Censorship and persecution of anti-war and anti-imperialists in the U.S. have extended to Canada where members of the country’s ruling elite—which increasingly align with U.S. foreign policies—have displayed utter hostility and contempt for immigrants who dissent against Canadian foreign policy.
A Cold War climate was on display at a recent foreign interference inquiry on Parliament Hill, which reflected a growing jingoism and paranoia about foreign subversion.
The foreign interference inquiry, driven into existence by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), has focused heavily on supposed Chinese interference in Canadian politics. It also exposed an attitude of suspicion toward any kind of dissent promoted by members of the Chinese Canadian community in what is supposed to be a free country where dissenting views are encouraged.
From this inquiry, it is clear that members of the Chinese Canadian community are welcome to speak out only if they support Canadian foreign policies. Anyone else is silenced.
Conservatives and Social Democrats United in Trying to Limit Dissent
The brazen nature of the hostility toward Chinese Canadian dissent has become undeniable throughout the foreign intelligence inquiry.
The man whose antics are most dramatic is former Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) and failed 2021 MP candidate Kenny Chiu. Chiu, since September 2021, has blamed the Chinese government (which is led by the Communist Party of China) for his election defeat in the riding of Steveston-Richmond East in British Columbia.
As explained by The Canada Files, Chiu’s decline in support from the Chinese Canadian community followed a clear path: in 2015, having strong support because he didn’t make China’s internal politics a constant issue; in 2019, winning a seat but losing support from ethnic Chinese elected officials and donations/support from the mainland Chinese Canadian community because of his support for the Hong Kong rioters; and, in 2021, losing his re-election after pushing for a foreign interference registry which would—because of the Canadian political climate—inevitably force Chinese Canadians in some community groups to lie and file returns under threat of jail time and fines.
Rather than explaining his decisions to constituents, Chiu simply displayed fierce hostility toward anyone seen to be defending the Chinese government.
Chiu spoke about two Chinese Canadian groups in defamatory terms:
“CACA [Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations] and CCSA [Canadian Community Service Association] use their member organizations to promote narratives the PRC wants people to believe about China. For example, CACA bought full page ads in Canadian Chinese language newspapers, celebrating PRC passing the National Security Law in Hong Kong.”
Chiu “questioned whether China was funding such efforts, given the cost of buying such advertising space.”
Chiu also complained about the logical consequence of having capitalist media companies.
His complaint was that, in 2021, after taking the China stances he did, that the owner of Vancouver Chinese Radio had the power to instruct “staff not to mention Mr. Chiu or invite him onto their programs.” This is supposed to be suspicious, rather than another of the many self-admitted examples of dissent from the Chinese Canadian community in his riding, around the ideological spectrum.
Chiu also targeted dissent toward his foreign influence registry bill, claiming it was PRC-directed foreign influence, disinformation. WeChat group posts, articles on WeChat, were supposedly a PRC-driven operation. But also, the PRC should have crushed Chinese Canadian community dissent via censorship and, “at the very least,” “interfered by omission.”
The utter incoherence and rampant hatred of dissent is crystalized in Chiu’s demand to the inquiry, explained by this author:
“When a candidate supposedly faces foreign interference in an election, CSIS or another government agency should not simply notify the candidate, but instead find ‘an effective way of communicating to the diaspora communities that are the target of foreign powers’ exploitation.’”
In short, demanding that the government spoon-feed diasporas the “official” information, and crush dissent from the diasporas under the invented grounds of purported foreign interference.
And this demand was also endorsed by ex-Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, at the inquiry hearings. O’Toole even went further by claiming that “the parties both in the House of Commons and their electoral parties that run nominations and that run general elections do need linkages directly with our security agencies” because candidates which CSIS does not like could get elected into Canada’s Parliament. O’Toole wants CSIS to be able to veto candidates using the grounds of “a security concern of any type before a nomination is completed.”
Further showcasing the extreme attitude toward dissent, Conservative MP Michael Chong confirmed (Day 9 Testimony, pp. 236-37) that he had engaged in “racial profiling” in fall 2022 after CSIS leakers began going to the media, by pulling “the lists of all the people with Chinese last names who had donated to my 2021 and my 2019 campaign” to check if “they may be people under suspicion.” Chong genuinely blamed his ethnic profiling on the Canadian government for not suppressing dissent, saying his actions were
“a result of the Government of Canada’s lack of transparency about the intelligence they have concerning agents and proxy agents here in Canada that may be targeting our democratic institutions”
But the Conservatives are not the only ones hostile toward dissent from the Chinese Canadian community. There is an extremely hawkish “HongKonger” Chinese Canadian NDP MP, Jenny Kwan, who joined in Chiu’s example with wild claims toward dissent against her China policies.
Kwan, a New Democratic Party (NDP) MP since 2015, had spoken more on China, but not been too aggressive on the front, up until 2019. From 2019 on, by her own admission, she took more action against China’s handling of its internal affairs. Kwan supported the Hong Kong rioters in August 2019, even speaking at a public event in favor of them, and continued supporting them. She then supported a “Uyghur genocide” motion. In 2020, she spoke at a rally hosted by the “Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement,” which describes itself as “committed to promoting democracy and human rights in China,” which, put bluntly, is a push for regime change in China.
