POLITICS

Chinese Interference in Canada is Systemic, and Getting Worse

Hogue warned us — but Ottawa is moving in the opposite direction.

By Charles Jesse, Editor · Published June 2, 2026 · 20 sources · 16 min read

Illustration of a Canadian government building with a widening crack running through the foundation, documents blowing in the wind around it

THE RECEIPTS Politics — Exposure

Six warnings. Ottawa went the other way.

Between January 2025 and May 2026, the Hogue Commission, CSIS, NSICOP, and independent researchers all identified the PRC as the most active foreign interference threat facing Canada. Over the same period, Ottawa forged a strategic partnership with Beijing, concluded an unreleased policing MOU with China's Ministry of Public Security, and failed to launch the transparency registry Parliament created to address the threat — missing its original October 2025 target and several subsequent timelines.

PRIMARY-SOURCE WARNINGS 6 documents

REGISTRY LAUNCH TARGET MISSED Oct 2025

FURTHER TARGETS SHIFTED 3 times

POLICING MOU Text unreleased

FI PROSECUTIONS SUCCEEDED 0

That's the receipt.

Canada's security apparatus has issued an unbroken chain of escalating warnings about Chinese interference. The government's diplomatic posture has moved in the opposite direction. Below, the full evidence — and what it means for Canadians.

Full analysis · 20 sources · 16 min

There is no ambiguity in what Canada's intelligence community has been saying. The Hogue Commission said it. CSIS said it in three consecutive reports. NSICOP said it. An independent Montreal-based research institute said it from the floor of Parliament Hill. The threat is documented, named, and escalating.

What makes this moment different is not the warning. It's what happened next. While the institutions were issuing those findings, the government forged a strategic partnership with the state identified as the source of the threat, concluded a policing agreement with the ministry conducting the operations, hosted that ministry's political superior in Ottawa, and let the one legal tool Parliament built to address it sit unused for two years.

📊 How to read this article ▾

Green boxes contain documented facts with source citations you can verify.

Gold boxes contain our interpretation — clearly labeled analysis you can agree or disagree with.

Grey boxes provide context that both sides of the debate tend to leave out.

Red boxes list specific conditions that would change our assessment — our built-in accountability.

The narrative between the boxes is designed to be read on its own. The boxes add depth if you want it.

Primary-source warning documents since Jan 2025

Canadian residents targeted by Chinese police (court documents)

Successful foreign interference prosecutions

2yr

Since Royal Assent — registry still not operational

Key Facts — Documented

Hogue Commission (Jan 2025): Named China the "most active perpetrator of foreign interference targeting Canadian democratic institutions." Called transnational repression a "genuine scourge." [1]
NSICOP (June 2024): Found that unaddressed challenges "help to perpetuate a permissive environment for foreign actors to operate." Identified 11 current and former parliamentarians as targets or participants. [2]
CSIS Public Report 2025 (tabled May 2026): Identified PRC as a "leading perpetrator of espionage and foreign interference" with evolving tradecraft including mass-recruitment through fake job ads. [4]
CSIS Landscape Document (July 2025): Assessed PRC as "the most active state conducting FI activities in Canada, in scale and scope." Concluded PRC "almost certainly views PRC FI activities as low-risk, high-reward." [5]
MIGS "Guarding the G7" (May 2026): Described Chinese interference as "systemic" and Canada as a "permissive environment" due to "institutional weaknesses and political hesitation." [7]
Unreleased policing MOU: Concluded January 2026 between RCMP and China's Ministry of Public Security. Text unreleased; RCMP says disclosure requires Chinese consent. [11]
Foreign Influence Transparency Registry: Legislation received Royal Assent June 20, 2024. Registry has missed its original October 2025 launch target, and the government has faced repeated questioning over further shifting expectations — June 2025, December 2025, spring 2026. It remains not operational as of June 2026. [13] [14]

1. The Warning Chain

Start with the record. Between January 2025 and May 2026, six major documents examined the question of Chinese interference in Canada. Hogue, CSIS, NSICOP, and independent researchers all point in the same direction: PRC interference is persistent, sophisticated, and the most active foreign-interference threat Canada faces.

