ports by such groups represented.”

Newark’s letter goes on to allege widespread failures in Ottawa that facilitated Chinese Triad infiltration of Vancouver’s port, revealing federal authorities’ reluctance to act on warnings from RCMP officer Garry Clement and immigration control officer Brian McAdam—former Canadian officials based in Hong Kong who had sounded the alarm, prompting the Sidewinder review.

Newark explained to SIRC’s chair that, during his tenure as Executive Officer of the Canadian Police Association, he prepared approximately fifty detailed policy briefs for the government and regularly appeared before parliamentary committees and in private ministerial briefings.

“I can assure you that in all of that time, no clearer warning was ever given by Canada’s rank and file police officers to the national government than what was done in our unsuccessful attempt to prevent the disbandment of the specialized Canada Ports Police in combination with the privatization of the ports themselves,” Newark’s letter to SIRC states.

The letter continues, noting that in October 1996, Newark met with Chrétien’s Transport Minister David Anderson—later addressing the Transport Committee—to highlight the imminent threat posed by Asian organized crime’s infiltration of port operations. Newark’s written briefing to the Minister underscored the gravity of the situation with a blunt question:

“Who exactly are the commercial port operators?”

Citing the Anderson briefing document, Newark’s letter to SIRC states that Anderson had been warned:

“We are, for example, aware of serious concerns amongst the international law enforcement community surrounding the ownership of ports and container industries in Asia and, in particular, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China. There is simply no longer any doubt that drugs like heroin are coming from these destinations through the Port of Vancouver, moved by organized criminal gangs whose assets include ‘legitimate’ properties.”

The Anderson briefing also referenced a British Columbia anti-gang unit report, titled “Organized Crime on Vancouver Waterfront,” which made clear that the Longshoreman’s Union had been infiltrated by the Hells Angels.

“The movement of goods through Canada’s ports requires an independence in policing that is impossible without public control,” the report warned.

It concluded:

“This report should be taken as a specific warning to this Government that, prior to downloading operational control over the ports themselves to private interests, Government be absolutely certain as to who owns what—and that it can continue that certainty with power to refuse acquisition of port assets in the future.”

Scott Newark’s letter to SIRC then turns to new intelligence—gathered from Canadian and U.S. officials—that further underscored the vulnerability created by Chrétien’s border policies.

“To now learn that law enforcement and public officials in Canada and the United States have linked a company (COSCO), granted docking and other facilities in Vancouver, to Asian organized crime, arms and drug smuggling is, to say the least, disturbing,” Newark’s December 1999 letter states.

“That this company, its principals, subsidiaries, and partners have been associated with various military agencies of a foreign government—agencies themselves identified by Canadian and American officials as having unhealthy connections to Triad groups—makes a bad situation even worse.”

Newark next addressed the broader implications of Canada’s failure to enforce border security, particularly in relation to the deportation of foreign criminals—a process he had sought to reform while serving with the Canadian Police Association.

Drawing on his experience, he described a deeply flawed immigration enforcement system, one that allowed individuals with serious criminal records to remain in Canada indefinitely. The problem, he wrote, was twofold: not only were foreign criminals able to enter Canada with ease, but authorities also failed to deport those with outstanding arrest warrants.

Newark recounted how, in 1996, a Cabinet Minister requested that he meet with Brian McAdam, a former senior foreign service officer in Hong Kong who had spent years uncovering organized crime’s grip on Canada’s immigration system. McAdam’s detailed revelations, he wrote, had directly led to the launch of Project Sidewinder.

Newark told SIRC that even after leaving the Canadian Police Association in 1998, he remained in contact with McAdam and other officials working to expose this vast and complex national security risk posed by foreign criminal networks.

It was this ongoing communication that led to an even more alarming discovery. Newark wrote that he was stunned to learn that Canada’s government had not only terminated Project Sidewinder but had gone so far as to destroy some related files.

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Newark suggests SIRC’s chair, in her review of Sidewinder, should determine whether “Sidewinder should not have been cancelled … why such inappropriate action was taken and at whose direction this was done.”

He concludes that SIRC should also freshly examine why intelligence reporting from the Canadian officials in Hong Kong, Brian McAdam and Garry Clement had been ignored in Ottawa.

Newark’s letter to SIRC says these failures to act on intelligence included the “Inappropriate granting of visas to Triad members or associates” and “Granting of docking facilities with attendant consequences to COSCO”—and “Failure of CIC and Foreign Affairs to respond appropriately to the various information supplied by McAdam and Clement in relation to material pertaining to Sidewinder.”

