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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The changes are expected to reduce the agency’s headcount from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a significant restructuring of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday in a move to streamline the huge federal agency and cut costs.
Kennedy plans to trim about 10,000 employees from the agency’s workforce in addition to employees who left as part of a Deferred Resignation Program, similar to a buy out, earlier this year. The move is expected to save about $1.8 billion.
Kennedy said the restructuring won’t affect the agency’s critical services. When combined with HHS’ other efforts, including early retirement, the changes are expected to reduce the agency’s headcount from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees. The restructuring will also align the department with Kennedy’s goals for a healthier U.S. population.
“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said. “This Department will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”
Kennedy also said the restructuring of the department’s 28 divisions will get rid of redundant units, consolidating them into “15 new divisions, including a new Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA, and will centralize core functions such as Human Resources, Information Technology, Procurement, External Affairs, and Policy.” Regional offices will be reduced from 10 to 5.
The overhaul will implement the new “HHS priority of ending America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins. These priorities will be reflected in the reorganization of HHS.”
Kennedy also said the restructuring would improve taxpayers’ experience with HHS by making the agency more responsive and efficient. He also said the changes would ensure that Medicare, Medicaid, and other essential health services remain intact.
The Administration for a Healthy America will combine multiple agencies – the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health — into a single, unified entity, Kennedy said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will get the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, which is responsible for national disaster and public health emergency response.
“Over time, bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient even when most of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants,” Kennedy said. “This overhaul will be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves.”
Among the cuts: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will shed about 3,500 full-time employees. Officials said the reduction won’t affect drug, medical device, or food reviewers, nor will it impact inspectors. The CDC will drop about 2,400 employees. The National Institutes of Health will cut about 1,200 employees. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will cut about 300 employees. The reorganization won’t affect Medicare and Medicaid services, officials said.
The Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) Elon Musk said Thursday on Fox News that the group found the federal government spent almost $1 billion on a survey that could’ve only cost thousands.
Following President Donald Trump entering office in January, his administration pushed for Musk and DOGE to comb through the government’s spending and identify potential cuts to save taxpayer dollars. On “Special Report with Bret Baier,” the Fox News host sat with Musk and his DOGE team and asked the billionaire what has been the most “astonishing thing” he’s witnessed so far in this process.
“The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government,” Musk said. “It is astonishing. It’s mind-blowing. We routinely encounter waste of a billion dollars or more, casually.”
“For example, like the simple survey that was literally [a] 10 questions survey. You could do it with SurveyMonkey, [which] would cost about $10,000. The government was being charged almost a billion dollars for that,” Musk added.
WATCH:
Baier could be seen interrupting Musk as he sounded astonished, later asking, “For just a survey?”
Musk responded and said the survey was essentially pointless as it had no “feedback loop.”
“A billion dollars for a simple online survey — ‘Do you like the National Park?,’ and then there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey,” Musk said. “So the survey would just go into nothing. It was insane.”
In February, Democrats’ opposition to Musk’s and DOGE’s place in the Trump administration began to ramp up after the billionaire announced during an X discussion that he and the president had agreed to upend the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Musk warned the agency was wasting billions of taxpayer dollars.
Some of the programs funded through USAID had not only attempted to advance a radical leftist agenda worldwide, but some had a high risk of landing in the Taliban’s hands and also aiding an organization linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Baier told Musk how he and DOGE technically had 130 days as a “special government employee,” asking if he believes he will be able to complete his task in the time frame allotted.
“I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time frame,” Musk said.
“We are cutting the waste and fraud in real time. So every day like that passes, our goal is to reduce the waste and fraud by $4 billion a day, every day, seven days a week. So far we are succeeding,” Musk added.
