Nuanced. - 221. Sam Cooper: U.S. vs. China — Who Is Canada’s Ally?

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

Is Chinese foreign interference shaping Canada’s politics? Journalist Sam Cooper joins Aaron Pete to unpack alleged election influence, the “Vancouver Model,” and how billions in suspected laundered funds were alleged to have moved through B.C. casinos—including discussion of the Mark Carney questions now circulating in Canadian politics and the Michael Ma controversy.Send us a textTurn Any Doc Into a Private Audiobook. No Subscriptions. Try WithAudio on Your Mac/PC.100% Local AI. No cloud. No tracking. Convert URLs, PDFs & EPUBs into high-quality audio.Support the shownuancedmedia.ca

You couldn't have chosen a more dangerous topic to cover, right? Do you have to take safety precautions when you chose to dig into this? A police officer who was and is a lawyer said, I have judicial authorization to read you a serious warning that we as a national security unit have learned, as a reporter on the PRC People's Republic of China, we have learned there's a serious and credible threat to you. What was your take on Michael Maugh's?

floor crossing. I think, yeah, reasonably that could be a case of foreign interference. We don't know yet, but it looks very bad within the context that I know. We're heading into another election, and I know we can't change the whole political apparatus. I know every day Canadians listening to this have no control over whether or not he adopts the foreign registry or not. Is there anything Canadians can do as we look into an election as we laid into that to try and make sure that we're making an informed decision and that we're supporting those diaspora communities? Sam Cooper, thank you so much for being willing to join us today. I'm excited to get into your research and your book.

But first, would you mind introducing yourself for people who might not be acquainted? Yeah, it's great to be with you, Aaron. I've been a journalist for over about 20 years now. I started in Vancouver as a community news reporter. I was at the North Shore Outlook, and I was right away. I was drawn into there. There was, you know, some interesting indigenous issues on the North Shore. There were some challenges with, you know, great leaders in some of the bands fighting back against how drug traffickers were exploiting their communities.

And that was really a theme for me in my young reporting days in Vancouver. I'm from the Toronto area. My family has sort of roots in BC up in the Shuswap Lake area. You know, we always vacationed there. But I relocated as a young professional to Vancouver. as an Easterner, and I was just stunned by, you know, the level that drugs had really shaped the downtown east side. And I came to find out, you know, I think I broke ground by discovering that drugs had shaped BC's economy, real estate, I believe politics. And so in a nutshell,

you know, I advanced to the Vancouver province and the Vancouver Sun. My work exposed what's called the Vancouver model of transnational organized crime money laundering. This is something that now the U.S. Treasury, the FBI, I think the CIA, the U.S. military is very interested in this mode of international Chinese state and organized crime-based money laundering. And I'll just jump to where I am now. In 2018, I went from the Vancouver Sun to global news in Ottawa, where slowly but surely I dug into Canada's political culture, and that led to a story that people will recognize as the Chinese election interference story. And as you know, my work was a leading force in sort of getting Canada's parliament to adopt a foreign agent registry. But 18 or 19 months after

it was passed unanimously in parliament, we still don't have one in place. And so, I mean, And I'll end my intro answer there that just shows you sort of how I started in Vancouver and advanced to national and international themes. I really appreciate that because I'd like to dig in a little bit more into your background and the journey you sort of went on. For people who follow you, they know the reporting you do. But I'm also interested in the story arc of your decision to kind of commit to this story and to follow it and to continue to dig into it.

When did that become, sorry, when did journalism become something you knew you were interested in? Well, I had always from a young age, I would credit my mother and father as being sort of very academic oriented in feeding, you know, very high level books from Victor Hugo to Dostoevsky and Hemingway was shoveled at me at a young age. And so I was kind of a very, on one hand, a very competitive and athletic person. on the other hand, academic-oriented. My idea growing up in, you know, the Toronto area, was to get into law school, hopefully. So I went to University of Toronto. My idea was to go into law school.

But at some point, I sort of got diverted from that, did some traveling and thought, I'll be a writer, but a writer of fact. And that's how I got into journalism. I went to Langara College to get my journalism certificate. And I always like to, you know, for the people that know me in British Columbia, keep giving credit to Langara

as a great, you know, practical journalism institute. And so very naturally, you know, when I was ready to go professional from Langera College, that's how I just jumped into community news reporter, reporting in BC. And that sort of basis, I'm telling you, I had that sort of sense of justice

or, you know, the fact finding capacities of a lawyer didn't go that path, but I very much, I think, sort of was drawn to legal reporting, drawn to investigating, you know, finding truth, tackling big issues, much like certain kinds of lawyers are motivated. And so that's what took me into, you know, discovering what I believe is driving inequality in Vancouver and Canada and worldwide. And that is a lot of global money laundering, I think, and sophisticated organized crime. May I ask, there's a lot of people who go into journalism.

And from my perspective, kind of stay at the front level of community news. And that's an important piece. But the journey to kind of, I think they call it finding your own beat, figuring out what you're passionate about, digging into that. Is that something you see as common? I'm just, I'm also interested in journalism as a field. And I see so many people getting stuck at that front end and not finding their, their beat or their issue or kind of figuring out where they want to focus on and developing that over time. And you can see through your career, you started at the front end and you, you over time, figured out where you wanted to be the issues you wanted to focus on to the point now where you're one of the most influential voices on this issue. And I just find that really awe-inspiring of like, okay, people can figure out that path. And so could you just help me understand that kind of piece of your career? Yeah. I mean, I really appreciate the philosophical framing of the question.

And I think about this a lot. And so I'll just, in a rambling way, I'll unpack what you asked a little bit. I mean, as to finding a beat, yeah, you need the capacity to and the willpower and the passion to find out what you're really interested in. And then as I always tell young journalism students or have in the past, there's going to be a lot of people above you trying to shape what you write about, try to shape the angles you write about. they may even as you kind of learn the business, because it's a business, you may even start to get the idea that their political views or even the shaping of high-level advertisers may impact a story or two. So this is just something that it doesn't matter if you're in journalism, any path in life, you're going to, you know, kind of as the saying for I believe attributed to Abraham Lincoln, you sort of find your solid ground and stand on it. don't move off it, don't let people push you around. So as I said, you know, I've always been kind of a competitive in my younger days athletic person. And that's very important for journalism.

