Maple Leaks | Transparency & Pattern Documentation
The sequence is now documented in public record. It is not coordinated in any conspiratorial sense — there is no evidence of back-channel agreements or synchronized planning. What there is evidence of is four countries arriving at the same conclusion independently, and acting on it simultaneously.
Canada signed a trade agreement with China in January 2026 following Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to Beijing — the first major bilateral deal with China in years, concluded while Washington threatened 100% tariffs on Canadian goods if Ottawa pursued exactly that relationship.
The United Kingdom signed a “strategic and consistent relationship” framework with China on January 29, 2026, following Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit — the first by a British PM in eight years. Starmer brought a delegation of 60 business leaders, approved a sprawling new Chinese embassy in London, and described the meeting with Xi Jinping as “productive” and the relationship as being in a “good, strong place.”
Australia invited Carney to address its parliament in March 2026, making him only the second Canadian PM ever to do so. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese publicly endorsed Carney’s Davos speech, describing it as consistent with his own position and calling for middle-power cooperation.
New Zealand began distancing itself from Five Eyes consensus positions years earlier, with Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta stating in April 2021 that New Zealand was “uncomfortable” with using the intelligence alliance to confront China and wanted to pursue its own bilateral relationship.
This is not speculation. It is the public record. And the pattern is too consistent to be coincidental.
What the Public Record Shows
Maple Leaks exists to publish leaked and declassified documents revealing gaps between government statements and government actions. In this case, no leak is required. The governments themselves are documenting the fracture in real time, in public statements, official press releases, and parliamentary announcements. The transparency is deliberate.
The question is not whether the fracture is happening. The question is what it means.
The Canada-China Timeline
January 9, 2026: Carney visits Beijing, signs trade agreement focused on critical minerals, green technology, and market access diversification.
January 14, 2026: Trump threatens 100% tariffs on Canada if Ottawa signs a trade deal with China.
January 15, 2026: Carney responds by stating Canada will not be “dictated to” on trade relationships, and that diversification is a strategic necessity, not a negotiable preference.
January 20, 2026: Carney delivers Davos speech calling on nations to accept the end of the rules-based global order and build middle-power coalitions to avoid economic subordination.
The sequence matters. The China deal was concluded before the public articulation of the middle-power thesis, and before the Trump threat escalated to the 100% tariff level. That means the decision to pivot to China was not reactive — it was strategic. And it was already underway when Carney made it explicit at Davos.
The UK-China Timeline
January 28-31, 2026: Starmer visits China — first British PM visit in eight years — with 60-member business delegation.
January 29, 2026: UK and China sign framework for “strategic and consistent relationship,” including £600 million in immediate benefits and commitments on AI, green technology, education, and finance.
January 24, 2026 (pre-visit): UK approves sprawling new Chinese embassy in London after years of delays over political and security concerns.
January 30, 2026 (during visit): Trump warns UK it is “very dangerous” to do business with China, stating “if you are integrated with the United States economically or you are dependent on the United States, Trump will use that as a vulnerability and exploit it.”
The UK visit happened after Carney’s Davos speech and after the Canada-China deal. That suggests coordination at some level, or at minimum, that London watched Ottawa’s move and concluded the political cost of doing the same had dropped significantly. Either way, the pattern holds: another non-US Five Eyes member pivoting to China while Washington applies economic coercion to prevent it.
The Australia Sequence
October 2025: Canada and Australia sign bilateral agreement on critical minerals cooperation.
January 25, 2026: Albanese announces Carney will address Australian Parliament in March, publicly endorses Carney’s Davos thesis.
Context: Australia’s AUKUS submarine deal with the US and UK is visibly faltering. The US Navy cannot deliver Virginia-class boats on schedule, and a retired UK rear admiral has warned that Britain lacks the workforce to deliver its share of the programme. The submarines that were supposed to arrive are not arriving. The deal that was supposed to anchor Australia’s defence posture for decades is in question.
Australia is not pivoting to China in the way Canada and the UK have. But it is publicly aligning with Carney’s middle-power thesis, deepening bilateral ties with Canada outside of US frameworks, and signalling openness to alternatives. That is not neutrality. That is hedging.
The New Zealand Precedent
New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta stated in April 2021 — three years before the current sequence — that New Zealand was “uncomfortable” with expanding Five Eyes to confront China and would pursue its own bilateral relationship. At the time, the statement was treated as an outlier. In retrospect, it was the first public signal that the non-US members of Five Eyes were no longer willing to subordinate their economic interests to American strategic preferences.
