Recommendations and findings from the 1997 Sidewinder report return to the spotlight in the wake of Washington’s call for action over border security.

By The Bureau

Summary

Author of the controversial 1997 Sidewinder report, a joint CSIS and RCMP study that found evidence of Canadian politicians under Chinese influence, has come forward with new details about the report’s alleged suppression.

Project Sidewinder claimed Beijing agents were funneling money into Canadian political parties and that communist spies had infiltrated Canadian assets and institutions. Now, with new allegations of China’s electoral interference in Canada, the Sidewinder report is once again in the spotlight.

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, the former CSIS intelligence officer who authored the report, claims a senior CSIS official ordered the destruction of key documents and the suppression of the explosive Sidewinder draft, which had the backing of a senior RCMP officer.

Juneau-Katsuya recounts creating three identical binders documenting the report’s findings. One was given to a senior CSIS official who ordered its destruction. The second copy went to the RCMP. Juneau-Katsuya kept the third until it was confiscated by his agency before he could submit it to SIRC, an independent intelligence watchdog charged with overseeing and reviewing the operations of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

SIRC documents reveal that an RCMP Chief Superintendent supported the forceful June 1997 Sidewinder draft, which named Hong Kong tycoons and flagged major firms. However, CSIS leadership disputed its findings and destroyed related documentation.

Juneau-Katsuya’s account of events is corroborated by retired RCMP officer Garry Clement, whose intelligence gathering in Hong Kong findings (in tandem with  former Canadian diplomat Brian McAdam) prompted the Sidewinder review.

Ultimately, CSIS rejected the report’s key findings, including the creation of a multi-agency task force to counter China’s state-backed criminal influence. The Chief Superintendent who supported the original draft, revealed as Richard Proulx by both Juneau-Katsuya and Clement, objected to alterations made to the rewritten Sidewinder report, changes which significantly misrepresented the information uncovered.

More than two decades later, U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats over Canada’s failure to curb fentanyl trafficking and transnational smuggling have brought the long-forgotten Canadian intelligence back under scrutiny, as well as the kind of organized crime strike force that Sidewinder originally proposed and that Washington is now pressuring Ottawa to implement.

Read the original version of this report by The Bureau at the publisher’s website here.

The main image for this piece was created by generative AI.

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