In a message recorded in Chinese asking voters to support Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown’s bid for the Conservative Party leadership, Conservative Sen. Victor Oh accuses Brown’s competition of racial discrimination and promoting white supremacy.
“When we see candidates running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada—one of the three major political parties in Canada—discriminate against people of colour in their speeches while promoting extreme white supremacy, as Canadian citizens, and for the sake of our future generations, we have the duty to join this Party and vote for a candidate who is friendly to people of colour and to new immigrants,” Oh said in a video posted on YouTube on May 27, without elaborating on what racist incidents he was referring to.
Oh’s video was in association with an event he co-organized in the Chinese community in the Toronto area on May 26 to promote Brown’s leadership bid.
According to reports in local Chinese media, the event was co-organized by the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations (CTCCO), an organization that takes pro-Beijing positions in the Chinese community, with representatives from many other groups that similarly take pro-Beijing positions in attendance.
CTCCO chairman Guo Ning Weng repeated Oh’s comments in a speech at the event, saying one of the reasons to support Brown is his stance against racial discrimination, according to Canadian Chinese Media News.
During the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong which led to crackdowns by authorities in Beijing, CTCCO was among the groups holding events in Toronto to denounce the protesters in Hong Kong. The group has also supported the Chinese Communist Party’s national security law imposed on Hong Kong, which has been denounced by many democratic countries including Canada as undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy.
Other organizations with representatives present at the event hold similar pro-Beijing positions, including the Chinese Professionals Association of Canada (CPAC). CPAC was one of the select recipients of the “Overseas Chinese Organization” awards during a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in attendance in 2014, organized by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office. Earlier this year, a federal court judge affirmed that the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office is involved in acts of espionage that are against Canada’s interests.
Patrick Brown announces his candidacy for the federal Conservative leadership at a rally in Brampton, Ont., on March 13, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Chris Young)
Sen. Oh has in the past attracted attention for his frequent trips to China. The Senate ethics officer said in 2020 that Oh breached conflict of interest rules by accepting a free trip to China in 2017. He has also taken other free trips to China sponsored by the Chinese regime and pro-Beijing business groups in previous years, according to the Globe and Mail.
In 2016, when fellow Conservative Sen. Thanh Hai Ngo introduced a motion urging Beijing to end its hostilities in the South China Sea, Oh spoke against the motion. He is also a regularguest of honour ateventsfeaturing the Chinese ambassador or top consul officials in Canada.
Earlier this year, Oh apologized to former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu for accusing him of lying about falling prey to a disinformation campaign that Chiu says cost him his seat in the 2021 federal election.
Chiu had in the previous session of the Parliament introduced a private member’s bill to compel those working on behalf of foreign entities to register as foreign agents in order to increase transparency. But the bill was misrepresented to those in the Chinese community to mislead them into believing it was against their interests, Chiu says.
The Epoch Times contacted Oh for comment but didn’t hear back by publication time.
Brown replied to an email seeking comment by asking for a link to Oh’s video, but didn’t respond further by publication time after he was provided with the link.
Brown has taken a noticeably milder stance on China in the leadership campaign compared to other candidates.
During the candidates’ debate in French on May 25, Brown said that while it’s important to defend human rights, it is also crucial to support trade vital to Canada’s interests, such as sending liquified natural gas to China as a way to “help China fight climate change.”
“And it is a way to improve relations with China that became worse under [former] prime minister [Stephen] Harper,” he said.
Harper famously refused to go to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which was attended by many world leaders. His tenure was marked as an era of cooler relations with the Chinese regime compared to previous Liberal governments. After Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won the 2015 election, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said the two countries were entering a “golden era.”
Racism Accusations
Brown and his campaign have on several occasions attempted to link fellow leadership contender and Tory MP Pierre Poilievre to racism.
Brown shared a video on Twitter on May 15 of Pat King, one of the protesters who went to Ottawa during the trucker convoy, in which King talks about a plan to “depopulate the Anglo-Saxon race.”
“There is an end game, it’s called depopulation of the caucasian race, or the Anglo-Saxon, and that’s what the goal is, to depopulate the Anglo-Saxon race because they are the ones with the strongest bloodlines,” King says in the video.
Patrick Brown (L) and Pierre Poilievre trade barbs at the Conservative Party of Canada English leadership debate in Edmonton on May 11, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh)
Referring to the video, Brown said, “Here is Pat King, a leader of the convoy [Pierre Poilievre] supported, spreading the dangerous white supremacist ‘White Replacement’ conspiracy theory which was reported to have been in the Buffalo shooter’s manifesto.”
Convoy organizers have distanced themselves from King, saying he is not one of the organizers of the Freedom Convoy, the main group that staged the truckers’ protest demonstrating against COVID-19 mandates in Ottawa in late January and February.
A few days later on May 18, Tory MP Michelle Rempel Garner, co-chair of Brown’s leadership campaign, shared a screenshot of an email on Twitter in which someone said to be a Conservative Party member says “I believe in Nazi-ism,” and signs off with “I support Pierre Polievre!”
Poilievre responded to these incidents by saying he denounces all racism.
The Conservative Party later said the person who sent the email resigned his membership of the party after an investigation was launched into the incident.
Andrew Chen and Isaac Teo contributed to this report.
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