You know, finding your beat, getting good at something, being confident, a lot of it is, you know, willpower, diligence, persistence, the same qualities that make, you know, a good athlete that's going to show up at the gym every day, even if they don't feel like it because they're driven and they've got a will to really excel the same you know in in my career path i've sort of started talking to special forces soldiers and things of this nature and we talk about you know sometimes we see you know similar qualities in in each other whether someone's from the security or policing field or a soldier or me in journalism it's like there's a there's a firmness of mind there's a will to sort of do the right thing if i'm you know really really looking in my

myself, I think I, at some point now, because I'm self-employed, I get a little critical to journalists. And in a way, that's my job because I see, unfortunately, again, you know, I've been there, but don't let your reporting be shaped by whatever political narrative is prominent in Ottawa. Or if because, you know, the government is sort of, I think it's a real criticism that the government is now largely subsidizing journalism. And there's some pretty senior journalists that I, I find I just find myself they adopt, you know, a party line a little bit too much. So, yeah, just be original. And if you love it, you're going to find your path.

If I was given advice about if there's any young journalists trying to find a beat in reporting. Okay. I want to ask this question because it's been on my mind since I started reading your book. You couldn't have chosen a more dangerous topic to cover, right? You're going into issues of billions of dollars flowing through communities. You write about how individuals who are Canadian, Chinese individuals are having gangs show up at their house and threaten their families. You're going into issues where politicians are involved and keeping a story quiet is important. Like you couldn't have chose, you didn't choose to cover the P&E or another event or another community event.

you're choosing kind of one of the, a story that goes at the heart of a country, of crime and justice, of political power. Do you have to take safety precautions when you chose to dig into this? How do you make sure you're safe and how do you hold true to that? Because I think it's likely one of those stories that you're at risk, right? Like there's people who do not want this covered to the extent that you're covering it. Could you just walk me through that decision as a journalist to cover this story? Yeah, I'll walk you through the decision. and then the security impacts. I mean, I've said before that when I really start to look into

myself and people ask, you know, you're taking some risks. You seem to have, you know, conviction in what you're reporting. If you're right, you could be doing something important for Canada. And I think, yeah, looking back at my family's past, you know, as immigrants into Saskatchewan, they were pretty, you know, very entrepreneurial in the business community. They helped build Canada as your ancestors helped build Canada. I look even further back to Europe and see the same qualities, you know, from some of my ancestors. So I'm thinking, yeah, this is, I believe in the long path of democracy and justice. I think it's the best model. It's not perfect, but it's the best model in some of the competing models in the world. And so, yeah, I've chosen difficult work.

I'll just add, you know, my father who comes from that history that I'm looking into. being sort of a, the sons of somewhat, you know, for Canada, wealthy family in Saskatchewan. They got sent off to private school in Switzerland with some very high level people. And I think my dad, he had the capacity to follow the path of a diplomat or a wealthy business person. Instead, he dropped it all and became an Anglican minister. And so he sort of pumped values into me that, you know, the world is important, understand the world, but service, service to your fellow, you know, community members is what's really important at the end of the day. So somewhere when I look in within myself, if I'm taking

risks, if I feel that I'm breaking ground, there is something that's being taught to me and there is some lineage there, I guess. Security, yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, the sharp end of the stick here is after I broke the Chinese election interference story in Ottawa, in 2023, I was asked to testify in Parliament about how China was threatening Canadian politicians, which is a big part of the story that I revealed. And I could go through a lot of examples of people in the Chinese community and politicians that face real risks. I told that hearing that I myself had been informed by Canadian intelligence that I faced some risks. There's people in Chinese intelligence that have been tasked to look into my life. And this is not very safe.

You know, I'm not supposed to travel to China. If there's a reporting junket on Mark Carney's new deal with Beijing, I can't go because it's not safe for me, right? And so after testifying, the RCMP came and knocked on my door in Ottawa two days later. As you're a lawyer, I believe. I have a law degree. I'm not practicing. Okay, you're not practicing, but you'll understand that a police officer who was and is a lawyer

said, I have judicial authorization to read you a serious warning that we as a national security unit have learned as a reporter on the PRC, People's Republic of China, we have learned there's a serious and credible threat to you. And then they gave me some information. So, you know, that was two years ago. I'm still doing what I do. I took, I was already, you know, pretty wise to safety measures, but I train with the former special forces officer. I'm wise to sort of looking at what's happening around me. I know how to personally defend and neutralize if it comes to that. I'm not saying that, you know, I'm off to join a special forces unit. I'm just saying that I know how to take care of myself. I'm not going to be frightened because I believe what I'm

doing is important. And I would tell people, you know, I'm going to be. I'm not. I'm I'm afraid that what's going on in Canada, anyone should be taking self-defense courses. It's sad to say if you're in the South Asian community now in British Columbia, Surrey, Brampton, Ontario, there's shots being fired at homes every day by people on a student visa that have disappeared into the underground, which is another side of sort of the story I'm talking about with how Chinese organized crime has infiltrated our political systems. the same for, you know, South Asian organized crime now. So it's a law and answer, but I feel a little bit sad that as a Canadian and as a reporter, yeah, I have decided to tackle some serious issues,

but I don't think I should have had to, you know, in this country, receive a warning from the RCMP, and I don't think my fellow citizens, whether they're from a diaspora especially, should face threats for geopolitical reasons. On that note, I just have to follow up. this is one of the implications as well, in my opinion, for freedom of expression, right? It's, of course, that that leans heavily on the government not interfering to our right, but it's also in part their role to protect us so that we can practice our freedom of expression.

When you run into these things, are you confident in the government's ability to keep individuals like yourself safe or to take proper precautions to make sure that you're able to continue your reporting or those diaspora communities to live safely? No, Aaron, I'll be brutally honest. I'll tell you, in Canada, no, I don't have confidence. You know, as I've said, I pay a former special forces officer to give me, give me some training. I see people across the Asian diaspora in Canada are absolutely, I would say, enraged and probably some of them terrified that the Carney government, in response to some brutal rhetoric and maybe even some economic coercion or worse from President Donald Trump has gone the other way unnecessarily getting closer to China. And I'll give you an example, making an agreement with between the RCMP and Chinese police on supposed cooperation on, you know, on crime.

