Canadian Government Official Responds to Reports of Unofficial Chinese Police Stations in Toronto
An investigation into allegations that communist China is operating unofficial overseas police stations in Canada is underway, officials say.
Testifying before the parliamentary Canada-China committee on Sept. 4, Weldon Epp, director general for Global Affairs Canada’s North Asia and Oceania Bureau, said should the allegations be proven true, the activity would “fall outside of any legitimate police-to-police liaison role” between the two countries, and that Ottawa would make “serious representations” to Beijing.
“The activity that’s being alleged would be entirely illegal, totally inappropriate, and would be subject to very serious representations and follow-up diplomatically,” Epp said.
Reports of China’s expanding “overseas police service stations” were brought to public attention after Spain-based human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders published its investigative report last month, titled “110 Overseas: Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild.”
At the time of publication, the report identified 54 Chinese overseas police stations in 30 countries, including three in Toronto. The stations are all under the jurisdiction of two local-level police services in China—the Fuzhou Public Security Bureau in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, and the Qingtian County police in Zhejiang Province, the report said.
Peter Dahlin, founder and director of Safeguard Defenders and co-author of the report, told The Epoch Times previously that in addition to the three stations in Toronto—two in Markham and one in Scarborough, whose locations were published in a Chinese state media outlet—there are likely other unofficial Chinese police stations either in existance or being established in Canada, though they have yet to be discovered.
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