Written by: Aidan Jonah

Canada is on the path to further escalation of its hostility with China, this time, by setting the path for targeting engagement with China’s Hong Kong SAR which has special privileges to enable trade, whose representatives have diplomatic status.

To do this, Canada’s parliamentarians, some tied to the Interparliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), are following the same path which they’ve used to demonize China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region: parliament committees.

What privileges of China’s HKSAR are being targeted

On November 18, 2024, Canadian parliament’s “Special Committee on the Canada–People’s Republic of China Relationship (CACN)”, a hotbed of ‘China danger’ paranoia, announced it was going to:

“examine the current regulatory, diplomatic, and trade privileges granted to Hong Kong through the Canada-Hong Kong Tax Agreement Act, the bilateral Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA), and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office Privileges and Immunities Order”

This will be done while the committee conducts “a study on Canada’s economic and diplomatic relations with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, including its Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO)”. The statement notes that “the first meeting on this study [will] be held no later than Monday, January 27, 2025”.

The HKETO diplomatic privileges include:

“The privileges and immunities accorded to consular posts under section 3 of the Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act are hereby granted to the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, and persons connected therewith, in Canada including members of their families forming part of their households in Canada, who are not nationals or permanent residents of Canada.”

The “Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement [FIPPA] between Canada and Hong Kong” is a common investment enabling agreement, usually between nation states, which contains the highly controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). Meanwhile, the “Canada–Hong Kong Tax Agreement Act, 2013” is a typical tax agreement, usually signed between nation states.

Conveniently, similar privileges are going to be targeted in the Hong Kong Policy Act of 2024, a bill introduced on December 9, 2024, by U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

One key provision is to codify “into U.S. law that Hong Kong will no longer receive differential treatment from the PRC except in certain circumstances.”

But this targeting had begun earlier on. In February 2023, the H.R.1103 - Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) Certification Act was tabled in the US House of Representatives, and passed in September 2024. The bill “requires the President to periodically determine whether to allow the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices (HKETOs) to continue to operate in the United States.” Removing that approval means removing diplomatic immunity for HKETO representatives, which would force China’s HKSAR administration to remove them from the US out of fear of political persecution. The US can then infer that this shows guilt by the Chinese government, helping with their narrative management efforts to bolster support for hostility with China.

The focuses of the Hong Kong Policy Act and H.R. 1103 match the focus of the Canadian parliament committee’s upcoming study on the situation in China’s HKSAR.

The committee’s justification?

“Beijing’s imposition of the national security law that violates the Sino-British Joint Declaration”

The National Security Law has provisions similar to Canada’s national security laws. Meanwhile, the joint declaration’s core principles are vague enough where societal changes unfavourable to the West could be declared as violations.

While speaking about the declaration, the committee also seems determined to damage the continued implementation of the tenth core principle:

“(10) Using the name of ‘Hong Kong, China’, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region may on its own maintain and develop economic and cultural relations and conclude relevant agreements with states, regions and relevant international organisations.”

So much for concern about the sanctity of the joint declaration.

In reality, for China, losing the FIPPA would be an irritating inconvenience and the tax agreement likely not a damaging event. The diplomatic status of HKETO is the real target, the rest is just gravy.

Who advocated for the study?

Hong Kong Watch (HKW) appears to be leading force in securing the study into privileges held by the Hong Kong SAR.

HKW’s colonial nature can be gleaned from their 40th anniversary of the joint declaration statement where they griped that Hong Kong was excluded from negotiations between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Britain, for Hong Kong’s return to China. Hong Kong was stolen from China by Britain in the mid-1800s after Britain waged war on China, and this theft ‘legitimised’ by a 99-year “lease deal” in 1898. Even in formalist terms, the question of a 'lease’ renewal or lack-thereof, thereby requiring a return of territory to the country who ‘leased’ the territory, doesn’t morally require the involvement of that territory in any way, unless you want to badmouth a victim of colonialism. To top it off, this logic infers that Chinese people in Hong Kong didn’t fight against British rule, which they did.

On October 15, 2024, HKW’s Chair of Trustees, Aileen Calverley and their Canadian policy advisor, Katherine Leung, met with the Chair of the Canadian parliament’s CACN, “to discuss Hong Kong's special privileges in Canada and the possibility of a study/hearing.” HKW further said, “[Canada] It's time to review #HKETO and other #HK special privileges.”

But their advocacy didn’t start there. As HKW gleefully stated, they have “published several briefings on the topic, including the June 2024 publication, From Hong Kong To Toronto: The CCP’s Overseas Outposts via HKETOS and October 2022 publication, PRC Embassies in Disguise: Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices are Another Overseas Arm of the CCP.”

