City Councillor Who Heads Groups Under RCMP Scrutiny Didn’t Breach Election Rules: Elections Quebec

The Sino-Quebec Center in Brossard, Quebec, is seen on March 9, 2023. RCMP said it's investigating this location, as well as the Chinese Family Service of Greater Montreal, as allegedly being clandestine overseas Chinese police service stations. Noé Chartier/The Epoch Times

Quebec’s election office says it won’t initiate an investigation into alleged violation of electoral law in the 2021 municipal elections by a Brossard city councillor who oversees two organizations currently under RCMP investigation as possible Chinese police stations.

Xixi Li, councillor for District 8 in the city of Brossard, is also the director general of a local Chinese community centre, the Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud (CSQRS), and a similar organization Chinese Family Service of Greater Montreal (SFCGM) in that municipality.

Brossard Mayor Doreen Assaad said on Facebook on March 10 that Li should temporarily step aside from her duties as city councillor until police investigations have concluded. She also said she had filed a complaint to Quebec’s Chief Electoral Officer in relation to Li’s actions in the 2021 municipal race.

Assaad alleged that Li’s organizations were translating certain information into Chinese on WeChat—a social media platform widely used by the Chinese community—and using the logo of Élections Québec while promoting Li as a candidate.

Élections Québec, however, told The Epoch Times on March 14 that existing evidence doesn’t warrant an investigation into whether Li breached the Act Respecting Elections and Referendums in Municipalities.

“Élections Québec acts as a public prosecutor for any violation of electoral laws. Thus, to move forward with an investigation, facts must support a possible violation of the Act respecting elections and referendums in municipalities,” it said in an email statement in French.

“That said, the analysis of the facts brought to our attention so far does not allow us to conclude that this law has been breached.”

WeChat Promotion

The SFCGM and CSQRS share a joint account on WeChat, where a number of articles promoted Li as a candidate in the 2021 municipal election.

Written in simplified Chinese, one of the articles dated Nov. 4, 2021, showed Li’s campaign team urging residents in her district to vote both for Li and for mayoral candidate Michel Gervais of Coalition Brossard.

“On voting day you have two ballots. One is for councillor. Please vote Xixi Li. Another vote is for the mayor. Please vote Michel Gervais,” the article said.

Of the two candidates, only Li was elected. Gervais was defeated by Assaad in the mayoral race.

A screenshot of an article promoting Xixi Li, city councillor for Brossard, Quebec, in the 2021 municipal election. The article was posted on a WeChat account shared by the Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud in Brossard and the Service à la famille chinoise du Grand Montréal, both headed by Li. The organizations are being investigated by the RCMP for being alleged secret Chinese police stations. Screenshot via The Epoch Times

Élections Québec said that although the Act Respecting Elections and Referendums in Municipalities prohibits anyone other than the official agent of a candidate or a political party from incurring expenses to promote or oppose the election of a candidate, “it does not prohibit the conveyance of partisan messages if there is no cost attached to the intervention.”

“For example, a company could make a free social media post inviting voters to vote for a particular candidate. As long as there is no cost, there is no violation,” the email said.

“This is why, in the light of the information we currently have, we will not open an investigation into the activities of the Center Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud or Chinese Family Service of Greater Montreal.”

Élections Québec said it remains “on the lookout for developments in the situation,” acknowledging that the RCMP is investigating both the SFCGM and the CSQRS as potential Chinese police stations.

Li told the Journal de Montréal had her organizations have never been partisan.

“We’re a local non-profit organization. ... We’ve always been there for the benefit of the community, to help the elderly and people in difficult situations who are handicapped or who have mental health issues.”

Li has not responded to several requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

Upon checking the WeChat joint account again on March 14, The Epoch Times found that the five articles promoting Li as a candidate in the 2021 municipal election had been deleted.

Foreign Interference

Li’s two organizations are the latest among a number of unofficial Chinese police stations that had been operating in Ontario and British Columbia until they were recently closed following RCMP investigations.

The stations came to public attention after a Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders published two reports in September and December last year, looking into the Chinese Communist Party’s transnational repression and long-arm policing.

The NGO has so far identified over 100 such Chinese police outposts in dozens of countries worldwide, including three in the Greater Toronto Area and one in Vancouver.

The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa said the reason such stations were set up abroad was to help Chinese citizens abroad with services such as driver’s licence renewal, and that the service centres are needed to perform eyesight and hearing examinations. The Embassy told CBC News that the stations are staffed by volunteers, who are “not Chinese police officers” and are “not involved in any criminal investigation or relevant activity.”

The RCMP said earlier this month that four of the alleged stations in Canada have ceased operations.

Safeguard Defenders noted in its reports that some of the overseas police stations have been support for Beijing’s campaign to fight telecommunication crimes by Chinese nationals living abroad, although open-source information provided by local and state-run media in China have shown that non-suspects or dissidents of the regime have also been targeted.

The RCMP said in a March 13 statement that they had received 15 “serious tips“ in relation to SFCGM and the CSQRS as being alleged Chinese police stations.

The two organizations were formed decades ago, and have both received millions of dollars in government funding. In light of the RCMP investigation, the Quebec Ministry of Immigration said it is cutting funding to the organizations following an audit.

Regarding the possibility of Chinese police stations in Brossard, Mayor Assaad said in her Facebook post that “the alleged facts are disturbing.”

“From what I understand, the Chinese police posts are linked to the Communist Party of China to control its citizens abroad with threats against their families and safety. They are interfering with our democratic institutions,” she wrote.

Noé Chartier contributed to this report.