Canada-China Relations Committee on March 20th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Good evening, everyone. I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 15 of the House of Commons Special Committee on the Canada-People's Republic of China Relationship.

Pursuant to the order of reference of May 16, 2022, the committee is meeting for its study of Canada-People's Republic of China relations, with a focus on Chinese police stations in Canada.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I'd like to make a few comments for the benefit of witnesses, particularly those joining us on Zoom.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. If you are participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you're not speaking.

For interpretation, those on Zoom have the choice, at the bottom of their screen—it's the little earth symbol—of the floor, English or French. Those in the room can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

I remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can, and we appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.

In accordance with the committee's routine motion concerning connection tests for witnesses, I'm informing the committee that all witnesses and members joining virtually have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Today, MP Ehsassi is substituting for MP Dubourg, and MP Genuis is substituting for MP Dancho.

I'd now like to welcome our witnesses for the first panel.

In order, we will hear from Dr. Roromme Chantal, associate professor of political science, Université de Moncton, by video conference; Dr. Christian Leuprecht, professor, Royal Military College of Canada, by video conference; and, finally, Laura Harth, campaign director, Fundacion Safeguard Defenders.

Each of you will have five minutes for your opening comments. Keep an eye on the speaker. I'll give you a sign when you're getting close to your five minutes. That will leave us enough time for lots of questions, which, I'm sure, we will all have tonight.

We will start, for the first five minutes, with a commentary and introduction from Dr. Chantal.

Please proceed.

[Dr. Roromme Chantal, Associate Professor of Political Science, Université de Moncton, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is a wonderful opportunity for me to answer questions from your honourable colleagues and try to make my modest contribution to the current discussion about the China question. I am very glad of the opportunity and I sincerely thank the committee.

To begin, I have decided to focus on the subject proposed by the committee for this testimony. I am therefore going to address the issue of the allegations about the presence of Chinese police stations in Canada.

First, what is there that would prove that these stations exist in Canada and in the rest of the world? According to the report by the Spanish non-governmental organization, or NGO, Safeguard Defenders, there are as many as 102 overseas Chinese police stations in 53 countries, and three of those stations are located in the Greater Toronto region in Canada. More recently, however, the media also revealed the existence of two similar stations in Quebec: the Centre Sino-Québec on the south shore and the Chinese Family Service of Greater Montreal. The managers of those organizations have denied those allegations, however, and have asked that they be presumed innocent.

That said, some observers think that there might be even more overseas agents of the Chinese police. The well-known American magazine Newsweek is of that view. Newsweek says that in addition to those agents of the Chinese police, it has identified at least nine other Chinese support centres in the United States alone. It should be noted that according to the Spanish NGO, some of those centres have sometimes been established with the help of the countries where they are located, even if that is not the case in Canada.

Chinese authorities and the Chinese media deny these allegations; rather, they talk about sites that are operated, sometimes on a volunteer basis, by local Chinese communities to help overseas Chinese nationals. The People's Daily, a press organ of the Chinese Communist Party, stated that in certain places in the world where there is inadequate law enforcement, for example in Africa or South America, these stations offer security teams, firefighters and ambulance attendants. In Canada, for example, the embassy of the People's Republic of China has confirmed the addresses of certain similar stations named by the media.

Second, why would China set about establishing these overseas stations? Among other reasons often cited, there is the anti-corruption campaign carried on by President Xi Jinping since he came to power. It must be noted here that more than 900,000 members of the Chinese Communist Party have apparently been disciplined to date and 42,000 of them have been expelled and prosecuted.

The covert police stations attributed to China are also said to contribute to achieving the objectives of this anti-corruption campaign. The objective of those stations is said to be to force citizens to go back home to face the Chinese judicial system. It is important to point out that according to a Chinese vice-minister of public safety, in 2021 alone, Beijing was able to dissuade 210,000 individuals to return to China to face telecommunications fraud charges. In one case cited in some media, even a Chinese citizen living in Canada is alleged to have been pressured to return to China to face charges of embezzling Chinese public funds amounting to $380,000 in Canadian dollars.

As a final point, why would the work of these covert stations be linked to the work of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party?

That is a question I believe to be of great importance. Historically, China has always demonstrated a desire to maintain control over the Chinese people both within and outside the country. The party describes the work of the United Front as a way for the Chinese Communist Party to unite all the sons and daughters of the party and contribute to the work of national renewal. The police stations attributed to China would thus also be linked to China's broader strategy of national and international influence.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Dr. Chantal.

