Beijing Donated Communist Propaganda Books to City Library in Quebec

Books donated by the Chinese regime to the Brossard municipal library in 2017 are shown on July 12, 2023. Noé Chartier/The Epoch Times

BROSSARD—Beijing made an unsolicited donation of Chinese language books to a municipal library in Quebec, which included a piece praising the accomplishments of the Communist Party.

The Chinese consulate in Montreal donated 300 books to a city on the south shore of Montreal in 2017, and attempted another donation in 2019, as first reported by the Journal de Montréal.

The Epoch Times went on-site to assess the collection at the Brossard municipal library. While many books are about the Chinese language, history, and culture, at least one is Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda.

“Overseas Chinese and the New China” features in the collection, which describes the 60 years of “struggle” and “great practices” of the “New China,” a term used to describe China under Communist Party rule since 1949.

The book “profoundly sums up the valuable experience of the sinicization of Marxism,” and seeks to “inspire us to march forward along the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” according to a description found on Baidu.com and machine translated with Deepl.

Two employees of the library told The Epoch Times they were not at liberty to discuss the donation or the books. The library’s director Suzanne Payette also declined to be interviewed.

In a report from the Journal de Montréal, Ms. Payette said the first donation took place during an event held by the Brossard Chinese school. “We didn’t have a choice. It was in front of everybody. So you say thank you very much, and you take it,” she said.

Accepting the donation didn’t necessarily have to lead to loading the books in the library, but they can now be found in the multi-lingual section. The Journal reports that no precise cataloguing of the books’ contents has been made due to a lack of resources.

Brossard Mayor Doreen Assaad told the Journal that the Chinese regime had also approached her about donating more books in 2019.

She said she was “very surprised” to receive such an offer. “I received a request saying that Brossard is a nice multicultural city and that [the consulate] had extra books available ... It was the first time I received such a request. I didn’t know what to say,” she said in French.

This time the library rejected the gift. Payette said it occurred during the Meng Wangzhou affair and the arbitrary detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in China.

Ms. Assaad’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

Chinese Influence

Brossard made the news recently in the context of Beijing interference. One of the two Montreal-area Chinese community organizations investigated by the RCMP for allegedly hosting suspected Chinese police stations is located there.

The Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud is located in a popular strip mall on the main artery Blvd. Taschereau. Its director, Xixi Li, is also a city councillor. Ms. Li is also in charge of the other organization under RCMP investigation, the Service à la famille chinoise du Grand Montréal (SFCGM).

Photo of a portrait of Brossard city councillor Xixi Li on the wall at city hall, taken on July 12, 2023. Noé Chartier/The Epoch Times

The organizations are directly tied to the Chinese regime since at least 2016 through their affiliation with the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO), which itself was absorbed by the United Front Work Department (UFWD) in 2018.

According to Canadian Security Intelligence Service Director David Vigneault, the UFWD is a prime CCP tool for conducting foreign interference.

Ms. Li has not responded to multiple requests for comment. She was not a councillor when the donation attempts were made.

The Epoch Times asked the city about her status with the city council during the RCMP investigation but didn’t hear back by publication time.

RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme told a House of Commons committee on June 13 that activities related to Chinese police stations in Canada had ceased.

“I’m comfortable to say at this point in time that [the Chinese police stations] are shut down. Investigations are continuing in these overseas police stations,” he said.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino also said the stations had been shut down in April, which led the SFCGM and Sino-Québec to issue a statement saying they had received no request from the RCMP to close.

The April 28 statement said their activities were taking place normally, though with reduced funding due to media coverage.

“Since the start of this saga, our two organizations have called for caution and to respect the right of our employees and cadres to presumption of innocence. We deplore the damages caused by the RCMP due to the premature identification of our organizations,” it says.

The RCMP took the rare step in March to announce publicly it was investigating Sino-Québec and the SFCGM. It took other overt action against the other alleged locations in the country, sending marked police cars and uniformed officers.

Duheme said these actions prompted backlash from Chinese diplomats.

“Any time you have representatives from the embassy whose law enforcement liaison officer comes up to us and is not pleased with the actions we took, I think that’s a sign that we did our job,” he said on March 2.

No arrests have been made so far on this file. The U.S. has recently made arrests for similar activities under its foreign agent registry law. The Liberal government completed public consultations in the spring for drafting such legislation, but no timetable has been offered for its tabling.