Shen Yun is a classical Chinese dance and music production performed across nearly 200 cities every year. From Lincoln Center in New York to the West End in London, over a million people see it each season.
The show brings 5,000 years of Chinese civilization to life on stage — ancient legends, breathtaking dance, a live orchestra, and a world of beauty and spiritual depth that existed long before communism.
Shen Yun was founded in 2006 by artists who practice Falun Gong — a peaceful meditation rooted in truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. In the 1990s, Falun Gong became the fastest-growing spiritual practice in China.
In 1999, then Chinese leader Jiang Zemin saw its popularity and independence as a threat and launched a brutal persecution campaign — imprisonment, torture, forced organ harvesting — that continues to this day.
These artists came to the West and built something beautiful out of that suffering. Shen Yun brings China before communism to life on stage — and tells the world what is still happening to their people today. That is why Beijing wants it silenced.
For 18 years, Ottawa audiences filled the National Arts Centre for every Shen Yun performance. Then, after meetings between its President and the Chinese Ambassador, the NAC stopped offering dates.
The CCP’s campaign to silence Shen Yun in Canada is not a series of isolated incidents. It is a documented, multi-front operation — bomb threats, diplomatic pressure, and sustained cultivation of institutional relationships. Over 20 bomb threats have targeted Canadian venues, national leaders, and even Parliament Hill in 2026 alone — part of more than 150 worldwide. All hoaxes. All designed to silence one show.
Police confirmed that they were unfounded. The Vancouver Police Cybercrime Unit traced the sender’s email to a phone number in China.
Then the sender bragged:
“My most successful one”
“Canada is hardly worth taking seriously”
“My motherland’s Communist Party”
“Police worldwide are just dogs running at my command”
…” The Toronto Four Seasons incident was my most successful one…Haha!…Canada is hardly worth taking seriously… Even my motherland’s Communist Party couldn’t make the Shen Yun emcee cry, yet I actually did it…”
He dismissed Canada’s politicians as “petty” and “utterly insignificant” — and vowed to continue “endlessly, like the Yangtze River.”
Outcome: Public outcry from audiences, journalists, and MPs forced the venue to reverse course. Shen Yun returns to Toronto June 25–28.
The same sender who targeted Toronto also sent hoax bomb threats to Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Chinese consulate officials then pressured a City of Vancouver employee to cancel — as reported by Global News. Former Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart called it “deeply worrying” — unprecedented interference “infiltrating within the civil service.”
In Ontario, the Mayor of Amherstburg publicly denounced the Chinese Consulate for pressuring him not to support Falun Gong — the first time, he said, a foreign power had tried to stop him from speaking his mind.
Outcome: Vancouver refused. All performances went ahead safely. Amherstburg held a Falun Dafa flag-raising ceremony in defiance.
For 18 years, Shen Yun performed at the National Arts Centre to packed houses. Then the NAC refused dates for both 2026 and 2027 — without public explanation.
The NAC cited commercial reasons for its decision. However, Access to Information records reveal that the Chinese Ambassador met twice with NAC leadership in the months before the decision, including at a private dinner at his official residence. Further details can be found in the China Ties section below.
Outcome: No resolution. The NAC’s position stands in contrast to that of more than 170 venues in over 20 countries that have hosted Shen Yun during the 2026 season, including renowned institutions such as the Lincoln Center, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Palais des Congrès de Paris, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Updates:
On May 28, 2026, Canada’s Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage heard formal testimony about Beijing’s interference campaign against Shen Yun in Canada — the same campaign that ran parallel to the NAC’s decision to drop the show. The committee that oversees the NAC now has this on the record.
Toronto fought back. Vancouver stood firm. Will Ottawa do the same?
Given the abrupt refusal to host Shen Yun after 18 years, people are digging deeper into the National Arts Centre’s leadership and board. What they’re finding is troubling.
Access to Information records — first analyzed by independent journalist Terence Shen — reveal that the Chinese Embassy began engaging NAC leadership as early as February 2023. The relationship intensified with the arrival of Ambassador Wang Di in mid-2024.
On June 14, 2024, the Embassy invited NAC President and CEO Christopher Deacon to Wang Di’s welcome reception — and to receive a personal visit from the new Ambassador. Wang Di had “indicated his interest in paying me a visit at the NAC,” Deacon noted internally.
On July 12, 2024, Deacon wrote in an internal email: “The advice received is that I should meet the Ambassador. Can you find a time — Nelson should join the meeting.“
Who advised him?
In August 2024, Wang Di met with Deacon and Managing Director Nelson McDougall. The Chinese Embassy’s website reports that “President Deacon stressed that the NAC is willing to strengthen cultural and artistic exchanges and cooperation with the Chinese side.”
On October 15, 2024, Wang Di hosted both Deacon and McDougall at his official residence for a private dinner.
Months later, the NAC refused Shen Yun dates for 2026. It has since also refused 2027.