We'll now go to Dr. Leuprecht for five minutes or less.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht, Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual]

Thank you for inviting me to participate in this study, Mr. Chair.

I will be speaking in English, but please do not hesitate to ask your questions in the official language of your choice.

Beijing's espionage and interference is now the single greatest threat to Canada's democratic way of life. The PRC is intent on gaining control of Canadian critical minerals and it is actively running influence campaigns over resource development. Balloons and election interference are merely the latest episodes in a long list of hostile hybrid warfare efforts perpetrated by the CCP against Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's staunch refusal to convene a public inquiry is actively jeopardizing Canada's security and its bilateral relationship with its most important strategic ally. Beijing's corruption of Canadian business and politics poses a national security problem to the United States, in part because the U.S. shares intelligence with Canada.

Recent unclassified versions of CSIS annual reports repeatedly warned about the state capture and elite capture of Canadian political, business, financial, educational and societal elites and institutions. Beijing invests heavily to make influential opinion leaders beholden to the PRC, who are then induced to repeat and lend credibility to the CCP's political disinformation. I know of Canadian academics who have been offered thousands of dollars to co-publish articles with scholars from China. Others have received lucrative trips, with all expenses paid by the regime in Beijing. In the same way, the PRC pays off politicians. Since 2015, CSIS has called out select Canadian politicians by name.

Australia's experience shows that no government is immune. In 2016, Australia's Liberal trade minister, Andrew Robb, announced that he would not run again after having negotiated deals that were exceptionally favourable to China, including a free trade agreement. Robb then took up a $880,000-a-year job with a billionaire closely connected to the CCP and its trade policy. As trade minister, Robb negotiated a 99-year lease for the Australian port of Darwin with that same Chinese billionaire.

In 2017, Labour senator Sam Dastyari quit the Australian Senate over accepting donations from entities with links to the CCP. The senator had even tipped off one such donor about being the likely subject of a counter-intelligence operation.

In 2020, the founder of a Chinese-language school in Canberra made an unsuccessful run at a seat in Australia's Senate. It turns out that he had a long history of activity with the PRC's United Front Work Department, which is tasked with mobilizing diaspora communities to meddle in foreign states.

UFWD's illicit activities have been called out by CSIS, the Privy Council and the federal court. Under broad guidance from CCP's consulates, the UFWD co-opts staff of targeted politicians, facilitates the clandestine transfer of funds, recruits potential targets, suppresses protests and supports ethnic Chinese under its influence in their election bids. The PRC maintains the second-largest diplomatic service in Canada for good reason.

Blurry lines between Beijing state organs, Asian-organized crime groups, and select members of Canada's mainland Chinese immigrant communities and business interests are the hallmark of the CCP's covert, coercive and corrupt influence, which has been systematically eroding resistance to the Chinese government from within.

Suspect activities by the CCP in Canada date back at least as far as the ill-fated Project Sidewinder in the late 1990s. This joint CSIS-RCMP investigation had been looking into the way Chinese intelligence and Chinese triads were collaborating on intelligence operations right here in Canada.

A Canadian prime minister's awareness that the fortunes of some of his party's candidates may have been aided and abetted by the CCP is all too ironic. Out of sheer self-preservation in any democracy, a ruling political party would have forced someone with as abysmal a record during his second term as Chinese President Xi Jinping's to resign. Xi never would have won a free and fair democratic election for a third term.

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows”, reads the famous line in Shakespeare's The Tempest. This refers to a man who's shipwrecked, and seeks shelter beside a sleeping monster. Politics makes equally strange bedfellows, and one would hope that Canadian decision-makers will finally wake up early enough to recognize the CCP for what it is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you very much, Dr. Leuprecht.

We'll now go to Ms. Laura Harth, campaign director, Fundacion Safeguard Defenders.

Ms. Harth, you have five minutes or less.

[Laura Harth, Campaign Director, Fundacion Safeguard Defenders]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good evening to all honourable members of this committee.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify on behalf of Safeguard Defenders. I also want to apologize to the francophone members of the committee, because I will be speaking in English. However, I will be happy to try to answer questions in French.

Thank you for allowing me to testify on behalf of Safeguard Defenders. Please allow me to express my sincerest gratitude to the Canadian journalists who have been shining a light on the PRC's transnational repression efforts in Canada, as well as, most importantly, to the activists and witnesses who have reported to the relevant Canadian authorities. We know the courage and sometimes very difficult choices it takes to come forward. Democratic societies owe it to you to ensure that those choices are not in vain.