In an exclusive interview with The Bureau, Garry Clement, who contributed to investigations referenced in Newark’s letter, corroborated many of its claims and provided further insight. Clement recalled his role in Project Sunset, a 1990s investigation into Chinese Triads’ efforts to gain control over Vancouver’s ports.

“I can remember having a discussion with Scott when he wrote that to SIRC because Scott and I go back a long time,” Clement said. “I knew about him writing on it, but I knew it was also buried.”

He described his own intelligence work during the same period:

“I wrote in the nineties when I was the liaison officer in Hong Kong, a very long intelligence brief on the Chinese wanting to basically acquire or build out a port at the Surrey Fraser Docks area. And it was going to be completely controlled by that time, with Triad influence, but it was going to be controlled by China.”

Clement expressed frustration that decades of warnings had gone unheeded:

“The bottom line is that here we are almost 40 years later, talking about an issue that was identified in the ‘90s about our ports and allowing China to have free access—and nothing has been done over that period of time.”

Newark’s urgent recommendation for SIRC to reconsider Sidewinder’s warnings on Vancouver’s ports was never acted upon.

“We still don’t have Port Police. We got nobody overseeing them,” Clement added. “The ports themselves, it’s sort of like putting a fox in the hen house and saying, ‘Behave yourself.’”

Finally, when asked about the Trudeau government’s claim this week that Canada is responsible for only one percent of the fentanyl entering the United States—a figure reported widely in Canadian media—Clement’s response was unequivocal.

“The fact that we’ve become a haven for transnational organized crime, it’s internationally known,” he said. “So when I read that, with the fentanyl—Trump is wrong in that there’s less than 1% of our fentanyl going to the United States. That’s a crock of shit. If you look at the two super labs that were taken down in British Columbia—I think there’s three now—the amount they were capable of producing was more than the whole Vancouver population could have used in 10 years. So we know that Vancouver has become a transshipment point to North America for opiates and cocaine and other drugs because it’s a weak link, and enforcement is not capable of keeping up with transnational organized crime.”

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That opinion is evidently acknowledged by British Columbia Premier David Eby, according to documents from Canada’s Foreign Interference Commission that say Eby sought meetings with Justin Trudeau’s National Security Advisor.

A record from the Hogue Commission, sanitized for public release, outlines the “context and drivers” behind Eby’s concerns, including “foreign interference; election security; countering fentanyl, organized crime, money laundering, corruption.”

The documents state Ottawa’s Privy Council Office—which provides advice to Justin Trudeau’s cabinet—had recommended that British Columbia continue to work with the federal government on initiatives like the establishment of a new Canada Financial Crimes Agency to bolster the nation’s ability to respond swiftly to complex financial crimes.

Additionally, the PCO highlighted that Canada, the United States, and Mexico were supposedly collaborating on strategies to reduce the supply of fentanyl, including addressing precursor chemicals and preventing the exploitation of commercial shipping channels—a critical area where British Columbia, and specifically the Port of Vancouver, plays a significant role.

Eby acknowledged the concerns again this week in an interview with Macleans.

“I understood Trump’s concerns about drugs coming in. We’ve got a serious fentanyl problem in B.C.; we see the precursor chemicals coming into B.C. from China and Mexico. We see ties to Asian and Mexican organized crime groups. We’d been discussing all of that with the American ambassador and fellow governors. That’s why it was such a strange turnaround, from ‘Hey, we’re working together on this!’ to suddenly finding ourselves in the crosshairs.”

Yet, despite Eby’s claims of intergovernmental efforts, critics—including Garry Clement—argue that nothing has changed. Vancouver’s port remains alarmingly vulnerable, a decades-old concern that continues to resurface as fentanyl and other illicit drugs flood North American markets.

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UN, Gates Foundation push for digital ID across 50 nations by 2028

Published on October 13, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Tim Hinchliffe

With 30 nations enrolled, the UN and Gates Foundation’s digital ID campaign signals accelerating efforts to create a global digital infrastructure that centralizes identity and data.

The 50-in-5 campaign to accelerate digital ID, fast payment systems, and data exchanges in 50 countries by 2028 reaches a 30 country milestone.

Launched in November 2023, the 50-in-5 campaign is a joint effort of the United Nations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and their partners to rollout out at least one component of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in 50 nations within five years.

