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Re: Canada Helping China Hunt For Fugitives & SECRET Chinese Police OPS
How Canada Has Been Helping China Hunt For Fugitives For Decades
Direction came 'from Ottawa at the highest level,' says former RCMP operations manager
CBC 21 OCT 2023
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Aug. 31, 2016.
While politicians in Ottawa decried the reported existence of several alleged Chinese police stations in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver earlier this year, Canadian officials were already well aware of Chinese police operations in Canada.
The Canadian government has given Chinese law enforcement assistance in their pursuit of fugitive Chinese nationals living abroad for decades, an investigation by CBC's The Fifth Estate has learned.
In Canada, that help has sometimes come as a result of quid pro quo deals, people with first-hand knowledge of the relationship, including two former Canadian ambassadors to China, told The Fifth Estate.
Calvin Chrustie, a former RCMP operations officer in British Columbia, said in an interview that he received direction "from Ottawa at the highest level" to "assist and collaborate with" Chinese officials regarding a "high-profile fugitive that they were after in the Vancouver area."
Chrustie said he refused to facilitate a meeting for the Chinese officials, who wanted to interview the fugitive and convince the person to voluntarily return to China to face prosecution.
China has ensured Canada's continuing co-operation by bartering on trade, offering assistance fighting illegal drugs and by negotiating the release of Canadians arbitrarily detained in China, The Fifth Estate investigation found.
"Our economic interests sort of drove this," said veteran Toronto immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman, who represents a number of people now in Canada who are wanted by Chinese authorities.
"We turned a blind eye to the lack of rule of law in China and turned a blind eye to the fact that we should be way more skeptical about the evidence coming from China. And as time went on, we turned a blind eye to the fact that Chinese agents were acting in Canada."
Safeguard Defenders, a Spanish non-governmental organization, listed this single-storey commercial building in Markham, Ont., as one of several alleged Chinese police stations in Canada.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc declined to be interviewed for this story.
Earlier this year, politicians in Ottawa decried the reported existence of several alleged Chinese police stations in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. But Canadian officials were already well aware of Chinese police operations in Canada.
Sky Net and Fox Hunt
Since 2014, the Chinese government has aggressively pursued the return of alleged corrupt public officials and economic criminals living abroad through long-arm police operations it dubbed Sky Net and Fox Hunt.
According to the Chinese government, thousands of alleged fugitives have been returned to China to face prosecution. Many returns are highlighted on state television.
In its 2019 annual report, Canada's National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians found that: "Chinese security officials have taken a number of measures to conduct Operation Fox Hunt, including diplomatic pressure on foreign states to co-operate with their investigations and covert trips to persuade or coerce fugitives to return. They employ these measures with Canada."
But critics say Canada co-operated with China's fugitive hunt for years while ignoring or downplaying issues in China around the lack of an independent judiciary and the use of coercion, including torture, to gather evidence.
"We've been successful in cases involving Chinese accusations in getting the evidence thrown out because it was the product of torture," Waldman said.
Waldman declined requests from The Fifth Estate to interview clients of his who are fugitives from China over fears that family members back home could face retribution from Beijing.
Waldman told The Fifth Estate that not only is the federal government still trying to remove his clients wanted by China, but CSIS officials have also interviewed some of those same clients to determine to what extent they are being harassed or threatened by Chinese authorities to return to face charges.
"Some of these were people that [the Canada Border Service Agency] was actively trying to send back to China," Waldman said.
CSIS declined to be interviewed for this story, but in an email, a spokesperson said that China uses "all elements of state power to carry out activities that are a direct threat to our national security and sovereignty."
One notable example of that, the spokesperson said, is "Operation Fox Hunt, which claims to target corruption but is also believed to have been used as cover for silencing dissent, pressuring political opponents, forcing repatriations and involuntary returns of [People's Republic of China] nationals or non-PRC nationals born in the PRC, and instilling a general fear of state power no matter where a person is located."
Because Canada does not have an extradition treaty with China..... ... the immigration and refugee system is used to remove alleged fugitives. Canadian officials present evidence at Immigration and Refugee Board hearings that they receive from Chinese authorities.
"I don't believe a Superior Court judge would ever authorize an extradition back to China given the state of the rule of law there," Waldman said. "So if that's the case, and we're not prepared to extradite and we've never extradited, why are we deporting people back to China based on evidence that we know is not reliable?"
In 2015, China released a list of 100 wanted economic fugitives, of whom 26 were believed to be in Canada.
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