Furthermore, the organization said:

“We have been briefing parliamentarians about Hong Kong playing a role in facilitating sanctions evasion, increased security concerns about the HKETO in Toronto, and the need to review bilateral investment agreements with Hong Kong”

This parliamentary advocacy included building relations with Canadian parliamentarians. Canadian MP Shuvaloy Majumdar, of NED-past, and Bloc Quebecois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe MP, a China-hawk, member of the Interparliamentary Alliance on China who has previously attended a World Uyghur Congress meeting, and member of the International Human Rights Subcommittee (SDIR) when the Uygur study hearings were occurring in 2019 and 2020.

Other Hong Kong Watch Patrons in Canada include “former Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler, Melissa Lantsman MP, James Bezan MP, Senator Leo Housakos, Garnett Genuis MP, Cathay Wagantall MP, and former Senator Jim Munson.”

Irwin Cotler and Conservative MP Garnett Genuis are IPAC Co-chairs, and Conservative MPs James Bezan and Cathay Wagantall are regular IPAC members for Canada.

US government institutions and future Canadian political influence

MP Shuvaloy Majumdar, who serves on the same SDIR sub-committee as Brunelle-Duceppe, can’t be just passed by, however. MP Majumdar worked for the CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy (NED)’s International Republican Institute (IRI) from 2006 to 2010: in Iraq, Afghanistan and then serving as Resident Director for the Middle East & North Africa Division between 2009 to 2010.

One year later, Majumdar became Director of Policy to Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, until the defeat of the Conservative government in 2015. Then, 2016 onwards, Majumdar worked as “Director of the Foreign Policy and National Security Program” and served as a “Munk Senior Fellow for “the MacDonald-Laurier Institute which has taken money from the Latvian and US governments, along with the Taiwan province administration, where he “Founded and led the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s national security and foreign policy practice”. The same year, he became Global Director of “Harper & Associates” – the consulting firm of former Conservative PM Stephen Harper – who served from 2006 to 2015 – where he worked until 2023. MP Majumdar is the definition of an imperial zealot, committed to US empire, as can be seen in his public writings and op-eds during these years, such as this one fearmongering about Russia and China. In July 2023, Majumdar became a member of Canadian Parliament for the Calgary Heritage riding, after winning a by-election. His rhetoric and actions have not eased up since becoming an MP.

Interestingly enough, another vocal ex-NED employee, Dominic Cardy, who worked in the 2000s to prevent Nepali communists from overthrowing the monarchy and controlling the government, became a vocal anti-China figure who targeted Confucius Institutes when New Brunswick Education Minister, and now leads the centrist ‘Canada Future’ party on the federal level. Meanwhile, Sherap Therchin, the head of anti-China group Canada-Tibet Committee (CTC) which has taken NED money, worked for the USAID in India between 2013 to 2015:[AJ1]

“From 2013 to 2015, he was the Deputy Chief of Tibet Fund India, with responsibility for oversight and evaluation of USAID projects supporting education and healthcare in Tibetan refugee communities. USAID is the regime change arm of the United States government.”

Afterwards, Therchin was funneled into his current role with CTC via Canada’s Parliamentary Friends of Tibet Internship Program and then short-term work with Global Affairs Canada.

Hong Kong Watch and the committee wanted for testimony

HKW’s advocacy towards a CACN study on the HKSAR webinar included a seminar in October, “on Hong Kong’s special status in the Canadian Parliament.” HKW notes that the “seminar was chaired by Hong Kong Watch’s Patron Shuvaloy Majumdar MP”. Shockingly, given the previous quote, the event focused on “the evolving dynamics of Hong Kong as a” supposed “backdoor for the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” and the implications for Canada.

Then, on November 1, 2024, Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation representative Samuel Bickett, “testified before the Canadian Parliament’s Standing Committee on International Trade.” CFHK claims Bickett “provided evidence that Hong Kong has become the preeminent global transshipment center of illicit finance and advanced technologies for Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and presented policy options for the Canadian government and international community.”

The US government is pursuing the same angle. As Nikkei Asia reported on December 17, 2024:

“A senior U.S. Treasury official this month met with Hong Kong financial institutions to warn them against doing business with Russia”

The CFHK said it was “grateful for the strong leadership of Judy Sgro, Chair of the Standing Committee on International Trade in Canada’s House of Commons, for defending freedom and human rights in Hong Kong and around the world.”

Judy Sgro is a Canadian MP and member of IPAC. Judy Sgro headed up the 2022 Canadian delegation to Taiwan province/area, and the 2024 delegation (which was attended by fellow IPAC member MP Stephanie Kusie (Conservative), who is Vice Chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence, and SDIR member Fayçal El-Khoury.

Then, on November 15, 2024:

“The CFHK Foundation, Hong Kong Watch, and the Hong Kong Democracy Council issued a joint statement urging global finance executives to withdraw from the Hong Kong Global Financial Summit, which will take place at the same time as the sentencing of most of the Hong Kong 47 on November 19, and the restart of Jimmy Lai’s trial proceedings the following day.”