Kwan also supported the campaign to get China’s Taiwan province observer status at the World Health Organization and World Health Assembly. The Canadian government’s One-China Policy “acknowledges that there is only one Chinese government, does not recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state and does not maintain official government-to-government relations with Taipei.”
Kwan’s support, which Canada’s government would also demonstrate in 2023, is an attack on China’s sovereignty and rejection of Canada’s “One-China Policy,” since the WHO and WHA observer status can only be obtained by sovereign countries, which Taiwan province is not even according to Canadian government policy.
Kwan would admit in a pre-testimony interview (WIT0000012.EN, p. 4) that, from 2019 on, when she took more actions on China, her relations with five important Chinese Canadian community organizations deteriorated over time.
Kwan was also upset that Chinese-language media are “being used to propagate PRC talking points” (WIT0000012.EN, p. 7)—which really means she was upset at support for the PRC government’s handling of internal affairs and dissent that the Chinese Canadian community had toward portrayal of Chinese government actions. Some constituents would tell her “directly that she should not be speaking out about China” (WIT0000012.EN, p. 7), indicating some Chinese Canadian dissent toward her stances, in conjunction with Chinese Canadian organizations’ opposition to demonization of China.
Kwan would also attack the then-President of CBA Fred Kwok in Fall 2021. Kwan noticed Kwok would not speak with her once she became vocal about China’s internal affairs (WIT0000012.EN, p. 7). Kwan, complaining about an August 2021 free lunch event to support her Liberal opponent, “wonders whether the Chinese Consulate may be operating a petty cash slush fund to finance events, such as the lunch hosted by Mr. Kwok” (WIT0000012.EN, p. 8). But she has no evidence of this, as she admitted after a multi-minute word salad (Day 9 Testimony, pp. 188-90). Kwok admitted to violating the Elections Act by not registering as a third party, and paid $1,500 CAD total for the event (Day 9 Testimony, p. 187). A receipt indicating any higher payment has not been seen as of yet, but even if it was, there is no proof of this being foreign interference, but there is clear proof that this is another example of Chinese Canadian descent Kwan does not approve of.
What is clear is that politicians take issue with the “wrong” kind of dissent from Chinese Canadians, and view that dissent with hostility. But there is a “right” kind of dissent that is liked by Canadian political elites and the politicians across numerous diasporas.
So Who Exactly Gets to Dissent?
The trigger point for the Canadian political class’s near century-long control tactic of using diaspora factions to control or intimidate the rest of a diaspora, was World War II. At the time, a fanatical anti-communist who thought favorably of Hitler, William Lyon Mackenzie King was Canada’s Prime Minister.
Canadian elites were rampantly anti-communist, and they had a problem: A pro-Soviet organization, the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (AUUC), represented the majority of the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora. To solve this “problem,” the Canadian government drove the creation of the right-wing Ukrainian Canadian Congress (then Ukrainian Canadian Committee [UCC]) which united fascists, monarchists and other right wingers into one organization in 1940.
The Canadian government then stole the AUUC’s property and gave it to the UCC. The government then imported thousands of Waffen SS 14th Division members into Canada, which bolstered the UCC’s position even further.
Over the last near 80 years, the UCC has received favorable engagement with governments and significantly more grants and support from the federal government because, to put it bluntly, it serves the interests of the Canadian political elite. This has seen the formerly organic representative of the Ukrainian Canadian community isolated and shunted to the side, in favor of a middle manager to control and intimidate the diaspora as necessary.
Echoes, but not replications, abound in the situation of the Chinese Canadian diaspora. The development of diaspora middle managers for the Ukrainian Canadian community occurred as Canada was hostile to the “home territory” of the diaspora, the USSR. But similar middle managers for the Chinese Canadian community had not been developed by the Canadian state by the time Canada was considering initiating diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China back in 1968.
This reality can be seen in a 1968 news article collected by the FBI in its 1968 dossier on Pierre Elliott Trudeau. In the article, Chinese Canadians who supported the KMT in its futile bid to retake the Chinese mainland against the Chinese peoples’ support for socialism, begged the Canadian government to not initiate diplomatic ties with the PRC.
They sought a position reached by the UCC—of diaspora middle management—by pushing the claim that a “flood” of “Communist agents” would come into Canada after the PRC was recognized. Though these collaborators of Canadian imperialism failed in their bid to have no diplomatic relations with the PRC, they would never give up their ambition of becoming the middle managers.
In the next few decades, Canada and the PRC had overall positive diplomatic relations, and some mainland Chinese moved to Canada. After the handover of Hong Kong back to China was agreed with the UK in 1984, Canada imported more than 300,000 “HongKongers” before the handover occurred in 1997.
After CSIS initiated smears of China in 1997, through a joint CSIS/RCMP counter-espionage report which claimed that Chinese Canadians are being used by the Chinese government to influence Canadian politics, the imperialist collaborators slowly gained prominence, with Falun Gong cult members being given asylum in Canada over the 2000s.
