In the shadow of a multi-million-dollar public inquiry that branded the People’s Republic of China the single greatest threat to Canadian democracy, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government quietly handed Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) the keys to the RCMP’s intelligence cupboard.
The vehicle? A Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Combating Crimes was signed in Beijing on January 16, 2026, during Carney’s high-profile visit. On paper, it’s about fighting drugs, cyber fraud, money laundering, and corruption. In reality, it is the only MOU from that trip that the government refuses to release to Parliament or the public. RCMP officials have bluntly told senators that details cannot be disclosed without Beijing’s permission.
That single fact should set off every alarm in Ottawa. Canada just spent years and millions exposing how the Chinese Communist Party interferes in our elections, harasses diaspora communities, and runs covert “police stations” on Canadian soil — yet now our top law-enforcement agency is in a secret intelligence-sharing pact with the very ministry running those operations.
Three MOUs Make Sense. The Fourth Does Not.
Canada signs police cooperation agreements all the time. Most are routine, transparent, and with trusted partners:
A domestic MOU between the RCMP and Canada’s own Competition Bureau — same government, full accountability.
Agreements with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Human Smuggling/Trafficking Center — long-time allies with shared democratic values and reciprocal safeguards.
Then there’s the fourth: the RCMP–MPS pact.
This one stays locked behind a “Beijing approval required” clause. Other MOUs from Carney’s China trip — energy, food safety, wood products — were promptly published. Only the policing deal with the MPS vanished into the black box.
RCMP Deputy Commissioner Brian Larkin tried to wave it off in Senate questioning as “standard.” Senators fired back: if it’s standard, why is it the only one hidden?
The Partner Is the Problem: MPS and Operation Fox Hunt
The Ministry of Public Security is not Canada’s FBI. It is the CCP’s domestic security muscle — the same agency that orchestrates Operation Fox Hunt, Beijing’s global campaign of transnational repression. Launched under Xi Jinping in 2014, Fox Hunt claims to target corrupt officials. Still, he has been repeatedly documented by CSIS, Safeguard Defenders, and international watchdogs as a tool to intimidate, coerce, and repatriate dissidents, critics, and even ordinary citizens abroad.
Canada has seen it firsthand: illegal Chinese “overseas police stations” in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver operated under MPS direction. The RCMP investigated them. Some were shut down. Yet charges were few and far between. Now the same RCMP is expected to share intelligence with the agency that ran those stations?
Hong Kong diaspora groups — the very people who fled this repression — have sounded the loudest alarm. In a joint statement, Hong Kong Watch and nine other organizations demanded the full text of the MOU, full disclosure of safeguards, and ironclad guarantees that no Canadian resident’s data will be weaponized against them. Their fear is not theoretical: Fox Hunt tactics have already targeted Canadian Chinese communities.
Millions Spent on a Foreign Interference Inquiry — Then This?
Recall the Foreign Interference Commission. CSIS and the RCMP testified at length that the PRC is the most active, sophisticated, and prolific foreign actor destabilizing Canadian democracy — election meddling, elite capture, community intimidation, the works.
The public inquiry laid bare how Beijing views Canada not as a partner but as a target. Yet within months of Carney taking office and calling China a “top security threat” on the campaign trail, his government inked this deal.
Former senior Mountie Garry Clement, ex-national director of the RCMP’s proceeds-of-crime program, didn’t mince words: the pact risks giving the CCP a backdoor into Canadian police tradecraft and could jeopardize Canada’s credibility with Five Eyes allies.
The Fentanyl Irony That Should Enrage Every Canadian
China is the primary global source of fentanyl precursors flooding North America. CBSA and RCMP have seized thousands of litres of these chemicals shipped directly from China — enough to produce billions of lethal doses. Mexican cartels and domestic superlabs in Canada turn those precursors into the poison killing our kids on the streets.
The RCMP is on the front lines of that fight. Now they’re supposed to share “intelligence” on the very transnational crime networks supplied by the country whose ministry they just partnered with?
Beijing has spent years slow-walking real cooperation on precursors while its chemical industry profits. Giving the MPS a seat at the table isn’t fighting the fentanyl crisis — it’s inviting the arsonist to help design the fire alarms.
Don’t Forget Sinclair Technologies — The Warning We Ignored
In 2021–2022, the force quietly awarded a $550,000 contract to Sinclair Technologies for radio-frequency filtration equipment critical to protecting RCMP communications. Sinclair’s parent company, Norsat, was owned by Hytera, a Chinese firm with a 10% stake held by the Chinese government. After Radio-Canada exposed the ties, the contract was suspended. A review found no breach, but procurement rules were quietly tightened.
Lesson learned? Apparently not. When even passive comms hardware from a Chinese-linked supplier triggered national-security panic, how exactly does sharing operational intelligence with the MPS — an agency whose own national intelligence law requires Chinese entities to assist the state — make Canada safer?
This Is Not Pragmatism. It’s Recklessness.
Carney’s government insists the MOU includes “Canadian safeguards” under laws such as the Avoiding Complicity in Mistreatment by Foreign Entities Act. But those safeguards are meaningless when the full agreement remains hidden from Parliament and the Canadian public. Canadians have no way of knowing what limits were placed on information sharing, what data is being exchanged, or whether real protections exist for vulnerable diaspora communities.
The pattern is damning. After spending millions and years on a public inquiry that identified the PRC as the central threat to Canadian democracy, after hearing detailed warnings from both CSIS and the RCMP about the scale of Chinese interference and transnational repression, the government chose to sign a secret intelligence-sharing pact with the very agency at the heart of those threats. This is not pragmatic engagement. It is a reckless disregard for the findings of its own inquiry and for the safety of Canadians.
Until the government releases the full, unredacted MOU and provides credible, verifiable assurances that no Canadian resident’s information will be fed into Beijing’s repression machinery, this agreement fails every basic test of national security and public trust. It doesn’t just fail the sniff test — it reeks of dangerous capitulation at a time when Canada should be hardening its defences, not lowering them.