Host: I think the biggest security threat to Canada is China.

Host: That was Prime Minister Mark Carney during the federal leaders debate in April 2025. Fast forward nine months.

Host: I believe the progress that we have made in the partnership sets us up well for the new world order.

Host: Same prime minister, same country, but very different tone. That comment came during an official visit to China after the announcement of a new trade deal. So what changed? Well, it's mostly thanks to US President Donald Trump's trade wars and threats pushing Canada to start looking for trade partners in places it kept at arm's length. And China, well, that's about as arm's length as it gets. Relations between the two countries have been strained since 2018. That's when Canada arrested the CFO of Chinese telecom company Huawei at the request of the United States. And then not too long after that, there were allegations of foreign interference. So can China be a reliable partner now? Well, according to a new book, issues between the two countries didn't start in 2018. They go back decades to the time of Pierre Trudeau. We talked to author Dennis Molinaro about why he believes China has been trying to undermine democracy in Canada for decades, and whether it still poses a significant security threat now. Carney isn't the only leader who's recently paid a visit to Beijing. French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer also met with Chinese President XI Jinping. So are we seeing the end of a China versus the West? And if a new world order is taking shape, what does that mean for Canada? This is The Rundown. A few years ago, Ottawa was rocked by allegations China had interfered in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. But a new book says China's attempts to influence politics in this country go back further, way further. Dennis Molinaro is a former national security analyst and policy adviser for the Canadian federal government, and the author of Under Assault Interference in Espionage in China's Secret War Against Canada. And he joins us in studio. How are you doing, sir?

Dennis Molinaro: Very well. How are you?

Host: I'm doing great. Let's start with a little history lesson here. You say in your book that China's covert actions against Canada go back over 50 years to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. What's the story there?

Dennis Molinaro: Oh, there's a story. Yeah. So it goes back really to the time when the PRC, the People's Republic of China, was looking to get recognised by the world and the Communist Party wanted their government recognised as the sole government in charge of China. And so what I learned from declassified documents was essentially one of the principal actors of that era. An individual named Paul Lin was very influential in speaking out in terms of recognition of China that it needed to happen, trying to meet with government members of government, academics, policymakers of all kinds internationally. And it turns out through the records that he was actually an agent of influence, as the RCMP put it, for China. And that really started to change the story of when did interference and influence start? I mean, because it started to look like it was a lot earlier than we may have thought.

Host: When we talk about interference, I want to make sure we distinguish. How do we distinguish between foreign interference versus, say, lobbying.

Dennis Molinaro: The covert aspect is the main element, right? So when when something is covert and being done behind closed doors, that's when it changes from something that is really open and legitimate type of lobbying work. When it shifts into the covert space, it becomes generally could be more nefarious. And so that's really what we're looking at is nefarious activity that is at the behest of a foreign state.

Host: Give me an example.

Dennis Molinaro: Sure. So, well, you could think about trying to influence a community leader to not speak out against China in some way if we're talking about China, which we are today. So trying to influence community members not to. So somebody could be covertly doing that for the PRC, for China, within Canada, not declaring that activity so secretly working for the state and harassing dissidents or harassing people could be influencing politicians to take a certain policy line, could be stealing intellectual property by getting into partnerships.

Host: Dennis, most viewers and listeners may be familiar with the allegations around election interference, but what other areas has China targeted?

Dennis Molinaro: So as I mentioned, a little bit of other areas like research partnerships. So it would be trying to partner with a Chinese institution or company, maybe that's got a state linked influence, trying to partner with academics, trying to form partnership agreements for research and for funding. And behind the scenes, there are clauses to turn over intellectual property. So that's that's another way of trying to influence and trying to gain tactical advantage for China.

Host: When we talk about trade and interference, what does that look like?

