Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on April 20th, 2026

[Peter Mattis]

There's been a steady expansion of united front work. You might say that in early phases, it was about mobilizing diaspora. You could say that it was about targeting a few handfuls of individuals, or about controlling the back-and-forth, but it's increasingly become an effort at mobilization. Therefore, you can see the groups being mobilized around Canadian politicians. You could see the groups being mobilized during COVID, for example, to get access to PPE and facilitate its transfer, as happened in Quebec. There are all these efforts to control.

Think about something like the Confucius Institutes on university campuses. I've never been convinced that this was so much an espionage threat or propaganda threat as it was that it trapped the university into a kind of relationship with the PRC. Somebody who got promoted because they built this relationship now has a stake in it, and is deeper and deeper inside the university's decision-making. They're considering the interests created by the Confucius Institute, by this United Front system, when thinking about the choices for that university—even though the Chinese Communist Party considers academic freedom to be fundamentally anathema to its values and to the way it thinks society should work.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

How do we tread the line between being aware of this and not falling into discrimination and into something beyond awareness and appropriate responses? How do we tread that line, in your opinion?

[Peter Mattis]

First, let's recognize, as some of the previous panellists just pointed out, that we are actually discriminating. We are treating people who have had, in some cases, criminal acts committed against them by a foreign government on our soil as secondary citizens who don't deserve the full faith and protection of our laws. Let's remember that piece of discrimination that's already ongoing and taking place.

Second, we have to have clear laws about what is right and what is wrong. When it is illegal, that's where our intelligence and our police services have a responsibility to investigate, to disrupt and to ensure that the behaviour is not tolerated and that there are direct consequences for it.

As for the rest of it, part of being a citizen in a democracy is being able to have this conversation, and it means that it should be informed. Why isn't it appropriate, if you are a member of the press, if you are a member of a university or if you are an elected politician? Why would you surround yourself with people who choose to be official representatives, if you will, of not just China, not just of the People's Republic, but of a part of the system that is actively hostile to us? We wouldn't sit here and say, “Oh, you're doing this with the Ministry of State Security. That's fine.” If it's an intelligence service, we would start thinking of this as something like espionage.

This United Front system is something altogether different, and it's not an intelligence service. It's not just a sort of people-to-people diplomacy organization. It is something that the party uses to build power and to mobilize when it needs to, and we should be asking, just like with FIRS, is someone acting because they're a citizen or are they acting at the direction of someone else or a foreign government?

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

In the 30 seconds or so that remain, I'll open it up to you to add any recommendations or concluding thoughts.

[Peter Mattis]

This is one of those touchy issues where it helps to work with concrete cases. We should look at espionage cases, and we should look at the organizations that are involved, because we've already decided that a conviction happened and that there was a danger. What else happened around them? What other organizations were involved? That can help us figure out a conversation about where things are that we have already decided are illegal and already decided are bad, and how we understand that environment that was created. That's our early warning point, because these organizations, in some cases, are established around companies or universities to facilitate this bad behaviour. It's worth watching to see the pattern as it emerges.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Zuberi.

I would now like to invite Mr. Davies to take the floor for five minutes, please.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before I get into a broad topic, I want to ask either Dr. Cheung or Ms. Wollensak about Shen Yun. This is one of the most popular presentations you can see in North America. It's travelled across the continent for years. I believe it performed at the National Arts Centre here in Ottawa for 19 straight years, but it has been cancelled.

Can you briefly walk me through the evolution of the threats against this show? It's hard to explain to Canadians what transnational oppression is and what these threats are, but this is a very salient and specific example of something happening right in front of our eyes. Can you explain how that evolved and what the status of the show is now?

[Grace Wollensak]

Thank you.

This is another manifestation of transnational repression and foreign interference. Another aspect of the coordinated campaign was that the Chinese embassy and the consulate also very actively pressured the theatres and the government to cancel. We have dozens of such examples worldwide in other countries.

In the meantime, there is a public opinion campaign. The government mobilized the disinformation campaign. It spread all over the place, and it is false, but people have no idea what's going on. That's another factor, plus the bomb threats, so I think a lot of theatres have valid concerns.