The chain begins with Justice Marie-Josée Hogue's final report, delivered January 28, 2025, after sixteen months of testimony from more than 150 witnesses. Hogue found that China was the "most active perpetrator of foreign interference targeting Canadian democratic institutions." She concluded that foreign interference "tainted" the 2019 and 2021 federal elections and called transnational repression a "genuine scourge," writing that what she had learned was "sufficient for me to sound the alarm." [1]

Six months earlier, NSICOP had already laid the structural foundation. Its June 2024 special report identified 11 current and former parliamentarians and 13 ministers, ministerial staff, and public office holders as targets or participants in foreign interference activities. More importantly, it diagnosed the institutional failure: four "significant unaddressed challenges" that "help to perpetuate a permissive environment for foreign actors to operate." NSICOP first identified those challenges in 2019. By 2024, they remained unresolved. [2]

CSIS picked up the thread across three consecutive publications. The 2024 Public Report named the PRC an "enduring threat" and disclosed Five Eyes findings on Volt Typhoon, a PRC cyber campaign pre-positioning in North American critical infrastructure. [3] The July 2025 landscape document went further: the PRC is "the most active state conducting FI activities in Canada, in scale and scope," its objectives include exerting "control over Chinese Canadian communities" and pushing politicians "toward adopting pro-PRC positions and policies that run counter to Canada's national interests," and it "almost certainly views PRC FI activities as low-risk, high-reward endeavours." [5] The 2025 Public Report, tabled in Parliament in early May 2026, documented the evolution of PRC tradecraft: mass-recruitment through fake job advertisements posted by front companies on mainstream employment sites, a "broad-net approach" that "permits engagement with far more people, many unknowingly." [4]

The independent sector confirmed the pattern. The Montreal Institute for Global Security released two reports in quick succession. The first, in February 2026, called transnational repression "one of the most serious yet least understood threats to security and democracy in Canada" and warned that Canada had "underestimated the scale and sophistication" of the threat. [8] The second, "Guarding the G7," was released from the floor of Parliament Hill on May 28, 2026. It described Chinese interference as "systemic," documented operations across electoral processes, elite networks, academia, media ecosystems, and diaspora communities, and called Canada a "permissive environment" for PRC interference due to "institutional weaknesses and political hesitation." [7]

Co-author Marie Lamensch described the nature of the threat at the press conference: it resembles the ancient Chinese strategy game wei qi. It takes space over a long time. It is adaptive. And the government takes its time responding.

So what does this mean? Six documents from four institutions, spanning eighteen months, with access to classified and open-source intelligence. All reached the same conclusion. There is no dissenting assessment in the public record.

2. The Opposite Direction

On January 16, 2026, Prime Minister Mark Carney met with President Xi Jinping in Beijing and forged a strategic partnership across five pillars: energy, economic and trade cooperation, public safety and security, multilateralism, and culture. A preliminary tariff deal lowered Chinese duties on Canadian canola seed from approximately 85% to 15% and opened the Canadian market to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles. Canada committed to increasing exports to China by 50% by 2030. [9] [10]

Carney described it as "value-based realism." During the April 2025 federal election campaign, he had identified China as Canada's biggest security threat.

Bundled into the strategic partnership was a policing agreement between the RCMP and China's Ministry of Public Security. The government framed the MOU around cooperation on corruption, transnational crime, telecom and cyber fraud, and synthetic drugs. The agreement covers exchange of information, investigative assistance, training, and coordination with other domestic law enforcement. The text has never been made public. The RCMP says releasing it requires Chinese consent. When pressed by CBC, Carney called this "standard practice." [11]

The MPS is the same Chinese security ministry that CSIS has linked to coercive return efforts and threats against family members in China. CSIS's 2024 report specifically named the MPS among agencies whose foreign interference "can include coercing a victim to return to the PRC or threatening their family members in China." [3]

Five months later, on May 28, 2026, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Ottawa for the first visit by a Chinese foreign minister in over a decade. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand committed Canada to serving as "country of honour" at the China International Import Expo and to holding at least annual foreign-ministerial meetings. [12]

The visit took place one day after MIGS released its report calling Chinese interference in Canada "systemic" from the floor of Parliament Hill.

