Chu Lai fought against anti-Chinese discrimination and won

2017/06/08 Leave a comment

One of the early Chinese Canadian pioneers in the struggle against discrimination and racism:

After he died while asleep at home at age 59, the Chinese community in Victoria turned out in huge numbers to say goodbye to one of the country’s pioneers. Chu Lai is not much remembered today, but in his day in the late 19th and early 20th century, he was known for fighting against racism toward Chinese immigrants at a time when it wasn’t popular. He was one of the wealthiest Chinese merchants in B.C., with a net worth estimated at $500,000.

On Wednesday, June 6, 1906, the Victoria Times Colonist reported about preparations for his public funeral.

The story said ceremonies included building a temporary altar for a Taoist priest to perform last rites in front of where Lai died. Everything was arranged by the Chinese Empire Reform Association, a political party started by the Chinese reformer and exile Kang Youwei in Victoria in 1899 to establish a constitutional monarchy in China. Chu was vice-president of the Victoria chapter when he died.

“Professional mourners who will be clad in sackcloth have been engaged to weep as they walk in a funeral procession,” the story said. “Every carriage in the city has been engaged, as also the services of a local brass band.”

Chu came Canada in the 1860s. A member of the Hakka minority in Guangdong in southern China, he made his fortune trading during the Cariboo Gold Rush. By 1876, he was successful enough to open the Wing Chong Company in Victoria.

In 1885, Chu was a participant in a historic court case. A year before, the provincial legislature had passed the Chinese Regulation Act which put an annual tax of $10 on all Chinese residents over the age of 14.

Chu and another Chinese immigrant were charged and convicted of failing to pay the tax. Chu posted a bond of $250 and challenged the law in B.C. Supreme Court, according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

In the precedent-setting case, the court ruled that the act was “ultra vires” — beyond the power of the provincial legislature.

Source: Chu Lai fought against anti-Chinese discrimination and won | Vancouver Sun

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Lillian Eva Dyck, Victor Oh and Yuen Pau Woo: Canada’s sordid history of treating Chinese-Canadians as ‘undesirables’

2017/05/13 Leave a comment

Good and important recounting of this aspect of our history by these three senators:

As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Canada’s Confederation, another anniversary must not go overlooked. May 14, 2017 marks 70 years since the repeal of the Chinese Immigration Act, the only law in Canadian history to bar a specific ethnic group from coming to Canada.

Today, roughly 1.5 million people of Chinese descent live in Canada. Although most arrived over the past two decades, the first significant wave began in the 19th century. Chinese migrants came to Canada during the 1850s for the gold rush in British Columbia’s lower Fraser Valley. Chinese prospectors earned little money because they were prohibited from working in mines until others had moved on from them.

Another wave of Chinese migrants came between 1881 and 1885 to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. They were exposed to harsh weather conditions and were tasked with the most dangerous and backbreaking jobs of building bridges over valleys and digging tunnels through mountains. These conditions led to 600 deaths, among the more than 15,000 Chinese labourers.

After the railroad was completed in 1885, many Chinese labourers remained in the country. Some headed for the prairies and eastern Canada, but most stayed in B.C.

Once Chinese labour was no longer needed, the government passed laws to limit and then prohibit Chinese immigration. In 1885, Sir John A. Macdonald’s government enacted the Chinese Immigration Act, which imposed a $50 head tax (more than $1,000 in today’s dollars) on all Chinese immigrants.

The head tax created poverty and fractured families. The majority of Chinese immigrants were men who came to the country to find work. The costly head tax forced them to leave their wives and children behind. Families that paid the fee would spend years paying off the outstanding debt.

On July 1, 1923, the federal government implemented the Chinese Immigration Act, banning Chinese immigration altogether. Other policies further restricted their ability to vote, hold public office, or practice law or medicine. Municipalities enacted additional policies. For instance, Vancouver barred Chinese from swimming in public pools.

Since the Chinese Immigration Act took effect the same day as the anniversary of Confederation, this day became known as “Humiliation Day” among Chinese-Canadians. In protest, some Chinese-Canadians closed their businesses and boycotted Dominion Day (the precursor to Canada Day) celebrations every July 1 until it was repealed. This community felt compelled to reject the nation’s birthday.

