Charlie Smith’s Georgia Straight legacy
Former editor took on Canada’s new generation of anti-Asian scapegoaters
Ng Weng Hoong, November 7, 2022, Monday
On my first visit in the summer of 1999, I discovered a Vancouver as gorgeous as I had been told.
Like a diamond mounted on British Columbia (B.C.) province as the jewellery piece, said a contact. Friendly, helpful, polite Canadian people, according to the tour company in Singapore.
Spot on.
There was more to discover when I put boots on the ground. Even though well-publicized, the city’s diverse population, particularly the extent of its East and South Asian diaspora, came as a surprise.
There are two Vancouvers. The one that I experienced while checking out the downtown area, the museum, the business district, the eating places, the waterfront, the neighbourhoods, and the suburbs. There was no escaping the Asian presence and B.C.’s links to countries across the Pacific Ocean.
The other is conceptual. It is the Vancouver (and B.C.) defined by the faces and voices in the headlines and editorials in the print and web media, and the prime-time news and documentaries on television. These shape the narratives that inform the collective consciousness. The conceptual Vancouver minimizes its Asianness, as if trying to hide a deficiency.
Thoughtful Canadians are aware of Vancouver’s dichotomy.
“Finally fired”
One of them is Charlie Smith, who until September was one of the longest-serving editors of a Canadian newspaper this century.
“On September 27, I was finally fired as editor of the Georgia Straight,” he wrote in a typically understated Charlie Smith comment.
That announcement came in the eighth sentence of a piece in his new Substack (1) blog. It did not read like someone who had just been dumped after 28 years of loyal service, the last 17 of them as the Vancouver weekly paper’s editor. Just as noteworthy was that he and the rest of its staff were laid off without severance pay (2), according to a former writer.
Charlie confirmed as much over coffee three days after his departure. His narration was matter of fact, devoid of resentment or anger.
Like most media in Canada, the Georgia Straight had been struggling financially in recent years. As a small local paper, it was further handicapped by the lack of economies of scale had it been a national or regional media.
He knew it was coming, especially after advertising revenues nosedived when the pandemic hit in early 2020. Soon, he was saddled with administrative and non-editorial work as the paper laid off staff. His hours started earlier and stretched late into the night. It was all about churning out copies for the daily website and the weekly print.
In our numerous conversations, he did not complain about the stress and the loss of sleep from overwork. Instead, he expressed gratitude for the opportunity of being in his job to serve its readers and the city. He praised the McLeod family who owned and operated the paper until they sold it in 2020.
Dan McLeod co-founded the Georgia Straight in 1967 to give voice to the anti-establishment that had emerged and converged around three causes: opposition to America’s illegal war in Vietnam, protection of the environment, and love of the arts. The paper nurtured some important counterculture talents in its early years. Irving Stowe wrote an environmental column for the paper before founding Greenpeace with other activists in Vancouver in 1971. Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof, who organized the Live Aid concert for Ethiopia’s famine relief in 1984, was its music editor in the 1970s.
Anti-establishment in the 21st century
Charlie kept faith with the paper’s founding principles as it confronted the challenges of the 21st century amid the rise of Asia and China.
“Stick it to the man,” is how he describes the paper’s anti-establishment stance.
At the community level, this translated into the paper calling out the pedlars of false information and distorted narratives to stir hate, prejudice, and discrimination. Over the past decade, Charlie began noticing that the discourse on Vancouver’s housing issues was turning racial and racist.
As Canada’s Asian communities grew wealthier and more visible, they became the scapegoat for Vancouver’s problems with housing affordability, the rising cost of living, and crime.
The Georgia Straight started sticking it to the scapegoaters.
In November 2015, it published Matt Hern, (3), a community organiser and scholar, who was among the early critics of a joint study by David Eby and Andy Yan blaming people with “non-Anglicised Chinese names” for the housing crisis engulfing Vancouver and its suburbs.
Eby, who is on course to become B.C.’s new Premier, (4) was then the housing critic for the B.C. New Democratic Party (NDP) when it was in opposition. Yan, an urban planner with Simon Fraser University who also serves the City of Vancouver, was then an adjunct professor with the University of British Columbia.
Eby said the study “bears out the anecdotal feelings (5) that people have about Mainland China buyers. This data shows that this money has a profound influence.”