3. What the Majcher Trial Revealed

On May 13, 2026, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Martha Devlin acquitted former RCMP Inspector William Majcher on a single charge under the Security of Information Act. The Crown alleged Majcher had prepared materials to compel a Vancouver real-estate investor to return to China. Justice Devlin found the case "entirely circumstantial" and insufficient to meet the criminal standard. [15]

The acquittal matters for two reasons. First, it was the only foreign interference prosecution Canada has brought in connection with Chinese operations. It failed. Second, the trial's collateral disclosures put far more on the public record than the original charge ever could.

Court documents filed during the proceedings revealed that at least 25 Canadian residents had been targeted by Chinese police under Operations Fox Hunt and Sky Net, some facing life imprisonment or death sentences if forcibly returned. [16]

Testimony from RCMP Superintendent Peter Tsui, a former liaison officer at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, described a 2018 incident in which three of fourteen visiting MPS officers went "missing" for six hours during an RCMP-escorted visit to Vancouver. The RCMP's concern at the time was that the officers "could be trying to illegally repatriate someone." [15]

The case of Xie Weidong, a Chinese government critic living in Canada, also entered the record: the MPS imprisoned his sister, kidnapped his son from an underground garage in China, and sent agents to Toronto to threaten and harass him. [16]

These are not anonymous allegations. They appeared in court documents and sworn testimony in a Canadian criminal proceeding, alongside evidence from a senior RCMP officer. They describe operations by the same ministry that Ottawa concluded an unreleased policing agreement with seven months earlier.

4. The Missing Safeguard

Parliament passed Bill C-70 on June 20, 2024, creating the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act. The legislation established a registry, a commissioner's office, and administrative penalties up to $1 million for non-compliance. The original goal was to have it operational by October 2025, in time for the next federal election. [6]

It is now June 2026 and the registry does not exist.

The timeline of delays is documented in Parliament's own records. The dissolution of Parliament on March 23, 2025 pushed the first target. A Public Safety Canada question-period note from June 2025 acknowledged the miss and cited the need for a "reassessment of timelines." [13] Draft regulations were published in the Canada Gazette on January 2, 2026. [14] Anton Boegman, former Chief Electoral Officer of British Columbia, was named as the proposed commissioner on March 13, 2026, following approval by both Houses. [17]

At his PROC committee appearance on February 26, Conservative MP Michael Cooper pressed on the slipping schedule. Parliamentary records show the government faced repeated questioning over shifting expectations — June 2025, December 2025, spring 2026 — none of which have been met. [18] As of this writing, the most recent public estimate is "as early as the summer." The delay is partly explained by genuine complexity: legal design, IT build, privacy consultation, and concerns raised by the Canadian Bar Association about solicitor-client privilege in the draft regulations. But implementation difficulty and political will are not the same thing, and the result is the same: two years after Royal Assent, the safeguard does not exist.

Boegman told the committee: "Canada's institutions and interests are increasingly under threat from foreign interference. Malign foreign actors seek to exert influence through covert means to shape public policy, to change public opinion or to interfere with our democratic processes." [18]

He is not wrong. But the office he was appointed to lead remains unfunded, unstaffed, and unoperational. The $25.9 million in projected costs over ten years has been allocated in draft regulations, but the IT system to support the registry is not built. The enforcement apparatus does not yet exist. [14]

5. What Canada's Allies Did Instead

Canada is not operating in isolation. Its Five Eyes partners have faced the same threat. The difference is in how they responded.

Australia is the clearest comparison. In 2024, after ABC's Four Corners program revealed that the Australian Federal Police had permitted Chinese MPS officers to interview targets on Australian soil between 2015 and 2019, the AFP terminated its policing arrangement with the MPS. Senate hearings revealed that at least six Australian residents had been interviewed by Chinese police under the agreement, five returned to China "voluntarily," and AFP oversight was found to be "negligent or even absent." A separate arrangement with China's National Supervision Commission was also allowed to lapse. Australia's Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme has been operational since December 2018. [19]

The United Kingdom legislated its National Security Act in July 2023. The Foreign Influence Registration Scheme came into force on July 1, 2025, roughly two years after Royal Assent. [20] Canada's Bill C-70 received Royal Assent on June 20, 2024. Two years later, no registry.

