Canada has quietly raised foreign interference with China 48 times in two years

Statistics released by the foreign interference commission Friday suggest active discussions between Canadian diplomats and China on influence, surveillance.

Canadian diplomats have quietly but frequently raising concerns over foreign interference and surveillance with their Chinese counterparts over the past two years, newly-released documents show.

A document published by the foreign interference commission Friday shows a total of 48 “representations” to People’s Republic of China (PRC) officials since September 2022. The general topic of “foreign interference” has been raised 31 times in total, including four formal diplomatic letters.

The document also shows Canadian officials raised Chinese overseas “police stations” 20 times, surveillance balloons twice, and two meetings on a former PRC diplomat, Zhao Wei, who was expelled from Canada over foreign interference concerns.

It’s a quieter part of the federal government’s overall response to foreign interference — clandestine operations aimed at shaping Canadian domestic politics chiefly from the PRC, but also countries like India, Iran and Russia.

But the document shows that, away from the public eye, Chinese officials were well aware the federal government was concerned about their alleged meddling in Canadian affairs.

David Morrison, the deputy minister of international trade and former national security adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, told the commission that “maintain(ing) a live, ongoing discussion with foreign states, even adversarial ones” is a central aspect of addressing foreign interference.

“This, according to Mr. Morrison, is the essence of diplomacy: how you work a relationship with a government that may be adversarial, dealing with a diversity of topics and managing the to-and-fro, cut-and-thrust of the relationship,” Morrison told commission lawyers.

Occasionally, those diplomatic exchanges do make headlines — like when Trudeau had a testy exchange with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the issue on the margins of a G20 summit in 2022. Xi apparently took issue with details about the two leaders’ discussion of foreign interference being “leaked” to Canadian media.