Dennis Molinaro: Trade is is another one that has a long history in terms of the PRC looking to build trade linkages, which would give them access to different technologies. Again, intellectual property over time, but also in this case, if we're talking about trade in the present modern day era, then we're talking about potentially PRC EVs, right? So the risks here start to become one. Chinese goods and technologies that are strategic, entering into the supply chain of North America, that becomes a problem, particularly with our relationship with the United States. And the integrated auto sector, you're also getting companies that are traditionally heavily state subsidised. So that undercuts Canadian labour and manufacturers. You're also getting other avenues that don't get talked about a lot. And that's because in China, a number of companies have been pulled into what's called military civil fusion. This is where companies are directly contributing or indirectly contributing to China's military ambitions. Okay. And so the danger there is, if we get tied into a company that provides technology to us or cars or what have you, that might have a military civil fusion connection. So then we would be indirectly assisting the PLA, the People's Liberation Army. Okay.

Host: I can see the concerns there.

Dennis Molinaro: There's concerns.

Host: You are throughout this book sort of waving, you know, pressing the alarm and letting people in on sort of what many people don't know. But the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS has listed a number of other countries, India, Russia, Iran as potential sources of interference. So one has to ask the question, why is there so much focus on China?

Dennis Molinaro: Well, because I felt that this history had not been told. Typically what we we have in Canada, what's happened is successively over the years and continually is as I make the point in the book, there have been there has been a belief when it comes to China that Canadian policymakers have continued, and even business leaders have continued to view China as they want to see it, rather than as it actually is. And so you can't really have that diplomatic history or that diplomatic understanding of the country when it's when all the intelligence security aspect is ignored. So China becomes the main focus because of the fact that it is a rising superpower. And it's our second largest trading partner. And progressively, consistently, actually, over the years, Canadian intelligence has identified it as the number one threat. So it made logical sense that we needed this story told.

Host: Now, I do have to ask, when you were a national security analyst, were you able to communicate any of these concerns?

Dennis Molinaro: I couldn't say.

Host: Signed an NDA.

Dennis Molinaro: Yeah. That's that's an oath you carry. Whatever I did or didn't do, I could never talk about it.

Host: Fair enough. All right. Given understanding that given the seriousness of the issue, though you've outlined in your book, how has it been handled by successive governments? We're to kind of look at the history here and with our current government. But what have we seen?

Dennis Molinaro: So what I saw from the book were researched for the book was that continually, you never really saw governments addressing any of the activities that were going on domestically. And that dates all the way back to the Trudeau senior years. You would have instances appear in the newspaper. You would have warnings appear from the security services. So in one instance, actually in the after the after China gets an embassy here, you have the CBC reporting that the FBI was concerned and wanted to arrest of diplomats who were bringing intelligence using the the embassy in Canada to funnel intelligence back to China that they were collecting in the United States.

Host: Okay.

Dennis Molinaro: And nothing appeared to have happened with that at all that I could find. You had other instances where technology is sold to China. There were efforts to try to sell. There was an effort actually, where they did sell. Companies did sell the engines for China's first attack helicopters. Tried to do it again later. You had one instance in the press where Canada was was fine with selling China spy planes that would be equipped with technology from Israel. When that got exposed in the press, the deal seemingly fell apart as far as I could find. But we have all these warnings about the PRC's activities against and transnational organised organised crime, but also transnational crime or repression against dissidents. Haven't seen anything happen.

Host: Is it different now than in those cases?

Dennis Molinaro: I think the danger that we're into now is that because of how long some of these activities have continued, we've had warnings from from the Chinese Canadian community and different diaspora communities that they've been targeted by China, for instance, just using this as an example going back to the '80s and '90s. Okay. And so the difference now is when we know the activity has been going on that long, it emboldens people who are doing the activity. If there's no cost imposed, then there's no reason for them to stop.

Host: How? I don't want us to to sort of look into to the future, but how bad can this be?

Dennis Molinaro: It can be very bad. I mean, potentially when you're talking about a a state that is, you know, challenging the United States, which is still our traditional ally in spite of the problems we've been having, is is considered, I would say, an adversary to, to Canada, really in these activities that it's doing, it's bullying its neighbours. And if it's able to try to influence Canadians, if it's if it's able to harass Canadians on Canadian soil, that undermines our sovereignty, that undermines our democracy and our democratic institutions. And that, for me, is very troubling. If we can't offer protections to our people that are living here.