It was not until 1947 that the federal government repealed the Chinese Immigration Act, in large part due to the lobbying efforts of activists from across Canada, including lawyer Kew Doc Yip. There was also broader public support for the repeal, as a result of Chinese-Canadians’ significant contribution to the Second World War effort. However, restrictions on Chinese immigration and other discriminatory laws remained in place.

In the House of Commons that year, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King said Canada had the right to determine who it considers “desirable future citizens.” “Large-scale migration from the Orient would change the fundamental composition of the Canadian population,” he said.

It took another 20 years for this attitude to change. In 1967, Canada introduced a points-based policy that gave Chinese equal opportunity to immigrate to Canada. It allowed immigrants to apply based on education and skills. By the 1980s, Chinese immigration was on the rise, enhancing the status of Chinese communities across the country.

Finally, on June 22, 2006, the Canadian government, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, issued a formal apology for the Chinese Immigration Act. It was an important step towards reconciliation. It reaffirmed to Chinese-Canadians that they are full and equal members of Canadian society and that their contributions were valuable to Canada’s development.

Source: Lillian Eva Dyck, Victor Oh and Yuen Pau Woo: Canada’s sordid history of treating Chinese-Canadians as ‘undesirables’ | National Post

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Why Ontario should steer clear of East Asia’s identity politics

2017/02/14 Leave a comment

Diaspora politics in action.

While I would disagree that Japan has come to terms with its wartime atrocities (sharp contrast to Germany), Welch’s concern regarding the divisiveness of this proposal is valid (just as the Canadian Vietnamese community was split over Bill S-219 – Backward Bill Passed, but Vietnamese-Canadians Move Forward – New Canadian Media):

In recent years, China has fanned the flames of anti-Japanese sentiment, partly for instrumental reasons (an external enemy enhances national cohesion and regime legitimacy), and partly because many Chinese honestly believe that Japan is nostalgic for its imperial, militarist past, and continues to pose a latent threat to the mainland. It is hardly surprising that they do. Their government keeps telling them so. Chinese citizens are fed a steady diet of anti-Japanese propaganda in the press and in the form of late-night television dramas depicting the heroic struggle of Chinese soldiers against barbaric wartime Japanese invaders. The Nanjing Massacre figures heavily in these anti-Japanese narratives.

In fact, the government of Japan has long ago—and many times—acknowledged and repented of the country’s imperial sins. Only a handful of arch-nationalist cranks refuse to do so, and they speak only for themselves. Today, Japan is among the least militarist countries in the world. Most Japanese today see their own government as the primary source of their wartime suffering. Since 1945, Japan has been a responsible and constructive member of the international community.

One finds ample evidence of lack of empathy in Japan as well, where China’s anti-Japanese propaganda is seen as part of a larger geopolitical project to impose Beijing’s hegemony. With few exceptions, Japanese fail to appreciate the extent to which anti-Japanese sentiment in China can be attributed to a combination of ignorance and regime insecurity. But the Japanese government does not respond by demonizing China. Instead, it calls for greater cooperation and communication on issues of mutual interest, while hedging its bets through more-or-less-standard balance-of-power politics.

These two efforts to single out the Nanjing Massacre for commemoration effectively endorse and encourage Chinese misperceptions of Japan. They ask the people of Ontario and the people of Toronto to inflame and take sides in a dangerous clash of national egos. They work against, not for, stability in East Asia. This is not the Canadian way. Canadians are peacemakers and bridge-builders, not pawns in others’ domestic and geopolitical games.

At the same time, and at least as importantly, these two efforts threaten to undermine harmony here at home. More than 100,000 Ontarians have roots in Japan, and more than 700,000 have roots in China. Nothing good can come from fanning the flames ethnic hatred—except, perhaps, for cynical politicians who care only about the relative number of their constituents in their districts with Chinese or Japanese ancestry.

Finally, these measures are dangerous precedents. By taking sides in one case, Queen’s Park and Toronto City Council would effectively invite others to do the same. Ontario, in general, and Toronto, in particular, have more diverse populations than anywhere else in the world. There are not enough days in the calendar to commemorate every historical atrocity that drives an ethno-nationalist grievance.

