Recent news that a Chinese diplomat had threatened a Canadian MP’s family in Hong Kong highlights the potential for more severe actions against the general Chinese-Canadian population and dissidents by the Chinese Communist Party, warns the leader of a rights advocacy group.

Conservative MP Michael Chong said on Twitter on May 1 that he was “profoundly disappointed” to have learned about the threats against his relatives in Hong Kong from the media, and not from the government or security agencies.

According to a Globe and Mail article citing a 2021 top-secret report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), China’s intelligence service has taken actions to target Canadian MPs involved in a parliamentary motion that condemned Beijing’s abuse of Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang Province, and this included seeking information about one MP’s relatives in China. A national security source told the Globe that the MP being targeted was Michael Chong.

Meanwhile, Zhao Wei, the Chinese diplomat who allegedly made the threats, has remained an accredited consulate officer with the Chinese consulate in Toronto.

“This is extraordinarily appalling to us because if the Chinese [consulate officials] in Toronto dare to threaten the official opposition party’s foreign critic, they could have done much worse to ordinary citizens of Canada,” Gloria Fung, chair of the Canada-Hong Kong Link, told The Epoch Times.

“The Chinese Communist Party [CCP] has been exploiting the fact that Canadians of Chinese ethnic background still have their relatives and family members in China or Hong Kong, and that’s why they could use them as hostages in exerting pressure on Canadians,” she said. “At the same time, I’m quite sure the magnitude and extent of intimidation, harassment will be much more severe than what they do to other Canadians.”

The CCP seeks to control all individuals of Chinese origin, regardless of where they live or what nationalities they hold, Fung said, pointing to the remarks from former Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi that people of Chinese origin are “first and foremost Chinese.” Wang made the remark in 2016, in response to concerns raised about the detention of a Hong Kong bookseller, Lee Bo, who holds British citizenship.

“We are Canadians and we do not consider ourselves a Chinese citizen. Therefore, I think this is a very misleading and wrong application of the concept of ‘Chinese national,'” Fung said.

A Chinese-Canadian resident of Toronto has experienced the CCP’s intimidation tactics, which have caused significant distress to her family members in China. Huang Hua is a Falun Gong practitioner who was forced to remain in Canada as a refugee due to the severe persecution she would face for her belief in China.

Huang’s father and sister still live in China, and she said local police have repeatedly harassed them as part of their intimidation tactics against her. According to Huang, her father, who resides in Zhejiang Province, has received warnings from local police when trying to contact her. In October 2019, the police raided his home, presumably searching for evidence to convict him for practicing Falun Gong, Huang told The Epoch Times.

When Huang’s father moved to Sichuan Province to stay with her sister during the COVID-19 pandemic, local police continued to harass and coerce the family to renounce their beliefs, Huang said. In approximately September 2022, when Huang decided to bring her father to Canada, they discovered that his life savings of 700,000 Chinese yuan (approximately $140,000) had mysteriously disappeared from his bank account.

“As an individual [in China], it is impossible to get away when the government targets you. You will always lose,” Huang said, noting that they gave up trying to secure a lawyer for her family. “In China, the rule of law does not exist.”

Even in Canada, Huang said she has been followed to her home by a stranger—a Chinese man who appears to be monitoring the activities of the location where she and others practice the meditative exercises of Falun Gong.

In his Twitter statement, Chong said when the Liberal government learned that the MP was being targeted by a foreign intimidation campaign, they should have declared the Chinese diplomat persona non grata and expelled him from the country, in addition to warning Chong about the threat.

“The fact that the government neither informed me nor took any action is indicative of its ongoing laissez-faire attitude toward the PRC’s intimidation tactics,” he wrote.

The Epoch Times reached out to Foreign Affairs Canada for comment on Chong’s call for action, but didn’t hear back.

Sheng Xue, a Chinese Canadian in Toronto and longtime democracy advocate, echoed the call that the Chinese diplomat should have been expelled.

“There should be a countermeasure in response to the role that the Chinese diplomat in Canada has played in this incident. [Canada] should deliver diplomatic démarche and expel this person,” Sheng told The Epoch Times. “Such action is a blatant challenge towards the Canadian sovereignty. But it is not just a matter of sovereignty, it is also [an act] that extends China’s transnational repression in Canada.”

She noted that one legislative tool that could remedy the situation would be a foreign influence registry, which would require individuals or groups working on behalf of a foreign entity to register with the federal government.

“This is a very basic and much-needed policy,” Sheng said. “This law wouldn’t just target the CCP, but any foreign entity that seeks to interact with Canada. It would be unfair and unjust for Canadians if any engagement is done through a covert, disguised, deceptive method.”

The Ministry of Public Safety is currently conducting public consultation on the merits of creating a foreign agent registry, but has not offered a timeline for its creation.

On May 2, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in the House of Commons that, following the release of the Globe report, he has reached out to Chong to “reassure him” that Canada’s national security agencies previously took measures to protect MPs who were on the radar of foreign threat actors. Trudeau, however, denied previously knowing about the threats to Chong’s family back in 2021.