China’s Political and Cyber Warfare: Why Canada Needs to Wake Up Now

A police officer stands guard outside the Tianjin Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Center during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, China, on Sept. 1, 2025. Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

Some 42 years ago, I found myself in a sparsely-decorated office in the Sir Leonard Tilley Building, part of a government complex in the southern part of Ottawa. I was there to receive my “indoctrination” for what I had been led to believe was a job as a multilingual analyst for the Department of National Defence. In actual fact, I was being read-in on the mandate of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada’s signals intelligence agency.