The United States has maintained its Foreign Agents Registration Act since 1938. The FBI continues to publicly attribute PRC-linked cyber campaigns, including Volt Typhoon (pre-positioning in critical infrastructure) and Salt Typhoon (telecoms compromise). In January 2025, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Chinese cyber actors directly linked to those campaigns. [3]

What makes the Canadian posture distinct is not the pace of implementation alone. The UK also took two years. What is distinct is that Canada's registry remains non-operational while the government simultaneously deepens institutional engagement with Beijing, including an unreleased policing MOU with the ministry identified as conducting the interference. That combination is unusual among Five Eyes partners.

Plain English: Since January 2025, the Hogue Commission, CSIS, NSICOP, and independent researchers have all reached the same conclusion: PRC interference is the most active foreign interference threat facing Canada, it is escalating, and Canada's defenses are inadequate. Over the same period, the Carney government forged a strategic partnership with Beijing, concluded an unreleased policing agreement with the ministry identified as conducting the operations, and hosted China's foreign minister in Ottawa. The transparency registry Parliament created in 2024 has missed its original launch target and several subsequent timelines; it remains non-operational. Canada's Five Eyes allies moved to harden their defenses. Canada moved toward engagement without the safeguards its own institutions recommended.

Context — What Both Sides Omit

Critics of the government's China engagement tend to omit the genuine economic interests at stake. The canola tariff reduction alone is projected to restore billions in trade value. Western Canadian producers had been locked out of the Chinese market since 2019. Energy exports, critical minerals, and food security cooperation are legitimate policy objectives separate from the security file. Diplomatic engagement can itself be a vehicle for raising interference concerns directly with Beijing, and some of the Beijing-trip MOUs (energy, food safety, wood construction) are unrelated to security. The GE45 Critical Election Incident Public Protocol retrospective also found that despite continued foreign-interference activity, none of the incidents reviewed threatened Canada's ability to hold a free and fair 45th federal election, and it emphasized that international engagement with partners and potential foreign malign actors can reinforce expectations and deter unacceptable conduct.

Defenders of the government's approach tend to omit the specificity of the warnings. These are not vague geopolitical risk assessments. CSIS has identified named operational vectors, NSICOP has identified named parliamentarians as targets, and court documents have identified 25 Canadian residents targeted by the same ministry that Ottawa just concluded a policing agreement with. The Hogue inquiry and CSIS both used language that leaves no room for misreading: "most active perpetrator," "genuine scourge," "low-risk, high-reward." The government's own institutions produced these findings. Defending the diplomatic posture without engaging with them is not a rebuttal.

This article examines the actions of the PRC state and its security apparatus — not Chinese Canadians. The CEIPP retrospective itself notes that foreign interference transcends ethnicity, ideology, and party lines. Chinese Canadians are disproportionately the victims, not the agents, of PRC transnational repression. Any policy response must include explicit anti-stigma safeguards, as the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and Canadian Civil Liberties Association warned during Bill C-70 debates.

Interpretation

The documented pattern is one of structural divergence: the security file says one thing, the diplomatic file does another, and no public mechanism exists to reconcile them. The transparency registry was supposed to be that mechanism. It is now two years overdue. The Majcher prosecution was supposed to demonstrate that Canada could hold foreign interference actors accountable through the courts. It ended in acquittal. The Hogue inquiry was supposed to produce recommendations that would be implemented. Most have not been.

What remains is a government that is simultaneously the publisher of the warnings and the architect of the engagement. The CSIS Public Report 2025 was tabled by the Carney government. The same government concluded the MOU. The tension is not partisan. It is internal to the executive itself.