I imagine members of this committee are well aware of the main findings of our September report “110 Overseas” and its December follow up “Patrol and Persuade”. I wish to highlight that everything in those reports is based exclusively on open source online statements by Chinese authorities and state or party media reports, which are available to all for independent verification.

Those sources openly describe how, starting in 2016, public security authorities from four local Chinese jurisdictions with large diaspora communities overseas established over 100 so-called overseas police service centres in at least 53 countries. At least five of those stations have listed addresses in Canada—three in the Toronto area and two in the Vancouver area. In addition, in “Patrol and Persuade”, we flagged the existence of so-called overseas Chinese service centres, two of which are located in the Montreal area and have been the subject of recent media reporting. Two more are listed by Chinese authorities, one in Markham, Ontario, and another in Vancouver.

While the origins of these organizations slightly differs—some of which, by the way, have linked subsidiaries across the country beyond the locations I mentioned—all of them share a direct and demonstrable linkage to the United Front Work Department. Understanding this linkage is fundamental.

The United Front is the prime influence agency of the Communist Party of China, which seeks to influence various public and private sector entities outside China, including but not limited to the political, commercial and academic spheres. To that end, on the one hand, the United Front promotes efforts that align policies and activities with CCP interests, while on the other hand, it seeks to divide and blunt CCP or PRC critics.

Within this sticks and carrots approach, which takes many different forms, all merit attention. As the CCP wages its hybrid war on liberal democracies and the international rules-based order, Safeguard Defenders focuses on the very extreme end of the Communist Party's transnational repression efforts.

In its so-called persuasion to return operations, the PRC uses clandestine means to coerce individuals overseas to return to China for persecution. The methods range from going after family members back home, to direct threats and harassment of targets overseas by consular or embassy personnel; proxies, such as individuals linked to the stations; private investigators; or even through the deployment of covert agents abroad. In the most extreme cases, the methods include the luring, or entrapment, of an individual in a third country, or even kidnappings on foreign soil.

While the People's Republic of China is far from the only authoritarian actor to engage in transnational repression, official numbers allow us to describe the PRC's efforts in this respect, which Freedom House defines as “the most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression in the world.”

Staggering, and as brazen a violation of national sovereignty the overseas police service stations are, unfortunately, they're also but the tip of the iceberg. It will take a comprehensive whole-of-society approach to counter the gamut of efforts under way to actively undermine fundamental rights and freedoms, and democratic societies as a whole.

To that end, allow me to make some initial policy recommendations.

First, continued community outreach is fundamental to grow the trust needed for witnesses to come forward, and to receive timely insights into new developments and actors.

To do so, it is crucial to put an immediate and firm stop to the legitimization of networks and individuals engaged in transnational repression through their engagement with Canadian institutions and officials. In that respect, it is crucial that investigations cover the wider United Front activities on Canadian soil.

I have some more recommendations, but maybe we can get to those in the questions.

Thank you. I do look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you very much, Ms. Harth.

We'll go to our first round of questioning.

Mr. Chong, you have six minutes or less.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have four very quick questions for Madam Harth, and then questions for Professor Leuprecht.

First, about the 102 overseas police stations located in 53 countries, how many deportations have these overseas police stations been linked to?

My second question is regarding persuasion to return operations. You state in your “110 Overseas” report that the PRC's Fox Hunt and Sky Net operations, which have claimed to return or coerce more than 10,000 people back to the PRC, are more “modest in scale” than the establishment of these police stations. Can you tell us in what ways the establishment of these police stations is a bigger threat than the persuasion to return operations, which have sent some 10,000 people back to the PRC?

Third, what steps can be taken to stop the co-opting of Chinese overseas hometown associations by the United Front Work Department?

Fourth, media reports from March, this month, indicate that the RCMP have begun investigating two police stations in Montreal and Brossard. Both of these stations are directed by Xixi Li, a municipal councillor for Brossard. My question is with regard to this particular municipal councillor working at this police station. How common is it for elected municipal councillors to work at these police stations, from the research that you've done?

Those are my four questions. I know that's a lot, but I wanted to get them out there.

[Laura Harth]

Thank you.

I don't know how much time I have to respond.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

You have about three minutes—

[Laura Harth]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

—or maybe a little more.

[Laura Harth]

Thank you.

Thank you for those questions. Regarding the number of deportations and the persuasion to return operations that we've been able to link directly to some of these stations, that number is 83. That is the anecdotal evidence that we found linked to three of the jurisdictions. One of those includes, notoriously, even video evidence put online by the Chinese authorities demonstrating how such an operation took place in a station in Madrid. We know that there have been at least 83, according to the authorities.