Well, that is the worst thing you could do or see in the Chinese diaspora because experts in the community and myself know that China, as you know, has been accused of running these CCP police stations in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, and elsewhere. And they're not just physical stations. It's about the networks. And as I assert, you know, the networks that I explain in my book involve the most powerful transnational crime working with Chinese police as proxies in Canadian cities. And so this is exactly the type of activity that RCMP has shown. You can look in the record, no competence in bringing forward charges

when anyone with any serious knowledge knows this is happening in Canada. And here's well, just jump back and say, look, there's a story that broke today in the United Kingdom, the same sort of thing. Kirstarmer's government, which is very similar, I think, in constitution to Mark Carney's government has just against all advice from the diaspora, from intelligence officials, again from the U.S. government, made the decision to give China the capacity to build a mega embassy, which all the experts say is going to increase their spying capacity

and their threats to the diaspora in the United Kingdom. So this is just the same type of sort of lack of confidence in governments in the world that I think are acquiescing to China's very sophisticated interference. And I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel in Canada on that issue. Thank you for being willing to share that. When you started on this work, I'm curious, what piece did you feel like you needed to learn about the most? There's the financial aspect of how money flows. That's a key part of your reporting. But then, and this is where I think just neuro, your ability to take on new information comes in where when I'm reading your book and there's all these different names that are Chinese, that's a lot for your brain to kind of take in and start

to learn just who the players are and get used to that model as well, where I'm used to John Doe, but I'm not used to different Chinese last names. And so that was a little bit of a learning curve and then there's the legal implications and then there's what's happening in terms of the movement of people and money. What part was the hardest for you to kind of unravel and understand to get a grapple on what the issues are? Yeah, that's a great point. And a lot of people have made the point that sometimes they've always made the point going back to, you know, the Vancouver Providence and Sun. My writing is very dense. And because of the way my brain is arranged differently than others, I probably stack a lot of facts in and overstack. I think I've learned to sometimes

air it out and simplify a lot more because you can lose people. But maybe there's a slight amount of sort of obsession in the thinking of wanting to grasp and understand a big system, a flow chart, and sort of my reporting is very network based. And I've found that after years and years of doing this work, when you see, first of all, I'm fascinated by social networks, business networks, power networks. I just find that, you know, gripping and fascinating to write about how power operates in the world. There are personalities involved. There are, you know, financial links involved, political links, strategic links. And so my mind is attracted to that sort of density and complexity. I don't always get it perfectly right. But a lot of the

I think I can see the patterns and sort of understand that, you know, what is not explained or obvious on the surface toward what's driving something. And again, I don't always get it right, but I think I've been pretty successful in identifying some interesting trends and getting me the bottom of stuff. So that's what, you know, that's what you see reflected in the writing of that book. And sometimes it is over dense, probably. We'll be back after a quick break. Turned any document or link into a private audio book. No subscriptions. Try with audio on your Mac or PC.

That's desktop.d.wird. Audio. 100% local AI. No cloud, no tracking. Converc URLs, PDFs and EPUPs into high quality audio. With audio. Try it at desktop.com. That just leads into your point. You talked about reading like Dolfsiyatzky and

and individuals like that. And I do, I enjoy your book. My fiance and I enjoy it because it is dense and because it does challenge the reader and it does remind us of how little we know and understand. I think in our Western culture right now, people kind of feel like they understand everything. And when you bring up an issue like Chinese interference, oh yeah, they're meddling in elections. But the issue is obviously much deeper and more complicated than people understand. And it's sometimes important when you're learning about something to be humbled by it and to appreciate the great complexity. And so how big do those connection maps become for you when you're trying to figure out all of the different players involved and all of their links and who's talking to who? And then trying to figure out, is this person really, really connected to this person?

Or did they just meet once? Or is that a long-term relationship that we just don't have any data on? How complicated does that part become for you? I mean, it gets very complicated. And in my experience, I would second the observation you make, you know, a very important. capacity for if you want to call yourself an investigator, myself in journalism, I think it should be taught in school as know what you don't know. Don't be overly confident in seeing, you know, actions in the world, and right away you jump and say, I know what's going on. I'd like to

admit that the world seems very crazy right now. And my theory is that, you know, China and Russia are, unfortunately, I'll put it this way, they're the enemies of, you know, Western freedom. They have seen, and people can even see a video clip. I think I'm getting to your answer in a roundabout way. They can see a video clip in 2023 of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin talking outside a meeting and saying, she says, Xi Jinping, President of China says, we are seeing opportunities to shape history unlike we've seen in 100 years. And Putin nods. And I think that is the evidence people need to see that they decided, you know, they're going to, they're going to rise to the top and upend the order. So, I mean, knowing what you don't know, you know, to put my head around your question, year by year, sort of, to give you an example, I saw, I wrote about these people that,

that had laundered massive amounts through British Columbia government casinos and you know some of them were what were I knew to be you know street level gangsters so that they would be the people that deliver drug cash to extremely wealthy people traveling in from China

who would be Chinese officials or former military officials or police officials or industrialists you know not not Jack Ma Valley Baba, but corporate people from China. So what's going on here? You've got a gangster handing, you know, a guy in a suit, you know, $500,000 in cash and BC government casino is letting him walk in and gamble drug money. So, you know, after a while year by year, after I start reporting that story, I now have Canadian government sources saying, hey, that deal that you wrote about,

there's a guy that received that duffel bag of cash. He's got a property. out and let's just say, I'm pointed to a real example, but I'll be a little vague. Let's say in the Fraser Valley, a compound with unimaginable wealth, massive amounts of cars in a bunker, you know, Lamborghinis, jeeps, fire truck, a big rig, doesn't make any sense. Oh, this is a former senior Chinese military official. And then I can poke around and see, oh, this person, the military official with this compound in Canada that makes no sense. All these weapons inside, this person is meeting with the Chinese Consul General. And sitting there, we can see them in a box in the Burnaby's Swangard Stadium.