Host: You wrote a recent column for the National Post titled Diversifying Trade with With China. It's a losing play. Why do you think so?

Dennis Molinaro: Because, again, for a lot of the reasons that I just mentioned, you're you're dealing with a quote unquote partner that is been historically proven unreliable. And we're not talking about one administration like we've been having with problems with the United States. I'm talking about. And in that article, in that op ed, I continually point out, just briefly, the history of where China repeatedly weaponized trade against us. Canola. Yes, canola. Going back to 2008. Would find reasons to block its shipment. Would find reasons to change docking, storage fees and what have you and all kinds of matters related to it. And would sometimes just outright not accept it. And they did this to leverage us to try to to exert pressure on us to conform to a policy that they wanted.

Host: Canada agreeing to reducing tariffs and allowing Chinese EVs into the country. I can get the sense from our from what you said earlier. Not a good idea. But when we talk about trade and sort of when we talk about our neighbours to the South, we and you mentioned China being the second biggest trading partner. Does that not make sense to be going in that direction?

Dennis Molinaro: Not on strategic materials. And I would put EV in the category of strategic because of the technologies that are involved in an EV, because of the fact that we won't be able to control where the data that EVs collect go, because we don't have insights on what companies relationships will be in China with the PRC military. For all those reasons, it makes it unless we can be given subtype of assurances or guardrails, that we won't have to worry about those things.

Host: But we should note that a number of countries do have Chinese EVs and may not use them in government. In military.

Dennis Molinaro: So. Right. I mean, we've had instances where they've been restricted from being driven to certain locations. Advice given where you don't connect your cell phone to it. So you start to ask, why are you buying a car like that? If you have those kinds of problems, but those other instances as well, don't rely on having such an integrated North American auto market either. Okay. And we have auto production here too. That is going to get undercut by that, that trade. But it's not to say we shouldn't trade with China. We absolutely should. And it's totally fine to diversify trade with China. It's when we get into the realms of strategic technology and goods, and we have to go in understanding the relationship some companies might have with the state and the military, and also addressing the activity they've been doing here. You do all that, then it's possible.

Host: All right. In a recent post on X, you wrote about why the US doing business with China is different than Canada doing business with China. Yeah. Lay down the argument.

Dennis Molinaro: For sure. Different in the sense of the US. One is the world's largest economy. So when China tries to pressure them in a particular industry or tries to hurt them or retaliate, in a way the United States economy is large enough that it can absorb it. Simply put, it can absorb it, and it can retaliate harder. Okay. That we don't have that option. You look at the canola EV incident. We, in my opinion, completely buckled and caved on canola in exchange for dropping the tariff on EVs. What was our ability to retaliate to China that would have made a difference? It didn't seem like there was one. And along with that, the US has more safeguards in terms of export controls, entity lists, banning of certain Chinese companies if they have military partnerships. They have a foreign agent registry that they've had since the '30s that they use to go after people that are actually working secretly on behalf of the PRC state. We don't have any of those things.

Host: All right. Whether we like it or not, it does seem like Canada and China will have relations, as you mentioned. Of course, in your book, you offer a set of recommendations on what Canada can do to to kerb China's interference. Let us hear some of them.

Dennis Molinaro: So one, I think a number of recommendations that the inquiry made when it comes to election financing, those should those are easy implementations. Those should right away I think could easily be implemented. I would say standardising across the board when it comes to elections in terms of not just elections federally, but on the municipal and provincial level and in nomination contests, the rules should be the same. You should be. I don't see why you can't have people that are 18 and a citizen voting in a nomination contest. Why we need to have the age lowered to something like 14 and not even being. That doesn't make sense to me. It's it's an election. So those I think are easy fixes that should be made. But other things like the foreign agent registry, we need that to come in and we need that to have some teeth so that it doesn't just function as a way to manage influence. In other words, have a nefarious activity that we become okay with as long as we can kind of organise and manage it, one that actually is used to deter it, and there's some type of cost imposed for that kind of activity. So those are, I think, realistic fixes, that some of these things are already in play. I think they just need to be followed through.