Counter-interpretation: Canada may be pursuing compartmentalized engagement: hardening domestic institutions while rebuilding channels with Beijing on trade, fentanyl, cybercrime, agriculture, energy, and crisis management. On this view, refusing dialogue with China would not reduce interference — it would simply remove Canadian leverage. A confidential law-enforcement MOU may be justified where operational methods, intelligence channels, privacy safeguards, and foreign-agency cooperation protocols cannot be fully disclosed without impairing investigations or breaching diplomatic practice. The registry delay, on this reading, is an implementation problem driven by genuine legal and technical complexity rather than a failure of political will. The Majcher acquittal reflects the difficulty of prosecuting intelligence-adjacent cases to criminal standards, not a lack of commitment. These are legitimate possibilities. They do not, however, explain why the safeguards remain confidential while the partnership is public, why the registry is now two years past Royal Assent with no operational date, or why every public-facing action has moved in the direction of engagement while every public-facing assessment has moved in the direction of alarm.

What Would Change This Assessment

This assessment would be weakened if the RCMP-MPS policing MOU is released, even partially, and shows clear privacy, Charter, national-security, and anti-transnational-repression safeguards. It would be substantially weakened if those safeguards include independent review and public reporting.
The Foreign Influence Transparency Registry becomes operational with a functioning IT system, published enforcement guidelines, and multilingual outreach to diaspora communities by September 2026.
The government publishes a scorecard tracking implementation of all 51 Hogue recommendations, with specific timelines and responsible ministers assigned, by December 31, 2026.
A subsequent foreign interference prosecution under the Security of Information Act succeeds by December 2027, demonstrating that Canada's legal framework can produce accountability in practice.
CSIS or NSICOP issues a public assessment indicating that Chinese interference activity has decreased in scale, scope, or sophistication in response to the strategic partnership or the policing MOU.

Sources (20)

Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, Final Report, Volume 1 (January 28, 2025). Hogue Commission
National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, Special Report on Foreign Interference in Canada's Democratic Processes and Institutions (submitted March 22, 2024; tabled June 3, 2024). NSICOP
Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS Public Report 2024 (May 2024). CSIS
Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS Public Report 2025 (released March 2026, tabled in Parliament May 2026). CSIS. See also: Probe International
Canadian Security Intelligence Service, "Foreign Interference Landscape in Canada: Key Actors and Objectives" (July 2025). Canada.ca
Parliament of Canada, Bill C-70, An Act respecting countering foreign interference (Royal Assent June 20, 2024). Public Safety Canada
Marie Lamensch and Kyle Matthews, "Guarding the G7: Countering Beijing's Interference Operations," Montreal Institute for Global Security (May 27, 2026). MIGS (PDF)
Phil Gurski and Marie Lamensch, "Transnational Repression in Canada: A Threat to Democracy and Public Safety," Montreal Institute for Global Security (February 17, 2026). MIGS. See also: Global News
Prime Minister of Canada, "Prime Minister Carney meets with President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping" (January 16, 2026). PM.gc.ca
Prime Minister of Canada, "Prime Minister Carney forges new strategic partnership with the People's Republic of China focused on energy, agri-food, and trade" (January 16, 2026). PM.gc.ca
RCMP-MPS policing MOU. Confirmed by Public Safety Canada response to Order Paper question. Coverage: Global News; Laura Harth (Safeguard Defenders), Globe and Mail op-ed
Wang Yi visit to Ottawa (May 28–30, 2026). Globe and Mail
Public Safety Canada, Question Period Note: Implementation of the Foreign Influence Transparency Registry (PS-2025-QP-00014, June 9, 2025). Open Government Portal
Canada Gazette, Part 1, Vol. 160, No. 1: Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Regulations (January 3, 2026). Canada Gazette
R. v. Majcher, B.C. Supreme Court (acquittal May 13, 2026). Reporting: Globe and Mail
Court documents and affidavits filed in R. v. Majcher revealing targeting of at least 25 Canadian residents by Chinese police. Reporting: CTV News (May 12, 2026)
Canada.ca, "Minister Anandasangaree names proposed Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner" (March 13, 2026). Canada.ca
Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC), Meeting No. 023 — Nomination of Anton Boegman (February 26, 2026). ourcommons.ca; Coverage: Hansard Files
Australia: AFP termination of MPS policing arrangement (2024); Safeguard Defenders documentation. Safeguard Defenders; Senator Paterson (Senate hearing)
United Kingdom, National Security Act 2023 (Royal Assent July 11, 2023); Foreign Influence Registration Scheme in force July 1, 2025. GOV.UK

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