Xinhua, created by the Chinese Communist Party in the 1930s to handle revolutionary propaganda, has grown into a multimedia empire with offices across the world and throughout China. It is run by the Chinese government in Beijing.
It is also widely known in western intelligence agencies to have links to China's intelligence services, a former senior intelligence official with CSIS told The Canadian Press.
“Basically, it's a cover,” said Michel Juneau-Katsuya, who now heads a private corporate security company.
“We're not talking about just people collaborating with the intelligence services. We're talking about people trained as intelligence officers to operate in foreign countries.”
Mr. Juneau-Katsuya said CSIS keeps tabs on Xinhua journalists in Canada, so Mr. Dechert's relationship with Ms. Shi should have raised “all the red flags you can think of.”
“So we've got here a serious breach in this exercise. Because this person should have revealed his relationship with that woman, a relationship that from the get-go never should have existed, period,” he said.
CSIS director Richard Fadden has suggested some Canadian politicians are influenced by foreign governments. He singled out China as particularly aggressive.
Mr. Dechert accompanied the Prime Minister to China in 2009, and clippings from a local Mississauga, Ont., newspaper suggest he has a keen interest in Chinese business and trade.
According to his disclosure to the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner's office, Mr. Dechert and his wife Ruth Clark accepted an all-expense-paid trip to Taiwan in January of 2010.
China and Taiwan split amid a civil war in 1949, and relations remain rocky to this day. Beijing still considers the island part of its territory.
The Chinese International Economic Co-operation paid a total of $5,697 for Mr. Dechert and Clark's nine-day trip, including hotel, food and meals.
The purpose of the trip was to “promote binational economic co-operation,” according to Mr. Dechert's public statement of sponsored travel.
Mr. Baird has two parliamentary secretaries. Mr. Dechert's responsibilities are for North America, not Asia, a government source told The Canadian Press.
The main role of parliamentary secretaries is to answer questions in the House of Commons when the minister is absent. They don't normally have access to secret cabinet-level information, and the only information Mr. Dechert likely had were briefing notes to answer Opposition queries in question period, the source said Saturday.
Another government source confirmed that Mr. Dechert does not handle Asia-Pacific matters, and said there is no record of him being briefed on anything related to China.
