Canada failed Chinese Canadians on intimidation

In the blizzard of commentary last week about Beijing’s meddling in Canadian elections, one interview stood out for the simple reason that it addressed the concerns of the group most affected — the 1.7 million Canadians of Chinese origin.

By now everyone should be clear that Chinese government interference didn’t affect the outcome of the last two federal elections. There’s a question mark over a handful of ridings with significant Chinese populations, but there’s no actual proof that Beijing managed to affect those results, either.

But there’s no doubt China’s interference did have a big impact on the various Chinese-Canadian communities, and so far we’ve heard remarkably little from them. An important exception came when David Cochrane, host of the “Power & Politics” program on CBC News, spoke to Cherie Wong, executive director of Alliance Canada Hong Kong, which advocates for democracy in Hong Kong.

Most Chinese Canadians, she said, haven’t gone public because they’re afraid of retribution from Beijing if they speak against the government. “There is a climate of fear that already exists,” she went on.

Wong is defying those pressures, at considerable personal cost. She said she doesn’t talk to family and friends back in Hong Kong for fear of exposing them to pressure from Beijing. That takes guts, and not everyone is willing to pay such a price.

So leave aside the overall result of the elections. Even leave aside the possibility that the outcome in a small number of ridings might have been affected. Isn’t it reason enough for concern — and for strong action — that a significant group of Canadian voters has been targeted for intimidation by a hostile foreign power?

There’s been no secret about that. There’ve been many news reports over the years, starting well before the 2019 election. Cherie Wong’s own group issued a report on the issue almost two years ago, in May 2021, called “In Plain Sight.” It even included a chapter titled “Surveillance and Intimidation of the Diaspora and Dissident Communities.”

But the rest of us — and here I include most of the news media — largely dismissed all this as obscure political infighting among factions in the Chinese community. We didn’t take it seriously for what it was: an organized effort to make a group of Canadian voters fall in line with the views of a foreign government.

Ironically, concern about feeding suspicion about the loyalty of Chinese Canadians, or even fuelling anti-Asian racism, was one reason for playing down the issue. In his report on the 2021 election, made public last week, former top civil servant Morris Rosenberg worried about the danger of “resentment and backlash” against communities targeted for foreign meddling, “whose loyalty to Canada is unjustly impugned.”

It’s an important concern, but think about the impact of failing to take foreign meddling seriously, with action to match. It gave Beijing a clear field to escalate its attempts to persuade, pressure or bully Chinese Canadians into supporting its preferred candidates, or at least refrain from opposing them. It meant abandoning them while another government did its best to push them around.

Chinese Canadians deserve the same protection as anyone else if a foreign government tries to influence their vote. They deserve the right to make up their own minds, free of intimidation and undue pressure.

The government let them down for years by not taking concrete steps to stop Beijing’s meddling. It’s finally waking up to the issue, under enormous public pressure. It shouldn’t have taken this long and Chinese Canadians know that more than anyone else.