Are these establishments a bigger threat than, for example, the operations Fox Hunt and Sky Net? Fox Hunt and Sky Net, according to the last numbers given by the CCDI in October 2022, have netted over 11,000 successful operations between 2014 and October 2022. Successful operations means that more individuals can be included for each of those operations.

I don't think the stations are necessarily a bigger threat. They're all part of the same pattern. I think what's important in them, though, is that these stations are directly linked to the United Front Work Department. The individuals and associations linked to them are manning these stations and may be engaged in transnational repression activities that go much wider than the extreme end of persuasion to return, but are also engaged in those influence operations. In that sense, they merit attention beyond what should be the focus of these persuasion to return operations.

What steps can be taken to stop co-opting by the United Front Work Department? I think in the first place it's publicly denouncing these activities and raising awareness not within the communities, because they know all too well what's going on, but within the wider society within the communities that may be targets of influence operations, be it political circles, academic circles, media, businessmen, and everyone who may be the target of those influence operations, and trying to promote people from the diaspora communities that are not linked to them and giving them a voice. I think for too long, for decades, the main interlocutors for officials and for many other private sector institutions have been exactly the people who are tied to these networks. We need to break that linkage. That will be a difficult and long process, and it will really take a whole-of-society effort, but it starts by very clear messaging about what's going on.

Your last question was on the municipal councillor. Now, obviously there's a presumption of innocence, so until investigations are concluded and we see what comes out of that....

To my knowledge, it is not necessarily common, but at Safeguard Defenders, we as an organization are looking at the global framework rather than single individuals or associations, so I may not be the best person to respond to that.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you for those answers. They're appreciated.

I have a question for Professor Leuprecht concerning the use of racism by the Chinese Communist Party to further its foreign interference operations.

Is it the case that the CCP's propaganda has a racial angle? In other words, does the CCP use race to convince those who are ethnically Chinese that they owe an allegiance to the motherland, as a way to further their foreign interference operations here? Is it part of the tool kit in their foreign interference operations here in Canada?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Give a brief answer, please, Dr. Leuprecht.

Thank you.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

The simple answer is yes.

There are some terrific people who have written about the extent to which the CCP systematically instrumentalizes racism, in particular to thwart policy action against it, such as foreign agent registries.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Mr. Fragiskatos for six minutes or less.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here tonight.

Ms. Harth, I'll begin with you.

In your organization's report, there's a detailed narrative of the allegations put forward. Can you go over the evidence again? What exactly is the report pointing to, in terms of evidence that shows these are, in fact, “police stations”, for lack of a better term?

[Laura Harth]

Thank you for the question.

Again, everything is open source and online, and can be verified.

We call them “police stations”, in the first place, because the PRC authorities that set them up do. These are, specifically, four public security authorities from four local jurisdictions in China. They vary a bit in the name they use, but they all call them “police linkage centres” or “overseas police service centres”. That's the wording they use. Obviously, the fact that they have been set up by a police body within the PRC is why we adopted that language, as well.

Among the tasks we've listed continually across sources, including newspaper articles appearing online from Chinese Communist Party media, are so-called administrative and consular tasks, which, by the way, the Chinese authorities and even embassies across the world confirmed exist, obviously. They also include tasks such as monitoring and measuring the sentiments or opinions of the community, and resolutely cracking down on crime—assisting public security authorities back in China with cracking down on crime, which, again, leads to those persuasion to return operations. We found direct evidence of the involvement of some of these stations in executing those operations.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

In asking the question, I wasn't trying to cast doubt on what's been put forward. I just wanted to know further detail about the evidence being used to put forward the conclusions the organization has drawn. I know you elaborated a little on that in your testimony, but I wanted to delve in a bit more.

What other leading democracies has China established such centres in?

[Laura Harth]

They're in all of them. This includes all G7 countries. Europe is very heavily targeted, which is not surprising, but we've seen this all over the world. I would say democracies are definitely bearing the brunt of the presence of these stations.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Is this something unique to China's approach? Is Russia employing similar methods? Is Iran, for example, doing this, as well?

[Laura Harth]

Transnational repression is definitely being used by all authoritarian regimes, and to a growing extent, which is another reason why we believe it's important to be very clear that this will not be accepted. We see countries learning from each other. Smaller authoritarian countries are starting to learn from those efforts and copying.

The scale on which the Chinese Communist Party is operating these is unparalleled, though. We haven't seen any other countries going to the extent of setting up overseas police service centres.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chantal, I am going to ask you the same question.

Is China's approach unique?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

You're still muted, sir.