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Foreign spies are not just stealing Canada's secrets. They are also doing something that is in some ways more sinister.
It's called "foreign interference" -- covert attempts by foreign governments to meddle in Canada's domestic affairs. Sometimes it is subtle.
Iran's MOIS intelligence is believed to have an agent in Ottawa whose job is to keep the Mujahedin-e Khalq, an armed Iranian opposition group, on Canada's list of proscribed terrorist organizations.
Several sources told the National Post that China has also gone so far as to front candidates in Canadian elections, even at the municipal level, in an attempt to advance its interests.
But sometimes it is more conspicuous. In April, Jiyan Zhang, the wife of a Chinese diplomat in Ottawa, defected with documents suggesting the embassy had been working behind the scenes to prevent a pro-Falun Gong television channel from getting a licence to broadcast in Canada.
India, Algeria and many other governments fighting armed opposition groups at home have been active in Canada, spying on and pressuring emigre communities.
A former Vancouver police officer testified at the Air India inquiry last month that India's RAW intelligence service had paid an Indo-Canadian newspaper $10,000 to back the government line on Sikh separatism.
"This is a direct attack on Canadian sovereignty and on the rights and freedoms of Canadian citizens," said Jack Hooper, who retired this spring as second-in-command at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
Although many countries do it, the Chinese are probably the most active today, according to experts and officials. Their foreign interference activities are focused on what Beijing calls the "five poisons": Falun Gong, Tibet, Taiwan, Uygar Muslims and the pro-democracy movement.
The Falun Gong seems to be their main target. The Chinese communist party views the spiritual movement as the primary threat to its rule, said Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese foreign ministry officer who defected in 2005.
A statement on the Web site of the Chinese embassy in Ottawa calls the spiritual movement an "anti-science, anti-humanity and anti-society evil cult which has been banned in China."
Mr. Yonglin, a former official at the Canada desk in the foreign ministry, said every Chinese embassy and consulate has an internal working group that targets the Falun Gong. When he defected, he brought with him records which he said document efforts to pressure the media and initiate letter-writing campaigns.
He said that in May, 2001, 40 Canadian Chinese organizations wrote to then prime minister Jean Chretien complaining about the Falun Gong.
"That was organized by the Chinese embassy in Ottawa," he said, adding Beijing had even drafted the letters. The operation was deemed so successful that a report was written about it and circulated to other embassies.
"That's a particularly repugnant form of intelligence activity by foreign services, and we take great offence to that for those reasons," Mr. Hooper said.
Ying Zhu was a student at Con-cordia University in 2001 when she returned to China to visit her parents. On the way, she stopped in Hong Kong and took part in a Falun Gong demonstration.
When she got to Guangzhou, she said she was arrested and questioned for 33 days. Security officers went through her address book and asked about each of the names and their connections to Falun Gong.
Before she was released, Ms. Zhu was told her there would be "trouble" unless she spied on the Falun Gong in Canada. She was given an e-mail address and told to use it to pass on information about Falun Gong practitioners and the locations of their meetings.
"Of course, I didn't do that," said the Montreal resident.
Overseas Chinese who cooperate with the government are rewarded with money and preferential treatment when they travel to China on business, Mr. Yonglin said.
Those who don't are put on blacklists that are kept at embassies. Those on the lists could be denied travel visas for China, or if they are Chinese nationals, they could be denied passports, he said. "In my view, that's inhuman."