Let us hope that our politicians see the wisdom of avoiding this particular minefield before the damage is done. No one could possibly object to commemorating the innocent victims of war; but if we are to do so, let us make the commemoration inclusive, in true Canadian fashion, rather than divisive.

Source: Why Ontario should steer clear of East Asia’s identity politics – The Hill Times – The Hill Times

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From Chinese to Canadian: Gordon Chong

2016/12/14 Leave a comment

More on the Chinese Canadian Archive Project and Gordon Chong’ take on the lessons learned:

The Archive Project is a long-awaited and worthy endeavour that will be bolstered by additional family papers and photographs.

Equally important are the lessons derived from this chronicling of the Chinese community’s collective history.

Successive generations have entered every sphere of Canadian life, making significant contributions in the professions and business.

These accomplishments were made without teachers or role models who remotely resembled us.

Our parents (and extended families) were our role models, providing stability and instilling confidence.

By the time we graduated from elementary school, our formal education had exceeded most of theirs.

While supportive, they were not the contemporary and widely satirized “Tiger Moms” or fathers described by Amy Chua, the Yale Law school professor.

Our parents simply recognized the value of higher education in providing socio-economic stability.

There have also been successful politicians produced from our ranks – Art Lee, Gary Mar, C.S. Leung, Michael Chong, Ying Hope, Denzil Minnan-Wong, Kristyn Wong-Tam and many others across the country.

Many were elected before Chinese Canadians became a significant voting bloc.

Indeed, they were devoid of identity politics and forged mutually respectful bonds with their eclectic white communities.

The message is clear: Canadians are more than willing to welcome immigrant families into our great, blended family, if they unconditionally throw their lot in with us.

The Chinese Canadian odyssey has been instructive!

Source: From Chinese to Canadian | CHONG | Columnists | Opinion | Toronto Sun

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New archive highlights years of racism faced by Chinese Canadians | Toronto Star

2016/12/07 Leave a comment

A good reminder of our history:

Seventy-one years ago Mavis Chu Lew Garland and eight of her preschool classmates were photographed on the porch of the Chinese Canadian Institute on the corner of Dundas St. W. and University Ave.

Times were different, rather “extremely difficult,” she says, being born to a Chinese immigrant father and a white mother when interracial marriages were seen as unacceptable.

But now, at the age of 76, Garland and her classmates have come together to recreate a photo that was taken during a period of discrimination, and now represents a snapshot of Canadian immigrant history.

The photo, which Garland found while scrounging through old shoeboxes is just one of the artifacts donated to the Toronto Public Library as part of a three-year initiative, the Chinese Canadian archives, which opened on Tuesday at the Toronto Reference Library.

Since the announcement calling for donations in July, the library has received hundreds of articles to commemorate the historic voices of the Chinese people in Canada. Among the collection are old photographs of the city’s first Chinese restaurants, and businesses that once existed in the area where City Hall stands today.

But among the pieces of colourful memorabilia are documents highlighting a Canadian history of discrimination, including documentation on the racist Chinese head tax, showing how it rose from $50 in 1885 to $100 in 1900 and eventually to $500 in 1903 — at the time the price of buying two houses in Toronto.

Seventy-one years ago Mavis Chu Lew Garland and eight of her preschool classmates were photographed on the porch of the Chinese Canadian Institute on the corner of Dundas St. W. and University Ave.

Times were different, rather “extremely difficult,” she says, being born to a Chinese immigrant father and a white mother when interracial marriages were seen as unacceptable.

But now, at the age of 76, Garland and her classmates have come together to recreate a photo that was taken during a period of discrimination, and now represents a snapshot of Canadian immigrant history.

The photo, which Garland found while scrounging through old shoeboxes is just one of the artifacts donated to the Toronto Public Library as part of a three-year initiative, the Chinese Canadian archives, which opened on Tuesday at the Toronto Reference Library.

Since the announcement calling for donations in July, the library has received hundreds of articles to commemorate the historic voices of the Chinese people in Canada. Among the collection are old photographs of the city’s first Chinese restaurants, and businesses that once existed in the area where City Hall stands today.

