The Han Dong defamation law suit, an update
Or, how a journalist spun the secret spinners
Here’s the chronology.
Sam Cooper, then employed by Global News as an investigative reporter, broke a story on March 22, 2023, with an explosive headline:
“Liberal MP Han Dong secretly advised Chinese diplomat in 2021 to delay freeing Two Michaels: sources”
At this stage, Cooper, who had begun to write stories about Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) interference in Canada’s 2019 federal election back in November of 2022, was in a battle with the Globe and Mail for eyeballs. The Globe had its own confidential sources and was producing its own headline stories about Chinese foreign interference, especially in the 2021 federal election.
Cooper led off his March 22, 2023, story with this statement:
“Liberal MP Han Dong, who is at the centre of Chinese influence allegations, privately advised a senior Chinese diplomat in February 2021 that Beijing should hold off freeing Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, according to two separate national security sources.”
On the surface this might have looked like responsible journalism, not least the implication that Cooper had corroborated his story by relying on more than one source, and that his sources had given him definitive information about the allegation. It is probably worth noting that the statement that Han Dong was at the “centre” of Chinese influence allegations was nothing more than a reference to the fact that he had become something of a centre-piece for Cooper’s own reporting.
A week later, Han Dong, who left the Liberal caucus of his own volition in response to the Cooper story, filed a notice of libel.
A year then passed before Global News tried the gambit of filing an anti-SLAPP (SLAPP stands for “Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation”) motion to stop the Han Dong law suit. [1] Anti-SLAPP motions are meant to enhance free speech protections, especially when Davids find themselves in battles with Goliaths, with the Goliaths often being individuals or corporations with deep pockets, phalanxes of lawyers, reputations to protect and a desire to silence critics.
An Anti-SLAPP motion didn’t make a good fit with the Han Dong case. In fact, there is a bit of role reversal, with Global News effectively trying to silence a critic of its reporting by trying to bring the lawsuit against it to an abrupt end. The tactic didn’t work. It was dismissed in a judgement (“reasons for decision”) arrived at by the Ontario Superior Court on June 19, 2024. [2]
Global was ordered to pay costs and remains on the hook for $15 million as the law suit against it proceeds. Sam Cooper has left Global News.
The Ontario Superior Court ruling not only revealed the shoddiness of Mr. Cooper’s reporting methods, it also cast some truly alarming light on the behind-the-scenes activities of leakers within the federal government.
Let’s look at what was revealed about Cooper’s sources. There are four of them—that in itself is pretty shocking. Two of them (Sources 1 and 2) are identified as CSIS officials. One reached out to Cooper as early as 2020. A third source is identified as a “senior Canadian intelligence officer with knowledge of the activities of the Privy Council Office.” This person appears to have been Cooper’s motherlode, feeding the journalist with classified documents from PCO, CSIS, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat and from Daniel Jean, the former National Security and intelligence Adviser to the PM.
One of the CSIS sources (source 2) and source 3, let’s call him or her mother, fed Cooper the information that CSIS had intercepted a telephone conversation between Dong and the Chinese consulate in Toronto. That in itself is a serious breach of intelligence sources and methods. The conversation was in Mandarin, but an English translation or summary was prepared. The sources refused to provide Cooper with the translation or summary, so he had no way to verify the contents of the conversation. But he went ahead with his blockbuster story nonetheless.
A fourth source, also an “intelligence community operative” (but not identified as from CSIS) told Cooper about irregularities in Dong’s riding and that the CSIS opinion (what is a CSIS opinion, by the way?) was that Dong was a witting affiliate in PRC attempts at election interference. This “opinion” has not been born out by the evidence to date and was refuted by David Johnston in his report as Independent Special Rapporteur.
Four independent sources, all apparently politically motivated by a concern that the Trudeau government was not, in their personal view, doing enough about PRC foreign interference. As the Ontario Superior court ruling reveals, they all worked in “different offices, in different departments, some of them in different cities and none of them worked directly together.” That’s a very leaky ship with some pretty serious ethical and morale issues among its crew.
To add to the picture of a journalist being led on by his sources, there is this. The Ontario Superior Court found that Cooper “did not keep all his notes” (of his conversations with his sources) and that “the retained notes of his contacts with his sources do not contain a reference to Dong having advised a Chinese diplomat to “delay” and “hold off’ freeing the two Michaels. So much for the Cooper headline.
When Cooper sent an email to Han Dong requesting comment on his story, one day before its publication, he did not put the allegation to Han Dong that he had advocated that the PRC hold on to the two Michaels and thus gave him no opportunity to refute the key charge. I am not a professional journalist but that sounds like a pretty blatant breach of journalistic ethics.
As the Court states, the Global News stories about Dong have never been changed, edited or retracted. They remain out there for online readers and viewers.
The court judgement concludes that Global News engaged in an abusive anti-SLAPP process and that “the matter of Mr. Dong’s communications with the Chinese is worthy of the freedom of expression of an open court decision.”
Hear, hear. Let the trial continue.
[1] Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Free Expression has an excellent backgrounder on Anti-SLAPP legislation, https://cfe.torontomu.ca/guidesadvice/anti-slapp-legislation-backgrounder#:~:text=Anti%2DSLAPP%20laws%20are%20designed,abusive%20purposes%20(e.g.%20to%20silence
[2] Dong v. Global News, 2024 ONSC 3532, https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2024/2024onsc3532/2024onsc3532.pdf;
CBC/Canadian Press, “Judge finds no documentation to support Global News’ reporting on Han Dong allegations,” https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/global-news-han-dong-lawsuit-1.7241936
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Perhaps those poor whistleblowers had an interest in assuring that people like yourself who somehow at all costs protect an establishment narrative that protects government malfeasance and corruption through soft power engagement are exposed. The old methodologies for understanding threat vectors are now global and not made in Ottawa and the parameters to which parliamentarians are accountable to the pubic need drastic reform.
A 2000's view on the PRC's commitment to Rule of Law and human rights reforms seems to be why our government was slow rolling its reaction to China's hybrid war operations in Canada. It is clear that the government took decisions on a plethora of public policy initiatives that were favourable to Beijing while certainly accruing some benefit to Canada.
If Han Dong is innocent, then fantastic, but nothing can take away the fact that the PRC installed him through fraud and he became an MP. That is more than enough for most Canadians to ask that he resign from parliament and the Liberals should have known better.
With FARA, the authorities will have a guide on who's who in the zoo and perhaps academics funded thought Chinese proxy companies will also face the music someday.
I'll speak up for the integrity of our intelligence agencies, and say, when it comes to leaking, I'm against it. I can't understand why they haven't been identified. Unless they have been, and quietly shuffled off. Which I would be quite okay with.