I know Kevin slightly, and I believe him to be an honest man, a straight player.
That said, Canon is not flying people to Hawaii because they are philanthropists. They expect coverage, and they expect to move the needle, overall, in the positive direction. Controlling the environment in which you first touch the camera, making it a pleasant experience, will inevitably color the results of the reviews. That is literally the point of these junkets. If something seems a misfeature, perhaps a pleasant chat over drinks with an expert from the company will change your opinion a little. Is it dishonest to allow yourself to be persuaded?
Kevin knows perfectly well that his job here is to walk a fine line. He must retain credibility with his audience, and therefore must be basically honest in his reviews. On the other hand, if he does not deliver results to Canon, he will lose access, just as Michael did with Nikon. Then there is no more Breaking Canon News on the front page, which circles around to losing audience, and then revenue.
Canon knows this too, of course, and will not expect Kevin to outright sell out on their behalf. They will expect that, overall, those first impressions reviews from everyone who went to Hawaii, will tend to be more positive than they would have been.
Notice, for instance, that the Canon R reviews trend a little more positive, while the Nikon Z reviews across the internet are uniformly negative. And yet, both cameras are basically similar assemblings of features off the standard chinese menu of camera features that everyone's working with. To pretend that the cameras are substantively different is absurd, and yet the reactions to them are quite different. Canon flew a stack of people to Hawaii and plied them with food and drink for several days, whereas Nikon invited people to some warehouse in NYC for a few hours.
If you think those two things are unrelated, I have a bridge to sell you.
Again, Kevin is an honest guy. But he is a player in a well understood game, and he is not a superhuman who is immune to the sirens. His job is a rather delicate one. Our job, if we care about Canon gear, is to work out about how much rosy glow we ought to subtract from the review.