This highly impressive guide gives a detailed schematic of the tangled relations between agencies of the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese business, Beijing supported astro-turf social organizations in the guise of Chinese diaspora civil society, their Chinese-Canadian leaders (many selected and vetted by Beijing), and Canada’s political and economic elite. But what we have here are networks of association only. There is no assertion of complicity in illegality or the enabling of criminality.

 

The operations of Chinese Communist Party influence, repression, and espionage agents and their proxies in Canada have been a focus of attention in Canada since the release of the controversial 1997 Project Sidewinder, conducted by a joint Canadian intelligence task force, composed of members of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to investigate and expose Chinese intelligence operations in Canada. In 2010, then director of CSIS Richard Fadden alleged two provincial ministers of the Crown are under the influence of China. In recent years, reputable Canadian mainstream media have reported on a series of highly damning classified intelligence assessments of Chinese influence operations leaked to them, many alleging the subversion of Canadian Laurentian elite
policymakers. In response, the Government of Canada appointed an Independent Special Rapporteur on Foreign Interference in 2023 and subsequently launched a fifteen month Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions. The Canadian Parliament passed Bill C-70, “An Act respecting countering foreign interference,” into law in June 2024. But these so far have led to no effective action to counter Chinese regime infiltration of Canadian democratic institutions. Over many years in false assurances, Canadians are told the government deems this “unacceptable” but in fact practically speaking they simply accept it as subordinate to other foreign policy priorities such as the promotion of Canadian prosperity through exports to China’s massive market for Canadian minerals, raw materials and agricultural commodities. So China’s very well funded and well resourced United Front operations in Canada continue to be expanded and enhanced unhindered by Canadian government action.

In 2015, I published an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail newspaper that their headline writer aptly dubbed “The murky world of Chinese influence.” In it, I observed “Canada could be managing these concerns much better. The Chinese money is there, but not the Canadian political will.” Ten years later, this remains disturbingly true. But this guide goes a very long way to clearing the pervasive murk.

The meticulous and painstaking research resulting in this extraordinarily impressive work has been undertaken by Canadians of Chinese origin. They fully appreciate that there is a clear distinction between persons of proud Han Chinese ancestry and persons who are nationals of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Both come out as “Chinese” in the English language. The linguistic confusion between a citizenship and an ethnicity is fully exploited by China’s Communist regime, whose propaganda is that all persons of Han ethnicity should be loyal to the PRC “motherland” before all else. But I have yet to meet anyone of Tibetan or Uyghur or Mongolian origin whose ancestral lands are within the contemporary borders of the PRC that would tell you they are “Chinese.” Similarly, most Han Chinese Canadians who have come to Canada, not just from China but from Hong Kong or Taiwan or Malaysia or Hakka from India, have no identification with the PRC’s malign purposes and agenda in Canada. It is high time all Canadians come to appreciate this point.

It is high time to stop China’s corrosion of Canada’s democratic bases and the CCP’s sowing of ethnic suspicion and distrust. This guide thus forms an important contribution to making Canada a better country.