EXCLUSIVE: Floor-Crossing MP Michael Ma Was Director of Group Explicitly Named as United Front Organization in Landmark Jamestown Foundation Study

The Chinese Canadian Conservative Association — which endorsed Ma, pressured two Conservative leaders to resign, is now identified in a major new study from Washington think tank.

OTTAWA — The diaspora organization that backed Conservative-turned-Liberal MP Michael Ma — and counts him as a former director — is now explicitly named in a landmark new study as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas United Front influence network. The same association orchestrated pressure campaigns to oust two successive Conservative leaders over their stances toward Beijing, and its associates appear in Ma’s own campaign finance filings. The finding raises urgent new questions about one of the most consequential floor crossings in recent Canadian parliamentary history.

The Jamestown Foundation’s Mapping Overseas United Front Work in Democratic States, published this month, identifies 575 documented organizations operating inside Canada — nearly five times the per-capita penetration rate of the United States and the highest density among the four democracies surveyed.

Among them, in the report’s section on political party-focused United Front groups, the Chinese Canadian Conservative Association is named directly alongside its Liberal counterpart as part of a cross-partisan influence structure designed, in the report’s own words, to ensure Beijing can “address all sides — including whichever party happens to be in power at any given time.”

Michael Ma, the MP for Markham-Unionville, crossed from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Party in December 2025, citing a need for “unity and decisive action” and stating the move was intended to reduce political division and better serve constituents by aligning with the governing party.

The Bureau has previously reported on Ma’s ties to the CCCA, the group’s long record of Beijing-aligned political intervention, and Ma’s attendance at a Markham banquet alongside Chinese consular officials.

Chinese-language outlets including EasyCA show Ma listed as a director of the CCCA in 2019, with additional Chinese-language coverage later describing him as a leader. The Jamestown report now provides the analytical and evidentiary framework that places those ties, and the CCCA’s sustained pattern of political intervention, squarely within the documented United Front system.

Notably, a photograph from Ma’s 2025 Conservative campaign launch shows Ma standing beside the very same CCCA founder who led the October 2021 press conference demanding Erin O’Toole’s resignation — the same individual who would later call for Pierre Poilievre to step down as well.

A Beijing Pressure Group by Design

The Jamestown report is unambiguous about the function of political party-focused United Front groups. They “target local politicians and leaders to promote PRC interests,” “mobilize voters to vote for candidates most supportive of Beijing,” and — in the finding most directly applicable to what The Bureau has documented in Canada — are deployed by the Party to “exert pressure on political foundations and parties.”

Since joining the Liberals, Ma’s positioning within the new government has been swift and notable. He accompanied Prime Minister Carney on a trade mission to Beijing and has since appeared in official and semi-official photographs in close proximity to figures at the center of Carney’s power circle, including Tim Hodgson, the Carney ally whom some reports have credited with playing a key role in persuading Ma to cross the floor.

The Jamestown report’s most strategically significant finding — and the one that most directly illuminates the full arc of the Ma story — is its documentation of what researchers describe as the CCP’s deliberately non-ideological approach to diaspora political organizations. The Party, the report states, cultivates corresponding organizations within every major political party in host countries precisely because it is “most beneficial for the CCP to be able to address all sides.”

The CCCA’s documented track record maps with precision onto that description.

In October 2021, following Erin O’Toole’s election loss, the group convened a widely covered press conference blaming his “anti-China” stance and demanding his resignation. The group’s founder — a sitting Markham Regional Councillor and three-time former Conservative candidate — served as its public face, telling reporters the arrest of the Two Michaels occurred because “Canada started the war,” that China had a right to fly military aircraft into Taiwan’s air-defence zone, and that Canada should not publicly criticize Beijing’s human rights record.

In April 2025, during the final stretch of the federal campaign, the CCCA convened another media event urging Chinese Canadians to “vote carefully” — stressing support for “the candidate they approve of, rather than the party.” Michael Ma was the Conservative candidate in Markham, where the CCCA holds its political press conferences. That framing is consistent with the cross-partisan hedging strategy Jamestown describes as central to Beijing’s political influence methodology: not loyalty to a party, but leverage over candidates regardless of partisan affiliation.

Following the Conservative defeat, the CCCA surfaced once more, calling for Poilievre to “actively resign.” It was the second consecutive Conservative leader the group had moved against.

While the Jamestown report’s identification of the CCCA as a United Front-linked organization raises significant questions about the networks surrounding Ma’s floor crossing, there is no allegation or evidence that Ma himself was acting under United Front motivations or direction.

The organizational ties between Ma and the CCCA extend well beyond the campaign launch photograph.