Because Canada is a refuge and offers a new life for people escaping authoritarian, thuggish, or grindingly hierarchical states, it is also a happy hunting ground for agents from those regimes. Those agents have two main objectives. One is to try to ensure the new Canadians don’t spark demands for political reform in their home country. The other is to influence the
Canadian government and Parliament’s stance on issues of importance to the meddling regimes, whether it be China, India, Russia or Iran.

As Canadian political life throbs in the midst of an election campaign two organizations, the political reform movement Canadian Friends of Hong Kong and Found in Translation, which aims to expose foreign political interference in Canada, have produced a handy booklet for voters. The booklet focuses on how to identify and counter agents of Beijing’s main political warfare organization, the United Front Work Department (UFWD), but its advice can be used just as well by Canadians suspicious they are being enlisted by agents from India, Iran, Russia, or any other interfering foreign regime.

There are three main tactics used by the foreign agents against their Canadian targets. The first is a charm offensive, claiming their regime is not as bad as it is painted, and often insisting that opposition in Canada is spurred by racism.

If charm doesn’t work corruption often does. Canadians may be offered free trips to China with privileged access to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or other government officials. From this flows offers of highly lucrative business deals. And just to make sure the fish is firmly hooked, the target may be snared in what is euphemistically called a “honey trap.” This is a plain old sexual encounter, but it gives Beijing a handy piece of blackmail to use on the Canadian if necessary.

The booklet contains fascinating pictorial charts showing the flow of business deals or other favours to Canadian business and political leaders over the last half century or so. The end product is a graphic description of the complex network of influence and alliances the CCP and the UFWD have established in Canada.

For Canadians of ethnic Chinese heritage who continue to work for political and human rights reform in their country of birth, the approach is usually more brutal. There will be threats to the lives and livelihoods of relatives in China. These people are often detained and then put on the phone to plead with their Canadian relatives to stop their political activity. There are also examples of dissident Chinese Canadians being fired from their jobs by a boss who has already been subverted by the CCP.

The booklet laments the lack of a potent law against foreign political interference in Canada, and points to Australia where such a law appears to be working well.

Many Canadians enrolled as Beijing’s agents of influence didn’t spot the warning signs until it was too late and they were hooked. The hub of the booklet is advice on what to do if an approach appears at all suspicious. And these approaches can come from anyone. The agent for the CCP or the UFWD may not be ethnic Chinese. But it will be someone who appears to have a privileged relationship with the political, academic or business elite in China. A good test is to ask politically-charged questions and then gauge the response.

The booklet puts emphasis on questions to put to candidates in the federal election. There have been several examples exposed of CCP agents working to get pro-Beijing Canadians selected as candidates for principally the Liberal and Conservative parties. Agents for the Indian government have done the same. And while there is no evidence that these espionage operations have affected the outcome of Canadian elections, they can cause Canadians to doubt the democratic process. That in itself is a victory for the foreign power.

This handbook is a valuable piece of work by the two Chinese-Canadian groups. In particular, the nine graphics of Beijing’s network of links with the upper echelons in Canadian political, business, academic, media and immigrant life is far more potent than a simple verbal description.

While Elections Canada does publish some advice to voters about foreign interference, it is basic and guarded, as government publications tend to be. The booklet by the Canadian Friends of Hong Kong and Found in Translation is far more direct and useful.

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Jonathan Manthorpe.
Victoria, March 27, 2025.