You know, there's Canadian politicians there. There's Chinese officials. There's gangsters. And so in a nutshell, I'll just end the example here. This was, I discovered what's called China's United Front Work Department, or the Chinese Communist Party, officials, members, whether they're drug dealers, former police officials, Chinese consulate officials, wealthy community leaders, they're all gathered together in many different kinds of business relationships,

social relationships, political relationships. But the key thing is they're doing President Xi Jinping's political work in Vancouver, you know, your city, and that's undermining Canada. So how high does it go? It goes up to President Xi Jinping, you know, at a mid-list. level, where does it go? Vancouver's Consul General and this, you know, a gangster giving cashed,

a former senior military member with a compound out in the Fraser Valley. That's sort of the mind mapping I do and that can be proven. When you learn about something like that, were you surprised? I find that there's kind of two different paths

people often take, and obviously there's a spectrum, but some are, like I didn't just default, skeptical of government. I just don't believe government's always there for the people. I believe there's a lot of money and influence involved. So my assumption when the government tells me something is to go, hmm, what's the real story? And then there's other people who believe government is a tool for good, and it's brought health care and it's brought social programs. And of course, there's a mixture, again, of both.

But I assume that when they create something, there's going to be leaks of financial movement that are not going towards the intended use case. So when you hear about the story and you start diving into it, Are you shocked seeing Canadian politicians involved? Or are you more like, this is not surprising. This is a challenge we need to address. Well, that's a great question. And it was an iteration of understanding. Like, when I, this network that I just described to you,

where you've got a Chinese military veteran absolutely venerated within a certain element of the diaspora. When I was told about this person's war, wealth in the Fraser Valley and the kind of the pictures as a Canadian, I couldn't believe and didn't make any sense. And then I had, you know, Canadian government sources saying this person was or maybe still is connected to China's military. They're a main figure in this Vancouver model money laundering story through the casinos. They're a main figure meeting with Chinese consulate officials. And so my eyes could see those photos.

I was hearing information from my sources, but still it was hard to believe because I just had no precedent for this in Canada, right? I didn't grow up in a country that was absolutely saturated with corruption and the people there know it like Russia, you know, or Venezuela or China. If you grow up in that system and you're relatively smart, you know that's how it works. But as a Canadian, no, I was taught. everything I was taught would lead me not to believe what I was seeing or what I was being told by credible professionals. And so that is that. But year by year, as I got more evidence, as I read more government reports from the United States, talk to more even senior officials in United States, then I'm starting to hear a bigger picture that actually there's people in the American government

that say, yeah, this is exactly what China is doing, and they're using the highest levels of organized crime. And yes, American and Canadian elected officials are directly connected. So, yeah, the one more thing I would add is, I mean, month by month, year by year, I do find more that it is a spectrum of trust in your government in Canada. Yeah, services still get done. You know, we pay our taxes. We can drive on road.

roads, go to the hospital. But the more you learn, you see, yeah, there is a tremendous amount of public corruption. I'll just assert, and I haven't even reported on all of it. It's not just to do with casinos or, you know, the police can't investigate bank money laundering. It's worse than that. It's procurement. It's a lot worse. And I'll end my answer by saying, you know, when Prime Minister Mark Carney goes over to China, you know, I can document that.

But the people that I may or may not have named in the Chinese election interference story, I'm thinking of one particularly. I'll jump over to Toronto, sits on a very senior China-Canada business lobby. And I'm going to assert to you, Aaron, you know, I've reported a little bit about some individuals, but I could report a lot more. How can a person sit on an influential business lobby that is clear. And others have reported very influential with Mark Carney in this trade deal and be a senior level gangster. It doesn't look like a gangster.

Wear is a suit, develops towers, you know, owns grocery stores. He's over there shaking hands with President Xi Jinping. But again, it doesn't add up for me as a Canadian. And so, you know, that gets back to your question. Do you sort of have trust that Canada's government? can protect people that might want to tell the truth or people in the Chinese diaspora that don't like, you know, this being monitored. And I don't have that confidence right now. I don't. I'm glad you're honest about it. Of course, that's terrifying. So I have to say, I was actually

given your book, Willful Blindness by somebody I met with who had been following me on Twitter and listening to the podcast. They're a charter professional accountant. And they're like, Aaron, you've got to look into the story. Like, this is going to blow your mind. And I was like, okay, I get a lot of guest recommendations. I start reading your book with my fiance. She's like, we got to look into this. And so we start diving into it. I'm blown away. What are three takeaways? Because I want people to pick up the book and read the full thing. What are three takeaways you hope people take away from the book that will pull them in and get them excited to read the full thing? Okay. First of all, my work started in Vancouver and focused on British Columbia government

casinos. I had assessed in my own sort of napkin calculations and sort of anecdotal view that it had to be in the billions, which is incredible in itself. But after my reporting helped to trigger the Cullen Commission into money laundering, after two years of study, Justice Austin Cullen, among a number of findings established that in one year, 2014, $1.2 billion was laundered through BC government casinos all in these large cash transactions. And it was all consistent with this Chinese transnational Vancouver model money laundering, which is incredible. So I think people can get a handle visually and otherwise on the scale of what the drug cash that was moving through BC government casinos with the government not responding until journalism exposed it. So that's the first

takeaway. The second is, look, the book, it really was a labor of obsessive passion in getting to the bottom of understanding a massive problem that I believed was deeply undermining Vancouver and Canada. And after my work was done, I found out that senior officials in the American government coming from the intelligence and law enforcement world, were impressed with the book. And in fact, some of them reached out to me and said that it helped them understand models of corruption and organized crime taking place in the Indo-Pacific

or in other areas of the world, even in the United States. And so I would say that's a takeaway. And also, I think it's pretty cool that, you know, Canada, when we're really focused, we can punch above our weight. And I think I punched above my weight on this book if I'm showing American intelligence, you know, something about how to understand threats to the world. The third takeaway, I've updated the book several times, including bringing in some of my reporting on Chinese election interference. And I can't stress enough that

