Former Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart says he has been interviewed by federal officials about a B.C. cabinet minister who is being investigated for collaborating with the Chinese regime.
“I reported [this] to senior B.C. NDP officials. I know the premier is aware of it. I know many members of cabinet are aware of this,” Stewart told journalist Jas Johal’s CKNW show on May 4.
“This is an ongoing RCMP investigation that nothing’s being done about it.”
Stewart, who is a former federal NDP MP and was Vancouver mayor from 2018–2022, said he has been interviewed by the Canadian Intelligence Security Service (CSIS) and “officials from Ottawa.” He said he alerted the B.C. NDP government about the investigation into the B.C. cabinet minister, “making sure that this information got to the top of the chain.”
“It did, and then nothing’s happened,” he added.
B.C. Premier David Eby was asked about Stewart’s comments by interim B.C. Conservative Leader Trevor Halford during question period in the legislature on May 5 .
Eby said he has had multiple briefings with the RCMP and CSIS on different issues but has never been told by them about any such concerns regarding any government caucus member or cabinet minister.
“At a minimum, if there was concern about a cabinet member, given the sensitive information that cabinet has access to, I would remove that person from cabinet,” Eby said.
Halford stressed that his specific question was whether Stewart had briefed the premier or other cabinet members about the issue.
Eby didn’t answer directly, instead saying he hasn’t spoken with Stewart for about three years, and brought up Stewart’s past reports that the CCP interfered in the 2022 election.
“I can assure this House that he did not lose the election because of the Chinese government,” Eby said.
B.C. Conservative MLA Macklin McCall, his party’s public safety critic, asked what actions the government has taken to ensure “there are no other cabinet ministers involved with inappropriate relations with foreign governments.”
“Collusion with foreign governments are serious allegations. They should be taken with the utmost importance,” McCall said in the legislature on May 5.
Eby said his government pushed for the federal government to make legislative changes to enable CSIS to brief provincial governments about national security issues, and that multiple members of his government have obtained security clearances to be able to receive briefings from CSIS and the RCMP.
“I took significant steps, including significant personal disclosure to the federal government, in order to obtain top secret clearance from the federal government, in order to access top secret briefings from CSIS and the RCMP,” Eby said. “I have received not one concern from any of the federal agencies that require that top-secret clearance about any member of government caucus or cabinet.”
A CSIS spokesperson said the agency can “neither confirm nor disclose” any investigation issues to protect its sources and methods.
‘More and Worse Interference’
Stewart told Johal that he has signed non-disclosure agreements, so he is “taking a risk” talking about the issue, but said it’s so serious that it should be discussed.“It is, I think, a serious problem both at the civic level and now at the provincial government level. And again, you’re seeing what happens when you don’t address these things seriously, you'll just get more and worse interference,” he said, in reference to the Chinese Consulate pressuring city staff to cancel Shen Yun.
Shen Yun, a classical Chinese dance company, was formed in 2006 in New York by leading classical Chinese artists to revive China’s traditional culture. The company’s artists practice Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, a spiritual meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 1999.
Local Shen Yun organizers report various incidents of the CCP interfering with the show over the years, including hoax bomb threats and other pressure tactics to have venues cancel the performance. Most recently, the Queen Elizabeth Theatre received bomb threats ahead of Shen Yun’s run there in April, but the shows went on after Vancouver police confirmed the threats weren’t credible. The police force’s cybercrimes unit determined that a phone number associated with the email from which the threats were sent is based in China.
Stewart said the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver “really exists just to” interfere with events like Shen Yun and to promote the interests of the CCP. But he says what took him by surprise with the latest revelation about the April meeting is that consulate officials are now going after the civil service, not just elected officials.
“This is something new and something that’s very concerning that all levels of government should take really seriously,” he said.
He added that it’s breaking with protocol for civil servants to meet with consular officials without elected representatives present.
“I can imagine that this is really off-putting and creating fear within City Hall, the boldness of this request, and the lack of response from the city, the province, and the feds,” he said.
The Epoch Times contacted Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s office, the B.C. ministry of public safety, Office f the Premier of B.C., the Prime Minister’s Office, Public Safety Canada, and Global Affairs Canada for comment but didn’t hear back by publication time.
A spokesperson with the City of Vancouver said that all protocols for the meeting with the consulate officials were followed.
“Staff may, from time to time, meet with representatives of consulates for information sharing purposes. These conversations are high-level and do not involve policy decisions or commitments,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that Shen Yun has been held at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre for the past 17 years, including this year, and that the city collaborates with local police to ensure safety at its venues.
A spokesperson with the RCMP said the national police force is “aware that foreign states may seek to influence, intimidate or harm communities or individuals within the country.”
“The RCMP will not tolerate any form of intimidation, harassment, or harmful targeting of communities or individuals in Canada,” the spokesperson said. “The RCMP continues to conduct outreach and communicate with communities across the country to raise awareness about foreign interference and how to report it.”
‘Early Tests’
Stewart said these moves by the CCP are “early tests” to see how far it can push its interference efforts.“They’re seeing what they can get away with, and they‘ll intensify it, like they do in countries all around the world. They’ll start to intensify their actions if there is no pushback,” he told Johal.
He added that Ottawa should intervene in this case, and that the presence of the consulate in Vancouver “should at least be reviewed.”
“You can imagine if this happened in the U.S. or if it happened in Europe, there would be an investigation very quickly as to what’s going on here,” he said.
He noted that instances of such tactics by Beijing in Canada are rising, and that this shows “the extent to which the Chinese have infiltrated our systems here with a deliberate intent to forward their own agenda and to interfere with our politics here.”
Subnational Interference
In 2010, then-CSIS director Richard Fadden told CBC News that several municipal politicians in B.C. are under the “general influence of a foreign government.”He also said at least two cabinet ministers in two provinces are influenced by foreign powers.
The Globe and Mail later revealed that one of those two was former Ontario cabinet minister Michael Chan. The report said that CSIS was concerned that Chan had developed “too close” a relationship with the Chinese Consulate in Toronto and warned the provincial Liberal government at the time, though the government kept him in cabinet. Chan, who is now deputy mayor of Markham, Ont., sued the Globe over its reporting, but an Ontario court dismissed the lawsuit in 2024. He has not responded to requests for comment.
The identity of the second cabinet minister cited by Fadden hasn’t been publicly revealed. Neither of the governments in Ontario or B.C. from that time are in power now.
Dennis Molinaro, an author and former national security analyst and policy adviser to the federal government, says subnational influence operations are “the most underestimated threat in the malign foreign influence space.”
He added that subnational officials such as mayors, school board members, and university administrators are the ones whose decisions affect people’s everyday lives, including on issues related to transit and classrooms.
“Foreign actors have figured this out. The federal tier gets the headlines and the resources. The subnational tier gets the runway, and the access and relationships compound quietly over years,” he said.
He gave the example of a California state senator in 2017 proposing a bill to express support for Falun Dafa practitioners. He said after the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco wrote to the state legislature warning of damage to relations between the state and China, the state senate “bowed to the CCP pressure and shelved the proposed bill.”
“We watch the CCP campaigns targeting state-level officials, local interests. We’ve seen them at PTA meetings. They have been in full swing for years, and they’re increasing in intensity,” Pompeo said.
