The Bureau Podcast

OTTAWA — This podcast discussion from late April was recovered from the cloud by Jason James, and was taped a month before my appearance this week alongside an incredible cast of national experts at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.
At that event, Mike Doran — director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at Hudson and a former senior White House national security official — asked me to explain how China seeds its influence through elite financial institutions. My answer, it turned out, foreshadowed a bombshell congressional report released this week by the House Select Committee on China, which found that major Wall Street banks turned a blind eye to underwriting deals with Chinese military-linked and Uyghur slave labor-connected companies.
In my answer to Doran, I argued that China invests across Wall Street, Bay Street, and Silicon Valley to forge bonds of obligation and influence with the most powerful, politically connected business figures in the West.
Using the example of Mark Carney and Brookfield, I also explained how significant Canadian political leaders — and the business networks that back them — have been granted privileged access to China’s green infrastructure and real estate markets. I told Doran this is, in my view, United Front influence tradecraft. In Carney’s case, it could be said to have created the perception of a conflict of interest: that Carney’s private interests, and those in his orbit, may now benefit from his government’s deepening trade dealings with Beijing — including a significant electric vehicle arrangement that would likely raise the precise concerns now at the center of the committee’s investigation into JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley.
There are a few minor lags in this tape due to some tech issues we were having, but I think the discussion is one of the deepest ones Jason and I have had, and it was predictive also, of the stance taken this week by the Pentagon, pausing a generational defense board partnership, due to concerns with Canada’s laxity on national security and military spending.
On the factors behind Carney’s dealings with China, I tell Jason that plausibly, it is circumstantially proven now, “that Mark Carney is making decisions that benefit himself, and the people that would boost him into the Liberal leadership, above Canada. From national security and economic sovereignty and our relationship with the United States, the moves that Carney is making for the strategic partnership with China, don’t make sense any other way.”
“Investigative pressure from the United States, and national security pressure, I think will get stronger,” I continued to tell Jason in April. “My best answer is, I see horribly negligent or corrupt leadership in Ottawa, with regards to decisions they are making between China and the United States.”

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OTTAWA – This week, I appeared on a panel at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., alongside Mike Doran, Professor Brenda Shaffer, and Zineb Riboua — and one of the central themes that emerged from that conversation also runs through this episode with Jason James.
It’s a question I’ve been investigating for years. How does Beijing cultivate the business and political elite networks that shape Canadian foreign policy from the inside out? We’re talking about the Canada China Business Council, the Power Corporation orbit, and the figures now surrounding Prime Minister Mark Carney — people who, through co-investments, trade relationships, and sustained engagement with Beijing, have become influential architects of Ottawa’s China posture.
To understand how that influence operates in practice, I walked Jason through a close reading of Carney’s January speech in Beijing — delivered to the Canada China Business Council, in the presence of Olivier Desmarais, grandson of Jean Chrétien and a scion of the Power Corporation dynasty.
What Carney said in that room, and who he thanked first, tells you a great deal about where this government’s China policy actually comes from, and the “green” Chinese EV deal that Carney has pushed under his new “strategic” partnership with Beijing.
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OTTAWA — In this discussion with Jason James, I break down the stunning rise of Liberal floor-crosser Michael Ma — a story The Bureau has led Canadian media on with at least 10 investigative reports since mid-December 2025, culminating in our coverage of his suspicious cross-examination of expert Margaret McCuaig-Johnston.
This is a wide-ranging conversation.
I explain the earlier rise of Markham-area Liberal figure Mary Ng, who was selected to run in a by-election after Liberal heavyweight John McCallum left Parliament to become ambassador to China. Ng had quickly risen from an Ontario Liberal government staffer, to a powerful member of Justin Trudeau’s office, to a new member of Parliament in a safe Liberal riding heavily influenced by Chinese diaspora pressure groups, and ultimately to cabinet as trade minister.
I tell Jason that Michael Ma’s trajectory — from elected Conservative, to floor-crosser helping give Mark Carney a near-majority, to joining Carney’s inner circle, to appearing to echo Beijing talking points denying Uyghur forced labour — could follow a similarly strategic path that raises questions about possible community pressure group chess moves. None of this has been proven. But I explain why I believe there are mounting signs that deserve serious scrutiny.
I also tell Jason that what happened to Margaret McCuaig-Johnston struck me as similar to some of my own experiences in committee hearings. In the interview, I disclose that after a recent request to appear before committee, regarding implementation of the proposed foreign interference registry, I sent a formal letter expressing concern that some questioning directed at witnesses on foreign interference could be inappropriate or reputationally damaging.
Because I discuss that letter centrally in the podcast, and because I later received an official response addressing parliamentary privilege and the sub judice convention, I am posting an excerpted copy of my November 2025 letter and part of the government’s response below, for public-interest reasons, so readers can assess it for themselves.
As it turned out, I decided last November not to attend the committee hearing on Canada’s proposed foreign interference registry, and I have not since attended Canada’s parliamentary committee hearings as a witness.
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Letter to PROC Chair: November, 2025
To: PROC ChairVia: Committee ClerksRe: Request for assurances regarding protections for witnesses on foreign interference and the registry
Dear Chair,
I believe I have important evidence and relevant expertise regarding the registry and its implementation. I would like to ask the clerks to please convey this message to you and provide me with an official response. Depending on that response, I would be prepared to accept this request for testimony, provided that my concerns are adequately addressed.