But among the pieces of colourful memorabilia are documents highlighting a Canadian history of discrimination, including documentation on the racist Chinese head tax, showing how it rose from $50 in 1885 to $100 in 1900 and eventually to $500 in 1903 — at the time the price of buying two houses in Toronto.

Then there was the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1881, when an estimated 17,000 Chinese workers were brought to Canada and endured long working days, for around $1 a day. Due to the poor working conditions and illnesses, records estimated that they died in the thousands.

“All of them remained nameless in the history of Canada,” the monument standing just outside the Rogers Centre commemorating the Chinese CPR workers reads.

“I feel like a lot of the lives, work, and contributions of Chinese-Canadians have remained nameless,” 28-year-old Coly Chau told the Star.

Chau immigrated to Montreal from Hong Kong at the age of 5.

“Elementary and secondary education gave me very little exposure to the history of Chinese Canadians” Chau says.

After graduating high school, Chau said a lack of belonging pushed her to “dig deeper” to research and learn about her history.

“As an immigrant, my experiences have been greatly attributed to the contributions and experiences of those Chinese Canadians that came before my family and I,” Chau said. “There are instances of racism that I’ve experienced, or the feeling of being an outsider — but those that came before me worked very hard to dismantle a lot of it, and lessen it for us now.”

Source: New archive highlights years of racism faced by Chinese Canadians | Toronto Star

Filed under discrimination, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Influential Chinese-Canadians paying to attend private fundraisers with Trudeau [investor immigrant angle]

2016/12/03 1 Comment

Sigh … One of the better initiatives of the Conservative government was shutting down the business immigrant program after evaluations showed just how flawed it was and just how few benefits it provided Canadians.

And of course the broader ethical issue of such fundraising – paying for access – remains:

Mr. Chan was at the most recent Trudeau fundraiser, which was held on Nov. 7 at the West Vancouver mansion of B.C. developer Miaofei Pan, a multimillionaire from Wenzhou province who immigrated to Canada a decade ago. More than 80 guests got their pictures taken with Mr. Trudeau at the $1,500 per ticket event, including Mr. Chan.

Mr. Pan told The Globe and Mail he lobbied the Prime Minister to make it easier for well-heeled investors from China to come to Canada. He said he told Mr. Trudeau the program put in place by the former Conservative government was “too harsh.”

In exchange for permanent residency, rich immigrants must invest $2-million and are subject to strict audits.

“If they don’t do business over two years here, they cannot stay or they have to leave the country. So I wanted the Prime Minister to know that is not a very merciful policy towards these people because they want to invest or stay,” Mr. Pan said. “It’s all about investment that Canada needs. I have friends, and [they are] wealthy people, who want to stay and invest.”

A Chinese government agency in Mr. Pan’s hometown that builds ties with and keeps tabs on expatriate Chinese, supplied photos of the Trudeau-Pan event to media in China. The Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the Wenzhou People’s Government promotes China’s interests abroad, according to former Canadian diplomat and China expert Charles Burton.

“That is an agency of the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Burton told The Globe and Mail. “The fact that the photos appeared in the [Wenzhou Metropolis Daily] in China suggests that the people who participated in that activity must have been tasked by the Chinese state to try and promote the Chinese position with influential people in Canada. In this case, our Prime Minister.”

Mr. Pan is honorary chair of a Chinese-Canadian organization that is an unabashed backer of Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea.

In 2012, he was part of a campaign by overseas Chinese groups to rally public support for the Chinese government’s position in a dispute with Japan over islands in the East China Sea that are close to key shipping lanes, bountiful fishing grounds and possible petroleum reserves.

That year, Mr. Pan was quoted in the Macau Daily newspaper saying his organization, the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations, had “declared its stand in newspapers” and that “overseas Chinese were responsible for defending China’s territorial integrity.”

In 2015, the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations held a symposium at which speakers backed Beijing’s assertion of title to islands, reefs and banks in the South China Sea, and issued a statement saying it “strongly supports the Chinese government’s defence of sovereignty over the South China Sea.”

The Prime Minister’s Office and the Liberal Party kept the Nov. 7 fundraiser confidential. Neither the PMO nor the party website noted the event. At the time, Mr. Trudeau was in Vancouver to announce a new marine strategy.

