As the current federal election campaign unfolds, I have been watching with a painful sense of déjà vu the Globe and Mail’s thinly disguised attempts to influence its outcome. Their recent coverage of Liberal candidate has become such a gaslighting exercise that even Prime Minister Mark Carney felt it necessary to say, “Ok, well, I'm sorry, but you can't believe everything you read in the Globe and Mail”.
Once again, using freedom of the press as a shield (and a sword), the Globe and Mail and Global News’ former employee, Sam Cooper, are employing the most underhanded tactics of insinuations and baseless, quasi-racist accusations of certain Chinese Canadian citizens as having too close connections with the Chinese government to assassinate their characters andpermanently damage the reputations and careers of loyal Canadian citizens.*
I speak from experience as the victim of conspiratorial vicious attacks and dirty political games instigated by CSIS bad actors leaking fictitious and embellished intelligence information who our former Prime Minister himself condemned as criminals.
After 15 years of scrutiny and personally disturbing invasions of my privacy by CSIS, there has never been one shred of proof to justify the false innuendo against me that the Globe and Mail and Sam Cooper so vehemently reported as if they were truths. In fact, their persistent and heavy reliance on unnamed sources has made a mockery of the cornerstones of journalistic ethics.
In Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue’s Final Report of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference, at which I willingly testified, she asserts that: “While allegations of interference involving elected officials have dominated public and media discourse, the reality is that misinformation and disinformation pose an even greater threat to democracy.”
Most troubling, Commissioner Hogue uncovered evidence where CSIS admitted their intelligence turned out to be completely erroneous, leading her to strongly caution that “intelligence must be used responsibly, taking into account its limitations, particularly when acting upon intelligence will have direct and significant impacts on an individual.”
These statements should alarm all Canadians, especially when it includes a media outlet like the Globe and Mail that purports to be one that “offers the most authoritative news in Canada”,but for some reason continues to repeatedly target members of Chinese Canadian descent who are simply seeking to raise the voice of their community and contribute to our representative democracy.
Canada is home to a uniquely diverse population who trace their origins to hundreds of countries and speak hundreds of languages. This vibrant diversity is especially advantageous in this moment of worldwide economic uncertainty, allowing us to leverage our people’s substantial and vast global ties to maximize new opportunities and reduce our US trade dependency.
Now more than ever, politicians of all ethnicities who are devoted to public service must be free to build relationships across the globe without fear of the media disinformation and misinformation from mere association.
As I did in March 2023, I am once again calling on the new Prime Minister from whichever party who will be duly elected on April 28 to take urgent and genuine action to expose the self-admitted unlawful CSIS leakers and bring them to justice. There must be a commensurate overhaul of CSIS’ substantial resources toward thwarting real rather than imagined threats to national security, and to do so in a manner that does not improperly implicate innocent parties.
Additionally, I urge our government to investigate the complicitous and self-serving relationship between CSIS and selected journalists that renders them criminally compliant pipelines for sensational disinformation. Government must reinforce that an important role of the free press isto educate and inform the public with honesty and integrity in the backdrop of the freedoms of expression for which the press has been bestowed.
Michael Chan
April 18, 2025
