Senator Oh Arranging 50 Buses to Bring Protesters to Ottawa to Oppose Foreign Agent Registry

Senators Woo and Oh working together to garner signatures for petition against registry

Sen. Victor Oh in a file photo. Becky Zhou/The Epoch Times

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.

Sen. Yuen Pau Woo, participates in a TV interview in the Senate foyer on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa on June 19, 2018. The Canadian Press/Justin Tang

The federal government recently held public consultations on establishing a registry to tackle foreign interference activities on Canadian soil, allegations of which have increasingly come to light in recent months. These include meddling by Beijing in the past two federal elections and the operation of at least seven covert Chinese police stations in Canada.

A Feb. 25 Global News report said irregularities in the 2019 election included Chinese international students with fake addresses allegedly having been bussed to certain ridings and coerced into voting for certain candidates.

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.

Chiu told The Epoch Times in a previous interview that neither his nor Housakos’s proposed legislation mentions “China” or “Chinese,” since a foreign influence registry is meant to comprehensively address interference attempts by all authoritarian regimes.

Sen. Oh, however, told his Montreal audience that the proposed legislation is “unfair” and “very problematic” because it targets specific countries rather than preventing infiltration from all countries.

“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.”

Sen. Leo Housakos in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

“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.”

Chiu, who was defeated in his B.C. riding of Steveston–Richmond East in the 2021 election, told the House of Commons ethics committee on March 31 that he was the target of a disinformation campaign by Beijing during the election due to his support of the foreign agent registry.

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.

On May 28, the three attended an event with a similar theme, also hosted by the MCCUC, where the Chinese consul general in Montreal was a keynote speaker and which the Chinese vice consul general in Montreal also attended.

Former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu (R) and Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former senior manager with the CSIS, appear before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics about foreign interference on March 31, 2023 in Ottawa. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Oh and Arya didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

Regarding the Montreal event, Woo told The Epoch Times previously that he was “very pleased to show my support for members of the Montreal Chinese Community, who organized the event to remember the 100th anniversary of the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act. I have spoken at gatherings like this across Canada and hope to attend more such events in the second half of the year.”

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.”

In March, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed former governor general David Johnston as special rapporteur to investigate Chinese interference in Canada’s elections and to decide whether a public inquiry is needed to study the issue.

In his first report, published May 23, Johnston decided against holding a public inquiry, saying he found no evidence to support allegations of Beijing interference cited in various recent media reports, including the allegation that 11 candidates in the 2019 election had received funding from the communist regime.

Johnston later said he did not review all intelligence before reaching his conclusion and producing his report. He subsequently tendered his resignation on June 9 in the face of heightened criticism from critics and opposition parties.

The Liberal government has now said it is open to holding a public inquiry into foreign interference, and is asking the opposition parties to work together to come up with the terms of reference as well as a list of potential candidates to lead the inquiry.