Hong Kong tycoons such as Li Ka-Shing and large companies such as Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. and China International Trust Investment Corporation (CITIC), a state-owned investment firm, were implicated. However, CSIS management disputed its findings and, according to a 1999 SIRC review, destroyed relevant documents—a move the committee criticized as an "overly broad interpretation" of the transition files.
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Clement and Juneau-Katsuya identified the RCMP officer who supported the June 1997 Sidewinder report as Chief Inspector Richard Proulx, who oversaw national security operations.
Juneau-Katsuya and Clement's accounts—apparently the first time he has spoken publicly about the SIRC's Sidewinder review—are consistent with a Globe and Mail article citing a letter from Proulx dated May 4, 1998. In his letter, Proulx expressed concern that the revised version of Project Sidewinder had been changed so significantly that it distorted the original conclusions.
"It has become clear that a significant amount of information contained in the original draft has been altered, sometimes inaccurately, and in some cases completely removed," Proulx wrote.
He objected to CSIS's decision to eliminate all of Sidewinder's recommendations, including the creation of a multi-agency task force to counter Chinese state-sponsored criminal influence. The original report would have proposed a joint intelligence unit involving CSIS, the RCMP, customs and immigration, and representatives from Canada's departments of foreign affairs and international trade.
CSIS, in a letter responding to Proulx, acknowledged rejecting Sidewinder's main conclusions:
"The service does not and does not support the conclusions or directions of the original version, produced under the banner of Project Sidewinder," CSIS wrote to Proulx, then director of the RCMP's Criminal Intelligence Directorate. According to the SIRC investigation, the final version of the Sidewinder report, released in January 1999, came unacknowledged and was shared only with senior RCMP officials and a few government insiders, ending the investigation. Instead of a national security review or the creation of the Sidewinder interagency task force originally envisioned, the report was quietly buried.
Now, more than two decades later, Washington is pressuring Ottawa to create exactly the kind of organized crime strike force that Sidewinder originally proposed. As U.S. President Donald Trump threatens draconian tariffs for Canada's failure to crack down on fentanyl trafficking and transnational smuggling, Canada's long-forgotten intelligence services are once again under scrutiny.
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