Who Saved Chinese Family Services? 

ILLUSTRATION: Fanny Lord-Bourcier @cartou.che

Chinese Family Services was a hair strand away from losing their building. 

Earlier this spring, they fell behind on their mortgage payment with Caisse Desjardins. The bank was quick to start procedures to seize the building and their operating account which effectively tied the organization’s hands. 

They would’ve been left with just one option: to shut down. 

The trouble started a year earlier, when the RCMP put forth allegations that the organization might be a Chinese “police station” sending information back to the Chinese government. In the aftermath, Chinese Family Services (CFS) have lost millions in funding and had to cut down on services and their staff. 

Yet, just a few months after the allegations came out, the RCMP announced that they found the Chinese police stations (in Toronto and Vancouver) and shut down all illegal activity. When asked to clarify publically that CFS was not one of the illegal police stations, the RCMP maintained that they are still investigating the organization. 

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The organization occupies the third floor of the building on Rue Clark in the heart of Chinatown and rents the other spaces out to different groups. But since the allegations, the flood of mainstream media coverage, it’s become increasingly difficult to rent out the space. On May 1, 2024, with no tenants at hand, the bank did not renew the mortgage and started sending out letters to the staff at CFS to empty the building.  

With the organization’s operation account drained, CFS was at the bank’s mercy. But the organization’s director Xixi Li wasn’t ready to give up her fight. 

By reaching out to the community for help, Li found 10 people, including herself, who all mortgaged their houses to pay the balance to the bank. Li herself was unable to speak publicly about this topic because of CFS’s recent court case against the RCMP, suing them for $4.9 million in damages and lost funding. 

“It shows the resilience and the determination of the community to save their social services organization. Because we really, we almost lost everything,” says May Chiu, community activist in Montreal’s Chinatown, who also mortgaged her house. “But on the verge of losing everything, the community stepped up, we’ve dug into our own personal resources and saved the centre.” 

Still, it was a risky decision for Chiu to mortgage her own house and put her life savings on the line. But as CFS’ former director, Chiu knows firsthand how the organization helps people. She knows that it is both the first and last resort for everything from translating students’ notes from school for parents to helping victims of domestic abuse. And she thought, “Well, where are people going to go if that organization is shut down?” 

Chiu remembers that Li told her she convinced her husband to mortgage their house because she couldn’t let her organization go down like this. Li’s tenacity and passion to save CFS at any cost inspired Chiu to take the same step. 

“I said, ‘Okay, if you’re doing it, I’m going to do it.’ She’s a real leader,” says Chiu. 

But the damages to the community are still numerous. On top of the immediate consequences to CFS, the RCMP allegations also had a huge impact on the community. 

With the level of scrutiny on Chinatown, community members have been reluctant to speak up about the issue because no one wants to be investigated by the RCMP. Chiu also explains that people in the community have been fearful of going to CFS for their services because of the allegations. The fear that comes from these allegations has forced the community to limit their own freedom of speech and freedom of association.

The Chinese Family Service of Greater Montreal building, in Montreal’s Chinatown. PHOTO: Neha Chollangi

Chiu says she knew one person who has friends in Toronto who wanted someone to do a health check on their aging parents in Montreal, and usually they would call CFS, but reached out to Chiu wondering if it’s even safe to call CFS now. 

“So people deprive themselves of the services… I think it has had a chilling effect,” says Chiu, adding that people are even scared to defend CFS in case the RCMP will personally come after them. 

“So we impose on ourselves, we limit our own freedom of speech. I think that people also are afraid because they can’t even say anything positive about China without thinking, ‘Am I going to be accused of being pro-Chinese?’” says Chiu. 

The larger attack on the Chinese Canadian community 

William Dere, a community activist and organizer, has written extensively on issues impacting Chinese Canadians from a historical and political point of view. 

“There’s this (stigma), this whole dark cloud over the Chinese Canadian community, and so a lot of people have decided to keep quiet, not participate in community activities and not to associate with CFS,” says Dere.

What happened to CFS is not an isolated incident. The Canada-China Friendship Promotion Association (CCFPA) and its founding member Tina Zhu were under suspicion as well for being “pro-China” and defending community members against discrimination, including Yuesheng Wang — a Hydro-Québec employee accused of being a Chinese spy. 

Last August, the Montreal Chinese Community United Centre was accused of being a propaganda centre for the Chinese government by the Journal de Montréal after the centre’s website published blog posts that “peddles pro-China propaganda.” 

