Chong Questions Why No Arrests in Relation to Chinese Police Stations After 8 Months

Conservative MP Michael Chong appears as a witness at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs regarding foreign election interference, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on May 16, 2023. Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press

Conservative MP Michael Chong grilled a cabinet minister on the issue of a Canadian resident being coerced into returning to China through the schemes of agents in relation to secret Chinese police stations established overseas, and why there have still been no arrests after eight months.

“An unsealed Justice Department indictment in U.S. court revealed that a Canadian in Vancouver was coerced back to the PRC [People’s Republic of China]," Chong, the Tories’ foreign affairs critic, said in Parliament during question period on June 15.

“It’s been eight months since the first reports about Beijing’s illegal police service stations. Beijing brazenly admitted to five of these stations and another two have been identified. These stations are being used to coerce people back to the PRC. The minister has indicated that these stations were shut down, but they haven’t been. When will they be?”

The indictment Chong referred to was unsealed by a New York court last November, charging seven Chinese nationals for harassing and coercing a U.S. resident to return to China as part of Beijing’s international extralegal repatriation campaign known as Operation Fox Hunt. The indictment said similar operations were planned in Canada, with Chinese agents trying to arrange a meeting with a victim in Toronto for more detailed intimidation and interrogation.

“The implication is that Beijing is comfortable using Canada as its foreign interference playground,” Chong said, pointing out that those Chinese agents have since been arrested by U.S. authorities, whereas no concrete action has been taken in Canada since then.

In response, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino defended his government’s effort in combating foreign interference and clandestine operations.

“We are getting the job done by making sure that we equip our national security establishment with the tools that they need to fight foreign interference, with additional resources for the RCMP—which we put into the budget—and by raising the bar on transparency through the creation of NSICOP and NSIRA, and by continuing to engage Canadians on this. That’s what we’re doing,” he said.

Chinese Police Stations

News about the U.S. indictment came months after media reported about the operations of three secret Chinese police stations in Toronto that were run by a local police bureau in China. The police stations were first exposed last September by the Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders, which was studying Beijing’s long-arm policing and transnational repression.

In an update report published in December 2022, the NGO further identified two other Chinese police outposts in British Columbia. The Epoch Times also reported about a third location in Vancouver that has been included in a list from a Chinese police bureau as its overseas branch.

More recently, the RCMP announced investigations into two Chinese community service centres in Quebec that are allegedly doubling as Chinese police service centres. The two service centres in question are the Service à la Famille Chinoise du Grand Montréal and its sister organization, Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud, located in the City of Brossard. The two organizations are run by Brossard City councillor Xixi Li, who has denied the allegations.

Mendicino said the RCMP has “taken decisive action to shut down the so-called police stations,” while testifying before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC) on April 27. The two Quebec organizations refuted the minister’s comment a day later, saying in a joint statement, “We have not received any closure requests from the RCMP.”

Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino rises during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 15, 2023. Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

In the House of Commons, MPs have continued to question whether operations at locations alleged to be Chinese police stations have ceased.

On June 1, Jody Thomas, the national security and intelligence adviser to the prime minister, told the PROC that the Liberal government is aware of the two alleged Chinese police stations in Montreal and “work is being done to ensure that they cease to operate.” Thomas cited challenges including that the alleged police stations are ”often staffed, managed by Canadian citizens.”

Meanwhile, Acting RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme told the PROC on June 13 that, based on the criminal intelligence the RCMP has, the activities in the specific areas suspected of functioning as Chinese police stations “have shut down,” while police investigations are still ongoing.

Concerns

According to the reports from Safeguard Defenders, a total of 102 overseas Chinese police stations have been identified in 53 countries. The NGO raised concerns that some of those police stations have been used to facilitate Beijing’s forced repatriation program, with the regime boasting the involuntary return of some 230,000 Chinese living outside of the country between April 2021 and July 2022.

Tactics used to compel the return of Chinese nationals living in a foreign country include harassment and intimidation of the targets or their family members back in China, and in rare cases, kidnapping, Peter Dahlin, founder and director of Safeguard Defenders, told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.

Such tactics were recognized by the U.S. court in the indictment unsealed last November.

“Under Operation Fox Hunt, however, PRC government officials pursuing targets of Operation Fox Hunt traveled to the United States ... —frequently individuals with familial ties to the PRC—to, among other things, surveil and harass Operation Fox Hunt targets,” the court document stated.

“PRC government officials and their assets threatened the targets and their families, including family members still residing in the PRC, with harm, including incarceration, to coerce the targets’ repatriation to the PRC.”