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.