Sen. Victor Oh (2nd L) and Sen. Yuen Pau Woo (3rd L) at a press conference in Montreal on Dec. 1, 2023. The two senators support the Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud and the Service à la Famille Chinoise du Grand Montréal, to Quebec organizations that are being investigated by the RCMP for allegedly operating as secret Chinese police stations. Others at the press conference included Tina Zhu, representative of the Coalition for Saving Chinese Institutions of Quebec (L); May Chiu, moderating the press conference; Xixi Li (2nd R), Brossard city councillor and director general of the two organizations; and lawyer Maryse Lapointe (R). (Yi Ke/NTD Television)
Sen. Yuen Pau Woo and Sen. Victor Oh are lending support to two Montreal-based organizations that are planning to launch a lawsuit against the RCMP. The organizations are currently under police investigation for allegedly operating as secret Chinese police stations.
“Together with my colleague Senator Victor Oh, we’re very pleased to be in Montreal to show our solidarity and support for the Chinese community in Quebec, and particularly the organizations in Quebec,” Mr. Woo said at a press conference at the Chinese Family Service of Greater Montreal, or Service à la famille chinoise du Grand Montréal (SFCGM), in the city’s Chinatown on Dec. 1.
In early March, the RCMP confirmed that it was investigating the SFCGM and the South Shore Sino-Quebec Centre, or Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud (CSQRS), in Brossard, a Montreal suburb. The RCMP said in a March 13 French statement that the federal police force was “currently at 15 serious tips received in relation to the presumed Chinese police stations in Montreal and Brossard.”
On Nov. 28, the two organizations, both overseen by Brossard city councillor Xixi Li, released a statement on Chinese social media platform WeChat accusing the RCMP of initiating a “baseless public investigation.”
The statement also said the bank holding the mortgage for the SFCGM office building has declared its intention not to renew the mortgage in March 2024.
It added that “since being publicly named as the subject of an RCMP investigation on March 9, 2023, the two only Chinese community service centres in Quebec have suffered funding cuts.”
According to the Quebec Ministry of Immigration, it had already stopped funding the two organizations under an immigrant integration support program several years ago, following a 2020–21 compliance review.
“Considering the findings raised following the compliance work, the Ministry made the decision to end its partnership within the framework of the agreements signed under the Programme d’Action et de Soutien à l’Intégration (PASI),” the ministry told The Epoch Times in a French email on March 13.
The email added that the 2020–21 review also included “aspects related to governance, sound management, and accountability.”
The ministry also provided the amounts of funding given to the two organizations over the last five years, from 2018–19 to 2022–23, based on the data it had available as of March 13, 2023.
According to ministry’s email, supplemented by earlier data from official records, the ministry provided $1,948,221 to the CSQRS from 2012 to 2020 under PASI and its preceding immigrant integration program, known as the Programme Réussir Intégration (PRINT). During the same period and under the same programs, the ministry provided $4,989,694 to the SFCGM.
The ministry’s email showed that the ministry stopped PASI funding to the two organizations after 2020–21 but continued funding them under its language integration program, Programme d'intégration linguistique pour les immigrants (PILU), in 2021–22 and 2022–23. From 2018–19 to 2022–23, the ministry gave PILU funding of $243,832 to the CSQRS and $522,451 to the SFCGM, much smaller amounts than those under PRINT and PASI.
‘Not in the Criminal Code’
For his part, Mr. Woo also said the RCMP has not provided a definition of what constitutes a Chinese police station or specified what illegal activities the two organizations have been engaged in.
May Chiu, moderator for the Dec. 1 press conference, said the RCMP interviewed the board members of the two organizations but did not provide them with information on the allegations they are facing.
She said there is a lack of evidence against the two organizations and that “being a police station is not in the Criminal Code.”
The South Shore Sino-Quebec Centre in Brossard, Quebec, is seen on March 9, 2023. The RCMP says it is investigating this organization and the Chinese Family Service of Greater Montreal, which are allegedly clandestine overseas Chinese police service stations. (Noé Chartier/The Epoch Times)
Sgt. Charles Poirier of the RCMP’s Quebec division told The Epoch Times in a recent French email that the force can’t offer further comments aside from confirming that the investigation “is still active.”
“There have been no arrests made on this file to date. We are still asking people to contact us if they’re victims of or witness to criminal acts,” he wrote in a statement in French.
Promoting Chinese App That Surveils Users
During the Dec. 1 press conference, Ms. Li, who is a director of both organizations, denied that they have engaged in any activities that could be considered foreign interference.
“We never did that, and I never get any complaint from any of our customers,” she said.
She further denied that a Chinese mobile application, called Qiaobao, that the organizations have reportedly been promoting to the local Chinese community, poses security risks to its users.
The app is developed by a Beijing-based technology company that operates as a subsidiary of the China News Service, which is the second-largest state-run news agency in China after Xinhua News Agency.
According to a 2016 news release, the Qiaobao app, launched in June that year, is part of a project of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO) of the Chinese State Council. The OCAO is an agency affiliated with the United Front Work Department, a primary tool of the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign interference activities, according to a 2020 study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, cited by Public Safety Canada.
In February 2022, a Canadian Federal Court confirmed that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that OCAO has engaged in espionage activities that harm Canadian interests.
Qiaobao extensively collects users’ personal information, including their real name, gender, date of birth, national ID number, mobile phone number, bank account number, mailing address, and email address. The system also automatically processes the location information of each user’s device through GPS or WiFi.
Foreign Interference
The RCMP’s investigation of the Quebec organizations came amid media reports about China’s operation of secret police stations in Canada, including three in the Toronto area and two in Vancouver.
The police stations gained public attention following revelations by Spain-based human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders in September and December 2022. While studying China’s long-arm policing and transnational repression, the NGO found Chinese official statements boasting success in coercing some 230,000 Chinese nationals, including critics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to return to China to face criminal proceedings.
“Everyone at this table on the stage is opposed to foreign interference. Everyone is against transnational repression. And all of us up here are shocked to hear a suggestion that there are Chinese or any foreign police stations operating illegally in other countries,” Mr. Woo said during the Dec. 1 press conference.
The senator told The Epoch Times in May that he helped draft a citizen petition against the creation of a foreign agent registry in Canada. The petition was sponsored by Liberal MP Chandra Arya in the House of Commons in April.
In June, Sen. Woo and Sen. Oh led a demonstration on Parliament Hill that was advertised as an event commemorating the 100th anniversary of Canada’s long-abolished Chinese Immigration Act, which restricted virtually all Chinese immigration to Canada. In a series of public events rallying support for the protest, the two senators urged the Chinese community to support the petition against the foreign agent registry.
Noé Chartier and NTD Television contributed to this report.
