I Once Believed Canadians Would Demand Better. Fifty Years On, I’m Not So Sure: Clement

Former Mountie Garry Clement says he’s speaking more candidly than before, as Ottawa remains inactive and legal threats to journalism loom.

By Garry Clement

OTTAWA — For most of my career, I believed that if Canadians truly understood the scale of criminal infiltration, foreign interference, and systemic mismanagement within our national institutions, they would demand better. I still believe that.

But after the past several years—marked by mounting revelations, official denials, and a troubling reluctance to confront hard truths—I have come to believe something else as well: silence is no longer an option.

That conviction is why I chose to revisit and expand Undercover, retitling it 50 Years of Dirty Money, Organized Crime and the RCMP. This second edition is not merely an update. It is a reckoning—driven by recent events, by newly available evidence, and by the hard-earned lessons of five decades spent on the front lines of law enforcement, intelligence, and organized crime investigations.

The decision to return to this story crystallized while I was assisting in the writing of Canada Under Siege: How PEI Became a Forward Operating Base for the PRC, a work that builds on investigative reporting and intelligence analysis by journalists and researchers who have spent years documenting Chinese Communist Party influence operations in Canada.

That project reinforced a reality many of us have warned about for decades: foreign interference does not announce itself. It embeds quietly, patiently, and often in places considered too small, too remote, or too politically inconvenient to attract sustained scrutiny.

Prince Edward Island was not chosen because it was powerful, but because it was overlooked. That lesson applies nationally.

At the same time, I reviewed recent policy research from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, whose scholars have repeatedly highlighted Canada’s exposure to transnational organized crime, illicit finance, and hostile-state interference. Their conclusions echoed what experienced investigators have said for years: Canada’s political structures and law-enforcement frameworks remain ill-suited to confront adversaries who are well-funded, strategically patient, and unburdened by democratic hesitation.

These are not abstract vulnerabilities. They are systemic ones.

Further confirmation came from an analysis published by Canadian Pulse / American Pulse (January 7, 2026), which drew directly on the federal government’s own 2025 National Risk Assessment. The figures are staggering: between $45 billion and $113 billion is laundered in Canada every year—roughly 2–5% of national GDP.

Globally, money laundering is estimated to range from $800 billion to over $2 trillion annually, with some recent analyses suggesting figures as high as $5.5 trillion. What was once viewed as a criminal problem is now inseparable from state-linked activity, sanctions evasion, corruption, and foreign influence operations.

The Pulse analysis underscored a truth many insiders already know: while Canada has improved reporting and compliance rules, it still lags badly in the one area that matters most—enforcement.

As Canadian Pulse accurately noted, FINTRAC, Canada’s financial intelligence agency, receives millions of suspicious transaction reports every year. Yet it has no authority to investigate, compel testimony, freeze assets, seize property, or lay charges.

FINTRAC’s director has put it plainly: “We are an intelligence agency, not an enforcement agency.”

That distinction came into sharp relief this week through The Bureau’s reporting on the TD Bank money-laundering case, where U.S. authorities moved to dismantle and prosecute a network they believe was directed from, and enabled in, Canada.

A former TD Bank employee in New York pleaded guilty Tuesday to helping a Chinese money-laundering network move nearly half a billion U.S. dollars through TD accounts in exchange for bribes, The Bureau reported.

A senior U.S. official said FINTRAC’s $9 million Canadian fine — levied only after a U.S. criminal investigation that produced $3 billion U.S. in penalties against TD, with no comparable criminal investigation in Canada — has become a major point of friction in Washington.

“What does Canada do on their side?” the official said. “So think about what that means for those groups in Canada that are operating through TD.”

This is the structural flaw at the heart of Canada’s anti–money-laundering system. We gather information exceptionally well—but we do not act on it.

The intelligence FINTRAC produces is passed to the RCMP, which has repeatedly warned—publicly and under oath—that it lacks the resources and structural capacity to pursue even a fraction of the cases referred to it.

At the Cullen Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia, senior RCMP officers testified:
“We do not have the capacity to investigate the volume of intelligence FINTRAC provides.”

Another officer stated plainly:
“Warnings about large-scale cash movements were raised for years without meaningful action.”

And on the nature of the networks involved:
“This is a sophisticated underground banking network operating between China, Mexico, and British Columbia.”

These are not activist claims. They are statements from Canada’s own federal police.

The Cullen Commission’s findings were unequivocal:

• “Money laundering in British Columbia is a problem of staggering magnitude.”

• “Canada’s anti-money-laundering regime is not designed to produce convictions.”

• “Money laundering has had a measurable impact on housing affordability in British Columbia.”

The subsequent Hogue Commission echoed similar concerns at the national level regarding foreign interference. Yet once again, meaningful implementation has lagged. Political caution and institutional inertia threaten to dilute urgency into process.

For those who have seen this cycle repeat, the disappointment is familiar.

What remains most troubling is the ongoing dysfunction within the RCMP’s senior leadership. While front-line members continue to serve with professionalism and dedication, the institution struggles to adapt to a world of cyber-enabled crime, state-linked financial networks, and transnational underground banking systems.

The consequences are not theoretical. They affect Canada’s credibility, security, and sovereignty.

Journalists and authors such as Sam Cooper and Dean Baxendale have continued to emphasize these uncomfortable truths publicly, often at considerable personal and professional risk. Their work has played a crucial role in bringing issues of foreign interference, illicit finance, and state-linked influence into the public domain.

My book on developments in Prince Edward Island is grounded in documented evidence and public testimony. Yet it has become the target of legal threats — even as the Premier has called for a RCMP investigation, and momentum builds for a federal public inquiry supported by the former Solicitor General, the Honourable Wayne Easter.

The contradiction is telling.

In Canada, the reflex to intimidate or silence criticism still seems stronger than the will to confront the underlying problem.

It remains to be seen whether Washington’s new guidance directing U.S. diplomats to prioritize specific categories of human-rights reporting will also surface evidence of transnational repression—including what some experts describe as “lawfare,” where legal threats are deployed as an instrument of intimidation by hostile states.

The stakes are heightened by the fact that think tanks across North America—and lawmakers on the Congressional Select Committee focused on Chinese Communist Party influence—are already examining many of the same issues my book covers, including questions around farmland exploitation and opaque investment structures.

The decision to speak more plainly in this second edition was also shaped by the recent passing of my friend and mentor, Bob Preston. Bob embodied the principle that integrity and persistence still matter, even inside institutions resistant to change.

His passing underscored a hard truth: if those who understand the system do not speak now, the opportunity may be lost.

This new edition goes further because it must.

Canadians deserve a clearer understanding of how political timidity, fragmented authority, and leadership failures have created conditions that hostile actors exploit with ease.

This is not simply a memoir. It is an examination of how Canada arrived here—and what it will take to change course.

Some readers will find this book uncomfortable. That is unavoidable. Comfort has never produced reform.

Canada stands at a crossroads. We can continue collecting information without consequence, or we can finally build a system capable of acting on what we already know.

I am choosing to speak now, more candidly than before, because people like Bob Preston—and journalists like Sam Cooper—have shown that one honest voice, used at the right moment, can still matter.

Whether Canada chooses to listen remains an open question.

But complacency can no longer be an excuse.