It was on a number of different bases. The first was educationally that their students were being given misinformation. Subjects were being censored, information was being presented as fact that was not fact, and most of this material was not in the material that was supposed to be covered by the courses that the Confucius Institute and the New Brunswick government had agreed on.
Beyond that, the concerns they had either as New Brunswick permanent residents, or in some cases Canadian citizens, was that they felt that, if they spoke out in any way that could be linked back to them or their name, there would be repercussions for their families back in China. This is a concern that's been expressed, again, in a number of different government reports here and abroad about the increased influence of Beijing over members of the Chinese diaspora and efforts to try to mobilize and weaponize them—often against their will—to be agents of influence and to do so in a way that, again, does not necessarily in any way reflect what they want to see, what they would like to do, their beliefs or their politics.
When you have a government that behaves as Beijing does and enjoys the levels of impunity that the country continues to enjoy, then it's not surprising that they continue to abuse their position in this and a multitude of other areas.