DPI is a civic technology stack consisting of three major components: digital ID, fast payment systems, and massive data sharing between public and private entities.

50-in-5 started with 11 first-mover countries, and with the count now at 30 the participating countries include:

Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Ethiopia, France, Guatemala, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Lesotho, Malawi, Mexico, Moldova, Nigeria, Norway, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Africa, South Sudan, Somalia, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Zambia.

The 50-in-5 campaign celebrated its 30-country milestone during a sideline event at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 22.

There, government officials, like Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, praised the work of 50-in-5 while the ministers of digital economy from Nigeria and Togo called for an interoperable digital identity system for the entire African continent.

“Nations want to maintain their own ID databases, but I think we have a unique opportunity to apply strong data exchange system interoperability,” said Tijani.

“I think a digital identity system that can go with you wherever you are going on the African continent would be a fantastic example,” he added.

In March 2025, the Nigerian government published a framework to develop national Digital Public Infrastructure that would leverage digital ID to track and trace “key life events” of every citizen from the cradle to the grave.

“Throughout a citizen’s life, from birth to old age, there are marked moments of significant life events requiring support or service from the government,” the paper begins.

“Some of these services include registration of births, antenatal healthcare, vaccines, school enrollment, scholarships, health insurance for business registrations, filing of taxes, etc.”

These “life events” require every citizen to have a digital ID:

The Federal Government of Nigeria is on a mission to appropriately deploy digital technology to support Nigerians through these significant and profound moments so they can integrate into the state and enjoy the benefits of citizenhood from cradle to old age.

Back at the 50-in-5 milestone event, Togo’s Minister of Digital Economy and Transformation Cina Lawson called for a free, cross-border, interoperable digital ID powered by the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP).

MOSIP is a Gates-funded platform that “helps govts & other user organizations implement a digital, foundational identity system.”

Said Lawson, “We’ve initiated conversations with our neighbors, namely Benin, to have interoperability of our ID systems, but also Burkina Faso and other countries such as Senegal, because we’re using MOSIP platform, so what we do is that we host meetings of countries that are interested the platform, so that we could see how we [are] operating it and so on.”

“Our ID system, using the MOSIP platform, is really the ID that the majority of the Togolese will have because first of all it’s free, it doesn’t require to show proof of citizenship, and so on, so that is the ID card of the poorest of the Togolese,” she added.

Lawson also spoke at the 50-in-5 launch event in November 2023, where she explained that Togo’s DPI journey began with the arrival of COVID-19.

First, the government set up a digital payments system within 10 days.

“We deployed it, and we were able to pay out 25 percent of all Togolese adults, and we distributed $34 million that the most vulnerable Togolese received directly through their mobile phones,” said Lawson.

Then, came vaccine passports.

“We created a digital COVID certificate. All of a sudden, the fight against the pandemic became really about using digital tools to be more effective,” she added at the time.

To get an idea where DPI is heading, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Myhailo Fedorov gave a pre-recorded speech for the 50-in-5 milestone event, saying that his country was successful in building “the state in a smartphone” via the DIIA app, which had reached 23 million users.

“For every citizen, government should be simple, convenient, nearly invisible, and accessible in just a few clicks,” said Fedorov.

“Today, 23 million people use the DIIA app […] Since the launch of DIIA in 2020, Ukrainians and the state have saved about $4.5 billion to date.”

“This is the combined anti-corruption and economic effect of digitalizing services.”

“For us, it’s powerful proof of DIIA’s efficiency and the real impact of building a digital state,” he added.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Technology Governance Summit on April 7, 2021, Fedorov told the panelists of the “Scaling Up Digital Identity Systems” session, that it was Ukraine’s goal to “enable all life situations with this digital ID.”

“The pandemic has accelerated our progress […] People have no choice but to trust technology,” Fedorov said at the time.

“We have to make a product that is so convenient that a person will be able to disrupt their stereotypes, to break through from their fears, and start using a government-made application,” he added.

The 50-in-5 campaign is a collaboration between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations Development Program, the Digital Public Goods Alliance, the Center for Digital Public Infrastructure, and Co-Develop; with support from GovStack, the Inter-American Development Bank, and UNICEF.

The Center for Digital Public Infrastructure is backed by Co-Develop and Nilekani Philanthropies.

Nandan Nilekani is one of the architects of India’s digital identity system, Aadhaar.

Co-Develop was founded by The Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Nilekani Philanthropies, and the Omidyar Network.