Host: All right Dennis, we're going to leave it there. Really appreciate your insights. Thank you so much for this.

Dennis Molinaro: Thank you very much for having me I appreciate it.

Host: Prime Minister Mark Carney has made it clear that Canada's future involves closer ties with China. But is this the best way forward? Lynette Ong is a distinguished professor of Chinese politics at the University of Toronto, and the director of the China Governance Lab at U of T's Munk School of Global Affairs. And Lynette joins us in studio. How are you doing?

Lynette Ong: Good. How are you?

Host: I am doing well. Now let's talk. Given the state of US-Canada relations, some say that Canada is now freed from the pressure of bloc shaped politics and can engage with China in a more pragmatic way. What are your thoughts on that?

Lynette Ong: I would agree with that. If by blockchain politics you mean United States and its Western allies, I think United States have actually broken trust among a lot of allies, including Canada and European countries. So people. So countries are out there trying to pursue their own interests, often on an issue by issue basis. And in our case, China has been the second largest trading partner. I think it makes sense for for Canada to look to look to China, kind of to diversify away of our trade from the United States towards China. But I think we shouldn't stop at China. China would be the beginning of our of our diversification strategy. We should also look to Indo-Pacific and Europe.

Host: All right. We'll talk about some of those potential countries making deals. But some see Canada's trade deal with Beijing as risk management under pressure and not a pivot away from the US. What are your thoughts on that?

Lynette Ong: Like the Prime Minister has put it, I think it's a way of buying insurance. Yes, it's a risk management. It's not putting all our eggs in one basket. So diversifying our eggs in many different baskets. But that also means that we are pivoting away from the United States. We are diversifying our reliance away from the United States towards a bunch of other countries. And one of them, and the largest among them would be China. So it's a bit of both.

Host: Among Canadians, engagement with China remains politically sensitive, following years of hostility between the two governments, especially under Trudeau. How should Carney navigate that?

Lynette Ong: I think he has to walk a very fine, fine line. I think so far he has done pretty well, I would think. On the domestic front, we have seen a shift towards Canadians attitudes towards the United States. Under Trump, Unfavorability rating of the United States has actually gone up vis a vis Beijing. Beijing China used to be very unpopular in Canada for very obvious reasons. We have got two Canadians being detained for 1000 days, right. And I think on the domestic front, the domestic landscape has changed a little bit, has changed quite a bit under under Trump, Washington, D.C. is now more unpopular than Beijing, and that's reflected in the kind of latest public opinion poll, not only in Canada but across a lot of Western nations conducted by Pew Research. So on that front, he has got a little bit more mandate, but I think the government needs to go out there and not only sell to people that we need to pay more attention to China, but also be also be firm on China, not forgetting, you know, our commitment towards democracy in Taiwan and be able to come to trade between China and our commitments towards, you know, all the values that are still important to us, including democracy in Taiwan, human rights issues and so forth.

Host: What does firm look like?

Lynette Ong: You know, for instance, I think our business with Taiwan should go according as usual, you know, should should be as usual. We shouldn't prematurely pull MPs out of Taiwan trip. Okay. Right. We should not cancel any Taiwan trade deal that we have planned. We have planned for. I think that would be prematurely kowtowing. I think that would be prematurely being you know, I think with that, we are we are signalling to Beijing that we need them more than they need us. I think that's not necessarily true. You know, I think China is at a phase where economically it's weak. Real estate use accounts for 30% of GDP growth. Its economy, its economic growth has has not recovered to the pre-pandemic level. It probably never will. And it now needs to to depend on export led growth to drive its economy. And Canada is one of those places that it looks to. But more importantly, I think because Canada shares a border with the United States, used to be closest ally of the United States, and where the instruction to arrest Meng Wanzhou came from. Not to forget that. So in the in the age of kind of great power competition between the United States and China, we would think that China naturally wants a better relationship with Canada. So in that sense, you know, I think we should go in there, you know, with all the confidence and we, we we do have cards in our hands,

Host: Okay.

