After US Arrests in Chinese Police Stations Case, Canadian Senator Urges Fast-Tracking Foreign Agent Registry Bill

A Chinese paramilitary police officer stands guard on the Bund waterfront during China's National Day celebrations in Shanghai on Oct. 1, 2022. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

With the FBI’s arrests in relation to a secret Chinese police station in New York City and foreign interference charges laid against a man in Australia, a senator is urging Ottawa to quickly move forward on creating a key legal tool to fight foreign influence operations in Canada.

The FBI arrested two people on April 17 for operating an illegal Chinese police station in lower Manhattan, charging them with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese regime, among other charges. Similar clandestine Chinese police stations are operating in Canada, yet no arrests have been made in connection with them.

On April 15, the Australian Federal Police arrested and charged a man with a foreign interference offence, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years’ imprisonment.

Canada doesn’t have an equivalent law that requires people acting on behalf of foreign governments to register with the government, and be subject to prosecution if they fail to do so, but Conservative Sen. Leo Housakos is trying to change that.

Housakos introduced Bill S-237, An Act to establish the Foreign Influence Registry and to amend the Criminal Code, in the Senate in February 2022, but it hasn’t received support from the government, and is far from becoming law.

Sen. Leo Housakos in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

“All the Trudeau government has to do is ... give the green light to Trudeau-appointed senators to review the bill, to pass the bill, and send it to the House of Commons, and within two, three months we can have a foreign registry,” he told The Epoch Times.

“[This] would be the first step forward in dealing with foreign interference and particularly dealing with the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] and their activity here in Canada.”

Housakos noted that the United States and Australia already have laws in place that criminalize foreign interference, while the United Kingdom, through amendments to its National Security Bill, is also close to creating a foreign interference registry that would do the same.

Amid the recent revelations of the Chinese regime’s attempts to interfere in Canadian elections, the Liberal government on March 10 announced the launch of public consultations on creating a foreign influence transparency registry in Canada, including enacting potential legislation. The consultation will accept online submissions until May 9.

Housakos believes there is no time for public consultations, given the urgency of the situation.

“They’re talking about launching a consultation in terms of putting together a foreign registry bill, which is ridiculous. We understand the urgency of this nature and there’s no time for consultation, discussion. We saw Australia, we saw the United States take action,” he said.

“Right now, intimidation and foreign interference is not being done only against government institutions and parliamentary bodies. We have first-hand evidence where the regime in Beijing is intimidating Canadians of Chinese descent.”

The Sino-Quebec Centre in Brossard, Quebec, is seen on March 9, 2023. The RCMP says it's investigating this location, along with the Chinese Family Service of Greater Montreal, which are allegedly clandestine overseas Chinese police service stations. Noé Chartier/The Epoch Times

The RCMP has identified at least six Chinese police stations in Canada, including three in the Greater Toronto Area, two in Quebec, and one in British Columbia. The Epoch Times has reported that there is another location in BC which a Chinese police force has listed as its overseas service centre. Some of those stations were first exposed by Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders, which identified 102 secret police outposts worldwide, run by four provincial-level police agencies in China.

While the RCMP has sent uniformed officers to some of those locations, and four police stations have been shut down, Housakos says police have no power to lay charges.

“A foreign registry and other laws of this nature would have given the RCMP the capacity to lay charges,” he said.

Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister David Morrison told MPs at the Commons Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 2 that he was unaware of any Chinese diplomats being expelled from Canada in the past four years. One Chinese diplomat was denied  a visa to Canada last fall, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly told the same committee on March 9.

CCP ‘Weaponizing Nationalism’

Some in the Liberal Party have voiced support for a foreign registry. Liberal MP Francesco Sorbara said in the House Commons on April 17 that he is in favour of such a measure, citing laws in the United States and Australia, reported Blacklock’s Reporter.

After media reports alleging that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had named a Liberal Party candidate who was supported by Beijing in the 2019 federal election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau linked the issue to racism.

At a news conference on April 17, when asked about whether a foreign registry would be in place before the next election, he said the government needs to “take on a range of tools” to address foreign interference, and that any measures should avoid making certain diaspora groups like Chinese-Canadians more vulnerable.

An online petition supported by Liberal MP Chandra Arya is calling on the government to reconsider creating a foreign influence registry because it poses “a serious harassment and stigmatization risk for racialized communities.”

But former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu warns against conflating the issue of foreign interference with racism.

“The communist Chinese regime has been weaponizing nationalism and hijacking the anti-Asian racism topics. It is, however, really sad to see that the prime minister has fallen victim, or worse, may have deliberately played into the same narrative as the Chinese communist [regime],” he told The Epoch Times.

Former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu. The Epoch Times

Chiu, who is of Asian descent, had introduced legislation similar to Housakos’s Bill S-237 in the last Parliament. But he says his efforts made him a target of disinformation in the 2021 election, which he said led to his defeat.

He noted that in both his and Housakos’s proposed legislation, “China” or “Chinese” are not mentioned since a foreign registry also addresses interference attempts by other authoritarian regimes, such as Russia and Iran. Chiu thus warned against repeating the CCP narrative of racism in pushing back against foreign influence.

“By keep on repeating this and not giving up this same narrative as the CCP, [Trudeau] is jeopardizing Canadians of Chinese descent and perpetuating a racist view that only Chinese-Canadians are at risk. That is far from the truth,” he said.

Chiu further noted that the man in Australia arrested on foreign interference charges is not of Chinese descent, which indicates that race is not a concern to the CCP in terms of their influence attempts.

“The Chinese communists, they practise ‘fair opportunity’—they look into what cracks they can use,” he said.

“So they are race-neutral, and they are political ideology-neutral. They don’t care if you are left-leaning or right-leaning—all they care about is that you have power to corrupt, that you have information that they need. They don’t care if you are white, Anglo-Saxon, or native Chinese or non-Chinese.”