“The party has … been clear that not every event is on the party’s national website, while it’s important to note that the Liberal Party of Canada is still the only major federal political party that maintains an active online events listing in any form at all,” party spokesman Braeden Caley said in an e-mail. “All fundraising by the Liberal Party of Canada fully complies with all Elections Canada rules and regulations for political fundraising.”

The Liberal Party would not provide The Globe and Mail with a list of attendees. Mr. Pan said all the guests were his friends, and all are Canadian citizens.

Source: Influential Chinese-Canadians paying to attend private fundraisers with Trudeau – The Globe and Mail

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ICYMI: China trip may help Trudeau win Chinese-Canadian votes

2016/09/07 Leave a comment

Good and interesting analysis regarding the differences among Chinese Canadians voting patterns and the efforts by the Liberals and Conservatives to attract their votes. For the breakdown of major voting groups in the 33 ridings where visible minorities are in the majority, see 2015 Election Top 33 ridings more than 50 % visible minorities):

As Justin Trudeau tries to build economic ties during his first state visit to China, he may also be helping himself a little with a political goal back home: breaking through with the country’s largest immigrant group.

Among the very few disappointments for Mr. Trudeau’s campaign team, in last year’s election, was how their party fared with Chinese-Canadians. Liberal candidates did as well or better with just about every other demographic as they could reasonably hope; this was one with which they struggled, and the Conservatives retained strength, more than they anticipated.

Markham-Unionville, with the highest concentration of Chinese-Canadian voters of any riding nationally, was one of the very few Greater Toronto Area seats where the Liberals failed to top the Tories – and, according to members of Mr. Trudeau’s inner circle, the only seat in the country they wrongly expected to win.

 The one other riding where more than half of eligible voters are of Chinese descent, the Vancouver-area Richmond Centre, also proved beyond their grasp; narrower-than-expected margins in a few ridings they did win, notably in Toronto’s inner-suburb of Scarborough, suggested a pattern.

It’s one the Liberals need to break, as the country’s largest immigrant population – 1.5 million and growing – could yet be the difference in a close election.

But there are no shortcuts, in the form of goodwill from foreign trips or anything else, to breaking through. Based on conversations with party organizers who have worked on the ground in Chinese communities, the reality is more an array of complex factors that the Liberals will have to work hard to change.

Underscoring the nuance is a key distinction between families who came from Hong Kong, mostly through to the 1980s, and those who have come from mainland China in the past couple of decades. The general consensus is that the Liberals tended to do better with the former and the Conservatives with the latter in last year’s vote.

While that may have helped the Liberals at least significantly narrow the gap from 2011 in a riding like Richmond Centre, where many of the Chinese-Canadian voters have Hong Kong roots, it’s of little consolation since even there those voters are increasingly being overwhelmed by waves of mainland emigrants.

The Liberals’ election postmortems seemed to leave them with all sorts of explanations for why they’ve struggled with the newer arrivals.

The most popular of those explanations, among Mr. Trudeau’s top officials, is social conservatism. The Conservatives made a concerted effort to convince immigrant voters (not just Chinese-Canadians) that the Liberals would allow the sale of marijuana to children; in Ontario, the Liberals also had to contend with controversy around their provincial cousins’ sex-education changes.

While such concerns may have gotten traction among evangelicals with Hong Kong roots, Liberals say they especially heard about them from mainlanders new enough to Canada to be worried about the radicalism of a party they had not seen much (if at all) in power.

Those issues may have penetrated partly because the Tories out-advertised the Liberals in Chinese-Canadian media. And Conservative-friendly ownership of leading outlets such as Fairchild TV and the Sing Tao Daily newspaper helped the Tories get more positive earned media than the Liberals in primary news sources for many relative newcomers – if not as it related to hot-button social issues, then in how the leaders and their agendas were generally presented.

That ties into a whole bunch of other explanations floating around. The Liberals’ polling, according to a source familiar with it, suggested former mainlanders were receptive to what some other Canadians saw as Stephen Harper’s authoritarian streak, considering him a much stronger leader than Mr. Trudeau.

A veteran organizer in the Chinese community suggested economic conservatism was borne of relatively affluent recent arrivals being concerned about their assets’ safety from government intrusion. Just as earlier waves of immigrants had a positive association with the Liberals because that party was in power when they got here, more recent ones might have felt that way about the Tories.

