Guest blogger: Gabriel Yiu
To clearly stand out a guest blogger entry, all such headlines will begin with [GB].
Tung Chan, the CEO of SUCCESS, recently criticized NDP Leader Carole James’ economic plan on the Chinese radio. When the leader of the Chinese community’s prominent organization publicly condemned James, I must say I was puzzled. As an advisor to the BC Opposition, should I take the criticisms as an official statement of the organization, and report to the leader and suggest that she responds to the criticisms, if only as a matter of courtesy towards SUCCESS and the Chinese community?
Are Chan’s comments personal? Or are they a reflection of the position of SUCCESS? Although I would presume the former, would the Chinese public perceive the difference? (I presume Mr. Chan wouldn’t make the same political comments through the English media, or would he?) When the members of SUCCESS and the Chinese residents see Chan participating in community events and on the media, they see him as the chief of SUCCESS, so how can they differentiate the two roles when he is commenting on politics in his own capacity? When Chan was appointed to the position of CEO of SUCCESS, he vowed he would put aside his partisan politics.
Tung Chan is of course a former NPA Vancouver city councilor. He served alongside the then mayor, Gordon Campbell, and has been a very keen supporter of Campbell and his BC Liberal Party. Chan was also a key member of Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative Party. Before working for SUCCESS, he was the vice-president of a major bank.
Throughout the years, I’ve debated with Chan many times on the Chinese media and his partisanship really impressed me. For example, during the era when the Reform/Canadian Alliance was the Official Opposition and the Progressive Conservative was near extinction, Chan could still say firmly on the media that his party would win the election. I can recall we once debated the problem of block vote in political party nominations. In order to cast a favorable light on his party, Chan said MP Chuck Cadman lost his party nomination because he was a lousy MP. The election result showed the contrary: Cadman was elected as an independent.
Since nearly 70% of SUCCESS’ revenue comes from the government, should its CEO be making political commentaries through the media? We certainly haven’t seen the administrators of other organizations like the Cancer Agency or advanced education institutions commenting on politics publicly, unless there were matters related to their institution, field or constituency, especially during highly sensitive election or by-election time.
On the Chinese radio, Chan criticized Carole James’ position to abolish the carbon tax. He opposed the NDP leader’s stand to increase the minimum wage. He agreed with the government’s refusal to help the forest industry. Chan also criticized the NDP’s governing record and praised the Liberals for their achievements in the past few years.
It’s well-known that Campbell’s carbon tax is highly unpopular. When you tune to the Chinese radio, you can hear commentators and open-line callers all slamming this unfair and ineffective tax. What James has done is listen to public opinion, promise to cancel the carbon tax but keep the Liberal tax cut. But she was criticized publicly by the leader of the largest Chinese community organization. Does SUCCESS have a position on supporting the carbon tax? If yes, when and where does this position come from? Is it a resolution of the board of directors or of its members?
Since the Liberal Party got into power in 2001, the government hasn’t raised the minimum wage; at the same time government fees and living costs have gone up rapidly. Campbell even introduced a $6 working wage…. We all know that most of the minimum-wage workers are immigrant, women and ethnic minorities, many of them Chinese. SUCCESS is obviously an organization serving immigrant and ethnic communities, so why would its leader not fight for the welfare of immigrants, but side with the authorities against its constituents?
In the past two years, BC’s biggest industry, forestry, has been in a historic crisis: numerous mills closed, close to 20,000 workers lost their jobs, their families were in a dire situation and local economies were devastated. Chan supported the Liberal government’s refusal to assist. Does forestry relate to SUCCESS’ operation? If the government wouldn’t help an industry in difficulty, why did it spend huge amounts of taxpayers’ money to subsidize the oil and banking industries which have been making record profits? The Liberal government subsidized the oil and gas industry to the tune of $685 million in this year and the next, while the big banks got a tax cut of $220 million. On the contrary, the forestry industry and the small businesses that were seriously affected by the construction of Canada Line got no assistance from the BC government.
Mulroney’s corrupt Progress Conservative Party was badly defeated in 1993 but the Conservative Party led by Stephen Harper was elected in 2006. When the leader of a political party made some serious mistakes, does it mean that that party is not qualified to govern again? If that were the case, only the Bloc, the NDP and the Green could govern federally.
Today, any knowledgeable person would realize that Canada’s good economy in the past few years was attributable to the high international commodity prices and the real estate boom resulting from the US government’s low interest rate, set after the bursting of the high tech bubble in 2001. It had indeed very little to do with the policy of the provincial government; otherwise, Gordon Campbell could also have claimed credit for the huge surge of the Canadian dollar.
Likewise, BC’s slow economic development in the 90s was very much affected by external factors. BC’s second largest exporting country, Japan, was in a long and painful recession then. The low international commodity prices and the 1997 Asian Financial Storm — these were influences that the BC and federal governments were powerless to change.
If the blame of external factors has to be borne by the governing party, then with the Wall Street financial tsunami knocking down our real estate market and economy in sight, shouldn’t the BC Liberal Party and the federal Conservative Party both take the blame?
Finally, regarding achievement, the writer would like to remind Chan that the office that you’re working in, the entire tower of the SUCCESS headquarters, plus the neighboring SUCCESS senior care centre, were funded by the NDP government (plus the museum archive of the Chinese Cultural Centre, the Millennium Gate, the Chinatown parkade and the CBA’s affordable housing manor etc.). Gordon Campbell has governed for almost eight years, what has he built for the Chinese community?
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Disclaimer: Views expressed by guest bloggers are theirs and may not represent those of CIV.
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