Canadian MP Jenny Kwan on Beijing's Long Arm and the Laws That Fall Short | Chang Yu-ping

Days before Canadians voted on April 28 last year, a federal task force did something no government had done before: it publicly warned that a foreign state was running a transnational repression operation against its own election campaign.

The Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force reported that one candidate — Joe Tay, standing for the Conservatives in Don Valley North and known for his criticism of Beijing's conduct in Hong Kong — was the target of a smear effort portraying him as an international fugitive. Tay was one of six people living overseas, two of them Canadian, for whom Hong Kong police had announced monetary rewards in December 2024. Earlier in the same campaign, candidates from both the Liberal and Conservative parties left their races after journalists reported comments that appeared to encourage the intimidation of dissidents from China and India.

Freedom House, which called the task force's announcement the first time any government had publicly acknowledged the danger extraterritorial intimidation poses to voters and candidates, has since documented how far the problem runs in Canada — and how uneven the response remains.

That combination is the subject Jenny Kwan keeps returning to: a country that has moved earlier and further than most of its peers, and still cannot show victims a case that ends in consequences.

Why Canada became a destination and a target

Canada is home to roughly 1.7 million people of Chinese origin, about 4.7 per cent of the population, and has been a favored destination for exiles from mainland China and Hong Kong. It is also, unsurprisingly, one of the countries where Beijing's reach abroad is most active.

The federal government's own public advisories describe the mechanics plainly: relatives still in China are used to pressure people in Canada into abandoning activities Beijing considers hostile, or into returning; and agents operating overseas are used to watch, monitor and report on people living in Canada. Public Safety Canada maintains a substantial public-facing section on the tactics involved — physical intimidation and violence, digital harassment and malicious cyber activity, social isolation, and coerced return.

Kwan, the New Democratic Party MP for Vancouver East and her party's public safety and national security critic, describes a campaign that has outgrown the categories built for it.

"The Chinese government's campaign of transnational repression has become increasingly sophisticated and brazen," she said in a written reply to Storm Media in late July. "It extends far beyond China's borders, targeting journalists, human rights defenders, democracy advocates, and refugees through intimidation, surveillance, coercion, and, in some cases, forced returns."

Her framing of what is at stake is deliberately not confined to the individuals affected. "This is not only an attack on individual freedoms but also on the sovereignty of democratic countries and the international refugee protection system," she said. "Democracies must work together to hold those responsible accountable."

The MP who was told she had been a target for years

Kwan has an unusual vantage point on the question, because she is on the list.

Born in Hong Kong in 1967, she came to Canada with her family at the age of nine. After graduating from Simon Fraser University with a degree in criminology, she worked as a community legal advocate in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside — the poorest urban postal code in the country — before entering politics. In 1993, aged 26, she became the youngest city councillor in Vancouver's history. Three years later she was elected to the British Columbia legislature for Vancouver-Mount Pleasant, among the first Chinese-Canadians to sit in the provincial assembly, and went on to become the province's first Chinese-Canadian cabinet minister. She moved to federal politics in 2015. Across more than three decades in elected office she has never lost an election.

In 2023, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service informed her that she had been the target of Chinese state-backed foreign interference for years.

Asked what she had personally experienced, Kwan did not itemize it. She answered with the principle instead.

"No one in Canada should have to fear intimidation by a foreign state because of their political beliefs or advocacy," she said. "Protecting those freedoms is fundamental to our democracy." And then, on whether it has worked: "Despite pressure to not raise issues, it has not and will not affect my ability to speak out on human rights."

The point of the intimidation is not any single person

What Beijing wants from all this, in Kwan's assessment, is not principally the removal of individuals.

"The objective is to silence criticism, suppress dissent, and extend the reach of authoritarian control far beyond China's borders," she said. "By intimidating individuals and communities abroad, Beijing seeks to discourage advocacy, fracture diaspora communities, and influence democratic institutions."

The intended cumulative effect is a belief. "These efforts are intended to make people believe that nothing is beyond the reach of the Chinese state," she said. "That is fundamentally incompatible with freedoms that are protected in Canada."

The catalogue of methods she lists is broad by design: intimidation of families overseas, surveillance, harassment, cyberattacks, coercion, and attempts to silence community leaders and activists.

Overseas police stations, and an investigation that ended quietly

The tactic that has drawn the most sustained Canadian attention is the network of so-called overseas police stations — premises presented as offering administrative and consular convenience to Chinese nationals, which critics say function as instruments of monitoring and pressure. The 2022 research by the NGO Safeguard Defenders that first catalogued them identified 54 such stations across dozens of countries, Canada among them.

Kwan's objection is structural rather than merely factual.

"Alleged overseas police stations are especially concerning because they blur the line between legitimate consular activities and unauthorized foreign state policing on Canadian soil," she said. "Their existence creates fear within communities, discourages people from exercising their democratic rights, and undermines Canada's sovereignty and the rule of law." Her conclusion is unqualified: "No foreign government should be allowed to police or intimidate people in Canada."

Canada investigated. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police opened inquiries into premises allegedly linked to the Chinese state, and a parliamentary special committee took evidence on them. But the enforcement record is thin: the RCMP closed its investigation into alleged police stations in the Montreal area in 2025 without laying charges, and no one has been arrested or had diplomatic credentials withdrawn in connection with any of the sites. The then RCMP commissioner told parliamentarians that investigations of this kind are normally very lengthy. Those defending the locations have maintained throughout that they were simply providing services to Chinese-Canadians.

Acted late, and now slowing down

Kwan's account of the government's record is a sequence of pressure followed by movement followed by drift.

"The Liberal government only acted after national security leaks and intense public pressure," she said. "This led Canada to take important steps, including investigations into alleged overseas police stations, a public inquiry, and the passage of legislation to strengthen our response to foreign interference."

Her complaint concerns what has happened since. "Since the election, the Carney administration is prioritizing economic ties and trade deals over the need to counter foreign interference and transnational repression," she said. "Diaspora communities on the ground indicate that they continue to face active harassment, surveillance, and coercion from foreign state actors."

She invokes the public inquiry's own language against the pace of the response. Justice Marie-Josée Hogue's final report, delivered in January 2025, described transnational repression as a "genuine scourge" on the democratic process in Canada and said the targeting of immigrant communities by foreign states is "one of the greatest strategic challenges to Canada's sovereignty and democracy." Hogue also noted that the practice fell largely outside her mandate — she had learned enough, she wrote, to sound the alarm, but the inquiry had only scratched the surface.

"Canada needs to act and enforcement must keep pace with the threat," Kwan said. What is missing, in her account, is the thing that would change behaviour: "Victims need greater confidence that reports will be investigated promptly and that perpetrators will face meaningful consequences." She wants stronger coordination across government agencies, and continued vigilance "to push back against any democratic backsliding domestically."

A law passed two years ago, and the word it left out

In June 2024, Parliament passed the Countering Foreign Interference Act — Bill C-70 — creating new offences and establishing a foreign influence transparency registry with a commissioner to run it. Kwan was among those who pushed for it.

She does not disown it. "Bill C-70 is an important first step forward, but legislation alone is not enough," she said. "It must be accompanied by robust enforcement, adequate resources for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, stronger protections for victims and whistleblowers, closer engagement with affected communities and robust public education. We also need greater transparency and accountability around foreign interference investigations. Canada's response must continue to evolve alongside the tactics used by authoritarian states."

Then the gap. Two years after the bill passed, she said, the commissioner and the office are still not in place — the registry was not operational during the 2025 federal election, the very contest in which the task force issued its warning.

And one omission she singles out above the rest: community groups remain concerned about holes in the law, "the most notable is the failure to address the use of 'proxies'."

That word carries more weight across this series than the drafting debate suggests. Canada's own intelligence service has flagged the trend: the CSIS public report for 2024 noted states increasingly leveraging organised crime networks to conduct threat activity, including transnational repression of legitimate speech in Canada. It is the same mechanism at work in Taipei, where prosecutors are examining whether a Hong Kong triad society was hired to punch a commentator in the face — an arrangement designed so that whoever ordered it never appears in the file. A statute that reaches state agents but not the intermediaries they rent leaves the cheapest method untouched.

The new law, read from Ottawa

On China's Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, in force since July 1, Kwan's reading is consistent with the rest of her assessment: the significance lies in what it authorizes others to do.

"The law reflects Beijing's continued effort to expand its influence and justify greater intervention beyond its borders," she said. "It reinforces concerns that diaspora communities and human rights advocates may face increased pressure and surveillance from the Chinese state."

Her prescription is unglamorous and cumulative. Canada must monitor the developments closely and be ready to strengthen legal protections, diplomatic responses and support for those targeted. "Defending democratic freedoms requires constant vigilance and a willingness to act when those freedoms are threatened," she said. "Canada needs to be vigilant and has an obligation to speak out on human rights."

Original Article in Chinese

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Red Dragnet｜'Nothing Is Beyond Reach': A Canadian MP on Beijing's Long Arm