CSIS Says Chinese Police Stations in Canada Part of Repression Operation: Report

A sign on the way to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service building in Ottawa in a file photo. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

Canada’s spy agency says that the Chinese police stations on Canadian soil are part of a network to track down high-level targets overseas and suppress dissent, according to recently released records.

The document, which was obtained by La Presse through the access to information regime and reported on Aug. 21, says the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) believes the stations are but one element the Chinese regime uses to conduct foreign interference.

“It is highly likely that those [Chinese police] stations, established without the approval of the Canadian government, have for mission to help the MPS [Ministry of Public Security] find, surveil and harass Canada-based targets of Fox Hunt operation, a longstanding international campaign of repression and fight against corruption,” says an official translation of the CSIS security bulletin released on Dec. 2, 2022.

“These ‘police stations’ are only but one element in the interference toolbox and transnational repression conducted by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] in Canada.”

The Epoch Times has not independently reviewed the CSIS document, which was reportedly heavily redacted.

The existence of Chinese police stations in Canada and other countries was revealed publicly in September 2022 when Spanish NGO Safeguard Defenders published a report on the matter. The federal government has not indicated if it knew about the phenomena beforehand.

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The report identified three Chinese police stations in Toronto, but others were later identified elsewhere. The RCMP also announced its investigation into two other locations in the Montreal area, taking the rare step of publicizing a national security investigation.

A Chinese state media outlet lists this single-story commercial building in Markham, Ont., as one of three overseas Chinese police stations in Canada. (Michelle Hu/The Epoch Times)

The RCMP said in June that the Chinese police stations have stopped their operations in Canada following overt disruptive actions by the Mounties.

There have been no arrests made in relation to this particular activity, but the RCMP charged one of its former officers in late July for allegedly participating in Operation Fox Hunt.

The Safeguard Defenders report says the Chinese regime uses the stations abroad to track down fraud suspects and persuade them to return to China. The NGO says this plays an “integral part” of the Fox Hunt operation run by the MPS, which is focused on higher-value targets.

“These methods allow the CCP and their security organs to circumvent normal bilateral mechanisms of police and judicial cooperation, thereby severely undermining the international rule of law and territorial integrity of the third countries involved,” says the report.

Fox Hunt was launched in 2014 by CCP leader Xi Jinping as an anti-corruption campaign to repatriate officials who have embezzled funds, but it has been expanded to target dissidents, according to security agencies.

“China describes Fox Hunt as some kind of international anti-corruption campaign—it is not,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray in 2020.

Mr. Wray says it’s instead a “weeping bid” by Mr. Xi to target “political rivals, dissidents, and critics seeking to expose China’s extensive human rights violations.”