The federal commission of inquiry into foreign interference heard from more than a dozen diaspora community members who want greater awareness of their security concerns.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
The foreign-interference inquiry heard a plea for federal resources and awareness campaigns to help protect 10 diaspora communities who face harassment from governments abroad.
Gloria Fung, immediate past president of Canada-Hong Kong Link, said government funding should be made available for diaspora communities to educate community members in reporting incidents and identifying signs of foreign interference. Transnational repression, when governments bully diaspora groups and exiles to silence them, makes recently arrived Canadians a major target of foreign meddling.
She urged the Hogue inquiry to recommend that Ottawa set up a national hotline and a secure online reporting system so the public can report “any incidents of infiltration or foreign interference” to an office that the government has already announced will be set up to to run a foreign-influence registry.
Ms. Fung urged Canada to ban WeChat, a Chinese-language social-media application that has been weaponized to spread disinformation and whose parent company is obligated under Chinese law to share data with Beijing.
Last year, Ottawa announced that Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong was the target of an operation via WeChat to spread “false or misleading narratives” about the MP whose support for human rights had made him a target of Beijing’s ruling Chinese Communist Party.
The inquiry heard from representatives of Canadian communities that trace their roots to Hong Kong, Tibet, Uyghur settlements in Xinjiang, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, Eritrea, Ethiopia’s Tigray province, Sri Lanka’s Tamils and Sikh populations in India.
Iranian Canadians said their community struggles to get the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service to listen to them when they warn that people are being targeted by Tehran. Both agencies must set up special task forces on foreign interference and the government should launch a national campaign to educate Canadians about how hostile states seek to influence, bully and sway diaspora communities, Farzaneh Fard told the inquiry.
“The public must be educated on how foreign regimes use financial resources within Canada,” she said. “Awareness campaigns can help citizens understand the importance of sanctions and asset seizures as tools to safeguard democracy,” said Ms. Fard, an Iranian Canadian human-rights advocate.
Earlier, the inquiry heard from three witnesses who voiced concern about how Canada is responding to reports of foreign interference, particularly from China and Russia.
Teresa Woo-Paw, a former Alberta cabinet minister and currently chair of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, said talk of Chinese state foreign interference in Canadian affairs has had an impact on members of the Chinese-Canadian community.
“We feel very targeted, alienated, disillusioned, guarded, isolated and losing faith in the public system,” she said.
Wawa Li, a second-generation Canadian from Quebec, criticized the RCMP for announcing that it was investigating the establishment of illegal Beijing-sanctioned police stations at two community centres in Montreal. Back in March, 2023, the RCMP told media it was investigating “alleged Chinese police stations in Quebec” and confirmed for journalists that these were the two community centres.
Ms. Li said the RCMP never offered any proof that the community centres were being used as Chinese police stations. She said the allegations prompted public funding cuts that forced the centres to chop programs and staff.
“The current foreign-investigation allegations are unfairly targeting my community and this is amplified by media, police and opportunistic politicians,” she said.
The force’s probe came amid global concerns raised by Spain-based human-rights organization Safeguard Defenders that the Chinese government was secretly operating more than 100 illegal police centres in upwards of 50 countries that it said were part of Beijing’s growing transnational repression. It said that these operations monitor Chinese diaspora communities and play a role in coercing individuals to return to the People’s Republic of China to face criminal proceedings.
University of Ottawa professor Paul Robinson told the inquiry that his writing in the past has been unfairly and wrongly maligned as conveying false narratives on behalf of Russia, which launched an all-out military assault in Ukraine in February, 2022.
He noted that the federal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council has prohibited funding for research involving Russian institutions and said that a narrowing of the “acceptable bounds of discourse” has made him leery of speaking publicly.
“It’s a chilling effect that restricts freedom of expression and intimidates and silences those who have unorthodox views and in general makes it harder to have intelligent conversations on key issues,” Prof. Robinson said.
“I have probably turned down 90 per cent of media requests in the last two years, simply because, if you step out of line, say the wrong things, people accuse you of being a Russian agent and things like this, and you get abuse pouring on your head.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Paul Robinson is a professor at Carleton University, He is, in fact, a professor at the University of Ottawa. This article has also been updated to note that Gloria Fung is no longer president of Canada-Hong Kong Link.