Canada faces questions over alleged Chinese interference

When MP Kenny Chiu was contacted by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) ahead of the 2021 Canadian federal election, he was amazed.

He never expected to be part of a CSIS investigation, let alone one that required an in-person interview at the height of Canada’s COVID-19 pandemic.

“At that time, everything had gone online, so it was quite unexpected that they insisted on a face-to-face meeting,” Chiu told Al Jazeera.

But the subject of the meeting was very sensitive: alleged Chinese interference in the Canadian elections. And soon it would become a dominant issue in Canadian politics, shaping Chiu’s political fortunes – and eventually even the Prime Minister’s.

Intelligence reports leaked from the CSIS in recent months indicate that the Canadian intelligence community has been concerned about Chinese election meddling for decades.

The documents suggest that the Chinese government is not only spreading disinformation, but also operating a clandestine network to influence the past two federal elections, in 2019 and 2021.

The alleged network includes Chinese diplomats, Canadian politicians, business owners and international students. They are accused of using their influence to support pro-Beijing candidates and suppress criticism of China.

One such figure is former Vancouver Chinese Consul General Tong Xiaoling. In a leak to The Globe and Mail newspaper, Tong reportedly boasted that Chinese efforts resulted in the defeat of two Canadian Conservative Party candidates in the province of British Columbia. Chiu was one of them.

Disinformation on the campaign trail

Chiu began to notice a shift six months before his re-election bid, in the early months of 2021.

Chiu was first elected to represent the Steveston-Richmond East district in 2019 and had recently introduced a member-only bill called the Foreign Influence Registry Act.

Individuals working for foreign governments and political organizations would be required to have records of their communications with Canadian officials if, for example, they wanted to submit policy proposals or influence government procurement.

According to Chiu, the bill was designed to provide Canada with tools to fight foreign interference, without singling out a specific country.

“Still, we saw a lot of misinformation being spread about the bill, with things like, ‘It will put Chinese-Canadians at risk and people with ties to China risk being fined 400,000 Canadian dollars’ [about $300,000]Chiu said. “Of course none of that was true.”

Chiu herself came under fire. “I was also slandered, saying I am a chosen one and accusing me of being racist despite my own Chinese heritage.”

But Chiu was not alone in noticing an increase in surveillance following the introduction of his bill. Canadian disinformation monitor DisInfoWatch took a close look at stories about Chiu and other Conservative Party candidates in the 2021 election.

It found strong evidence of a coordinated campaign aimed at influencing Chinese-Canadian voters.

Benjamin Fung, a professor of cybersecurity at McGill University, also analyzed the disinformation spread during the election. He also concluded that there were ties with Asia.

“It was widespread, but a lot of the activity would be concentrated around a 9am to 5pm time slot — just not Canadian time, but Chinese time,” Fung told Al Jazeera. “So it was most likely coordinated somewhere in East Asia.”

Chiu district had a large Chinese-Canadian community, and experts found that a significant amount of disinformation was spread through WeChat, a Chinese social media app widely used in the diaspora community.

With an estimated 1 million users in Canada, WeChat was one of the few apps that allowed communication between people inside and outside China.

Chiu subsequently lost his bid for re-election. And his initiative bill on foreign interference was eventually shelved.

Scandal for the Liberal Party

However, the exact effect of the alleged Chinese interference is difficult to measure.

While the government of Canada has acknowledged China’s interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections, a report released in February concluded that those efforts did not significantly affect the outcome of either vote.

Chiu agrees that Chinese interference may not have changed the outcome of his 2021 campaign. But, he stresses, that doesn’t mean foreign interference shouldn’t be taken seriously.

“It is not only our democracy that is under threat. It is our sovereignty as a nation that is at stake,” he said.

The recent revelations of election interference have sparked a political storm for the ruling Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

A Liberal Party MP, Han Dong, was identified among the leaks as having private meetings with China’s Consul General in Toronto, Han Tao.

National security sources quoted by CTV News accuse Dong of encouraging China to delay the release of two Canadians, Michael Sparov and Michael Kovrig, who were detained in 2018 on espionage charges.

Releasing them early, Dong allegedly suggested, would benefit the Conservative Party in the polls.

Dong has denied making such suggestions, but confirmed that he has spoken with the consul general. His office did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment, and Dong has since stepped down from the Liberal Party and instead serves as an independent.

Under increasing political pressure, Trudeau appointed an independent special rapporteur in March to investigate reports of election interference and determine whether a public inquiry was necessary.

His critics say it’s too little, too late. They accuse Trudeau of being more fixated on stopping the leaks than on addressing the outage itself.

Preying on anti-Chinese hatred

Initially, Trudeau dismissed the allegations against Dong as evidence of anti-Asian racism.

“One of the things we’ve unfortunately seen in recent years is an increase in anti-Asian racism related to the pandemic and concerns about people’s loyalty,” Trudeau said at a press conference in Mississauga.

Allegations that Dong was “in some way disloyal to Canada”, he added, “should not be entertained”.

But some experts say the issue of anti-Asian hatred has in some cases been used as a smoke screen to cover up election interference.

Reports have shown that instances of anti-Asian racism and xenophobia increased in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, resulting in increased feelings of insecurity among Canadians of Asian descent.

According to research analyst Ai-Men Lau, Beijing has been able to respond to such concerns by dismissing criticism of its meddling efforts as further evidence of anti-Asian bias. She works for the Doublethink Lab, an organization that tracks influence operations.

The solution, she told Al Jazeera, is to reach out directly to Chinese diaspora communities to build trust in Canada’s public institutions. But the government initiatives she’s seen so far have been top-down.

“I still haven’t really seen anything forward-looking in terms of what we’re going to do for the next election,” she said.

“Unfortunately, in Canada we have a particularly nasty habit of being incredibly reactive to allegations of foreign interference rather than being proactive.”

China, meanwhile, has consistently denied allegations of meddling in Canadian elections. On a bulletin board on the official website of the Chinese embassy, ​​a spokesperson called the allegations “pure slander and utter nonsense”.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Chinese consulate in Vancouver and Toronto, as well as the Chinese embassy in Ottawa, but no one responded to requests for comment.

Beyond election meddling

Some proponents believe the interference extends well beyond Canada’s electoral system. In 2019, Canadian activist Rukiye Turdush said she had found evidence that students were planning to obstruct a lecture she was giving at Ontario’s McMaster University in collaboration with Chinese officials.

Turdush, a member of the Uyghur ethnic group, had given a lecture on the situation in Xinjiang, the westernmost region of China where, according to the United Nations, some 1 million Uyghurs are being held in re-education camps.

A Chinese student present accused her of lying and cursed at her before storming out. But after that, Turdush received a series of screenshots from WeChat that supposedly showed Chinese students collecting information about her and her son, supposedly to intimidate her.

Based on the chats shared with Al Jazeera, Chinese student groups signed up and coordinated with the Chinese embassy in Canada to disrupt her event.

“It shows how deep Chinese interference goes in today’s Canadian society and how many different Chinese actors are involved,” Turdush told Al Jazeera.

In 2022, the Spanish NGO Safeguard Defenders released a report revealing a global network of more than 100 so-called overseas police stations, operating on behalf of the Chinese government.

It identified three locations in Toronto alone, with other locations believed to be in Montreal and Vancouver.

The presence of such police stations does not surprise Toronto resident Mimi Lee, a member of the NGO Torontonian HongKongers Action Group.

The influence of the Chinese government is pervasive, she said. “The interference of the Chinese government exists from top to bottom in Canada today.”