Lynette Ong: Is what I'm saying.

Host: I want to get a better understanding of the meetings that happened with Mark Carney just last month, but also the UK's prime minister, Keir Starmer. He had went but very different in terms of what had come out of it. Can you can you give us a little insight into how those two meetings would have gone?

Lynette Ong: Yeah. You know, Keir Starmer, the British prime minister of the Beijing trip, he was hammered at home. Right. But you know Mark Carney after that he went to Davos and then came back celebrated as a hero. They're two very different reception I think, you know, people would say that Britain gave away a little bit too much before the trip. He approved the mega embassy in in London with a lot of, you know, concern about potentially espionage and spies and, you know, underground tunnels and so on. So he gave away a little bit too much before he went to Beijing. So he was seen as kind of weak, giving concessions vis a vis China. Whereas us I think we have hold on to it a little bit more, more firmly. And we didn't actually give away a lot of concessions. The EV tariff reduction is actually restricted to a very small number of quarters.

Host: You bring up EV. So I need to talk about some critical minerals. The Trump administration recently announced a new US trade bloc. And that would help because China owns a pretty substantial share of the market. But Canada has not signed yet. Should Canada?

Lynette Ong: I'm not sure whether US has the credibility to mobilise any country to form a trade bloc, with its recent behaviour tone towards taking over Greenland, alienating a bunch of European allies. You see what happened in Munich security conference. People are not reassured. Trust has definitely broken Rubio. Right after Munich went to Hungary and spoke to Viktor Orban. People don't know where the United States stands. So what if we enter into a trade bloc on critical minerals with the United States? They could turn around and do something against us. I think without that sort of predictability and credibility, it will be difficult to lead. And any sort of alliance.

Host: With that. Canada is spearheading its own efforts to create a trading bloc between the European Union and a 12 nation Indo-Pacific bloc. This is we're talking, 1.5 billion people amongst all those nations. The US is not part of this. And I'm curious, can it succeed without the US with everything that you've mentioned?

Lynette Ong: Yeah. The proposal was between CBC and and and and a bunch of European Union countries. Right.

Host: And of course, Lynette, when you say CPTPP, we are talking about the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific partnership.

Lynette Ong: I think the very idea is kind of complementarity between these countries, which is more developing countries in the Indo-Pacific versus more, more industrialised nations in Europe. So if those two regions combined, I think would constitute a large proportion of the world's GDP, that would be a good counterbalance against the United States. I don't see that as kind of necessarily as whether we need the United States to succeed. But I think if there is enough complementarity and differences in comparative advantage among these countries, there's a lot of benefits to be gained. Yeah.

Host: Does this present a chance? You mentioned the speech at Davos. Here's an opportunity for the middle powers. Is this a chance for them to be for Canada to be more assertive on that world stage?

Lynette Ong: I think so I think so I think Canada is in the right place to lead because we are we used to be the closest ally to the United States and now we are not. So we have there's a lot of serious damage being done to Canadian diplomacy. And I think our prime prime minister, in addition to being a political leader, he's also an intellectual, someone who could conceptualise ideas, who could articulate kind of big ideas and deliver it to common people. With a combination of the two, I think we are in a good position to lead and mobilise countries and to stand to stand firm and get middle powers, hang together to advance our interests.

Host: Well, now we are going to leave it there, of course, something that we will continue to follow. Thank you so much for your insights.

Lynette Ong: Thank you for having me.

Host: I'm Jeyan. Thanks for watching The Rundown. What do you want to know more about? Email us at therundown@TVO.org or reach out to me on social media. And as always, let us know what you think. Until then, see you tomorrow.