How Canada has been helping China hunt for fugitives for decades

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."

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.

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.