From ‘Quiet Province’ to ‘Strategic Beachhead’: New Book Reveals Beijing’s Escalating Influence Operations in PEI

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A newly released investigative book, authored by Canadian intelligence veterans, details how the Chinese regime used immigration loopholes and elite capture to infiltrate Canada’s smallest province and make it a front line for foreign interference.

Commenting on the book’s findings, former Solicitor General of Canada and former P.E.I. Liberal MP Wayne Easter called for a public inquiry.

“The only way to do this to gain the confidence among islanders is to go to a public inquiry with all the powers that entails,” Easter said in a statement.

The book was co-authored by Garry Clement, former national director for the RCMP’s Proceeds of Crime program; Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former senior manager and intelligence officer at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service; and Dean Baxendale, CEO of Optimum Publishing International and the China Democracy Fund.

The authors say P.E.I.’s case serves as a warning to the rest of Canada about the dangers Beijing’s infiltration poses to the country’s democracy and sovereignty.

“This is hybrid warfare,” said Clement in an Aug. 5 press release announcing publication of the book. Clement has more than 34 years of experience in financial crime, having served as an investigator and undercover operative in organized crime cases throughout Canada.

“Canada doesn’t yet understand the scale of the threat. But we are in an economic war, and Prince Edward Island was ground zero.”

Among the findings of the investigation by Clement and Juneau-Katsuya, dubbed Project Anne, is that P.E.I.’s Provincial Nominee Program was exploited as what they call a “visa-for-influence” scheme, allowing immigrants—including wealthy applicants linked to Beijing—to gain near-instant permanent residence in exchange for investments that, the authors say, often never materialized.

It also investigates allegations of money laundering through government programs and real estate transactions, while uncovering unusual cases such as the kidnapping of a monk, a hotel allegedly serving as the residence for more than 500 Chinese nationals, and a series of unexplained suicides.

“So, when Canada and the world were all in on partnering with China, many just followed the leaders and saw the Chinese market as a great opportunity to diversify PEI’s export markets and bring new immigrants to the province given that the aging of the population was leading to negative birth rates on Prince Edward Island,” reads the book.

“Meanwhile immigrants were coming with lots of money to buy real estate, and that meant new jobs and new wealth for the Island. Whatever the government’s intentions, for Islanders, it was as if Anne of Green Gables, a symbol of the purity of rural life on the Island and her coming of age, had been sold out,” the book continues, making a reference to a business venture to promote Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1908 classic novel “Anne of Green Gables” in China with prospects of merchandising and drawing tourists.

“Poor Anne’s very soul and the innocence she represented had been sold to the most ruthless dictatorship and murderous regime the world has ever known, and this almost a decade before the brutal treatment of Hong Kongers and the exposure of the concentration camps in Xinjiang became known to the world.”

The book’s authors say Beijing did not choose P.E.I. for its operations by accident. They cite its small size, low media scrutiny, and “outsized political access” as factors that make it an “ideal proving ground for foreign interference.”

A note by the publisher adds, “P.E.I. may be a frontline in a global campaign of covert domination—a quiet province turned into a strategic beachhead.”

The investigation took the authors to places like Taiwan, Germany, and the United States to speak with key sources such as dissidents, government exiles, and global intelligence officials.

The book urges the Canadian government to treat elite capture and foreign-influenced immigration schemes as national security threats. Meanwhile, the authors warn that the P.E.I. case is only the tip of the iceberg.

“P.E.I. may be small, but its story might just save a nation,” reads the book’s description.

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