The Canadian government has been helping Chinese authorities locate nationals who have fled abroad for decades, according to an investigation by CBC’s “The Fifth Estate.”
In Canada, that assistance has sometimes resulted from reciprocal agreements, say people familiar with the relationship between the two capitals, including two former Canadian ambassadors to China.
Calvin Chrustie, former chief of operations for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in British Columbia, said in an interview that he had received instructions from the highest levels in Ottawa to assist and cooperate with Chinese officials in connection with a key fugitive’s search Vancouver area.
Mr Chrustie said he refused to facilitate a meeting with Chinese officials who wanted to question the fugitive and persuade him to voluntarily return to China to face trial.
Beijing secured Ottawa’s goodwill by offering trade concessions, offering help to combat drug trafficking and negotiating the release of Canadians arbitrarily detained in China, a CBC investigation found.
“Our economic interests contributed to this situation,” says Lorne Waldman, a Toronto-area immigration lawyer. These are a number of people who are currently in Canada and are wanted by the Chinese authorities.
We ignored the lack of rule of law in China and the fact that we should be much more skeptical of the evidence presented by Beijing. And over time, we ignored the fact that Chinese agents were active in Canada.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc did not wish to offer an interview for this report.
Earlier this year, politicians in Ottawa condemned the alleged existence of several Chinese police stations in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. However, Canadian officials have long known that Chinese police were operating in Canada.
Sky Net and Fox Hunt
Since 2014, the Chinese government has aggressively sought to secure the return of allegedly corrupt officials and white-collar criminals abroad through police operations called “Sky Net” and “Fox Hunt.”
Beijing says thousands of suspected fugitives have returned to China to face trial. Several cases of this kind are discussed on state television.
In its 2019 annual report, the Parliamentary Committee on National Security and Intelligence (CPSNR) found that Chinese officials took a number of measures to carry out Operation Fox Hunt, including diplomatic pressure on foreign states to cooperate in their investigations and clandestine trips to persuade or pressure refugees to return home. They apply these measures in Canada.
But critics argue that Canada has cooperated in this hunt for Chinese refugees for years, ignoring or downplaying problems in China related to the lack of an independent judiciary and the use of coercion, including torture, to collect evidence.
In cases involving Chinese allegations, we have been successful in throwing out evidence because it was obtained through torture, Waldman said.
The lawyer declined CBC requests to interview some of his clients who fled China, fearing family members back home would face repercussions from Beijing.
In an interview with The Fifth Estate, Me Waldman pointed out that not only is the federal government trying to revoke the mandates of its clients sought by China, but that Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) officials have also interviewed some of those clients to determine the extent to which they were harassed or threatened by the Chinese authorities so that they could return to the country and face justice.
Among these people are people who the border guards actively want to deport to China, said the lawyer.
CSIS did not respond to an interview request, but in an email response, a spokesperson noted that China is using every means at its disposal to conduct activities that pose a direct threat to our national security and sovereignty.
A notable example of this, the spokesperson continued, is Operation Fox Hunt, which is ostensibly aimed at corruption but is also believed to be used as a cover for cracking down on dissent, putting pressure on political opponents and forcing returns and involuntary returns of nationals or non-citizens born in China, stoking fear of state power regardless of people’s whereabouts.
Since Canada does not have an extradition agreement with China, the immigration and refugee system is used to deal with suspected refugees. Canadian officials are presenting evidence obtained by Chinese authorities during hearings before the Immigration and Refugee Board.
“I don’t think a Supreme Court justice would authorize an extradition to China based on the rule of law there,” Mr. Waldman said. So if that is the case and we are not prepared to extradite and have never extradited, then why are we deporting people to China based on evidence that we know is unreliable?
In 2015, China released a list of 100 fugitives wanted for economic crimes; Beijing estimated that 26 of them were in Canada.
A list of thousands of Chinese nationals expelled from Canadian territory between 2008 and 2020, compiled by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and obtained through a freedom of information request, shows that 33 of them were deported on allegations of criminal or serious crime in another country.
The CBSA declined to offer an interview for this report.
In an emailed statement, an agency spokesperson noted that in all cases where the CBSA decides to act on an allegation of inadmissibility, the commission is the one that makes the final decision.
Canada’s cooperation
The Fifth Estate noted that over the past 20 years, China has demanded Canada’s cooperation in finding refugees when Ottawa wanted Beijing’s support on key issues.
For example, Guy Saint-Jacques, who served as Canada’s ambassador to China between 2012 and 2016, reiterates that the Canadian government is willing to cooperate on repatriation issues if Beijing, in turn, helps combat the flow of fentanyl into Canada.
A note was signed between the RCMP and China’s Ministry of Public Security indicating that visits by Chinese inspectors would be allowed in Canada, Mr. Saint-Jacques said in an interview.
He added that Chinese investigators would have to provide details before their visits, including the identities of the people they would talk to and the reason for those conversations. The memo also required that a Mandarin-speaking RCMP officer be present at these meetings.
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Guy Saint-Jacques was Canada’s ambassador to China. (archive photo)
Photo: The Canadian Press / Jason Franson
However, there appear to have been cases where the Chinese appear to have overstepped these boundaries.
The first visit took place in the spring of 2016, Mr. Saint-Jacques recalled, and shortly afterwards the CSIS liaison officer at the embassy came to me and said: “Mr. Ambassador, I have to report that we have captured some members.” Chinese delegation while carrying out activities that went beyond the planned scope.”