I've been able at my new platform, the Bureau, to report more and more. Some things I still have to hold back because of legal risk, but believe them to be true. And Canadians, Americans, people of the world should know that countries like China and China first and foremost are undermining elections across Canada in the United Kingdom, New York City, California, with the same methods all around the world that I exposed, and that is senior organized crime from China, is tasked and enabled to become more rich and powerful by fulfilling objectives for President Xi Jinping's United Front Work Department. And that brings in election interference. It brings in drug money feeding into political campaigns, high-level corruption. So everyone in the world should

understand this. And I'll end by saying, I know there's a lot of crazy talk going on alone among world leaders. I just think, I mean, a takeaway of my book is I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, wrote it because I believe China was the greatest threat to democracy worldwide, and I believe that. And I don't think people should lose sight of that. China is the biggest threat. And it's the reason that world leaders of the West right now. I don't think a lot of them are acting very well. And I think they're losing focus on the real threat, which is China and Russia and their related countries. Bringing it home to British Columbia, I'd be interested in your thoughts. You write about Premier David Eby and some of his work to discuss this.

It was, if I recall correctly, it was something on the radar of Premier Christy Clark at the time. John Horgan comes in shortly thereafter. And then they kind of say, we're actually going to address this. Could you walk us through kind of that chapter? What steps did David Ebe? I don't think he was Premier at the time. He took some of these steps. I believe he was a minister.

Could you walk us through a bit of that chapter? and what more British Columbia should be doing to address this? Yeah, sure. I mean, this is a very complex story that it gets to what I was saying about. I learned more through time. And I'll give you another brutally blunt assessment. Aaron, I've come to believe that it's very difficult to be a politician or a regulator in British Columbia because over the decades, China has been so skillful and sophisticated

in flooding corruption money and organized crime money into real estate, into banks, into law offices, into BC casinos front and foremost, and most easily to see into all areas of society, you know, to the point where, I mean, I've come to believe that Premier David Eby, while I was exposing and reporting on the Vancouver model, was a very strong advocate in cracking down on the casino money laundering. He got on his soapbox and argued very well that people before him, including Premier Christy Clark, including housing and gaming minister Rich Coleman and others, hadn't been very diligent in cracking down on how this dirty money from abroad was coming in and washing through

our casinos in real estate. He was right. And as the data point I showed, Justice Austin Cullen showed how right he was and I was. But once Premier Eby came to power, I have found that, yes, he took some strong actions, but money laundering is continuing at scale through real estate. It has gotten more sophisticated through banks across the country. It moves around. And the political side of what I'm talking about, Aaron, there are people surrounding Premier Eby that I believe are connected to these Chinese United Front networks, unfortunately. And I don't think that Premier Eby has had full success in acknowledging some of the people that have approached the NDP, just as they approached the BC Liberals before, don't have Canada's interests at heart. And I'm sure Premier Eby

would have a counter to that. But I've done some reporting at the Bureau that I do believe points to, let's just call them continuing vulnerabilities for BC's government and they didn't end with the BC liberals. Can we talk a little bit about the path forward? I believe if I'm reading the tea leaves correctly from your book, Australia may be a reference point for Canada to look at to take some initial steps to start to get this under control. But if I'm understanding, you're reporting correctly, this isn't just a policy issue. This isn't just one department needs a few. a few changes. This is kind of like a whole system. We need to look at CIS. We need to look at the RCMP. We need to look at how our court systems operate and how and what their levels of willingness to support. I believe it was wiretapping was one of your examples of it taking like 18 months in comparison to the U.S. that takes a couple of weeks. And there's all these gaps. Could you walk us through some obvious steps we should be taking? Sure. Again, this is an evolving story. So where

Australia was apparently very strong under a former government. I think they're backsliding on these international threat networks. And often it gets very political. But to keep it simple here, yeah, Australia was cited as a paragon of how to respond to foreign interference, which is a big subject on my book. Their government was targeted by some surprise, casino whales from China and a major real estate developer that has come up in, you know, United Nations corruption cases. These two individuals that are cited in Canadian intelligence documents on foreign interference flooded Australia's political system with donations. And again, they're working for Chinese intelligence. They're involved in organized crime. And Australia's government

implemented some strong laws to crack down on foreign interference. And they've had a few successful cases. So that's a good example. What does Canada need to do? Again, Aaron, we have this somewhat weak version of a foreign agent registry for Canada not even implemented yet. To me, it's just it's, it's negligent for Mark Carney to go over to Paysing and do a trade deal without that foreign agent registry in place because I believe it could be shown that people in Canada that are quite influential in the liberal party, you know, some of them should be on that foreign agent registry. So how do you do a deal with China when you haven't put that safeguard in place? So that's one step, clear enough. That's a low-hanging fruit. And still, it's not being done.

What do we need to do for the legal, you know, the legal legales out there like yourself that sort of see the system? Yeah, Canada cannot. It's become more clear that Mexican cartels are very president in Canadian cities. And as was testified in the Cullen Commission, the RCMP could not even get wiretaps on Sinaloa cartel operatives in Vancouver, you know, after half a year. Whereas because the American government and the Australian government working well on these transnational files have recognized, you know, how lethal these crime groups are, you know, they they have carve-outs or judicial authorizations where the threshold is much lower. And again, it's always a tradeoff between privacy, government overreach, and the nature of the threat. But the United States and Australia

realize, hey, these cartels and these Chinese networks are killing people both indirectly with fentanyl and directly for the Mexican cartels. So you need a strong justice system to be able to to get on them with wiretafs. But in Canada, we'll get right into the legal weeds. We have something called the Stinchcombe law, where essentially, you know, Canadian police, as some of my American sources complain, after a short amount of time,

have to reach out to the subject of the wiretap and inform their lawyer that they've been wiretapped just because this, you know, this disclosure, stinchcombe rule is so, I would say, to keep it simple, slanted towards sort of the criminal defense side. And what's my proof of that, Aaron? I mean, there have been a number of cases related to Ryan Wedding, the fallen Olympic snowboarder and cartel networks running, you know, drugs up into Canada from Mexico. Many, you know, a handful have come to trial. All the cases have failed because of this Stinchcombe excessive disclosure rule.