The pattern began with New Zealand. It has now extended to Canada, the UK, and (in more limited form) Australia. Four of the five eyes. All moving in the same direction. All within the same twelve-month window.
What This Is Not
This is not a formal break. No country has left Five Eyes. No intelligence-sharing agreements have been terminated. The surveillance infrastructure documented by Edward Snowden in 2013 — the ECHELON system, the XKeyscore databases, the bulk collection programmes — remains operational. Canadian communications still flow through American servers. British GCHQ still coordinates with NSA. The technical architecture of the alliance has not changed.
This is also not an alliance with China. None of the four countries signing trade deals or pursuing diplomatic resets with Beijing are abandoning their security relationships with Washington. They are diversifying. They are hedging. They are building alternatives. But they are not switching sides.
What this is is a documented pattern of strategic de-risking across all four non-US members of the Five Eyes alliance, happening simultaneously, in public, and without coordination but with obvious mutual reinforcement.
What the Transparency Reveals
The governments are being transparent about this because the alternative — conducting the same pivots quietly — would be worse. If Canada signed a trade deal with China without announcing it publicly, and it leaked six months later, the political cost would be catastrophic. The accusation would be deception, conspiracy, betrayal. By doing it openly, by announcing it in press releases and parliamentary statements, the governments are making a different argument: that this is not betrayal, it is adaptation. That the relationship with the US has become untenable, and that alternatives are not just permissible but necessary.
The transparency is the message. It is a signal to Washington that the subordination is over. It is a signal to domestic populations that the governments are acting in national interest, not alliance obligation. And it is a signal to each other — to the other non-US Five Eyes members — that the move is safe, that others are doing it too, and that the political cover exists.
That is why the sequence accelerated after Carney’s Davos speech. He broke the seal. He said publicly what the others were thinking privately. And once he said it, the cost of others saying it dropped to zero.
The Intelligence Implications
Five Eyes is not just a policy alliance. It is an intelligence-sharing network built on the assumption of aligned strategic interests. When those interests diverge — when Canada prioritizes trade with China over alignment with Washington, when the UK does the same, when Australia hedges, when New Zealand opts out — the intelligence-sharing framework becomes a liability rather than an asset.
Because here is what intelligence-sharing means in practice: it means Canadian signals intelligence collected by CSE flows through NSA systems. It means British GCHQ intercepts are accessible to American analysts. It means that any country within Five Eyes has access to the communications, the metadata, the surveillance data of the other four.
And it means that if one member of the alliance is conducting economic and diplomatic engagement with a country the US considers a strategic competitor, the US has access to the intelligence that member is collecting on that engagement.
That is not just a policy problem. That is a sovereignty problem.
The fracture we are documenting is political and economic. But the deeper fracture — the one that has not yet happened publicly but that the political fracture makes inevitable — is intelligence. At some point, one of these four countries is going to conclude that full-spectrum intelligence-sharing with Washington is incompatible with strategic independence. And when that happens, Five Eyes does not just fracture. It collapses.
What to Watch For
The pattern is established. The question now is how far it goes.
Does Canada restrict intelligence-sharing with the US on China-related matters? If Ottawa concludes that CSE intercepts on Canadian-Chinese trade negotiations are being accessed by NSA and used to inform American economic coercion, the logical response is to compartmentalize. To stop sharing. To build independent intelligence infrastructure. That is a massive shift, but the logic is sound.
Does the UK do the same? GCHQ and NSA are more deeply integrated than any other bilateral relationship in Five Eyes. If London starts restricting access — even marginally, even on specific topics — it signals that the intelligence alliance is no longer politically sustainable.
Does Australia move beyond hedging? Right now, Canberra is playing both sides: maintaining the security relationship with Washington while building economic alternatives. At some point, that becomes untenable. Either the US forces a choice, or Australia makes one preemptively.
Does New Zealand go further? Wellington has already signalled discomfort with confronting China through Five Eyes. The question is whether it formalizes that position — whether it restricts intelligence-sharing, opts out of specific programmes, or builds independent capabilities.
None of these outcomes are certain. But all of them are now plausible in ways they were not twelve months ago. And all of them are the logical extension of the pattern we are documenting here.
Maple Leaks publishes leaked and declassified documents revealing gaps between government statements and government actions. In this case, the governments are being transparent. The gap is not between what they say and what they do. The gap is between what this pattern means and what anyone in Washington is willing to admit.
For related analysis: Prime Rogue Inc.: “There Are No Friends” [link] Signal Cage: “Carney in Canberra” [link] Civil Defense Canada: “Why American Culture Is Structurally Incompatible With Allied Trust” [link]