Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the RCMP “will not hesitate to take action” against the unofficial Chinese police service stations suspected to be operating in various locations across the country that are under investigation.
Conservative MP and public safety critic Pierre Paul-Hus asked the prime minister during question period in the House of Commons, on May 9, if the Liberal government plans on shutting down the covert stations in the near future. Trudeau replied that the RCMP “is following up” on it.
“Our police operate independently,” Trudeau said. “We expect the police to do their job, to ensure Canadian safety, and they will continue to do that.”
“Foreign actors attempting to monitor, intimidate, or threaten Canadians is completely unacceptable,” Trudeau later added. “The RCMP have said that they are actively investigating these suspected stations and, as they have done before, they will not hesitate to take action again.”
The prime minister was referring to the RCMP sending uniformed officers and marked police cars to three of the unofficial Chinese police stations in Toronto and one in Vancouver this past winter, according to then-RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki.
Lucki told the Commons Standing Committee on Canada-China Relations on Feb. 6 that the RCMP “did a disruption by going in uniform with marked police cars, to speak with the people involved in those police stations.”
Current RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme, who was at the time its deputy commissioner of federal policing, told the Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in March 2023 that four of the unofficial Chinese police service stations in Canada had “ceased” operations.
“Our understanding is that they’ve ceased and we’re continuing investigation,” Duheme told the committee on March 2, adding that a Chinese embassy official expressed displeasure at the RCMP’s actions against the stations.
“I think that’s a sign that we did our job,” Duheme said, acknowledging that police had not laid any criminal charges in relation to the issue.
Police Stations
Other suspected unofficial police stations remain under investigation, as the RCMP said it was looking into two “presumed Chinese police stations” in Montreal, having received over a dozen “serious tips” about them.
Both suspected Montreal-area organizations in question—the Service à la Famille Chinoise du Grand Montréal based in the city’s Chinatown district and Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud in the suburb of Brossard, Que.—said in a joint statement in late April that the RCMP hadn’t given them any “closure requests” despite the investigation.
“Our activities are proceeding normally,” they told The Canadian Press on April 28.
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told a House of Commons committee that the stations were shut down.
“The RCMP have taken decisive action to shut down the so-called police stations,” he told the Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs on April 27.
The House passed a non-binding motion on May 8 calling on the Liberal government to immediately take steps to shut down the unofficial police stations still in operation.
Andrew Chen and The Canadian Press contributed to this report.