a rule called Jordan, where you have to run complex cases through the courts in a strict amount of time or else the case gets dropped. And it's not just cartels. These are straight up, you know, sexual assaults, murders, all kinds of cases are being tossed out by Canadian courts because of these restrictive rules. So I think when we step back, we need some sort of common sense reassessment of how Canada's charter rule well intended has become a too much of a shield for serious organized crime. And I think that's a big problem that probably most, most Canadians, if they understood it, would be very willing to tackle in Parliament. You provided one of those examples in your book where you kind of walk through how everybody

felt that this one individual in the book was kind of lined up and they were going through the criminal justice system. And it was all but fed a complete. Everybody felt confident. And then some things happened with the process. And I believe the person's wife. And they ended up not being held accountable as a consequence of that and that had huge ramifications. I'm interested. I don't know if you recall this, but Pierre Pahliav, the leader of the Federal Conservative Party, had made some comments about the RCMP and their senior leadership ranks, which he got held accountable for by many different voices. And I was somewhat surprised by the reaction just personally. I kind of, I know people in the RCMP. I understand

their system. I did a criminology degree. The politics at the senior levels is very, very high. The goal of moving up the ranks within the RCMP is complicated and it's built in a structure that encourages people to work together to kind of find that top. And so when I heard his criticisms of like, well, these people are like, they're politicians, basically. They're not serious RCMP officers, boots on the ground type people. They're in the realm of politics. And And the backlash he received really surprised me not because I think he's right on everything. But because I don't think it's in dispute that many of the senior level officials within the RCMP are politically motivated and mindful of how they're going to be seen by the general public and want to be at that upper echelon of the RCMP. Whenever you have a hierarchy, people are driven to want to lead to the top.

And if that means sacrificing principles, some are willing to do that. And overwhelmingly over time, I think that leads to people. at the top who are incentivized just to be at the top and not be principles based. And I just think that that happens over time. So he got attacked for that. And then I read your reporting where you kind of talk about this and the challenges within the senior levels of the RCMP to get progress on this. And I was wondering if we could just have a candid conversation about not the boots on the ground people who are in community taking risks every day, but that's senior level officials of the RCMP and how you view them and what challenges exist there when we talk about some of these issues. Yeah, Aaron, I agree exactly with how you framed it. There's a lot of great officers in the RCMP or CIS across the country. They all know their stuff. They're as smart and as diligent and passionate as their American, you know, brothers and sisters, but they're blocked politically. And so a few examples, you know, if people go to one of my book covers, they'll see an individual sitting beside our former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who, you know, is whether we want to get

into the names or photos or not, who is sitting at a fundraiser with former Prime Minister Trudeau, and yet similarly, I could produce a photo of them in their Chinese military uniform at a younger age, or them standing beside a known extortion, loan shark, pimp, suspected fentanyl trafficker. Even the Globe and Mail has reported about Prime Mr. Trudeau stumbling into a surveillance operation where he was meeting with individuals of these nature, with connections to Chinese organized crime and the Chinese government. So these people, we know where their mansions are. We know where their underground casinos in Vancouver or Toronto are.

We know that they have no legitimate tax pay and income to substantiate or verify, you know, 20 vehicles in their garage. and yet what is the RCMP doing about them? But even more concerning, we know that their fundraisers, not just for the liberals, it often seems to be for senior liberals, but we can find them beside conservatives and NDP people too at various levels of government.

As I say again, where is the RCMP on the Chinese Communist Party police station story where I'm saying decades-old human traffickers suspected fentanylonders, people that are developing towers, own grocery stores, can be found in photographs beside, you know, candidates suspected of election interference support, can be found standing beside the corporate, you know, leaders from Montreal, who I would say are behind sort of the policies on China of Prime Minister Mark Carney, as I and others such as Michael Covrig or, you know,

other authors have started to be much more sort of forefront about this, this thing that experts know in Canada. And the RCP is doing nothing about them. And that's just sort of the interference crime story or, you know, the Vancouver model story. There's also the SNC Lavalance story, which is what Pierre Pahliav was referring to. Aaron, I just got a call from someone in British Columbia the other day who's been following my work for years and just has been urging me to get on a story that they say of a bid rigged. involving construction in British Columbia on a company from Quebec with links to France. They told me very credibly, and I haven't even reported on this,

but I'll share with you today because I looked into their claims. Yeah, they could point to legal cases against the company they're interested in the United States. They reported to local police in British Columbia as they informed me, and the local police said, I'm sorry, we believe you,

but we heard from Ottawa to back off in this case. So I could go on and on with examples that I believe stand that up, that the RCMP is politically controlled. They say they're independent, but I don't think they are. I think that, you know, they are subservient. What was your take on Michael Maugh's floor crossing? That's a very well-timed question because that probably touches on some of the people I was talking about in that answer. Look, let me get a little detailed here. after I left global news, I reported on a CIS document that I obtained.

People can go to the Bureau.com news to read the story that says that CIS assessed when Huawei executive Manwan Zao was detained in British Columbia, China's Secret Police Service was tasked from the highest level to have maximum impact on Canada's political system through election interference. And they were so sophisticated, this document says, that they wanted to pull back on their support for Justin Trudeau. So they support Justin Trudeau is what the document says, but they wanted to calibrate support into the conservatives

and the NDP with certain candidates to strategically lever pressure on the 2019 federal election to try to pressure Canada to release Manwan Zao. So remember, Michael Ma was a conservative candidate or was seeking to be a conservative candidate, I believe in Don Valley North in 2019. He's not mentioned in this document that I'm talking about. I'm just saying that this is the overarching Canadian intelligence picture of our elections and the sophisticated interference. So here we have Michael Ma. Finally, he gets elected in a neighboring writing in 2025.

and suddenly he's scurrying across the floor to Mark Carney's party with no good explanation. And then what happens, you know, I detail along with some others that he has been meeting with these senior United Front Work Department officially connected community leaders in his Markham riding. We can find these pictures. We can see pictures of Michael Maugh and other Canadian politicians. wearing red scarfs with the Chinese anthem playing and, you know, images of Chinese military behind them. It's like you can't even, you can't even make it up how bad that looks. It's just very obviously something's wrong. That doesn't mean that Michael Maugh under the table made a deal with these United Front community leaders who surround people from all parties, candidates,

not just, you know, the liberals. As I said, CIS reported in 2019, China will support candidates, from all parties. So was Michael Maugh one of those candidates that, you know, was supported as a conservative? He gets elected and suddenly someone wants to throw the switch and, and give Mark Carney a majority. So, you know, now Michael Ma is going to cross the floor. I don't have that evidence or wouldn't even allege that, but it certainly looks suspicious. And then, you know, what do we know? After crossing the floor, he travels with Mark Carney to Beijing on that trade mission. It looks horrible from all angles. So I do think if we step back, I've not, you know, I don't have any information besides my own educated assessments.