The study’s publication was a watershed event as it opened the floodgates to Asian scapegoating in Canada’s housing discourse. Co-produced by an academic of Chinese ancestry and by a fast-rising political star, it had the cloak of legitimacy and scholarly authority. Yet, it was blatantly misleading.
Hern called out its minuscule sample size of 172 homes and the conclusion that 66% of them were owned by people with “non-anglicized Chinese names”. He rubbished Yan’s assertion that those names “implies they’re new arrivals.”
The tiny, selective data sample was collated by Eby, a trained lawyer with apparently little respect for economics and statistics. Despite Eby’s poor sampling and Yan’s flawed analysis, the media pounced on its “findings” as hard evidence that Asian money and immigrants, particularly those from China, were driving up housing costs beyond the reach of the average Canadian family. None of Canada’s famed columnists mentioned that the study’s 172 homes represented just 0.4% of the more than 42,000 sold in Vancouver and its suburbs in 2015. Instead, they turned the Eby-Yan study into an authoritative document.
Hern called it “regrettable research” that needed “to be repudiated firmly.”
“This city has a long and highly shameful history of singling out racialized populations and heaping blame on them for real and perceived civic ills—often precipitating long, painful periods of explicit discrimination, violence, and racism,” he warned.
“There are dangerous currents at play here.”
His warning was drowned out by the new populism engulfing B.C.’s politics.
Riding on the resultant public anger, the B.C. NDP with the help of the B.C. Green Party narrowly won the May 2017 provincial election. By then, the public was convinced the B.C. Liberal Party government had courted “toxic” Chinese investment at the expense of Canadians.
The rise and rise of David Eby
But Eby did not stop there. And, thankfully, neither did the Georgia Straight, which kept pace to document the twists and turns of his creative story-telling.
As the attorney general in the new provincial government, he invented the novel concept of “toxic demand” (6) to explain Metro Vancouver’s housing boom.
Initially, it focused on anecdotes about housewives and students buying up multi-million-dollar mansions (7) apparently with questionable money coming out of China. It later morphed into an expansive story about Chinese criminal gangs taking over the city and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) buying up Canada’s politicians.
According to Eby’s diagnosis, the region’s booming real estate market was driven by “dirty money” from Asia. The media helpfully produced a regular flow of stories featuring Chinese speculators, tax evaders, tycoons, and criminal gangs to support his narrative. As a market mover, “toxic demand” was deemed to be far bigger than the combined forces of B.C.’s growing economy, expanding population, tech sector, insufficient new builds, inefficient government, and the Bank of Canada’s loose monetary policies. Allegedly encouraged by the political establishment and the real estate industry, dirty money brought about the province’s multitude of crises encompassing housing affordability, money laundering, organized crime, and drugs.
Questioning minds would have poked holes in the purported scale and nature of this conspiracy. But, not in Canada where mainstream media outlets gladly signed on as the unofficial sponsors of the threat narrative.
Over the past decade, some of Canada’s most influential journalists and writers fed the public a steady diet of stories about the reputed insidious effects of foreign money, especially Chinese, on Canada’s economy and society. The Chinese-threat narrative brought together a remarkable convergence of the Canadian media corps spanning the ideological spectrum from left to right.
A handful of dissenters attempted to stall the tide in 2015 and 2016. Pete McMartin (7) at the Vancouver Sun and urban planning consultant Bob Ransford (8) warned against the racist messaging and its consequences. Retired politician Garth Turner (9) along with Chinese media commentator Jimmy Yan (10) and veteran human rights activist Victor Wong (11) delivered some sharp criticisms of the Eby-Yan study. But their scattered and occasional protests were no match for the stampeding horde.
The media’s Socratic role
As the scapegoating bandwagon gathered momentum, the Georgia Straight emerged as the only media outlet to offer consistent resistance. It took on the Socratic responsibility to question the new xenophobic and Sinophobic wave sweeping the province.
Charlie (12) led the charge by writing critical commentaries and seeking out contrarian voices. One of the Georgia Straight’s writers, Travis Lupick, (13) reminded Vancouver of its long history with racializing its never-ending real estate problems. Since the 1850s through to the arrival of Hong Kongers in the 1980s and other immigrants today, the city has shown a fondness for blaming outsiders for its mismanagement and poor planning.
Charlie gave me a shot at the questioning role.