Chinese Canadian politicians are under scrutiny as well. Independent MP Han Dong in Toronto was accused of being connected to China and filed a $15 million defamation lawsuit in the spring against Global News and Corus Entertainment. 

Michael Chan, the deputy mayor of Markham, also faced accusations of having ties with China and for interfering in Canadian elections. Chan sued CSIS, two journalists, and the attorney general of Canada for defamation. 

“In the past there was a fear of deportation [for Chinese Canadians], and now there’s a fear of being criminalized by participating in Chinese Canadian activities in the community,” says Dere.

Place Sun-Yat-Sen, Chinatown, Montreal. PHOTO: Neha Chollangi

Recently, the RCMP launched an awareness campaign in July for foreign interference incidents like threats, intimidation or harassment specifically from China. RCMP Sergeant Charles Poirier said that they’ve received calls about foreign interference concerns, specifically threats on social media. 

Benjamin Fung, a professor of information studies at McGill University, also had concerns about foreign interference. As a member of the Action Free Hong Kong Montreal, Fung says that when the group held demonstrations in the past, he noticed there was usually someone taking close-up pictures of the protesters. 

The national security law in Hong Kong makes it so that it’s illegal for someone to be protesting even in Montreal. In the event they go to Hong Kong, and the government can arrest them if they have information that they were protesting. 

But despite this heightened focus on Chinese Canadians and the fear of foreign interference, Quebec’s Public Security Minister François Bonnardel said his office is regularly in communication with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and the main intelligence agencies in the country. 

“We have no reason to believe that there is any interference or anything else going on in Quebec,” said Bonnardel. 

David Johnston, the former independent special rapporteur on foreign interference, echoed the same sentiments in his first report from May 2023. 

Johnston also notes that, “it is crucial that efforts to combat foreign interference do not cause discrimination against diaspora populations. Diaspora communities are largely victims of foreign interference activities. This is especially (although not uniquely) true for the Chinese Canadian diaspora, since so much of the recent discussion of foreign interference has focused on the (People’s Republic of China).” 

The psychology of ‘Yellow Peril’ in Canada

In order to understand what’s happening today to the Chinese-Canadian community, Dere says it’s crucial to look into Canada’s past — particularly the yellow peril. 

The yellow peril was used to exclude Chinese people from coming into Canada, first with the Chinese head tax introduced in 1885 and then with the Chinese Exclusion Act from 1923 to 1947. The term itself, according to Dere, is used to describe the alleged power of Asiatic peoples, especially the Chinese, to threaten or destroy the supremacy of white or Western civilization. 

“For 60 odd years of Canada’s history, there was legislation against a whole race of people from China. People need to understand that to understand the psychology of Canadian history, and also the wider Western approach to China,” says Dere. 

Place Sun-Yat-Sen, Chinatown, Montreal. PHOTO: Neha Chollangi

In our present political context, these deep histories of racism and discrimination show up in different ways. COVID-19 brought out a wave of anti-Asian racism in Canada. The political “witch hunt” (as Dere describes it) towards many Chinese Canadians across the country is also bringing the history of Chinese exclusion to the surface. 

“There’s a yellow peril 2.0 happening today, and it’s not the blatant racism of the past… Today, what is happening is that you have Chinese exclusion and Chinese discrimination in the form of xenophobia under the guise of the China threat — that China or Chinese people are a threat to the civilization and democratic values of the West,” says Dere. 

In reality, those under scrutiny like CFS do crucial work to support Canadians. CFS has been in Montreal for around five decades, offering bread and butter services for Chinese immigrants like employment help, French language classes, and legal aid, just to name a few. It’s the only place along with its sister organization the Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud that provide support specifically for Chinese immigrants in the city. 

Some time after the RCMP allegations came out, Chiu talks about how a Chinese international student died tragically in an accident. Her parents flew to Montreal from China to deal with the aftermath of the death, and all the formalities. They didn’t speak English, they didn’t know how to get around, or how to navigate the system in dealing with her daughter’s death. The only person who they were in contact with was their daughter’s professor. 

“Whenever there were deaths, when there were suicides, when there were tragedies, when there was family abuse, Chinese Family Services was the organization that had people who help,” says Chiu. 

But in light of the allegations against CFS, Chiu says the professor was hesitant to send the parents to the organization because they didn’t know if it would be safe. 

The fear that grows from the yellow peril mentality is not only external. In times like these, as we see with Montreal’s Chinatown, the fear is internalized within the community to the point where people begin to self-impose and deprive themselves of essential services. 

Chiu says, “it’s terrible for us to have internalized that type of racism against ourselves.”