A Harry Tsai Update

Last week, I wrote a note with five reasons explaining "Why I Can't Support Scarborough-Agincourt Candidate Harry Tsai" (Part 1 | Part 2), largely focusing on the Conservatives' ethnic targeting and the underwhelming campaign (i.e. campaign advertisement in Mandarin but not in English, no riding-specific policy/issues presented on the website). As the polls have shown, a lot can change in a week, and so here's an update.

I emailed the campaign team showing my concern, with a link to the blog posts. I received an official response on Sunday morning (the 24th), with the following four points:

1. The Conservative party has several promotional videos and one of them was done in Mandarin which Harry was in it. The video is posted on our web page simply because Harry was in it. We had no intention to target any single ethnic group. As you may also notice, we do not have many other languages but English on the webpage simply because Harry always promote multicultural integration, not isolation. If you really care, please speak to those who knows Harry, and you will find out more about what he has done for the community in the last ten years. 

2. As for ethnic targeting, our target is not lmited to Chinese voters. Historically, Chinese voter turn out is low, and of course, we are encouraginging Chinese voters to vote, but at the same time, we are getting support from many other residents in the riding.

3. Harry was nominated on March 28 and the election was called on April 2. We only had one week to prepare for the election and we do apologize not having all the information ready at once, but we keep working on it. We have recently post up more materials on our website, please have a look.

4. We encourage you to work in any campaign office and understand the campaign work.

Thus, my comments on the election campaign video offered only in Mandarin can be shifted away from the specific Tsai campaign and towards the overall Conservative strategy. It's difficult for me to tell since I can't understand the video - this goes back to the overall management of the Conservatives' Youtube channel. Blocking comments and ratings makes the party seem closed off to public opinion, while they should utilize some of Youtube's features, like subtitles. These would allow the videos to be more inviting and effective to the community, and would not give the impression that a campaign is only featuring an ad for a specific ethnicity.

The next two points in (1) aren't as relevant. Supporting 'multicultural integration' does not necessitate having information available mainly in English - I don't mind if it's available in several languages - I just want to make sure that it is available in English, at the very least. In regards to speaking to those who know Harry, I have - and did so before writing the post in the first place. For ethnic targeting, my main complaint goes to the Conservative party, and the superficial approaches to catching the ethnic vote is still present, and continues to bother me.

Back to the Tsai campaign, there have been updated links posted between Sunday and Tuesday that pleased me, providing more insight into what Harry Tsai could bring to Scarborough-Agincourt. His "about" page links to the candidates' interviews and a personal interview. Content is good, and finally I can read up on his personal opinions and ideas for this riding, though I have trouble accepting "lack of time" explanation given that my post was written three weeks after his nomination, ample time to set up a few pages and prepare a few statements on what he feels is best for Scarborough-Agincourt. In a matter of hours, I was able to pour out more content on my blog - so this key information shouldn't be coming out with a week left in the election. Of course, better late than never. Thus, this post addresses my first three concerns. On the fourth, petty issue on typos, I have noticed some minor changes, though the four I highlighted remain untouched. Oh well.

Overall, I am pleased with the changes on the website, and their response is worth updating from the previous posts, though my stance on the campaign stays intact.