Eighty-six percent of the staff at the Canada Visa Center in Beijing are employees of Beijing Shuangxiong Foreign Service Co. which is owned by the Beijing Public Security Bureau and is a subcontractor to VFS.
According to federal disclosures, nearly 90 percent of the staff at the Canada Visa Application Center in Beijing are employed directly by a company owned by the Communist Party’s police.
According to a report published in the Globe and Mail on March 10, Michèle LaRose, a spokeswoman for Public Services and Procurement Canada, said that 14 percent of the staff at the Canada Visa Centre in Beijing belong to VFS Global, the company that operates Canada’s visa application centers abroad. The remaining 86 percent are employees of Beijing Shuangxiong Foreign Service Co. which is owned by the Beijing Public Security Bureau and is a subcontractor to VFS.
VFS has previously said that under Chinese law it must operate its business in partnership with local companies. The Canadian government has publicly assured that its related contracts, systems and audits protect the privacy of individuals who submit visa applications at this center.
“We audit everyone who works at the visa application center, as well as those who subcontract,” said Marco Mendicino, Canada’s immigration minister, in response to questions before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Immigration on Monday (8).
However, Ms. LaRose’s specific explanation was that Beijing Shuangxiong hires its own employees, who are vetted by VFS, not the Canadian government.
She said that VFS operates 11 Canadian visa centers in mainland China and that “prior to hiring, [VFS] is responsible for confirming the reliability and trustworthiness of all employees at the Beijing visa center.” The Canadian government is informed of “any issues that may affect the security status of employees.”
Richard Fadden, former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, recently said that the federal government should end the arrangement at the Beijing Visa Centre because it gives the Chinese Communist government access to an agency with ties to Canada’s Immigration Department, and “I can’t think of another breakthrough that would be more attractive to the Chinese Communist Party‘s cyber spies. “
Employees have close ties to the CCP
VFS said it conducts “in-depth identity, credit, criminal, residency, Education and employment checks” on its employees; uses an encrypted system to send application information to servers in Canada; and has taken a number of measures to keep information secure, including requiring employees to hand over their cell phones to managers while inside the visa centers.
However, a Beijing government report indicates that at least one of the managers of the Canada Visa Center in Beijing was hired by Beijing Shuangxiong from the Beijing Youth Political College, the school where the Communist Party trains its new generation of leaders.
The involvement of the Beijing Public Security Bureau in the operations of the Canada Visa Center has raised concerns among Canadian opposition parties. NDP Immigration Review MP Huizhen Guan on Monday compared the matter to Nuctech, a Chinese Communist Party state-owned company that was qualified to supply X-ray equipment to Canadian embassies and consulates abroad and was disqualified after media revelations about its ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Beijing Shuangxiong’s staff and management included members of the Communist Party.
“Isn’t that enough to cancel that contract?” Guan Huizhen said in Congress, “If I were the person who submitted an application to that visa center and learned that the company was owned by the Beijing Public Security Bureau and that its general manager was chosen by the CCP, I would be very concerned.”
Feds say no problems found
Ms. Catrina Tapley, the federal deputy immigration minister, responded, “We are conscious of the risks of doing business in China.”
She said the Immigration Department has conducted 23 on-site inspections of its visa application centers in China since 2018. Canada has 11 such centers in mainland China and one in Hong Kong. The centers are all operated by VFS, each with its own subcontractors.
Mendicino said in Parliament that the Canadian government has not found any data breaches at the Department of Immigration in the past six months. Safeguards are in place to provide protection for applicants at the Beijing and other visa application centers.
VFS said in Parliament that they have surveillance cameras at the visa centers that are required to monitor every interaction in the process of uploading sensitive information and biometric data. Once this information is uploaded to government systems, local records are deleted.
In a written response to the congressional committee, VFS said that access to these video surveillance recordings “is provided only to visa center managers approved by the Department of Immigration.”
VFS, however, declined to provide information on how many CCP members work at the Canadian visa center, citing Chinese laws that do not allow it.
“All of our employees, regardless of party membership or affiliation, are subject to the same stringent security screening, background checks and other regulations that apply to our operations worldwide.” The company said.
VFS acknowledged that some of the Internet routers used by the Canadian Visa Centre are made by huawei. But the company said, “This does not raise cybersecurity concerns.” “Given all of the security measures we have deployed, there is no reason to be concerned that information collected from visa applicants at the visa centers operated by VFS could somehow be communicated to the Chinese Communist Party, its government or any unauthorized third party.”
VFS Revealed to Have Ties to Chinese Communist State Enterprises
As previously reported by the Globe and Mail, VFS Global is majority owned by EQT VII (No. 1) Limited Partnership, which is registered in Edinburgh. Chengdong Investments, a subsidiary of Chinese state-owned China Investment Corp. is one of the investors in EQT VII, while another investor is Hong Kong sovereign wealth fund Eight Finance Investment Co. Ltd.
Although VFS said it would not pose an information security problem, concerns were raised by both Conservative and New Democratic Party of Canada MPs.
Several NDP MPs sent a letter to Immigration Minister Mendicino and Public Services and Procurement Minister Anita Anand, saying the presence of Chinese capital raised “serious concerns” about the security of information handled by VFS.
The letter states that they are concerned that Chinese companies must “support, cooperate and collaborate with national intelligence efforts” when requested, as stipulated in Article 7 of China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law.
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