The Globe and Mail’s 2023 coverage of political interference in Canada by the Chinese government triggered a national debate, dominated the country’s news agenda, and ultimately led to a public inquiry that is currently underway.

Robert Fife and Steven Chase spent months building relationships with national security sources and went to extraordinary lengths to protect them. In all, the reporters wrote 17 stories based on information from their sources and from classified documents.

These documents constituted the largest leak of national security material in Canadian history. They outlined the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate Canada’s political system at every level.

The reporters’ initial February 17, 2023 story drew on top-secret and secret reports that exposed China’s strategy to disrupt the 2021 federal election. Chinese diplomats and their proxies backed the re-election of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and worked to defeat Conservative politicians they considered unfriendly to Beijing.

Several days later, Fife and Chase reported that the Chinese government had orchestrated $1 million in donations to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and the University of Montreal law school through wealthy Chinese donors, in hopes of influencing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. After the story was published, the Foundation returned all the money received from the Chinese donors, and most of its board of directors resigned.

In a subsequent story, Fife and Chase revealed that Beijing had targeted Conservative MP Michael Chong and his Hong Kong-based relatives over the MP’s campaign to spotlight China’s human rights abuses of the Uyghurs. The story shocked Chong, who had never been warned of this targeting by China, and it led to an extraordinary incident in which the prime minister, and high-placed national security officials were forced to publicly confirm the Globe’s reporting. The story identified the Chinese diplomat who had targeted Chong as Zhao Wei and, on May 9, Canada expelled him. This was the first case in decades of a Chinese diplomat being ejected from the country. The government later disclosed that former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole and NDP MP Jenny Kwan had also been targeted by China before and during the 2021 election.

The Globe’s reporting prompted Trudeau to appoint former Governor General David Johnston to investigate Chinese interference in Canadian elections, but all three major opposition parties called for Johnston to step down because of perceptions that he was too close to the prime minister. Johnston, who is a family friend and served on the Trudeau Foundation, resigned as special rapporteur, paving the way for a full public inquiry in 2024. 

Fife and Chase wrote additional stories about Chinese state involvement in advanced-technology research projects at Canadian universities; about the infiltration of Chinese graduate students into Canada to collect intelligence, after they had been denied U.S. visas; and about a Canadian bank that was susceptible to Chinese state influence.

One of the key national security sources for this series wrote an essay for The Globe explaining they had risked prison by speaking to the two reporters because internal options to address the threat had been ignored.

The Globe’s reporting on Chinese state interference in the democratic process fundamentally altered the way Canadians think about their government’s willingness to confront the issue in a serious way. These stories fueled discussion about the need for vigilance and stronger measures to protect Canadian democracy, values and institutions from foreign interference and espionage. 

Further reading:

• CSIS uncovered Chinese plan to donate to Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
• China views Canada as a ‘high priority’ for interference: CSIS report
• CSIS reports outline how China targets Canadian politicians, business leaders
• Chrystia Freeland rings national security alarm about founders of Canadian bank with suspected ties to China
• Freeland imposes extraordinary measures to force out founding investors of Wealth One Bank with alleged ties to China
• Canadian universities conducting joint research with Chinese military scientists
• China diverts some researchers to Canada after U.S. visa denials, CSIS says