Canadian Infiltration of Beijing Agents

"These allegations only serve to stigmatize and reinforce stereotypes and prejudices against a historically marginalized group."

Service a la Famille Chinoise du Grand Montreal (SFCGM) leadership 

"The individual you mention attended a local community event hosted and organized by the local candidate."

"There was no donation taken from this individual."

"[The Liberal party has] no formal ties [with the SFCGM]."

Liberal spokesperson Guillaume Bertrand

 

"It is well known that China uses community organizations to engage in united front influence activities."

"In a general sense, inviting groups connected to the UFWD [United Front Work Department] or OCAO [Overseas Chinese Affairs Office] to political events could send the wrong message to Canadians and the diaspora community and the right message to China."

"We now have a community leader that has met UFWD leaders attending a fundraising event for a Liberal candidate."

Former national security analyst Dennis Molinaro

Xixi Li, a city councillor in Brossard, Que., and the head of an organization suspected by the RCMP of hosting a secret Chinese police station, attends an invitation-only campaign event hosted by local Liberal candidate and outgoing MP Alexandra Mendès. Photo by Submitted

The head of two organizations that the RCMP suspects of operating a secret Chinese police station in Montreal was invited by a Montreal-area Liberal candidate to a federal election campaign event. Alexandra Mendes, the incumbent Liberal who is running for re-election in Brossard-Saint-Lambert had issued the invitation. When the news surfaced of this event and its attendee, consternation within the Liberal party surfaced, related to scrutiny over over a number of candidates' comments relating to apparent links of the invitee to the Chinese government. 

This is by no means a sole incident of concern. During this federal election campaign, a number of Chinese-Canadian-linked episodes with Liberal candidates have surfaced that underlined their commitment to Beijing through links to the Chinese Consulate in Toronto and to the United Front Work Department which works to enforce Beijing's orders that impact (illegally) on Chinese-Canadians. China's undercover work in efforts to interfere with Canadian elections in the past have been a cautionary tale.

 

Yet the Liberal Party, in government for the past decade, has maintained its close ties with the Chinese Communist Party. Justin Trudeau's father Pierre Trudeau famously opened Canada up to recognition of China and trade opportunities with the consumer giant. That giant has since overtaken the world economy in producing goods now consumed throughout the world. And Justin Trudeau throughout that decade, aided and abetted by former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, has yearned for a free trade agreement with China.

 

The current (unelected) Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney also has close trade and investment ties with China. Beijing's infamous hijacking of corporate trade and scientific secrets to benefit its own production and technological advances have had a habit of scooping up the benefits of its ill-gotten data while destroying the originator of the techniques and scientific, medical and technical discoveries unable to compete with China's cut-throat production facilities. 

 

MP Alexandra Mendès delivers a speech in the House of Commons prior to voting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick /The Canadian Press

Xixi Li, head of two controversial Chinese community groups and herself a Brossard city councillor has been shown in a photograph while attending an invitation-only dinner that Mendes hosted. "I'm pleased to invite you to a rallying spaghetti dinner for the 2025 federal election campaign" read an "invitation from Alexandra Mendes" which had been sent to event attendees. As executive director of SFCGM and the Centre Sino-Quebec de la Rive-Sud, in 2023, the RCMP annunced suspicions the organizations surreptitiously housed a Chinese "police station". 

Such underground "police stations" have been investigated by the RCMP for years, some of which they claim to have shut down. The suspicion is that their purpose may be to support efforts to intimidate or silence critics of the communist regime. The investigation, noted the RCMP, was part of a larger probe purposing to "detect and perturb criminal activities supported by a foreign state that can threaten the safety of people living in Canada". A month onk the RCMP reported it had "shut down illegal police activity in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia".

 

"Since the investigation is still ongoing and there are legal steps to be taken, we cannot offer any comments at this time", an RCMP spokesperson advised. The links existing between SFCGM and the Chinese government are not new, the organization is held to have received funding directly from Beijing. Chinese media reports in 2016 noted that the SFCGM had been designated an Overseas Chinese Service Centre,which is now part of China's United Front Work Department. Chinese media had published photos of Ms.Li with OCAO directors.

 

The "United Front System" has been accused of stifling critics of the Chinese regime abroad. Many Chinese Canadians have good reason to fear the United Front System, which has attempted to persuade some of the more outspoken among them, critical of Beijing, to return to China. Where, once there, they would be accused of plotting against the state, subjected to a show trial, and imprisoned or even worse.

 

The government of Canada itself has for years warned that Beijing uses the United Front Work Department "to stifle criticism, infiltrate foreign political parties, diaspora communities, universities and multinational corporations".