In January 2023, Mehmet Tohti, a Uyghur Canadian activist, answered a call that appeared to come from Hong Kong. Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, later told Canada’s Foreign Interference Commission that Chinese police had placed a relative on the line to tell him that his mother and two sisters were dead. He eventually learned that his 76-year-old mother had died in a detention camp. The timing, he said, carried an unmistakable warning: her death was “the cost you have to pay if you continue to advocate.” The call came days before the Canadian Parliament debated a plan to resettle 10,000 Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.
On February 1, 2023, the House of Commons unanimously adopted Motion M-62, calling on Canada to resettle 10,000 Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in need of protection. Yet, three years later, as of March 2026, fewer than 300 have actually arrived. At this pace, Canada is nowhere near on track to fulfill its commitment, which is scheduled to conclude at the end of 2026.
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Although Canada has recognized that Chinese repression tactics cross international borders, it has not built an equally effective system of protection. Sanctuary cannot mean admission alone; it must include both a timely route to Canada and the freedom and protection of Uyghurs’ free speech once they arrive.
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The resettlement process is not simple. Applicants generally need a referral from the UN refugee agency, a designated organization, or a private sponsor, and must pass medical, criminal, and security checks before travelling to Canada. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) claims operational details must sometimes remain confidential to protect applicants, staff, and referral partners. Those are legitimate constraints, particularly when documentation is difficult to obtain, and third-country host governments may not cooperate.
However, the confidentiality issue does not explain the scale of the Canadian government’s shortfall. By September 2025, more than 140 people had arrived in Canada, while over 740 applications were still being processed. In March 2026, a senior departmental official reported that fewer than 300 people had reached Canada — less than three per cent of Parliament’s target of 10,000.
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Moreover, arrival in Canada does not necessarily place Uyghurs beyond Beijing’s reach. Transnational repression occurs when a government tries to monitor, threaten, or silence people outside its territory. Uyghur Canadians who spoke to the Foreign Interference Commission described threatening calls, hacked devices, surveillance at protests, online harassment, and pressure directed at relatives in China. One participant also reported physical and verbal assaults while protesting outside Chinese consular buildings. Threats against family members are especially effective because they turn ordinary communication into a source of danger.
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Ottawa cannot reliably prevent reprisals against relatives inside China, but it can improve support for people targeted within Canada. A single multilingual portal and hotline should allow victims to report suspicious calls, digital intrusions, and protest monitoring without first deciding whether a case belongs with police, CSIS, or another agency. A trained coordinator could refer victims to law enforcement, cybersecurity specialists, legal aid, or trauma-informed counselling and explain what follow-up is possible. Agencies should proactively brief at-risk communities rather than waiting for victims to navigate several institutions on their own. IRCC should also issue regular aggregate updates on M-62 applications, approvals, and arrivals while withholding identifying and operational details. These measures would connect two policy areas that Ottawa treats separately: refugee resettlement and protection from foreign interference.
Canada’s promise to Uyghurs will remain largely symbolic if those in danger cannot arrive and those who do arrive cannot enjoy the liberties of free speech, press, and association. Meaningful sanctuary requires both a route to safety and protection from the government that made refuge necessary.
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Can’t support the Uyghurs and trade with China. Uh ohhhh
Don’t know, but if so, it’s just another reason why cheap Chinese EVs aren’t worth the price.
Alex Cosh, the news editor of The Maple, has explained: “First, and most obviously, these contracts use taxpayer dollars to help sustain the profitability of Israeli companies that play key roles in supplying the Israeli military with the tools it needs to carry out the genocide in Gaza. Second, by feeding the growth of Israel’s domestic arms industry, Canada is helping Israel to reduce its reliance on foreign imports, thus weakening the potential impact of current and future arms embargoes on Israel.”
I hope you also support divestment from Israel.
Sure, they also have the wrong government. There’s no difference between Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal policy against Palestinians and Xi Jinping’s genocidal policy against Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other minorities.
Do you agree?
I think this is continually brought up as a way to distract from the fact that the US and Canada are DIRECTLY complicit in the Palestinian Genocide whereas the situation you are talking about is under the the umbrella of another empire.
There’s no difference between Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal policy against Palestinians and Xi Jinping’s genocidal policy against Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other minorities.
Do you agree?
Do you not agree that Canada is far more directly complicit in the Palestinian Genocide and thus has far more agency and leverage to stop it than it does to influence what China is doing?
Answer my question.