We asked our government to help with a public statement to condemn the bomb threats, because that involved a cost around public safety, but they are false. They are not real threats, so people should not take them as real. They want to censor a lawful, legitimate cultural performance here in Canada.

This will facilitate the Chinese Communist Party's goal. We should not fall into that trap. It will really embolden the CCP to go further and do more of this if they see success in Canada. They could apply this like a playbook against other countries, communities and groups.

We see that as a dangerous precedent happening in Canada. We need help from government—

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Thank you. I have limited time.

Canadians are inundated with social media. We hear about forced labour. We hear about transnational suppression. We hear about persecution and human rights violations.

Mr. Kolga, I wonder if you could give me your ideas on how China and Russia linked information operations and adapted them to Canada's media landscape, including digital platforms and community-based outlets. What are the indicators we should be paying closer attention to?

[Marcus Kolga]

We need to be looking at the role of influencers. We have a very clear case of Russia allegedly using $10 million U.S. to hire U.S.-based influencers. This was done allegedly through two Canadians. It included a Canadian influencer as well.

The $10 million was used to set up a media platform in order to inject Kremlin-aligned narratives into the North American information space. Each of these influencers was offered $100,000 U.S. for a one-hour podcast episode to do so, so we have a clear smoking gun showing the Russian government is paying influencers to do this work.

This represents the tip of a much larger iceberg in terms of Russian, Chinese and Iranian information and influence operations targeting North America.

One other thing I should mention is that we shouldn't just be looking at Canada when it comes to these operations. Information influence operations often don't respect borders; they're transnational. Although a well-known influencer in the U.S. may be U.S.-based and may be talking about primarily U.S.-based grievances, a lot of those grievances are also shared by many Canadians, so those audiences in Canada are significant.

In terms of information influence operations, this is one of the aspects we need to pay much closer attention to, because as information operations evolve, our foreign adversaries understand that it is the domestic voices that lend credibility to them.

Regarding Russian state media and, God forbid, Global Times News in China, I don't think there's a single Canadian who is going to those sites, but the domestic influencers who amplify those narratives are being listened to. They have significant audiences, and I think they represent a significant threat to our democracy and our information space.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

I invite Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe to take the floor for five minutes.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Arkin, have you ever seen politicians being targeted by Beijing for their work with human rights organizations such as yours?

[Zumretay Arkin]

Yes, it has happened on many occasions. It is mostly members of IPAC, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, of which you are a member, who are approached by ambassadors in various countries, including North Macedonia, Indonesia and Malaysia.

I've also participated in missions in other countries, such as in Latin America and Southeast Asia, where politicians received messages from the Chinese embassy in the country in question before our visit. The embassy ordered them not to meet with us.

So it happens very often. Sometimes politicians who are very vocal about the human rights violations in the Uyghur region receive a visit afterwards and are silenced. If it doesn't work with the individual, they talk to the party leader, then to the Speaker of Parliament, and so on. It goes up the line pretty fast.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Therchin, I'd like to know what you think when you see Mr. Carney travel or when economic agreements are signed with China, when you see Liberal members of Parliament being urgently repatriated because they're travelling to Taiwan while Mr. Carney is in Beijing, and when you hear Michael Ma cast doubt on the existence of forced labour in China.

In your opinion, does this make China feel less and less threatened and more and more free to continue, and even to increase transnational repression against the Tibetan diaspora, but also against the various diasporas that are currently victims of the Chinese communist regime?

[Sherap Therchin]

China certainly has shown its aggression and ruthlessness. Both the report that came from the public inquiry into foreign interference and the recent report from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security found China was the main perpetrator of foreign interference.

We saw one of the recent election candidates basically saying that the other candidate should be handed over to the Chinese consulate for the bounty placed on him, which is absolutely unacceptable in a democratic, free and independent country like Canada.

We cannot let China take advantage of Canadian freedom and democracy. China is really good at studying, extracting and exploiting diversity and democracy to its advantage, and we have to recognize this.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Kolga, you mentioned Irwin Cotler, who is my mentor, and also the mentor of many people sitting around the table here. You've worked very closely with Mr. Cotler, of course. I'm thinking of what he endured, specifically the death threats against him from the government of another country, Iran.

Isn't that also an example of transnational repression?

I would like you to tell the subcommittee.