On November 20, 2024, fellow IPAC Canadian Co-chair, Liberal MP John McKay, “supported an Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China statement calling on global governments to review their diplomatic engagement with Hong Kong”. On the same day, China-hawk NDP MP Jenny Kwan, “tabled petition e-5137 in solidarity with Hong Kong political prisoners and pro-democracy movement”, which among other things “urges the government to proactively apply sanctions under the Magnitsky Act on Chinese and Hong Kong officials; and to stop according any special rights or diplomatic status to the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO).”

This came two days after the CACN committee chose to study HKSAR’s diplomatic and trade privileges in Canada. In that announcement, the committee noted that it would “invite representatives of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation”, Canadian government officials and “other interested stakeholders”, to testify. Frances Hui is the CFHK’s Policy and Advocacy Coordinator.

The Hong Kong Watch Patron in the CACN committee is:

Melissa Lantsman MP (Conservative)

IPAC Canadian MP members in the CACN committee are:

Damien Kurek (Conservative)
Tom Kmiec (Conservative)
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (Liberal)
Heather McPherson (NDP)

On November 27, CFHK’s Policy and Advocacy Coordinator, Frances Hui, testified at the same Canadian parliament’s SDIR committee whose studies triggered the Xinjiang genocide and Tibet ‘colonial’ boarding schools motions in Canada’s parliament.

CFHK says:

“Speaking before the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development [SDIR], Hui urged Canada’s government to criminalise acts of transnational repression and revoke the special privileges afforded to the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) in Toronto.”

Hong Kong Watch and Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation’s activism will no doubt continue onwards, through the upcoming study, which will begin no later than January 27, 2025, unless there is an election called before then.

How did past parliament committee studies lead to anti-China parliament resolutions/votes?

The Canadian parliament’s Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development (SDIR), has been the vector used to drive anti-China parliament motions.

In October 2018, SDIR began its “Human Rights Situation of the Uyghurs” study. The study carried on, having witnesses such as Christian fundamentalist (who claims to have been ‘led by god’ to defeat the Communist Party of China) and anti-Semite Adrian Zenz, known for research “riddled with severe errors and miscalculations” and manipulating data.

Then came the founding of Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP) in April 2020 with CIA-front (NED) money, just before IPAC was founded in June 2020, just around the time of the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law on June 30, 2020. URAP’s Executive Director, Mehmet Tohti, is deeply tied into the CIA-front world, as this author explained in 2022:

“In 2004, Tohti was a co-founder of the NED-funded World Uyghur Congress. He was a "Special Representative” of the WUC to the European Parliament between 2010 to 2012, and even served as Vice-President of the World Uyghur Congress for two separate terms. Later in 2021, he even was elected to serve as the Director of the Legal Committee for fellow NED funded organization, World Uyghur Congress.”

This author noted on URAP’s public-facing influence:

“This public-facing influence was his testimony to the second sitting of the subcommittee, on July 28, 2020, where he pushed the debunked narrative that 80 per cent of all sterilizations in China occurred in Xinjiang, and falsely claimed that Uygurs are having their organs harvested and sold.”

But most importantly, URAP had extensive background influence on the SDIR’s study:

“Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project strongly supported MPs after they set up an unofficial Parliamentary Uyghur Friendship Group, launched on February 28, 2020, partway through the subcommittee’s term, with URAP proceeding to express their pleasure and promise to work closely with the friendship group. PUFG’s working program was publicly revealed on URAP’s website.

These MPs were far from nobodies. Five out of the eight MPs (including NDP MP Heather McPherson) were members of the Parliamentary Uyghur Friendship Group throughout the Xinjiang study of the subcommittee. These MPs were not impartial judges to determine whether China is committing genocide or not. Bloc Quebecois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, a member of this subcommittee, was even a delegate to the NED funded World Uyghur Congress in November 2021.

An archived version of URAP’s site from July 2020 declared that “[We are] pushing to have Parliamentary Hearing around July 20 or 21 in Ottawa.” They succeeded in this goal.

The MPs in the PUFG could be even less impartial judges towards a witness, Tohti, who was part of the same Parliamentary Uyghur Group as the majority of the subcommittee’s members, when he testified on July 28, 2020.”

Looking back to July 28, 2020 - by which time IPAC had been created - SDIR Co-chair, Conservative MP David Sweet, and members Conservative MP Garnett Genuis and NDP MP Heather McPherson were already members of IPAC.

On October 21, 2020, the “stage-managed committee released its report summary… coming to the conclusion that China was committing genocide against the Uygurs, and demanding the Trudeau government take action.”

