Addressing an audience recently in Montreal, Sen. Victor Oh said he is planning to rent buses to transport up to 3,000 people to Ottawa for an upcoming demonstration against proposed legislation to create a foreign agent registry aimed at combatting foreign influence.
“We need to rent buses to [transport people] from Toronto. I plan to rent 50 buses. ... Each can accommodate around 55 to 60 people, so with 50 buses, that’s 3,000 people,” Oh told his audience in Chinese at an event held at the Montreal Chinese Community United Centre (MCCUC), according to a video posted June 13 on Weixin, the Chinese version of WeChat. The video’s caption said Oh spoke “yesterday,” indicating the event was held on June 12.
The demonstration is scheduled to be held on Parliament Hill on June 24, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923. The act is commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion Act because it resulted from an effort to stop Chinese immigration.
Oh said he and Sen. Yuen Pau Woo will be leading the demonstration to oppose “anti-Chinese sentiment,” highlighting the need to push back against a foreign agent registry.
Proposed Bills
Bill S-237, introduced in November 2021 by Sen. Leo Housakos to create a foreign influence registry, is currently in second reading in the Senate but hasn’t received government support. An earlier bill, C-282, was introduced in the House by former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu in April 2021.“The registration act for the transparency of foreign political intervention in Canada—this registration act is very important. Everyone needs to understand that this act currently before us only stipulates the inclusion of a few countries. This is very unfair to us,” Oh said.
Housakos told The Epoch Times his bill “does not single out any one regime” but rather “provides a tool for Canada to guard against foreign interference and intimidation targeting members of various diaspora communities, no matter from where they originate.”
“We owe that to people who come to Canada from afar looking for freedom and security,” he said in an email statement. “It’s a shame that some people are using this as a tool to pit Canadians against each other.”
Chiu reiterated Housakos’s viewpoint, saying the claims by Oh and Woo are “completely false.”
“Even what Senator Leo Housakos had proposed in the Senate—there is no mentioning of any country,” Chiu said in an interview. “To accuse them [the proposed bills] of targeting China, Iran, it’s just a complete lie, unfortunately, coming from an honourable senator.”
Petition
Oh urged his audience in Montreal to sign and help promote a citizen petition, e-4395, launched by Li Wang, a resident of Coquitlam, B.C. The petition, drafted by Woo, argues that a foreign agent registry “poses a serious harassment and stigmatization risk for racialized communities.”Oh said he and Woo, as senators, are not allowed to sponsor a petition in the House of Commons, and they therefore asked Liberal MP Chandra Arya to do so in April.
The senator said he would liken a foreign agent registry to a “disguised Chinese Exclusion Act” that will be used to suppress future generations, adding that the Canadian intelligence agency could randomly target Chinese businesses should the legislation become law.
“If we don’t stand up and demand fairness, our future young people will find it difficult to climb up [the ladder] within major organizations and the government. And you won’t be able to rise up, because you'll always face suppression. This is why we must stand up, primarily for their sake, for the next generation, and the generation after that,” he said.
“Even in the future when you come to see me about an issue, our intelligence agency can say at any time, if you’re part of a business association coming to see Senator Oh, then ‘what are you discussing? Are you trying to influence our domestic affairs and influence Senator Oh?’ This could happen, if they think you haven’t registered. So this is a kind of disguised Chinese Exclusion Act.”
Woo is also promoting their cause in B.C., according to Oh, while they and MP Arya have been participating in forum discussion with Chinese communities across the country on the issue.
Oh and Arya didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from The Epoch Times.
Legal Action
Oh said he is planning additional efforts to push back against so-called anti-Asian sentiment, including creating a national Chinese foundation to raise funds to take legal action against politicians or media outlets that say things or publish reports they deem to be slanderous to Chinese-Canadians.“We will provide funding [to counter] the baseless accusation and defamation from politicians,” he said. “We need to take legal actions against those unreasonable journalists, news outlets, and politicians who slander and defame Chinese people. We must stand up against them in various forms.”