Why I can't support Scarborough-Agincourt candidate Harry Tsai (Part 1)

A Part 3 Update and Follow-Up

There has been some excitement in the Taiwanese community, as Harry Tsai, the first Taiwanese-Canadian to run for Parliament, has been campaigning in my home riding of Scarborough-Agincourt. Representing the Conservative Party of Canada in a Liberal stronghold against incumbent Jim Karygiannis (who has occupied the seat for this riding since its formation) is a tough challenge, and many local Taiwanese have flocked to support him. I am proud to be Taiwanese-Canadian and am happy to see our community members stepping up to politics, but even given Karygiannis' lacklustre performance in the House of Commons, I do not support Harry Tsai in the upcoming election, and here's five reasons why:

1) The Campaign Video: Not in English, and closed to debate
As you could probably guess by my letters to candidates in my school riding on the issue of "special ballot" voting, accessibility is a big issue for me. I want to be able to get to know my candidates, understand the democratic process, and communicate to the Canadian government. Like any young voter, I headed to his election site, harrytsai.ca, to learn more about him, and was greeted by some news-bites, and two videos on the sidebar. I will discuss the content in reason number three, as what drew my attention first were the videos.

The first was the Harper campaign video with the quote on Canada being the best country in the world. The second was of Harry Tsai, titled "Harry-Mandarin". Not unexpectedly, the 30 second ad was in Mandarin, featuring Tsai saying something about Harper. My description is vague because, granted, my Mandarin isn't great - but there are many other people in this riding - in fact, a majority of voters - that do not understand Mandarin. To my surprise, this video was not provided in any of Canada's official languages, and the website at the time, did not provide any other clips of Harry Tsai speaking in English (or French), or at least provide subtitles to his video in any other language.

[To keep this post up-to-date, a video was posted on Monday, April 18th, that did offer a few minutes of Harry Tsai speaking English, but this clip comes late in the election (with two weeks before ballots are cast) and offers no comparable replacement for an English campaign advertisement.]

Besides the video not being offered in English or French, making it difficult for me to know more about him, the ad blocks any commenting to their videos, along with all other ads from the Conservative Party of Canada. No thumbs up or down, either. By blocking off response from voters, it is difficult for the candidates to gauge the effectiveness of their campaign, and removes a channel for discussion. By purposely disabling comments, I've been given the impression that the issues that they are talking about are not open to debate, and that they are ignoring the voices of Canadians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak9t0OMm2Do
Above is a link to his election campaign video, if you haven't watched it yet. I would have loved to embed it, but that's blocked too. Why the campaign would deliberately change the default settings to prevent others from sharing his video on other sites and blogs puzzles me, and this issue does not send me a positive image of his election campaign.


2) Conservative Ethnic Targeting
Harry Tsai running in this Scarborough-"Asiancourt" is just one of the many examples of ethnic targeting in this election. As a riding with nearly 70% of the population identifying themselves as a visible minority and more than half of those Chinese (2001 census), an Asian candidate is part of the strategy of targeting immigrant and minority voters. Similarly, Chungsung Leung and Gin Siow are running in Willowdale and Trinity-Spadina, respectively, both ridings with a significantly high population of Asian voters.

But let's look at specific examples. It is no secret that targeting the ethnic vote is part of the Conservative strategy. In this document and powerpoint presentation, sent to Conservative candidates by Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism, the Conservatives outline their goal of targeting "very ethnic" ridings, singling out ethnic and "very ethnic" communities.

Click to enlarge

One of their slides even outline a sample campaign advertisement.

Look familiar? Here are some screenshots from the Harry Tsai campaign video mentioned earlier (which, of course, I can't embed).

Harry Tsai's campaign is a clear example of the Conservative's targeting of ethnic voters, and this is further emphasized by point 1, where his campaign video is only offered in Mandarin. I am not saying that focusing on the concerns of visible minorities is a bad thing, but in this campaign, (along with the photo-op in Etobicoke Centre where community leaders were asked to bring representatives dressed in "ethnic costumes"), the Conservative approach to immigrants and visible minorities has been superficial, and driven with the purpose of winning key ridings.

As a Taiwanese-Canadian, I want to vote against this superficial Conservative approach to multiculturalism, and thus, cannot support Harry Tsai in this election. I want to see the integration of visible minorities into Canadian culture, instead of singling them out as a demographic and appealing to them with token gestures.

This issue has taken up more space that I would've hoped, so I'll split it into two parts, with issues 3-5 in a following post. I hope you'll take more time into deciding who to vote for in this upcoming election, instead of jumping to a candidate just because he comes from a similar background.

UPDATE: Here's a nice interview of three main candidates, and what they each stand for.

Part 2 Part 3 (Update)