Bob Mackin
Two years after he scoffed at Canada’s spy agency for suggesting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) helped get him elected, Vancouver’s mayor sought support from leaders of a group affiliated with the People’s Republic of China consulate.
A video circulating on WeChat shows Mayor Ken Sim and one of ABC Vancouver’s two by-election candidates, Vancouver Police Union president Ralph Kaisers, meeting on March 26 with Canadian Community Service Association (CCSA) executive chair Peter Fu Binqing, vice chair Xu Hong and vice-president Richter Bai Jiping. In May 2023, a report on China’s state broadcaster CCTV showed CCSA chair Harris Niu Hua in a Beijing meeting with Xi Jinping.
Also present in the board room meeting were Canada Committee 100 Society (CCS) founder Ding Guo, who is an advisor to Premier David Eby, and Swan Zhou, a Deloitte Canada senior advisor and board member of Sim’s ABC Vancouver party.
Neither the Office of the Mayor nor Kaisers have responded for comment.
Kaisers and fellow candidate Jaime Stein, who did not attend the March 26 meeting, were the lowest-ranked, party-affiliated candidates in the April 5 by-election. Winners from left-wing parties COPE (Sean Orr) and OneCity (Lucy Maloney) were sworn-in April 15.
In February, Sim attended a ceremony of the pro-Beijing Chinese Benevolent Association with officials from the Chinese consulate and United Front groups where attendees sang the Chinese national anthem. In response to theBreaker.news, Sim’s press secretary Kalith Nanayakkara said: “Any suggestion that this implies coordination or meetings with a foreign government is categorically false.”
Leaks of Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents indicated a Chinese diplomat in Vancouver worked to get a Chinese-Canadian candidate elected mayor in 2022. Sim and ABC Vancouver won a landslide over pro-Taiwan incumbent Mayor Kennedy Stewart.
“If there is proof of this, I’d be as mad as hell as everyone else,” Sim said after the Globe and Mail story in March 2023.
In May 2022, CSIS briefed Stewart about potential threats to the October civic election.
China’s missions in Canada deny they meddle in Canadian affairs. But the Jan. 28-released report from the federal foreign interference public inquiry said Chinese diplomats and their proxies target all levels of government in Canada, supporting parties and politicians that China believes are helpful to its interests.
“The United Front Work Department, formally a department of the CCP, tries to control and influence Chinese diaspora communities, shape international opinions and influence politicians to support PRC policies,” the Hogue Commission report said.
