Prince Edward Island is supposed to be the kind of place you visit to remember what a country once looked like—clean, quiet, untouched. Yet somehow, it’s now the epicenter of one of the most shocking stories in Canada: how a province of 170,000 people became a forward operating base for a foreign power, and how Ottawa let it happen.
It started small. Land sales that didn’t make sense. Empty houses bought with cash. A network of properties linked to a Buddhist organization with curious ties and deeper pockets than anyone could explain. Locals started asking questions. The provincial regulator dragged its feet. Ottawa shrugged. And a story that should’ve been national front-page news became another bureaucratic secret.
Then came Canada Under Siege—a book from publisher Dean Baxendale and former intelligence and law enforcement officers Michel Juneau-Katsuya and Garry Clement. They followed the money and the shell companies and found a pattern: Chinese Communist Party–aligned entities quietly embedding themselves in local economies, real estate, and politics across the country. PEI was just the visible tip of something much larger.
Canada Under Siege: How PEI Became a Forward Operating Base for the Chinese Communist Party
Baxendale joined me along with Garry Clement, who used to run the RCMP’s proceeds-of-crime division, and The Honourable Wayne Easter, a 28-year MP and former Solicitor General who first received the citizen dossier that sparked this investigation. The story they told was not speculation—it was documentation.
Dean explained how the book began as a research project and turned into an exposé that Ottawa’s political class immediately wanted to bury. Within 24 hours of publication, the algorithms turned against it. Reviews flooded in—most suspiciously uniform. “Suppression strategy,” the publisher called it.
Garry walked through the money trail. Cash-heavy land transactions, numbered companies, and brokers moving funds through Hong Kong—classic “Vancouver Model” laundering. He described a law-enforcement system that’s lost its teeth, where complex cases die under disclosure burdens, plea bargains, and politics. Canada, he said, needs its own RICO statutes. Instead, we have a patchwork of policies that look tough and act weak.
Wayne Easter brought the political reality: this isn’t a partisan issue. He’s Liberal by pedigree, but even he says Ottawa’s response has been pathetic. A small province sent letters demanding federal investigations while the national government busied itself with photo-ops. “When a province has to ask the RCMP to investigate foreign interference,” he said, “it means Ottawa has already failed.”
They all agreed on one point—this isn’t just about PEI. It’s about elite capture, the subtle corrosion that happens when foreign interests buy silence with money, access, and respectability. It’s how democracies rot from the inside out.
So what happens now? PEI has done its part. The government issued formal requests to the RCMP and FINTRAC. The rest of Canada is waiting to see if those agencies actually act—or file it away under “ongoing.” Because every time Ottawa promises transparency, what we get instead is process: inquiries, consultations, and months of nothing.
The truth is simple: a handful of determined people exposed something real, and the institutions built to protect us don’t want to deal with it. That’s the story.
If a tiny province on the edge of the Atlantic can find the courage to shine a light on this, what’s stopping the rest of the country? Maybe the same thing that always does—power, money, and fear of the truth.
Listen to the full conversation with Dean Baxendale, Garry Clement, and Wayne Easter. Decide for yourself whether this sounds like a conspiracy—or a cover-up hiding in plain sight.
🎙️ Guests: Dean Baxendale (@dmcbaxendale) — Optimum Publishing International; Garry Clement (@garryClement2); The Hon. Wayne Easter (@wayneaster)