My first piece (14) for the Georgia Straight in November 2013 cast doubt on a proposal by the Malaysian state energy firm Petronas to build a US$36 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in B.C. In 2013, most Canadians had never even heard of Petronas while the Canadian media generally treated it as a credible project right from the start. Charlie trusted my judgment, based on my then three-decade experience covering Asia’s energy sector, that this was a pie-in-the-sky idea. Four years later, we were vindicated when Petronas announced (15) that it would not proceed with the project.
That story opened up a role for me to tackle a more troubling issue.
The idea that foreign capital from Asia was the sole or even main cause of Metro Vancouver’s housing affordability problems smelled of a political agenda. There were at least 15 other factors, especially monetary policy, (16) driving the region’s housing market. So why were B.C.’s decision and opinion makers so keen on targeting “foreign capital”?
In 2018, former senior RCMP officer Peter German released his much-anticipated report commissioned by Eby’s office to make the case that B.C. was engulfed by dirty Asian money. Charlie published my list of questions (17) to rain on their parade, particularly German’s main finding that criminals had laundered a total of C$100 million into the B.C. economy over a 10-year period. That worked out to C$10 million a year, a laughable sum in the context of Metro Vancouver’s $50-to-$60-billion annual housing market.
The German report totally undermined Eby’s claim, but the media largely ignored its failing. The propaganda machinery continued its messaging that the housing market was soaked in tainted money from Asia.
Eby’s office released another two reports, one by German and another by a group of academics that yielded further inconclusive and dubious findings (18).
Ten days after Premier John Horgan announced the inquiry’s launch with Eby and finance minister Carole James at his flanks, Charlie published my critique (19). I predicted that the inquiry would struggle to properly define the scope and size of money laundering crimes in B.C., much less stop them. Eby’s goals for the inquiry were simply too ambitious, vague, and politically driven.
Having predetermined the areas in need of investigation, Eby’s three expert reports had potentially prejudiced and crimped the inquiry from the start. It was an exercise in confirmation bias to justify the B.C. NDP government’s suspicion that Canada’s Chinese and Asian communities, not the province’s casinos, were at the heart of the province’s money-laundering and corruption problems. The three reports largely overlooked the money-laundering activities in far bigger multi-billion-dollar sectors like the capital markets and B.C.’s world-class cannabis industry. Glaringly, a list of other sectors had also been left out. Was it because they were not deemed worthy of investigation as they did not have a significant Asian presence? On the flipside, the investigators, especially Peter German, targeted activities known to be popular with Asian people: casino gambling, education, luxury cars, horse racing, and real estate. The investigation was doomed by its racial-profiling approach from the outset.
The reports’ combined impact was to make British Columbians feel a sense of siege that they were being governed by incompetent politicians owned by Chinese tycoons. Apparently, Canada’s rule of law had failed, and its public institutions were beholden to possibly criminal foreign capital. With this narrative in the bag, Eby won political support to proceed with the government’s $20-million money-laundering inquiry. Its avowed goal was to flush out the “mind-blowing” (20) shady ties between Canadian politicians and officials, Chinese criminals, property developers, and casino operators. Just as important, the inquiry kept the newly-ousted Liberals on the defensive (21) as the NDP consolidated its grip on power after a 16-year absence from government.
Initially, the public was rivetted as government officials, business executives, law enforcers, and crime experts were called in to testify. Even the veteran worldly-wise commentator Jonathan Manthorpe (22) was fooled into expecting the inquiry to uncover smoking-gun details of “the billions upon billions of dollars that have been smuggled into British Columbia and other regions of Canada over the last two decades”. Believing the German report, Manthorpe repeated the mantra that most of those “billions upon billions” had come from China. Clearly, he had not read the Georgia Straight’s story that German had shot himself, Eby, and the B.C. NDP government in their collective foot with his finding that criminals had laundered a mere $100 million over a 10-year period.
As the hearings dragged on, it became clear that the focus was increasingly on employee grievances and localised illegal activities centred on the River Rock Casino before 2015. The amount of suspicious money detected and verified at the height of the casino’s shady days in July 2015 was $13.5 million (23), nowhere in the billion-dollar range as alleged by Eby (24) and his supporters in the media. Significantly, none of them mentioned the casino’s annual gross revenues often came in below $400 million, mocking the claim that River Rock was the “epicentre” (25) of B.C.’s multi-billion-dollar money laundering operations.