But I think, yeah, reasonably that could be a case of foreign interference. We don't know yet. But it looks very bad within the context that I know. I think that's my bigger fear. I see a lot of, and I'm sure you've seen this, the debate all. on CTV or CBC, like, is floor crossing good or bad? What does it mean? And the topic about, like, what does this mean in this specific case seems not the focal point that it should be? And I think that's, and I'd be interested in your kind of reflections on your work,

Canadians are so by their, their nature, kind, and assuming the best in people and generous in their perspective and believe that multiculturalism is a founding. pillar of our society, that we don't want to look at a Chinese gentleman who ran for a party being capable of choosing or working with another, like the CCP over Canada. We just don't want to believe we live in that world. And I just wonder what level of cognitive dissonance you've seen in your reporting where it just makes people uncomfortable to think that of another human being. Because that's when I hear these stories and when I look at the Michael Mall case, my default is like, no, no, no, no, no. People are generally good. They're not driven by, by negative things. I'm not

driven by those things as much. Like, I'm trying to be a good person here. So he must be doing the same thing. And we must just be misunderstanding something. But then you see the follow-up actions, the lack of justification, the willingness to travel to China after this. And no remorse for his actions. And I go, well, I can't give you the benefit of the doubt because you're not giving me anything to kind of be reasonably doubtful that these accusations are the case. Like, you're not making it look innocent. And so how am I supposed to presume your innocence? Because I don't want to do a trial by media, but that's all we're left with when we're in these circumstances. And I'm just, you're reporting, I imagine, make some people uncomfortable. And I'm just wondering how you digest that and how you

work with people to kind of see the light at times. Yeah. I mean, you framed it really well. Like there's a lot of complex issues and it goes back to my journey having a hard time believing, you know, back in 2017, 2018 that this casino money laundering story wasn't just a crime story. It was a Chinese political interference story going up to the highest levels, you know, in various countries. And so how do I deal with it? Look, I guess I'm somewhat, I would say, inoculated from from being from shy. away from a story based on sort of the the average kind of Canadian, you know, sensitivity or political correctness. Because I have such direct relationships with people from the Asian diaspora, many of them who are fearful, literally, you know, for their lives in some cases, because they're being targeted by these thugs from the Chinese Communist Party. And they know very well, you know, coming from China and understanding the community that there's a lot of people that wanted to leave that thuggish system, arrive in Canada, and suddenly now they have to worry

about the thuggish system following them. So they can't be free to have their, you know, their comments about Canada's political system or China's political system because literally there, Aaron, there are now, you know, questions on whether, you know, a political assassination or targeting could have happened in Vancouver involving a Chinese dissident. It's not proven, but what is proven, you know, from Australian media and Radio Canada is that, you know, there are messages that say, we don't like this person. We want to get rid of them. Some person dies in a suspicious, you know, kayaking accident and we're left wondering, right? So this is what the diaspora lives with. They are my sources. People may get the idea that I'm like a government

mouthpiece or whistleblowers that don't like Canada's government come to me to just like push info out. No, I'm getting information from diaspora sources that I'm rewarded to say that they say, you know, you're out there with us trying to make Canada's democracy better and safer, right? So I'm not, I don't, I can, people can call me bad names so many times and I just, I've got a shield against that by now. And I have a system. of beliefs that doesn't pay attention to what I find spurious or superficial. But, you know, I hope that my story and, you know, my, I tried to apply very sensitive and deep reporting that Canadians can read and hear from all sides that this is not about

saying just because you come from a certain community, you're automatically suspected of working with, you know, the government that you immigrated away from. No, there's people, you know, whether. Whether whether people want to use, you know, the phrase old stock Canadians, Mark Carney himself could equally be a beneficiary of Chinese election interference. And he has met these very same people in Toronto that that shouldn't be on the foreign agent registry and apparently supported him as, as, you know, China's choice for prime minister. And so you talk about context.

And I've I've had a lot of, you know, reporting and podcast discussions where Mark, Karni's trade deal was pretty much telegraphed in a way from some of his early meetings and discussions with, you know, Chinese diplomats and people from the community that are proxies for Beijing. One of the last questions I wanted to get your thoughts on and I'm mindful of time and want to respect that is just around the, so I had reposted something you had said on Twitter and one of the people had commented something along the lines of like, oh, well, he's spoken with Laura Lumer. So like, you can't trust that guy. And I did look up a bunch of your interviews. And I notice, surprisingly, that a lot of more right-leaning like Rebel News is willing to speak with you, Laura Lumer, those types of individuals. And my response to that person is you're an investigative journalist. You're trying to cover a story.

The people who are willing to hear the story are the people you're going to speak with. But I just wanted to get your reflections and make sure you speak for yourself because I was somewhat defending you, even though we hadn't interacted. but I wanted to get your kind of take on. You're trying to get a story out. How do you balance that it doesn't look like it's perceived as right leaning or left leaning and like how do you navigate those types of things? Yeah, I mean, I'll address. I've always had the view within limits that my reporting and my facts are my reporting

and my facts. So if you come from a MAGA base like a Laura Loomer and, you know, she's very controversial. She's said some things that I completely disagree with. She takes positions I don't agree with. And yet, she's a person that I was told, President Donald Trump will watch her show. So I knew when I was deciding, will I go on, Laura Loomer's show? Look, my facts are going to be my facts. They're important facts.