I have decided to include the media addresses of the RCMP and CSIS in this official note, as their representatives would also be able to testify to the facts I set out below, including the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) providing me with a judicially authorized notification shortly after my first testimony on foreign interference threats to Canadian politicians.
In three prior instances of testimony, I have put myself forward to assist various Committees. In 2023, several days after one of my appearances—regarding PRC threats against Canadian politicians—an RCMP national security unit informed me that I was the subject of a serious safety threat related to my reporting on interference activities of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
During some of my appearances, certain elected members have questioned me about civil lawsuits I face as a result of my reporting, even after I explicitly stated that I would not comment on such matters. I am increasingly concerned that certain questions directed at me may be inappropriate, and even designed to discredit my reporting on foreign interference and Canada’s present lack of capacity to counter it.
As the Chair is, I am sure, aware, the NSICOP 2024 report found that some members of Parliament may be involved in foreign threat activities, including clandestine or opaque financial activities that could be contrary to the public interest and might even be unlawful—if Canada had modern regulatory structures and laws in place to address and prosecute such activities. Further to my concern about nefarious forces, I would note the publicly reported targeting of former MP Kenny Chiu after he raised the idea of a foreign influence transparency registry. My concern is that the same types of tactics used to discredit or punish elected officials who raise concerns about the PRC and a transparency registry could also be deployed against journalists who testify on these issues.
For example, the 2019 NSICOP report documents intelligence indicating that:
“A provincial Cabinet Minister responsible for the province’s dealings with PRC officials appeared to favor China’s interests in many of his activities. This individual provided political information to the PRC Consulate and offered to verbally attack other members of the Provincial Assembly who raised Chinese human rights issues.”
(See my report: China clandestinely targeting First Nations and Parliament — https://www.thebureau.news/p/china-clandestinely-targeting-first.)
[Excerpted for relevance.]
After appearing three times before Committees, I continue to perceive that some questions I face are not relevant to the stated purpose of my testimony and may present various personal and professional risks. I therefore believe it is necessary to formally raise this concern with you and request that you consider how individuals called to provide evidence on foreign interference could themselves become targets of such interference through their testimony.
Thank you very much for your attention to this matter. I respectfully await a response.
Sincerely,Sam Cooper
Committee Response
The response confirmed:
“Witnesses are also protected by parliamentary privilege during parliamentary proceedings and may speak freely without risk of prosecution or civil liability. The subjudice convention limits Members from making reference to matters before the Courts (pp. 632-636). This restriction exists to protect an accused person or another party from prejudice that would result from the public discussion of the judicial matter.”
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CALGARY — In this episode, I sit down with Brian Lilley to break down one of the most troubling moments in recent Canadian parliamentary history — Liberal floor-crosser Michael Ma’s attempt to discredit University of Ottawa China expert Margaret McCuaig-Johnston during a Commons industry committee hearing, and what happened in Beijing hours after the cameras stopped rolling.
Chinese state-linked media didn’t just celebrate Ma’s performance. Within hours they published a detailed biographical attack on McCuaig-Johnston with a level of institutional knowledge about her career that raises an uncomfortable question: was this a coordinated operation, and does it trace back to Beijing?
I also walk Brian through my prior reporting linking Ma to a political organization identified by the Jamestown Foundation as one of 575 United Front Work Department-affiliated groups operating in Canada — a group with a history of targeting Conservative leaders Erin O’Toole and Pierre Poilievre.
To be clear: Ma’s connections to that group are not illegal, and they are not proof of wrongdoing. But when you set those connections alongside his stunning assault on one of Canada’s most prominent China scholars — and the speed with which Chinese propaganda apparatus amplified and weaponized that assault — you are left with very significant questions about whether Michael Ma is acting in Canada’s interest. That conversation is next.
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OTTAWA — In this conversation with BNN's Jason James, I wrestle with the central confusion surrounding the United States-Israel campaign in Iran. Is the objective regime change, the retrieval of enriched uranium, Israel's own objectives, or something deeper and more indirect — the culmination of a pivot from the Middle East, and a strategic warning to Xi Jinping and his axis partners in Russia and North Korea? My view is that the United States military would not have launched this campaign without a rigorous analysis of what it means for Taiwan.
I open by recounting a reporting trip to Taiwan in 2023 — the same year, we now know, that the Central Intelligence Agency director privately warned Silicon Valley executives that Xi could move on Taiwan by 2027. I left that trip with several firm convictions.
Xi Jinping was not a popular leader among his Red princeling cohort, and has vulnerabilities little understood in the West, including a coup-like challenge from within, prior to 2020. The current military upheaval under Xi has only deepened that assessment.
And in 2023, I gathered that the United States, likely supported by Japan, Taiwan, and Australia, will not allow Beijing to blockade or invade Taiwan — and the U.S.-led coalition believes it can defeat China’s military, a conviction that holds regardless of who occupies the White House.
The conversation ranges widely, from confusion surrounding Prime Minister Mark Carney’s position on Iran, to a potential trade resolution between Washington and Ottawa.
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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe