A Conversation with the Honourable Michael Chong
Editor’s Note: This is part two of a two-part series written by Rajwani and Sloan. For part 1, see “Intimidated, Coerced, Silenced” in Vol. 25, Iss. 2 of Ultra Vires (Oct 2023) or online in Vol. 17, Iss. 2 of Rights Review.
In our previous article, we outlined the serious and multidimensional nature of transnational repression in Canada and conveyed the need for our government to take stronger measures to counter these foreign threats.
One of the leading voices on this topic has been the Honourable Michael Chong, Member of Parliament for Wellington-Halton Hills and current Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs. MP Chong graciously agreed to speak with us by phone earlier this month. Our conversation has been transcribed below, with edits for brevity and clarity.
Q: Part of the reason you were invited to Washington to testify [before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China] is because you have experienced transnational repression personally. Can you talk a bit about your own experience and how it informs your perspective on this issue?
A: First off, my parents were both immigrants to Canada. My father came as a Chinese immigrant from Hong Kong in 1952, and my mother was a Dutch immigrant who came here in the 1960s. I mention that because millions of North Americans have a similar story, and the issue of transnational repression is often connected to the intimidation of family and extended family in authoritarian states. I suspect that as the number of people in Canada and the United States with family ties in other countries has expanded rapidly in recent years, so too have transnational repression threats.
In my particular experience, there was a People’s Republic of China (PRC) consular official in Toronto, just up the street from U of T Law School—by the way U of T is my alma mater as well—that was actively collecting information about me and my family, and my extended family in Hong Kong, and sending that information to the Ministry of State Security in the PRC for potential future targeting. There have been other incidents as well that are suspicious, but I don’t want to get into the details because there are ongoing investigations.
Sanctions have become an increasingly used tool by both Western democracies and by authoritarian states, but for very different purposes. Western democracies have used sanctions to uphold the rules-based international order and to sanction individuals and entities that have violated it. Authoritarian states like the PRC have used sanctions to silence and intimidate people who are speaking up for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. So that’s another example of transnational repression [I’ve experienced], simply because I introduced motions that were adopted by the House of Commons concerning violations of human rights law with Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Simply because I was speaking up about violations of the Sino-British Joint Declaration which was supposed to govern the people of Hong Kong for 50 years from 1997, I was sanctioned by the government of the PRC, which banned me from entering the PRC, and banned PRC entities and companies from having dealings with me.
Q: In your previous commentary, you’ve noted the value of looking to best practices that other states have implemented to address foreign interference and discussed how those might fit into Canada’s security agenda. Can you speak a bit more about what specific policy options are available and most valuable in addressing this issue?
A: There is no one magic solution to countering foreign interference. It’s a complex issue that has many different elements to it. It has to be a comprehensive approach that includes a range of tools.
Sunlight and transparency
One of the most important tools the government should use is sunlight and transparency. Often governments are reticent to talk about foreign interference activities because it’s often gleaned from intelligence, and the very nature of intelligence makes governments hesitant to release information to the public. I think that needs to change, and I think we’re starting to see democracies change their approach in handling intelligence and in disclosing it publicly.
Translating intelligence into evidence is difficult because there is an evidentiary standard for prosecution, whether it’s the Criminal Code or otherwise, and often intelligence doesn’t meet that evidentiary standard. Often, foreign interference threat activities don’t [amount to] a level where it would warrant prosecution. Nevertheless, it’s a corrosive and threatening act. In those circumstances, governments should go public with the information they have, which has been gleaned from intelligence, to arm the public with information about these foreign interference activities, so the public can equip and protect itself from these threat activities.
Whatever form these threat activities take—whether they are disinformation operations on social media, coercive and corrupt behaviour on the part of agents of authoritarian states, or other threat activities—sunlight and transparency is an effective tool. I think Western democracies need to become more open about the information they have so that the public is forearmed. We live in the information age, and governments haven’t yet quite understood how to handle all this information that’s coming in, so I think that’s one area for improvement.
Changes to the machinery of government
We [also] have a problem in Canadian law with two differing definitions of foreign interference. The definition of foreign interference in Canadian law needs to be clarified through legislation…that’s deeply important. Relatedly, we need changes to the machinery of government in Ottawa to clarify the evidentiary standard required by law enforcement so that there’s no misunderstanding about translating intelligence into evidence. As it presently stands, the translation of intelligence to evidence isn’t as smooth as it should be because there are different understandings within law enforcement compared to our intelligence community about what those evidentiary standards are.
A foreign influence registry
I think there’s [also] a need for a foreign influence registry. The United States has had one since 1938, Australia more recently introduced one about five years ago, and the UK just introduced one this past summer that’s being implemented.
We require individuals to register if they are working on behalf of a private corporation interfacing with government officials. I think it’s reasonable for the state to require individuals working on behalf of an authoritarian state to register their activities if they’re interfacing with public officials. The government has committed to introducing a registry but has yet to do so.
Better enforcement of existing laws
There’s a challenge within our law enforcement about enforcing existing laws that relate to foreign interference threat activities. We do not have a good track record of prosecuting individuals who are engaged in coercive, clandestine, and often corrupt activities in Canada on behalf of an authoritarian state. Human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have concluded that at least three individuals in Canada have been coerced back to the PRC by PRC agents operating here on Canadian soil. We know at least one of these individuals was highlighted last year in an unsealed indictment in a U.S. court in Brooklyn, New York […] In the U.S. government’s prosecution of another set of individuals, they revealed that there was a person in Vancouver who had been coerced to go back to the PRC under clandestine circumstances.
I think we can look at some of the recommendations from the Mass Casualty Commission and in the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians report that was just released. Both of these reports have concluded that the RCMP is failing to uphold its national security mandate and its mandate in federal policing because it is getting pulled in the other direction in contract policing in provinces outside of Ontario and Quebec. This has been a longstanding issue where the RCMP is engaged in law enforcement that really should be the responsibility of the provinces and the municipalities, which is distracting it from its core constitutional responsibility to uphold matters of federal jurisdiction, including interprovincial crime, national security crime, international crime, and the like. That core mandate is being negatively impacted because of the massive demand upon the RCMP to provide local policing in most of Canada’s provinces. So there, again, we need to sort out that machinery of government problem.
Q: We know that you are very familiar with the reports of all of how China allegedly attempted to interfere in our 2019 and 2021 federal elections. Our government has tried to reassure us that these were free and fair elections—how do you see that, and how should this be addressed moving forward?
A: There are a couple of issues. First, the government’s conclusions have been somewhat imprecise. They initially said that they could not conclude that there had been an effect on the overall outcome of the election; notice how that’s different from saying that there was no impact on the outcome of the overall election. I think it is safe to say that the PRC’s foreign interference in the 2021 election had a negative impact on the outcome of elections in a number of electoral districts, and I would put that number at anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen electoral districts. Now, it is difficult to measure the quantitative extent of that impact and whether or not it would have changed the results in those ridings. I would note, though, that the House returned another minority Parliament—very close to the results of the previous election—but which led to the Conservative Party leader being ousted…and one of the reasons was that no progress had been made in increasing the number of seats that Conservatives held in the House.
I think the other area of concern is that the protocols in place for the 2021 election did not allow the task force of senior public servants to release information about disinformation operations being conducted by the Chinese Communist Party during the 2021 writ period. Within Global Affairs Canada, there is a Rapid Response Mechanism unit, which is part of Canada’s G7 commitment to monitor and counter disinformation operations from authoritarian states. This unit was tracking in real-time disinformation that it concluded was likely from the Chinese Communist Party targeting a Conservative candidate named Kenny Chiu. That information was never publicly disclosed during the election. Our view is that the protocol needs to change so that information like that will be publicly released during the writ period and voters are then equipped to make an informed decision.
The other thing about elections is that some of the allegations about PRC interference in party nominations in Toronto, while they have yet to be proven, highlight a vulnerability in our political party system. Our political parties are still largely run as private organizations and in a way, that’s not transparent and accessible to the public. As a result, I think we are susceptible to meddling and interference by foreign actors, particularly when it comes to the nomination of party candidates and the election of party leaders. That is an area of our democracy which needs to be cleaned up because for too long, we have allowed this quasi-private system of party nominations to run in a way that is subject to abuse. It is worrisome when that abuse is done by Canadian citizens but even more concerning when it is done by hostile foreign states. So, we need to have a discussion about political party reform and how we make sure that party nominations and party leadership contests are run in a way that insulates them from corrupt, clandestine, and coercive behaviour.
Q: One of the stories we went back to—which you commented on in an episode of The Fifth Estate—is the CanSino vaccine deal, in which the vaccine candidate developed by CanSino [a Chinese company with ties to the People’s Liberation Army] was never shipped to Canada after we spent millions preparing to manufacture it at home. Can you touch on why that was so concerning, and how it goes to the importance of shielding key areas and technologies from foreign interference?
A: The experts in our intelligence community have told us for some time now that five sensitive areas of research are susceptible to threats from authoritarian states because of national security threats and because of the theft of intellectual property. Those five areas are telecommunications, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, biopharma, and clean technology. In that context, I think the Canadian government has been too lax in protecting our national security and our intellectual property. So, the vaccine deal with CanSino is troubling because it relates to one of those five areas: biopharma. I think the Canadian government needs to take much more seriously the advice we are getting about these threats.
The Winnipeg lab is another example of lax national security; this is the top-level microbiology laboratory in Winnipeg, which is run under the government by the Public Health Agency of Canada. It handles some of the world’s most sensitive pathogens and viruses, and there were clearly national security breaches at that lab in recent years. Against security protocols, members of the People’s Liberation Army were admitted into the lab, which is a complete contravention of Canada’s national security policies. Two of the scientists there have been terminated for these breaches. An investigation into what exactly happened is ongoing, and we await the results, but I think it’s clear there were serious breaches—and it appears there was also theft of intellectual property (IP). Canadian law is clear that any IP generated by a government official or by a government lab is the property of the Government of Canada and must be registered under Canadian patent law. The IP generated at that lab was registered by one of the fired scientists in the People’s Republic of China and not in Canada. So again, there’s an example of the nature of the threats we’re facing.
Q: You’ve provided a lot of insight on both your experience and why this is a broad threat to Canadians as a whole. Coming to this conversation as law students, we’ve also heard you state that this issue is a “pervasive threat” on university campuses. You’ve alluded a bit to the legal relevance of this issue. But why, if at all, should this be weighing on the minds of law students like ourselves and legal professionals across the country?
A: [This issue has] impacted the University of Toronto. There was a student election where a U of T student, Chemi Lhamo, won the election and she was active in promoting Tibetan human rights, and for that, she was subjected to harassment, threats, and intimidation coordinated through the consulate of the PRC on St. George Street. There was a similar situation at McMaster University in Hamilton, where a woman gave a lecture to McMaster students about the plight of the Uyghur Muslim minority in China, and for that, she was also targeted by coordinated action through the PRC consulate in Toronto.
Those are two examples that hit pretty close to home for U of T law students. What we have to understand is that we can’t allow these kinds of coercive threats to go unanswered. It’s not acceptable. Since these threats are often very targeted, we can’t dismiss them because they don’t affect everyone else.
And I think the Government of Canada has a much bigger role to play. The Ambassador should’ve been called on the carpet and been told in no uncertain terms that this is unacceptable, and the second time it happened, diplomats should’ve been expelled.
In my particular circumstance, the only reason why the diplomat got expelled in Toronto was because it was published on the front page of The Globe and Mail. The government had known since 2019 that this individual was wrongfully collecting information about me from the PRC Consulate in Toronto. It wasn’t until it was published on the front page of The Globe and Mail that the government took action. They should’ve taken action as soon as the information came to their attention. The same thing goes for these threat activities directed at U of T and McMaster University students. The Government of Canada has a big role to play here too in making it clear to authoritarian states with representatives here that there are certain lines not to be crossed[…] I think we’ve been too passive in defending Canadian interests here at home.