Merely having won government may help the Liberals with that last factor, and some of the others besides. They can set to rest some of the more extravagant fears about their social liberalism by not legislating like radicals. Mr. Trudeau will seem stronger just by virtue of his office.

A trip like this week’s is a prime opportunity to forge better relations with Mandarin media outlets, while also getting copious coverage in them. (Although it also runs the risk of alienating some of their supporters who came here from Hong Kong, and are wary of Canada’s government cozying up to the Middle Kingdom.)

But there is also an underlying reality that belies quick fixes, and will test the Liberals’ commitment to their “hope and hard work” mantra to winning over voters.

Source: China trip may help Trudeau win Chinese-Canadian votes – The Globe and Mail

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Stigma, shame behind ethnic delays in seeking help for mental illness

2016/08/19 Leave a comment

Not the first study that I have seen but appears to be one of the more comprehensive.

Noteworthy in that it applies to both first and second-generation immigrants:

Chinese and South Asian patients experience more severe mental health problems by the time they seek professional help, says a new study that looked at severity of psychotic symptoms and ethnicity.

“When compared to patients from other populations, Chinese and South Asian patients were on average much sicker by the time they got to hospital,” said Dr. Maria Chiu, lead author of the study, “Ethnic Differences in Mental Health Severity,” to be released Wednesday.

“Cultural factors play a big role in these findings. While Asian people tend to have stronger family support, they are also faced with a higher level of stigma and it prevents people from seeking help early. Families may try to cope and keep the illness within the family until there is no choice but to go to hospital.”

Based on the Ontario Mental Health Reporting System database, researchers with Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences examined information on more than 133,000 patients — including 2,582 Chinese and 2,452 South Asians — hospitalized for psychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression, between 2006 and 2014.

Chinese and South Asian patients represented 2 per cent and 1.9 per cent respectively of the in-patient population in the study, while they respectively account for 5.6 per cent and 7.9 per cent of the overall Ontario population.

Researchers assessed the severity of the subject groups based on four measures: if they were admitted to hospital voluntarily, whether they demonstrated aggressive behaviour, and the number and frequency of psychotic symptoms (hallucinations, delusions and abnormal thought process) they presented.

The study found that involuntary admissions were significantly more common among Chinese (67.1 per cent) and South Asian (59.7 per cent) patients than among the general population (46 per cent).

Both groups were also more likely to demonstrate aggressive behaviour at 20.4 per cent for Chinese and 16.3 per cent for South Asian patients, compared to just 14 per cent among other patients.

Patients from these two groups were also significantly younger than other populations being hospitalized and were more likely to experience multiple psychotic symptoms (55 per cent of Chinese versus 49 per cent of South Asian patients versus 38 per cent of other populations.)

Although immigration experience has often been linked to stress and mental health challenges, the study found both immigrants and Canadian-born patients of Chinese and South Asian descent shared similar illness severity when admitted to hospital.

“We need to consider Chinese or South Asian ethnicity, independent of immigration and diagnosis, as an important determinant of multiple dimensions of illness severity,” said the study published in the August edition of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

The report suggests Chinese and South Asian communities may be more reluctant to seek help due to shame and stigma as well as cultural differences in the recognition and conceptualization of mental illness and mental health care.

Those challenges, it said, can be further compounded by language barriers and culturally insensitive health services.

“The longer mental illness goes without treatment, the more difficult it can be to get people back on track,” said Dr. Paul Kurdyak, psychiatrist and researcher with CAMH’s mental health policy research and lead scientist for the ICES mental health and addictions research program.

“This study highlights that ethnicity and culture are factors that should be considered when developing outreach strategies and treatment approaches, particularly at earlier stages before a patient’s illness worsens and hospitalization becomes necessary.”