As I've said, people at a senior level in the U.S. government read my book and learned something. So I decided she's got a lot of viewers. President Trump watches her. I'm going to say my facts. going to say the truth. I'm going to report on this breaking election interference story, which involved this former cop, Paul Cheyenne, talking about how his conservative opposition, Joe Tay, could be turned over to the consulate egregious. Again, the RCMP has done nothing. You know, Joe Tay, I find to be very honorable, not to get off topic, but I told Laura Loomer's

audience this is happening. And if people flip forward to the end of the interview, I, explained, hey, Canadians want to be respected. You know, Donald Trump talking, President Donald Trump talking about the 51st state isn't helping the political temperature in Canada. We want to be respected. We want to be side by side fighting the real enemy, which is China. I had perhaps a naive hope that maybe even President Trump would listen to that. Doesn't matter if he did or didn't. I'm saying my truth as a Canadian. I was offended and am offended by his confidence. comments and I conveyed that view. It was my facts, evidence, and truth. And it was true then and it's true now. So if people don't like Laura Lumer, good for them. I said my truth.

Are there people that I would not go on? Yeah. There are people that are, it appears to me, now are being leveraged by Qatar or other foreign governments where they would appear to be conservative, but they're, I think, speaking, you know, the line of another bad foreign government, whether it's Russia or Qatar. So there's people I will draw a line. And so, yeah, I would just say, tell people that's a little bit complex. There are lines, but if Anderson Cooper or Jake Tapper asked me to go on, I'll be overjoyed. You know, I'm going to rebel. Look, they did. They broke a story about the People's Liberation Army training in Canada's Arctic. So I would tell people my training is the facts are the facts within good reasonable bounds. I'll talk to someone if they have a

platform and the facts will be my facts and I believe they'll be in the public interest. I agree with you. I'm glad you were able to share that. I frequently watch, so I watched the interview with Rebel and I actually thought it was a really, really good interview and you can, like as you kind of described you can separate the noise or the other things that they cover but his interview with you I found to be very thoughtful I would have loved if he let you speak a little bit more because you were making some really good points and he was he was going a little bit longer which is not a bad thing that's his style but the only other piece I just wanted to get your thoughts in we're leading into I think an election here what I'm hearing is that Mark Carney's

interested he didn't get his majority he's interested in taking a spring election that's what I'm That's what I'm hearing. And so if that ends up being true, we're heading into another election. And I know we can't change the whole political apparatus. I know every day Canadians listening to this have no control over whether or not he adopts the foreign registry or not. Is there anything Canadians can do as we look into an election as we laid into that to try and make sure that we're making an informed decision and that we're supporting those diaspora communities? Yeah, I'll keep it simple because this was my view and it is my view that it's, It's my deep-held belief that Canada and the United States are natural allies as people were very similar, not identical, but our cultures are the most similar in the world.

I myself, you know, I've got a great connection and affinity to the United States, also to Japan, Taiwan, as people. You know, we kind of, for family reasons and whatever, we get along with certain countries. I would say, I mean, I'm closer to those Japan and Taiwan that I am to the United Kingdom. But what I'm reiterating here is that China and Russia, Iran, once you do this, you know, your research enough, I think an honest person living in the West will understand those are the enemies. They want us harmed. So people in this new election, I'm afraid that the last election people were scared into believing. that the American government was the real enemy. President Donald Trump, you know, wants to subsume Canada.

I don't think he does. I, in some ways, if I'm being very honest, I think he's an extremely effective leader. Marco Rubio, Scott Besant, J.D. Vance, more or less, you know, these are intelligent people. And the view in Canada that, you know, it's a bunch of world-conquering idiots that are making some hard, you know, moves around the world just because for imperialism, I think it's a lot deeper

than that. You know, I've got insight that because I have traveled to Taiwan, because I have connections to Japan, there's a great fear that China is about, along with Russia, to extend attacks, right? They're working together. So I just don't want Canadians to, and President Donald Trump is making it very hard with all the noise. I believe that. that, you know, he sort of can't help himself in some ways. No one's perfect. He's done some good for the world. Look at the whole picture. But Canadians, I just, if you believe America is the enemy and we need to worry about them invading us, we don't need to worry about China. So let's get closer to China. I'll just be very blunt. I think you got a wrong view of the world and you're

not going to be able to vote in a way that benefits you as a Canadian. You're going to end up harming yourself. And as it turns out, it seems to be a lot of older people that are leaning towards you know, President Trump and the United States is the enemy. And we'll never be friends with them again. I think if they vote that way, they're hurting their children and the generations that follow. So it's going to be very interesting, but I don't know that I'll be able to change one single mind with that viewpoint, but I'm going to keep trying. How can people follow your work? you can go to the bureau. News, which is my journalism platform that I started in 23 when I launched out on my own after almost two decades with Vancouver Sun,

province and global news. The Bureau. Dot News, that's at almost 35,000 subscribers now. I write not just on Canada, but very geopolitically, you know, around the world. I'm trying to get people of the world to see that big picture we've been talking about. you know, they can, they can agree with me or not, but they're going to find some thoughtful in-depth reporting. So the bureau.news, and if you go to X at Scooper Cooper, where I'm often a little bit more off the cuff with some commentary and thoughts, but the same sort of, same sort of you just trying to make sense of a very, very wild and noisy world. Sam Cooper, thank you so much for being willing to join us today. I have great admiration for

voices like yours, Holly Dohn, Tara Henley, who are independent, who have straight away from legacy media and chosen to share their voice in a unique way. And I honestly think you're courageous. Some of the things you're reporting on are dangerous and learning more about the work that you're doing has just been really inspiring because it shows that people are willing to take a step. I think your book also highlights some other people who are willing to put their neck on the line, to put themselves out there and try and make sure that we move and adjust. way. And that reminds me very much of the people who founded the U.S. and Canada in the early stages, they were taking risks. They were distancing themselves from a regime that was in control and that

was very much the voice of the day. And to separate yourself and to take these steps, I just find admirable. And so it's just been a privilege to hear your insights, but also just to get to know the man who's done so much work to illuminate Canadian. So I really appreciate your time. Thanks. I really appreciate how deeply you've been looking at. the topic matter and your questions. I'd love to join you again, and it's been great talking. Looking forward to it.

Thank you so much.