The imperialist collaborators, whether they be Falun Gong, “Uyghur” separatists, or Hong Kong “freedom” activists, would slowly build alliances with CSIS, in building up hostility toward China. In doing so, they slowly built up the middle management role their forefathers sought so dearly in 1968, by going around Canada’s elected government, which still maintained good relations with China for economic reasons.
Falun Gong cult members and the other Chinese Canadian imperialist collaborators played their middle management role to a tee in helping gin up the animus toward Canada-based Confucius Institutes—language and cultural learning institutions—as supposed Chinese “propaganda” institutes, during the 2010s. With CSIS leading the demonization of these institutes, the imperialist faction of the Chinese Canadian diaspora put a Chinese face of Canadian elite machinations against China.
With the advent of the Uyghur “genocide” narrative, Canada’s kidnapping of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou and the Hong Kong riots, all within three years as China kept rising economically, anti-China sentiment came in full force from a Canadian political elite which saw China as a threat to the NATO unipolar political order.
All of a sudden, the aspiring middle managers were thrust into the limelight, though no longer under the guise of being the Chinese face, but instead the “HongKonger,” “Uyghur,” or “Tibetan” faces used to justify imperialism against China.
All these middle managers, before and after obtaining their desired position in Canadian society, have been leading in denouncing China as an interferer in Canada who supposedly target dissents, but never provoke any successful RCMP charges against such interference.
Mehmet Tohti is a prime example of this. Tohti is a long-time Uyghur separatist who founded Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project in 2020, thanks to funding from the CIA front National Endowment for Democracy. URAP was the collaborator organization Canada’s parliament used to put a Uyghur face on a campaign by parliamentarians to follow the U.S. in declaring that China was committing a “genocide” against Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Canada’s parliamentarians would farcically vote to declare a Uyghur “genocide” in 2021.
Tibetans in Canada have been the “Tibetan” face of demonizing China all the way back to the 2000s. In the 2020s, they helped push demonization of China’s boarding schools in Tibet, meant to provide better education for citizens in geographically remote areas. Canadian parliamentarians would jump at any opportunity to demonize China and, when the NED-funded Tibet Action Institute claimed that the boarding schools were “colonial” boarding schools like Canadian residential schools, parliamentarians jumped at the opportunity.
Canadian Tibet separatists would testify to a parliament committee which would condemn Chinese “human rights violations” and call for a “special temporary immigration pathway to get more Tibet dissidents into Canada.” Their decades-long agitation would pave the way for domestic acceptance of 24 MPs, including four Liberal cabinet ministers, to meet with the president of the separatist “Central Tibetan Administration” organization, Sikyong Penpa Tsering. This grave insult to Chinese sovereignty could be justified thanks to the work of the “Tibetan” middle managers.
“HongKongers” in Canada have gained prominence by nature of their numbers, showcased their value during the Hong Kong riots in 2019 and 2020, being the “HongKonger” face which demanded an “independent inquiry” into China’s successful combatting of the rioters.
And as such, it is little surprise that two of the most aggressive anti-China politicians, for their comments on Chinese Canadians who favor engagement in China, are two “HongKongers,” former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu and NDP MP Jenny Kwan, who work in tandem with CSIS to clamp down on the “wrong” Chinese Canadian dissent.
URAP, led by Tohti, is another of the middle managers who, along with Cheuk Kwan of the regime-change-focused Toronto Association for Democracy in China, even testified to Canada’s 2024 foreign interference inquiry, claiming intimidation. The regime-changer Falun Gong cult is another middle manager. And of continual relevance to Canadian parliamentarians even in 2023, the Tibet separatists, mainly coalesced in the Parkdale-High Park area of Toronto, have their middle manager in Ontario provincial parliament representative Bhutila Karpoche.
They, among others, are among the collaborator middle managers of the Chinese Canadian community, who have attained the prominence which collaborators in 1968 could only dream of. Their victims are the Chinese Canadians who are pro-China engagement, who face the very same “Communist agent” smears as were posed in 1968.
In the eyes of Canadian political elites the “right” dissent has always been the dissent which provides it cover to pursue its imperialism and the “wrong” dissent that which condemns imperialism by name or even seeks engagement or simple peace—something that still stands in the way of imperialism.
The manufacture and maintenance of imperialist diaspora factions as middle managers is a key ongoing tactic of the Canadian political elites to avoid engaging in mass violent repression of anti-imperialist sentiment, that would destroy the democratic façade they so dearly covet and claim. Such a sincere “democracy,” wouldn’t you say?
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About the Author
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news site founded in 2019.
He has written about Canadian imperialism, federal politics, and left-wing resistance to colonialism across the world.
Aidan is a fourth-year Bachelor of Journalism student at Toronto Metropolitan University, who was the Head of Communications and Community Engagement for Etobicoke North (Ontario, Canada) New Democratic Party (NDP) Candidate Naiima Farah in the 2019 Federal Election.
He can be reached at aidanjonah.canadafiles@gmail.com.
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