The Omidyar Network is a funder of MOSIP.

The Digital Public Goods Alliance lists both the Gates and Rockefeller foundations in its roadmap showcasing “activities that advance digital public goods,” along with other organizations and several governments.

At last year’s Summit of the Future, 193 nations agreed to the non-binding “Pact for the Future,” which dedicates a section in its annex, the “Global Digital Compact,” to implement DPI in member states.

One year later, the U.K. announced it was going to force Britons into mandatory digital ID schemes under the guise of combatting illegal immigration.

Reprinted with permission from The Sociable.

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Netherlands Seizes Chinese-Owned Chipmaker in Unprecedented Security Move

Published on October 13, 2025

By

Sam Cooper's avatar Sam Cooper

Court-approved removal of executive Zhang Xuezheng bears hallmarks of counter-intelligence concern

The Dutch government has taken control of Chinese-owned semiconductor manufacturer Nexperia, invoking an urgent national-security law directed at Beijing to safeguard Europe’s access to critical technology used across the automotive and electronics industries.

In a statement issued late Sunday, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said it had taken the “highly exceptional” decision to invoke the Goods Availability Act on September 30. The move followed “recent and acute signals” of such “significant scale and urgency” involving “serious governance shortcomings and actions within Nexperia” that Minister Vincent Karremans was compelled to intervene.

“The decision aims to prevent a situation in which the goods produced by Nexperia would become unavailable in an emergency,” the ministry said.

“These signals posed a threat to the continuity and safeguarding on Dutch and European soil of crucial technological knowledge and capabilities. Losing these capabilities could pose a risk to Dutch and European economic security.”

It is not known what specific information Dutch authorities gathered on Nexperia executive Zhang Xuezheng, who has been suspended from all management and board positions, but the move, approved by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal, has the hallmarks of a national security alert deemed severe by Dutch lawmakers.

Nexperia, headquartered in Nijmegen, produces semiconductors used widely in the European automotive industry and consumer electronics and is a key link in the continent’s industrial supply chain. The government said normal production will continue, but Karremans now has powers to block or reverse company decisions that could harm national or European interests.

The ministry’s order bars Nexperia and all its global subsidiaries, branches, and offices from making any adjustments to their assets, intellectual property, business operations, or personnel for one year.

Nexperia’s Chinese parent company, Wingtech Technology Co., a Shanghai-listed conglomerate placed on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2023, denounced the Dutch move, saying it “constitutes an act of excessive interference driven by geopolitical bias, not by fact-based risk assessment.” Wingtech said the measure “gravely contravenes the European Union’s long-standing advocacy for market-economy principles, fair competition, and international trade norms,” and “strongly” protested “discriminatory treatment toward a Chinese-owned enterprise.”

Wingtech disclosed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange that it had been notified of the Dutch order on September 30, but the government did not make the intervention public until October 12.

The Dutch government’s action marks the first time the Netherlands has used its emergency powers to seize control of Chinese-state linked company — an escalation that mirrors Washington’s strategic-industrial posture and signals Europe’s entry into a new era of techno-sovereignty.

In Britain, Nexperia’s ownership structure had already triggered alarm. In 2021, the company’s acquisition of Newport Wafer Fab, the UK’s largest semiconductor plant, was blocked by the Conservative government over national-security fears. The UK later ordered Nexperia to divest most of its stake under the National Security and Investment Act in 2022.

The controversy resurfaced this year amid the collapse of a high-profile espionage prosecution under Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government. The Mail on Sunday reported, citing an unidentified source, that Christopher Berry—one of two men previously charged with spying for China—“sent details of the row within government on the Newport Wafer Fab semiconductor factory, which was initially sold to Nexperia but later blocked by the Conservative government over national-security fears.”

The Netherlands’ intervention follows escalating moves by allied governments to tighten control over critical-tech supply chains. Just days earlier, Beijing imposed sweeping export restrictions on rare-earth minerals, essential for cars, wind turbines, and electronics, citing “national security” grounds — mirroring Western justifications for semiconductor controls. The action drew a strong counter-threat from U.S. President Donald Trump, who warned that Washington could impose 100 percent additional tariffs on all Chinese goods if Beijing “weaponizes its mineral dominance.”

A semi-detente appeared to emerge after Trump’s weekend remarks suggesting a pause in escalation. But the Dutch government’s unilateral action underscores a global race to secure access to critical industrial components amid fears of spreading conflict in Europe and rising tensions in Asia.

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