Source: Stigma, shame behind ethnic delays in seeking help for mental illness | Toronto Star

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Chinese real estate investors are reshaping the market

2016/05/11 Leave a comment

Good long-read in Maclean’s on the impact of Chinese investors and immigrants in the Vancouver, Toronto and other real estate markets. Most interesting point for me was that Chinese Canadians, equally affected by rising housing prices, are participating more in the debates:

Last November, the 38-year-old lawyer and former head of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association helped Andy Yan, acting director of SFU’s City Program, with his headline-grabbing study on home buying in Eby’s West Side riding. In addition to the incendiary data involving Chinese names, the study revealed that 36 per cent of owners on homes worth an average of $3.05 million listed their occupations as housewives or students with little or no income. Fully 18 per cent of the 172 homes purchased were not mortgaged by banks. That means on Vancouver’s West Side alone over a six-month period last year, roughly $100 million in cash came pouring into Canada, almost all of it from China. Yet the homeowners would in all likelihood pay little or no income tax. The total value of all homes sold in the study period topped a half-billion dollars.

Predictably, when Yan’s study was published, a chorus of voices, including former developer Bob Ransford, jumped to criticize Yan: “The danger is intolerance, racism, singling out certain groups of people saying they’re to blame for this,” said Ransford. But such labels have failed to muffle the debate, particularly as more and more Chinese-Canadian voices have begun calling out white developers and academics for making the claim. Fung, the software engineer, says he’s among those “deeply pissed off” by what he considers a slur: “The only people claiming racism are white Anglo-Saxon males—that’s it. These are the same guys trying to label Andy Yan—whose grandparents paid the head tax—a racist? It’s absurd.”

That sentiment is shared by Ian Young, the South China Morning Post’s Vancouver correspondent and author of the popular Hongcouver blog. Young, who is ethnically Chinese and was raised in Australia and Hong Kong, says the issue is one of money, not of race. “What defines those people in terms of their behaviour here in Vancouver, and in terms of their impact on affordability, is not their ‘Chineseness,’ it’s their ‘millionaireness,’ ” he says. “The idea that there is commonality to be found in the Chineseness—I find that kind of insulting. Why would you think that someone was better defined by the colour of their skin than the colour of their money?”

This is why Fung believes it is so vitally important for Chinese-Canadian voices to encourage a debate over the impact of foreign investment on the local market. “Chinese people have a tendency to be a little quiet, we tend to want to not create ripples—culturally it’s something we’re not comfortable with.”

Source: Chinese real estate investors are reshaping the market

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‘Widespread’ workplace abuse persists for Chinese restaurant workers | Toronto

2016/04/26 Leave a comment

Worth noting, including some of the methodological limitations:

Chinese workers in Greater Toronto restaurants face “widespread and persistent” workplace abuse, including being routinely denied minimum wage, overtime pay and vacation pay, according to a new report.

The report to be released Monday finds that some 43 per cent of Chinese workers earned less than the minimum wage, currently set at $11.25. Over half of the respondents reported working more than 40 hours a week, but only 11 per cent of those eligible for overtime pay said they received it.

The majority of workers were also cheated out of their statutory entitlements, the report shows: 61 per cent said their employers denied them public holidays, and 57 per cent said they did not receive vacation pay.

“The experience of Chinese restaurant workers stands out as a powerful illustration of the atrocities suffered by some of the most vulnerable workers in our economy, as well as a demonstration of the complete failure of the Ontario government to act on its legal obligation to protect workers,” says the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic report called “Sweet & Sour: The Struggle of Chinese Restaurant-workers.”

Avvy Go, director of the clinic, said the findings were no different from a similar survey it did almost three decades ago.

“Unfortunately, nothing has changed in the last 30 years. Our clients come to us asking for help on the same issues over their employment rights. They are still paid half in cash, half by cheque, with a pay stub,” Go said in an interview.

“We are still banging our heads against the same system over and over again. We call the report Sweet & Sour because it is a good deal for restaurant patrons and owners but sour for the workers.”

The clinic undertook the survey to identify the scale of workplace exploitation experienced by Chinese workers, after being contacted by more than 600 clients with complaints about employment standards violations over the past three years.

 Because the 184 workers surveyed were identified using the clinic’s client database and through other organizations working in the Chinese community, the report acknowledges that there is a “high probability” that participants with legal issues are over-represented in the data. The report argues that the consistency of responses across multiple workplaces suggest a general trend within the restaurant industry, rather than isolated incidents involving a “few bad apples.”

Source: ‘Widespread’ workplace abuse persists for Chinese restaurant workers | Toronto Star

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