Four years ago, Canadians learned that Beijing was allegedly running five police stations on our soil. My colleague David Menzies went to one in Markham. Nobody came to the door.
Nobody was charged, either.
Now the group that found those five says there are at least 18. And the foreign influence registry, the one the minister points to when he’s asked about this? Not one of them is on it.
The report, A Formula for Repression, comes from Safeguard Defenders, the Spain-based human rights group. It alleges at least 18 overseas Chinese associations in Canada are acting as police monitoring stations, part of a network of nearly 1,250 in 91 countries. CTV calls that a 12-fold increase over what the group found four years ago. It says the network exists to watch and police the Chinese diaspora.
CTV News, which reported the findings on November 6, put them to Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree.
He said foreign interference won’t be tolerated. He also said “they are allegations and have not been investigated.” Some of the associations are sports or book clubs, he said, and mislabelling them could frighten communities for no reason.
