Liberal candidate Peter Yuen, chosen to replace Paul Chiang, linked to pro-Beijing groups, events
Robert Fife Ottawa Bureau Chief
Steven Chase Senior parliamentary reporter
Includes correction
Ottawa
Published April 10, 2025
Open this photo in gallery:
Peter Yuen, Liberal candidate for Markham-Unionville, attends a campaign event at Kennedy subway station in Scarborough, Ont., on Jan. 31, 2025.
Laura Proctor/The Canadian Press
The Liberal candidate selected by Mark Carney to replace one who dropped out over a China-related controversy is a member of a Beijing-friendly lobby organization and has given talks at events honouring a Toronto group that advocates for the annexation of Taiwan by China.
Onetime Toronto police deputy chief Peter Yuen, who is now carrying the Liberal banner in the Toronto-area riding of Markham-Unionville, succeeded Paul Chiang. The former MP stepped down April 1 after news broke that he had talked to reporters about how someone could take a Conservative candidate and human-rights advocate to the Chinese consulate to claim a bounty put on him by Hong Kong authorities.
Foreign interference has been a significant topic in this federal election campaign, including this week when Ottawa’s election-interference watchdog announced that it had detected an information operation from Beijing aimed at shaping public opinion among Chinese-Canadians about Mr. Carney.
Mr. Yuen appears to have a strong relationship with China’s diplomatic mission in Toronto. In 2014, the consulate held an event to mark his promotion to Toronto police superintendent. He has attended consulate celebrations, including one in January, 2020, that included a photo display on Xinjiang province that did not acknowledge Beijing’s brutal treatment of its Muslim Uyghur minority there. Canada’s Parliament adopted a motion in 2021 that declared China’s treatment of its Uyghurs a genocide.
Mr. Yuen has also spoken at and attended events of the Toronto branch of Chinese Freemasons, which has advocated for what it calls the “peaceful reunification of China and Taiwan,” a phrase rejected by the Taiwanese government, which contends that only the self-governing island can decide its own future. Ottawa’s position is that it opposes the use of coercion or force to unilaterally change the status quo of Taiwan.
The new Liberal candidate as of Wednesday was listed as honorary director of the Jiangsu Commerce Council of Canada (JCCC), a Toronto-headquartered organization founded in 2002 with clear ties to China’s United Front Work Department. The UFWD answers to the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s central committee and oversees Beijing’s influence, propaganda and intelligence operations inside and outside of China.
Although listed as honorary director, Mr. Yuen said in a statement that his role with JCCC ended a decade ago. He declined to answer e-mailed questions from The Globe and Mail on whether he supports Taiwan’s self-determination, condemns China’s crimes against its Uyghur minority or disapproves of UFWD activities.
Instead, he pointed to his career with the Toronto Police as his qualification to seek election to Parliament.
“I have built a great career committed to public service and have a track record of maintaining the health, safety and well-being of those in our community as Toronto’s former Deputy Police Chief. I’m ready to build a stronger community for the people of Markham-Unionville,” he said in an e-mailed response that was sent by the Liberal Party.
Liberal spokesperson Isabella Orozco-Madison said Mr. Yuen went through “a robust” vetting process by the party’s Green Light Committee before Mr. Carney named him the candidate to replace Mr. Chiang.
During the Liberal leadership race, Mr. Carney met with the executives of the JCCC, according to its website, which described the former central banker’s entry into politics as “an important turning point in the upgrading of China-Canada relations.”
In December, 2021, then-JCCC president Jiang Rui travelled to Nanjing and met Li Guohua, an executive deputy director of the UFWD. A year later, Mr. Rui and another colleague participated in the Central Conference of the UFWD in Beijing, attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Department of Public Safety in Canada says the UFWD attempts to “stifle criticism, infiltrate foreign political parties, diaspora communities, universities and multinational corporations.”
The JCCC’s stated aim is to promote trade, business co-operation and “friendly relations” between Ontario and the Chinese province of Jiangsu and between Canada and China. Statements and actions by JCCC echo narratives pushed by Beijing that, according to Human Rights Watch, has deepened repression of its citizens under Mr. Xi’s rule.
Justice Marie-Josée Hogue’s 2024 public inquiry into foreign meddling identified China as the “most active perpetrator of foreign interference” – one that uses “proxies, individuals or organizations, taking explicit or implicit directions” from Beijing.
“It supports those it believes helpful to its interests at the time, and those it believes are likely to have power, no matter their political party,” Justice Hogue said.
Cheuk Kwan of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China said it is well known within the Chinese-Canadian community that the JCCC and Chinese Freemasons are pro-Beijing proxy organizations.
“We pretty much know that they are part of the organizations that are friendly to China and promote China’s agenda,” he said.
He noted that two members of JCCC also belong to the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference, a top political advisory body to the country’s President.
“One of the bonuses is that they get to meet Xi Jinping,” he said. “So it’s not surprising they would sing the praises of the so-called motherland and support initiatives like the Belt and Road.”
When Mr. Rui spoke at a UFWD event in China in 2019, he called for spreading the Belt and Road initiative into North America. China is pouring US$1-trillion into building railways, ports and pipelines around the world in what many experts regard as a state-directed effort to bolster its political influence and extend its military reach from Asia to Africa. Critics in the West have accused China of ensnaring developing countries by offering them immense loans for questionable infrastructure projects that the countries will struggle to repay.
Mr. Kwan said he was not aware that Mr. Carney had met with the JCCC leadership during the Liberal leadership race.
“It’s not surprising because for years the Liberals have been openly friendly to China since the days of Jean Chrétien, and it continued with Trudeau. This is part of so-called vote-getting. So you have to be seen as friendly with all these organizations that have been set up or infiltrated by China,” Mr. Kwan said.
On Wednesday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre charged that China was out to help elect Carney-led Liberals in the April 28 election.
Referring to a federal election-interference watchdog report that says Beijing tried to shape public opinion among Chinese-Canadians about the new Liberal Leader, Mr. Poilievre accused Beijing of clandestinely campaigning for Mr. Carney.
The Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force announced Monday that a Beijing-linked information operation had spread messages on the Chinese-language social-media platform WeChat that were laudatory toward Mr. Carney, calling him a “tough prime minister” who could take on the Trump administration.
“The government in Beijing is actively interfering to campaign on behalf of Mr. Carney,” Mr. Poilievre told reporters, noting that SITE found that China had targeted Liberal leadership rival Chrystia Freeland with malicious messages on WeChat and are now “pushing out propaganda” for Mr. Carney.
“That is the real foreign interference that we should be worried about.”
Editor’s note: A photo cutline in an earlier version of this article referred to Peter Yuen as Ontario Liberal candidate for Scarborough-Agincourt. It has been corrected to state he is now the Liberal candidate for Markham-Unionville. (April 10, 2025) The first paragraph of this article was corrected to state that Mark Carney selected a Liberal candidate to replace one who dropped out of the election campaign.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-liberal-candidate-peter-yuen-chosen-to-replace-paul-chiang-linked-to/
