Every Canadian prime minister over the past 40 years has allegedly been compromised by agents working for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to Michel Juneau-Katsuya, the former chief of the Asia-Pacific desk at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
Juneau-Katsuya made the comments during an interview with Canada’s CBC News on March 19 in response to revelations made in a soon-to-be-released book, “The Mosaic Effect: How the Chinese Communist Party Started a Hybrid War in America’s Backyard.”
The book, authored by journalist Ina Mitchell and intelligence expert Scott McGregor, alleges that the United States ran a secret probe—Operation Dragon Lord—into CCP activities in Canada in the 1990s that found China’s alleged infiltration of the nation’s government posed a major security risk to the United States.
Juneau-Katsuya claimed that he was aware of the U.S. probe into the alleged CCP infiltration but Canadian policymakers ignored warnings from him and other intelligence officials for decades.
When asked how serious China’s political interference in Canadian politics was, Juneau-Katsuya said it became “extremely dangerous” for Canada’s democracy but claimed that a CSIS report regarding concerns about the alleged interference—issued during his time as chief of the Asia-Pacific desk—was sidelined by political leaders.
“Definitely, we have evidence that we have been infiltrated by agents of influence, people working on behalf of the Chinese intelligence service, not necessarily spies but people who have been recruited and were capable of influencing the power at bay,” Juneau-Katsuya said.
According to the former CSIS employee, the alleged infiltration by Beijing in Canadian politics has been ongoing for the last 40 years, right up to the current administration led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Whistleblower Alleges CCP Election Interference
“Every [Canadian] prime minister has been compromised at one point or another by those [Chinese] agents of influence, and when we brought the warning, nobody listened,” Juneau-Katsuya said.
The ex-intelligence official could not cite specific evidence regarding his claims, citing the sensitive nature of documents allegedly proving the CCP’s interference. The Epoch Times could not verify his claims.
However, he added that if his and others’ concerns had been taken seriously at the time, officials may have been able to mitigate the alleged CCP threat to Canadian politics, but the situation now had evolved into something more substantial, pointing to recent whistleblower allegations made in the Globe and Mail.
The Globe and Mail, citing national intelligence sources, recently reported on alleged schemes run by the CCP to interfere in Canada’s elections in 2019 and 2021.
The reports noted that Beijing’s alleged foreign influence operation was centered around returning a Liberal minority—seen as open to doing business with China—in 2021 and defeating Conservative candidates who are critical of the regime.
China has denied the allegations of interference but Trudeau has since appointed veteran former official David Johnston as an independent special investigator to probe the alleged election meddling.
The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA), an oversight agency, will also review how national security agencies in Canada handled the foreign interference threat.
Officials Acknowledge Foreign Inference Attempts
Trudeau has also said that Canada already had protocols in place to prevent foreign meddling, including the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol.
That independent panel has acknowledged foreign interference attempts existed during the 2019 and 2021 elections but said the elections “unfolded with integrity.”
“It’s not only this current government that is at fault, all previous governments were also ignoring what we were saying,” Juneau-Katsuya said, adding that the 40-year-long alleged breach of governments by the CCP poses a “phenomenal security risk” for Canadians.
“You can ask yourself the question: ‘Who’s really running the country? Is it the foreign entity or is it our government?'” he said.
Juneau-Katsuya, who is set to appear before a special committee meeting of the House of Commons on Canada–China relations on Monday, called for immediate measures to be put in place to protect Canada against alleged foreign interference and prevent future governments from replicating what previous governments have allegedly done.
In its 2021 annual report, CSIS said that threats of espionage and foreign interference had increased in “scale, scope, and complexity” and that “multiple foreign states continued covert attempts to gather political, economic, and military information in Canada through targeted threat activities in support of their own strategic goals.”
When questioned in the House of Commons last November about possible CCP interference in elections, Trudeau said, “I have never gotten any information from any of our security agencies or police officers or intelligence officials or public servants any information of a federal candidate receiving money from China, as the allegations highlighted.”
From The Epoch Times