[Marcus Kolga]

Absolutely, I believe that. This was not the first time Professor Cotler had been targeted. I remember him telling me about a trip he took to Russia in the early 2000s when he was advocating for human rights and had been doing so for several decades. He believes that when he visited Moscow in the early 2000s, he was poisoned by Russian intelligence services, so this is not the first time he has faced these sorts of threats. He faces a regular bombardment of threats via email and otherwise.

All of this, of course, is related to his work in defending human rights and standing up for those most vulnerable to domestic repression inside of places like China, Russia, Belarus and beyond, and standing up for those of us who are fighting with him in common cause for those rights here in Canada or elsewhere.

The sorts of threats that Professor Cotler is facing and has been facing, especially the latest death threats from Iran, are only going to continue unless we, this government and all members of this committee and their caucuses take a stand against them to say that enough is enough: We are going to stand up to transnational repression, we are going to support the disruption of these sorts of operations and we are going to stand up for the rights of those who are being threatened and are the most vulnerable to transnational repression.

Until we take that sort of a stand, they're going to continue. I've seen this happen for the past 20 years. I have been a victim, but more importantly, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, I've been working with very brave activists like Sherap, who has been doing this for just as long but faces much more dire consequences.

We need to stand up for them. We need to find that political will. Until we do that, our authoritarian foreign adversaries are going to continue targeting us with impunity, unfortunately.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you.

Now I'd like to invite Madame Vandenbeld to take the floor for five minutes, please.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to continue with Mr. Kolga.

Thank you for that. I think our committee has done very well in standing up for human rights defenders, including all of you, and we will continue to do so.

I want to pick up on something you said in your opening remarks. You used a term that I had not heard before. You spoke about cognitive warfare. We heard some of the others talk about the psychological impact of some of the surveillance and intimidation, but it sounds like this is more scientific. This is not just trying to intimidate people; there's something more behind it.

Could you talk a bit about that? Then maybe I can hear about lived experience from some of the others.

[Marcus Kolga]

Sure. Thank you for that question.

Cognitive warfare is a more specific term. It's not just information warfare, and it's not just transnational oppression. This is warfare undertaken by our authoritarian adversaries to try to manipulate our understanding of the world around us to impair our ability to clearly make political decisions based on facts.

It's part of what I call cognitive sovereignty, which is our ability to defend the sovereignty of our information spaces and defend not just individually but collectively our ability to make political decisions clear of any sort of foreign intimidation and, on the topic that we're talking about today, clear of any fear, intimidation and harassment as well.

When we look at the Uyghur, the Tibetan and the Falun Gong Hong Kong communities, they are being bombarded with cognitive warfare. We're seeing that on an increasingly large scale. The sophistication with which it's carried out is helping intensify those operations.

That's what I mean by cognitive warfare and also cognitive sovereignty, which is an important term when we're talking about these issues.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I'd like to hear how this is impacting the other witnesses' lives.

Mr. Therchin, maybe you can begin.

[Sherap Therchin]

One of the biggest examples of cognitive warfare that China has launched on the Tibet issue—for more than 60 years—is that it has repeatedly created a narrative that Tibet is an issue of ethnic minority through a manufactured history. The world unfortunately has bought into this narrative, and today, when people discuss Tibet, it is almost assumed to be an issue of human rights, which is very important, as much as an issue of ethnic minority.

If we look at the 1960s and even the 1970s, it was an issue of one nation invading another. China has succeeded in creating the impression on the rest of the world that this is an issue of ethnic minority. That, I think, is a good example.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Ms. Arkin, with the Uyghurs, could you give us your experience?

[Zumretay Arkin]

It's very similar, but it's also that Uyghurs have been labelled terrorists and separatists for the longest time. Before 9/11, we were labelled as separatists. Nowadays, we're labelled as terrorists. The moment you engage in political advocacy, that's the label you carry with you.

Of course, that has repercussions on your travels. For example, you can be issued an Interpol red notice. We know about the case of Idris Hasan, for example, who has sought refuge in Canada. He was detained in Morocco for over two years because he had an Interpol red notice. These are actions that also go along the lines of cognitive warfare.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

For the Falun Dafa, because you also talked about lawfare, which is similar to this, could you also talk in the last minute remaining?