The former ambassador did not want to elaborate on what activities were involved. Mr Saint-Jacques raised the issue with a Chinese counterpart who assured him that an incident of this kind would not happen again, but the former ambassador claims this is difficult to verify.
For his part, Mr. Chrustie was a senior RCMP officer in British Columbia when he was asked to facilitate an interview between Chinese officials and a high-profile fugitive they were seeking in the Vancouver area.
When asked whether it was a request or an order, Mr. Chrustie replied that it was a request, followed by a specific reminder that it was a request coming from the very top of the organizational chart in Ottawa would come.
The principal concerned emphasized that he was uncomfortable facilitating this conversation.
What I knew was that China was one of the countries that did not have a strong track record of respecting the independence of the judiciary and adhering to established rules.
For years, the RCMP and CBSA have participated in working groups with their Chinese counterparts to discuss issues related to various areas of cooperation, including the repatriation of refugees from Canada to China.
Also in its 2019 report, the CPSNR noted that Global Affairs Canada took the lead in Ottawa in 2015 and established an interdepartmental working group with CSIS, the RCMP, the Department of Justice and the CBSA that met frequently [à tous les deux ou trois mois]to discuss Fox Hunt.
The RCMP did not respond to an interview request for this report, but in an email response, the federal police said the RCMP works with foreign police forces through our Interpol Ottawa office and our agent liaison program to facilitate international investigations .
The RCMP’s assistance in these international cases is always provided in an informed manner and in accordance with policies and procedures established in Canada, the email continued.
The disappearance of Tao Mi
The beginnings of Canada’s cooperation with China’s global efforts to track down refugees date back more than 20 years and were linked to a major corruption case in Fujian province.
In 1999, Canadian immigration officials received an application for refugee status from a man considered China’s most wanted person and smuggling king.
Lai Changxing is alleged to have given gifts and bribes to Chinese officials while importing cigarettes, oil and other products without paying taxes. When political circumstances began to change, Mr. Lai fled China and arrived in Canada.
Mr. Lai was a particularly effective fraudster, said David Mulroney, also a former Canadian ambassador to China, in an interview with The Fifth Estate. Rumor had it that he had connections to the highest levels of power in Beijing and was therefore particularly important to them.
In 2000, three Chinese security officials and the refugee’s brother secretly traveled to Vancouver to force Mr. Lai to return to the country, stating in their visa applications that they were coming to Canada as part of a business trip focused on the agricultural industry . The conspiracy was uncovered by Mr. Lai during the process of obtaining refugee status.
As part of the same process, Canadian officials evaluated affidavits from Chinese nationals submitted by Beijing in which those citizens claimed to be aware of Mr. Lai’s illegal activities. The testimony included a woman named Tao Mi who said she worked for Mr. Lai and his wife.
Fearing that her testimony could be used to return Mr. Lai to China, Ms. Tao contacted Canadian lawyer Clive Ansley in November 2001.
Mr. Ansley practiced in Shanghai and collected testimony from Chinese citizens to support Mr. Lai’s defense.
Tao Mi contacted him, the lawyer said, to withdraw her statement incriminating Mr. Lai. She claims she signed the document in question only after she was held in a hotel room for two months and her young son was threatened.
She was shaking like a leaf during our meeting, Ansley said, worried about what would happen if Chinese authorities found out that she was denying her testimony against Mr. Lai.
Mr. Lai’s defense lawyers informed immigration officials in Canada of Ms. Tao’s rejection and assumed her identity would not be disclosed to Chinese authorities.
But Mr. Ansley says he was outraged and ashamed to be a Canadian when he learned that Tao Mi had been questioned further by an RCMP officer at the consulate in Shanghai along with “an official of the Chinese” just weeks after her rejection Security forces.
The Fifth Estate obtained the video recordings of this interrogation conducted by the RCMP. As the interview begins, a Chinese security guard joins Tao Mi, the RCMP officer and a translator in the small room.
In 2007, a federal judge ruled in Mr. Lai’s case that the RCMP’s questioning of Tao Mi was at least grossly inappropriate.
It is not an adequate defense to claim, Judge Yves de Montigny continued, that Tao Mi’s testimony during her interrogation was entirely voluntary and merely confirmed what she had stated in her first statement. What else can we expect when there is a Chinese official in the room?
Mr. Ansley last saw Tao Mi 20 years ago in his Shanghai office.
“I don’t think she’s still alive,” the lawyer said. I think she was being honest when she said, “If the Chinese police find out that I spoke to you, I’m dead.”
Lai Changxing was deported from Canada and returned to China in 2011, but only after China gave strong assurances that he would not be tortured or executed. Mr. Lai’s refugee status frustrated Chinese government officials, and the case shaped relations between Ottawa and Beijing for a decade – laying the foundation for cooperation between the two countries’ police forces that continues to this day.
“I remember a conversation with the Chinese ambassador,” Mr. Mulroney said.
And he said, “David, we will never have normal relations, otherwise things will not be the same until you bring Lai Changxing back to us,” and I said, “Mr. Ambassador, I’m sorry you think that “But it’s a given.” inflicted wound.
There is a process that Mr. Lai must complete. “He entered Canada illegally, you knew his past, you didn’t share it with us, you sent a secret team to try to bring him back, so it’s your own fault,” the former ambassador added.
The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa did not respond to The Fifth Estate’s request for an interview.
With information from CBC News