This author noted for The Canada Files that:

“Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal and Grayzone contributor Ajit Singh, who provided the basis for debunking the Uygur genocide narrative, were never invited to testify by the Canadian parliamentary subcommittee. Inconvenient information would get in the way of imperial propaganda narratives.”

On February 22, 2021, the Canadian parliament voted unanimously for the Conservative party’s “non-binding motion urging the Canadian government to declare that China is committing a genocide against Uighurs in Xinjiang.”

This author explained events around Canada’s Senate after the parliament vote, which culminated in a URAP meltdown in June 2021:

“Senator Leo Housakos [an IPAC member by July 2020] filed a motion in the Canadian senate to declare a ‘Uyghur genocide’ in Xinjiang, China. On June 29, 2021, this motion was defeated, with 29 votes for, 33 against, and 13 abstentions. The opposition to this motion was spearheaded by Independent senator Yuen Pau Woo. The defeat of Housakos’ motion caused URAP to have a full-fledged meltdown in the form of a statement. The most egregious element, pushing anti-communist Red Peril narratives, claimed that ‘Mr. Yuen Pau Woo has been acting as a spokesperson for China rather than for Canada.’ URAP promised to retaliate against Pau Woo by campaigning for his expulsion from the Senate.”

The Tibet front begins with a report from the NED-funded Tibet Action Institute, which “came out with a report in December 2021, comparing Tibetan boarding schools to Canadian residential schools (a brutal genocidal effort to assimilate Indigenous children and separate them from their parents).” Conveniently, “The Canadian state-backed Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) did a news report just days later, on December 8, 2021, promoting this TAI report.”

The flaws of this report are explained by Jerry Grey in an article for The Canada Files, written in April 2023.

This author already explained the similarities to the machinations which led to the Uygur ‘genocide’ vote, back in July 2023:

“In February 2023, the same Subcommittee on International Human Rights launched a study into ‘colonial boarding schools’ in Tibet. The methods taken to ensure an anti-China report were similar to those which ensured an anti-China Xinjiang report in 2020. They focused on amplifying the claims of NED funded groups (Tibet Action Institute, Tibet Watch and the Canada-Tibet Committee), and brought in witnesses who would sing to the same tune, while avoiding calling any witnesses who would challenge the comparison of Tibetan boarding schools to the genocidal Canadian residential schools.

The report called for sanctions on Chinese officials and a special temporary immigration pathway to get more Tibet dissidents into Canada, among other actions.”

In July 2023, this author explicitly warned that “If history is a suitable guide, we’ll see a Canadian parliamentary vote about the ‘colonial’ Tibetan boarding schools, within the next year.” In November 2023, 28 Canadian MPs (including 24 Liberal MPs, the leader of the Bloc Québécois party and more) met with the main Tibet dissident organ, the “Central Tibetan Administration” (the “Tibetan-Parliament-in-Exile”) President, Sikyong Penpa Tsering, who came “to garner support for Tibetan freedom struggle”.

IPAC Co-chair for Canada, MP Garnett Genuis (Conservative), met with Tsering.

IPAC member MPs who met with Tsering include:

Minister of Justice & Attorney General of Canada, MP Arif Virani (Liberal)
MP Sameer Zuberi (Liberal)
MP Judy Sgro (Liberal)

On June 10, 2024, Canadian parliamentarians unanimously voted for a non-binding motion, “put forward by Bloc Québécois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe [and current IPAC member], that refers to Tibetans as ‘a people and a nation’ who should get self-determination.”

What these two examples should make bluntly clear, is that since 2018, when a Canadian parliament subcommittee targets an element of supposed Chinese ‘human rights violations’, this is a ploy to justify ramping up anti-China sentiment and targeting Canada-China engagement. Fascinatingly, 2018 is the same year when, as academic John Price (Emeritus Professor at the University of Victoria) notes in a January 2024 discussion paper:

“heads of the CIA, FBI, and other US intelligence agencies, appointed by Donald Trump, launched what the Wall Street Journal called an unprecedented campaign in early 2018 to portray China and the telecom giant Huawei as a major threat to the Five Eyes, composed of the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.”

After which, Price emphasized that:

“Attending Five Eyes’ meetings in London (UK) and in Halifax was CSIS director David Vigneault who uncritically accepted the US accusations, rushing to share them with Justin Trudeau in the spring and summer of 2018. Fully informed of US accusations, the Canadian government willingly accepted the US request to extradite Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. The firestorm that erupted with the subsequent arrests of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig plunged Canada-China relations into a crisis from which they have yet to recover.”

On the China file, coming from the West’s side, there are few flukes.

Don’t let misleading rhetoric from Canada’s government, and your own dreams of Canada-China cooperation, get in the way of reality. China’s HKSAR is the latest target of Canada’s parliament and IPAC more broadly, and since Canada-China cooperation advocacy is utterly non-existent, it will be targeted by Canada’s parliament sooner than later.

Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.

Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.

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