Or, in fact, the entire idea that China is suppressing the Uighur is just a propaganda myth spread by a certain religion that is obsessed over the reality that Chinese citizens forcefully evicted it from China so many centuries ago. Maybe just maybe, the Uighur do not want to come to Canada. We can not force them to come, quotas or no quotas. Maybe we should have asked them BEFORE we set the quota if they actually want to come.Their land is, in fact, their homeland and has been for centuries. Why would they want to leave it - just because Canada set a quota? There are more Uighur in that region than the populations of two thirds of the nations of the world.
No need for Chinese propaganda here thanks.
There is equally no need for sinophobia and racism against the Chinese, either.
Agreed. Glad no one did that.
As an addition, here are two sources regarding the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity in the Xinjiang region.
A Committee Report to the Canadian Parliament says about the Chinese government:
In particular, the Subcommittee was informed that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government:
- continues to detain Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in what witnesses referred to as concentration camps, where women and girls are regularly subjected to sexual abuse and other forms of gender‑based violence;
- separates children from their families and places them in state run schools or orphanages;
- forces Uyghurs to work in various types of factories in Xinjiang and other regions of China, as part of the PRC government’s “poverty reduction” initiative;
- uses invasive surveillance measures to repress Uyghurs living in Xinjiang and abroad; and
- imposes barbaric methods to reduce Uyghur birth rates in Xinjiang, including the forced use of intrauterine contraceptive devices as well as forced and coerced sterilizations and abortions.
Justine Nolan, Professor of Law and Justice and Director of the Australian Human Rights Institute, writes that a UN report on Xinjiang abuses leaves no room for plausible deniability,
The Chinese regime’s treatment of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups in the province of Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity …
It describes as “credible” allegations of torture, including rape and sexual violence, discrimination, mass detention, forced labour and widespread surveillance.
Multiple reports over the past five years have documented human rights abuses in the far-western province. These include the arbitrary detention of at least 800,000 people, and possibly millions …
It is no longer possible for anyone – including the many companies that continue to source products from Xinjiang – to claim plausible deniability …
You find much more on the web.
What s NOT said is how many of the Uighur that applied for ‘sanctuary’ were ISIS terrorists. That is the conundrum Canada got itself into. The root cause of China’s actions in the Uighur autonomous region of China was that these ISIS terrorists were indiscriminately bombing public places, and killing innocent Uighur citizens. It was, indeed, the local Uighur population that demanded China take action against these terrorists, and eliminate the terrorism. So now Canada is faced with a mess of our own doing - either meet the quota and allow ISIS terrorists into our country, or continue to screen the applicants and deny entry to them. The evidence is clear - most Uighur WANT to stay where they are, they are happy, especially now that China has taken action and their economic conditions and opportunity to better their lives has vastly improved. They are no longer living in poverty. It is their home, and they re proud of it. The ones that want to leave are the justifiably persecuted terrorists. Now, either way, it is a no-win situation for Canada. Either Canada does not meet the publicly stated quotas and suffers the propaganda-driven political backwash (this article, for instance), or Canada lets in ruthless terrorists and becomes a safe haven for them. Canada should never have allowed our country to be dragged into this political morass. It was well known in the diplomatic corps that these were indeed true terrorists, yet this was ignored and instead Trudeau went for the public optics. We never asked the majority Uighur population what THEY wanted, we in fact tried to TELL them what they wanted, and totally blundered in the process. Their population is equal to the top third of all countries in the world, and they are quite capable of deciding for themselves what they want. Really, the Chinese government wants to waste the resources by monitoring every one of them? Xi has much bigger problems on his plate than wasting time ‘oppressing’ the Uighur. He has to deliver an economy that will provide jobs for over a billion people, you really think suppressing dissent in a population in a far distant region of China has even a minuscule spot on his agenda? Suppressing ISIS terrorism, on the other hand, would be a main focus.
Another fine mess Justin got the country into, with his faith-based sinophobia. The majority Uighur population can and will decide their own fate, no meddling from Canada necessary, quotas or no quotas.
The root cause of China’s actions in the Uighur autonomous region of China was that these ISS terrorists were indiscriminately bombing public places
This is Chinese propaganda slop.
There is ample evidence for grave human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by the Chinese Communist Party.
No, it is reality. The Americans, in fact, used the world’s largest bomb on the Uighur terrorists in Afghanistan to try to wipe them out. The bombings are public record, for anyone who wants to seek the truth.