Annabelle Cloutier, then the NAC’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communication, and Corporate Secretary to the Board, attended the first meeting with Ambassador Wang Di — and approved President Deacon’s attendance at the private dinner at the Ambassador’s residence.
She became President and CEO in December 2025 — and has continued the refusal.
Two leaders. Both engaged with the Chinese Ambassador. Both refused Shen Yun.
Yet a new President also means a new opportunity. Ms. Cloutier has the authority to write a different chapter — and to be the leader who brings Shen Yun back to Canada’s national stage.
A 31-year veteran of BMO Financial Group, serving throughout the bank’s most aggressive expansion into China: the first Canadian bank licensed by Chinese regulators (2004), a role in the Bank of China’s Hong Kong IPO (2006), a Shanghai branch (2008), a wholly owned mainland subsidiary (2010). BMO’s current Vice-Chair of Investment and Corporate Banking, former cabinet minister Scott Brison, serves as Vice-Chair of the Canada China Business Council — the same lobby group connected to BLG, the Board Chair’s law firm.
These are not accusations. They are documented professional affiliations. But Canadians have the right to ask: can an institution whose Chair’s law firm advises Chinese state-owned enterprises and whose Vice-Chair spent three decades at a bank deeply invested in China — credibly claim its decision about Shen Yun was made free from Beijing’s influence?
See more details in Jennifer Zeng’s full investigation: “Beijing’s Shadow Over Ottawa’s NAC: Deep CCP Ties Fuel Shen Yun Cancellation”
In January 2025, Chinese Ambassador Wang Di visited Mayor Sutcliffe at City Hall — a meeting the Embassy published on its own website.
As Ottawa’s Mayor — who sits on the NAC Board — he represents Ottawa residents who deserve the freedom to decide for themselves what appears on their national stage. He has the authority and public accountability to act in his capacity to help bring Shen Yun back.
Whatever the NAC’s reasons, 18 years of performances ended shortly after the Chinese Ambassador began engaging its leadership. Canadians who fund this institution with over $60 million annually have a right to ask why.
Reports citing Chinese government insiders reveal that in late 2022, Chinese leader Xi Jinping personally directed a new strategy to smear and sabotage Shen Yun and Falun Gong — using lawfare, disinformation placed through Western media and social media, all designed to be untraceable to the Chinese government.
Some outlets knew exactly what they were doing. Others may not have. Thousands of fake social media accounts were then created to amplify the negative coverage — making the campaign appear organic and giving it massive reach, as revealed in the documentary UNBROKEN.
One concrete example: allegations about Shen Yun’s labour practices were published by an American media outlet, echoed by other media outlets without seeking Shen Yun’s response, and amplified by thousands of fake social media accounts linked to CCP influence operations. Yet after a nearly two-year investigation, the New York State Department of Labor found no violations related to compensation paid to Shen Yun performers. The allegations were cleared. The coverage that spread them largely was not.
In the Washington Examiner’s words, “The CCP, unable to shut down Shen Yun through direct suppression, has now turned to an even more insidious tactic — leveraging American media outlets … to attack it instead.” The publication called it “foreign interference in its purest form.”
Washington Examiner, February 20, 2025
Either way, the strategy worked exactly as Beijing designed it — giving venues and institutions the cover they needed to distance themselves from Shen Yun.
If you’ve read negative coverage of Shen Yun and wondered where it came from — now you know.
The NAC is a federal Crown corporation — over 50% of its budget, more than $60 million annually, comes from Canadian taxpayers. Its Board is appointed on the recommendation of the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It answers to Parliament. It answers to you. It was built for artistic freedom. Not for foreign censorship.
And yet, after the Chinese Ambassador dined with its president, after 18 years of packed houses, after a coordinated smear campaign designed by Beijing — the NAC shut its doors to Shen Yun. Without a credible explanation.
Canadians have the right to present and to see lawful artistic expression on their own national stage. Canadian stages must be governed by Canadian values — not by the agenda of authoritarian regimes.
Whatever led to the NAC’s decision — whether diplomatic pressure, the smear campaign, or hoax bomb threats — the campaign behind it is now documented on this page. Beijing’s goal is to shut down Shen Yun on Western stages. The NAC delivered the result Beijing wanted.
Canadians deserve to decide what they see on their own national stage.
At the federal level, Parliamentary Secretary Rob Oliphant has stated that “Canada will not tolerate foreign interference or transnational repression,” and Global Affairs Canada has referred the bomb threats to the RCMP and Public Safety Canada.
The question now is whether Ottawa’s own flagship cultural institution will act consistently with those words — or continue to exclude the very show federal officials say should be protected.
Sign a petition to the NAC Board, the federal government, and all MPs. Public pressure already brought Shen Yun back to Toronto. Your signature can bring it back to Ottawa.
Let Shen Yun Perform.
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Want the whole story? Watch UNBROKEN: The Untold Story of Shen Yun →