Eby’s unexpected apology in the Cullen Commission’s finding
After more than three years helming the inquiry and interviewing over 200 witnesses, former Supreme Court judge Austin Cullen submitted his report (26) in June 2022.
His most important finding was not about money laundering itself, but his criticism of the scapegoating narrative that had launched and driven the inquiry.
On page 1,624, Cullen delivered his verdict:
“Ideas have developed in the public discourse that promote generalizations about the involvement of ethnic or racial groups in money laundering activity.”
Without mentioning their names, Cullen issued a direct rebuke of Eby, and his supporters in the media and academia:
“There is a theory that money laundering by Chinese criminals in the housing market in the Lower Mainland has contributed to a housing affordability crisis. I explored this theory…and concluded that low supply, high demand, and low interest rates are the drivers of housing unaffordability in British Columbia.”
The commission’s decision to repudiate Eby’s “toxic demand” story was likely linked to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA)’s powerful take-down of the attorney general on April 26, 2022.
It was easily the most pivotal moment of the entire inquiry as Eby unexpectedly capitulated under questioning by the association’s staff lawyer, Jessica Magonet.
The Georgia Straight (27) was the only media that reported in detail their exchange.
Magonet asked Eby if “making such broad statements about Chinese investment may help perpetuate a harmful narrative that conflates Chinese money with dirty money in British Columbia.”
Eby’s offer of an apology was grudging, but hugely humiliating and significant under the circumstances. The hearing was part of a process intended by the B.C. NDP to show its tough anti-corruption stance as well as enhance the leadership credentials of the then 45-year-old lawyer politician eyeing higher office. The humbling of one of the province’s most powerful men was not in their script.
Sufficiently chastened, Eby replied: “I have apologized for my participation in the study for exactly that reason.”
According to the commission’s transcript of the exchange, Eby yielded further ground when he acknowledged:
“I was insufficiently sensitive to the impact on the Chinese community of the sociological marker that Mr. Yan used based on other research in terms of the sense that a person's name is a really important personal marker, and to be described as a foreign investor based solely on what your name is was incredibly problematic for that community and completely understandably so I apologized for my participation in this by providing Mr. Yan with those studies.”
Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly, the journalists who had so loudly championed the Eby-Yan study did not report on the attorney general’s climbdown. As a result, Magonet’s sizeable impact on the inquiry has been overlooked.
Eby, who once headed the BCCLA, alluded to the existence of “a better article where I apologize for my participation in this study. I was supportive of trying to get to the bottom of international money in our real estate market.”
Charlie later told me that Eby’s office did not reply to his requests for a copy of that “better article”. So, does the article even exist? Did Eby imagine this like the way he thought up “toxic demand” and “non-Anglicized Chinese names” as the be-all and end-all explanation for Vancouver’s housing problems?
Weeks later, Magonet posted her comment on the BCCLA website titled, “Challenging anti-Asian racism at the Cullen Commission”(28). She delivered this message: “the BCCLA will continue to fight against racism and for equality at this public inquiry.” Again, the mainstream media did not report Magonet’s comment, even though it had made a mark on the Cullen Commission’s final report. Will VanColour’s Mo Amir, the Vancouver Sun’s Douglas Todd, or the various anchors at CBC and CKNW interview her at some point?
Beyond the Cullen Commission
One of Eby’s leading supporters in the media is the self-acclaimed investigative reporter Sam Cooper. In May 2021, the Global News reporter released his book, “Wilful Blindness”, to national applause that the housing crisis was part of a long-term plot by China to undermine Canadian society and take over the country. His earlier suggestion that “every overseas Chinese is a warrior” (29) for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) helped him surpass Eby in the Chinese scapegoating game.
Charlie did not hesitate when I asked if he would publish my 6,321-word critique (30) of Cooper’s 460-page book released by Optimum Publishing International. Much of the book is based on conjecture and dubious information provided by anonymous sources, some recycled from Cooper’s reporting in Global News, Vancouver Sun, and The Province.
Charlie’s decision to publish the BCCLA’s and my criticism of the race-based narration of B.C.’s money-laundering problems may have been vindicated by the Cullen Commission’s findings, but the battle is far from over.
Cooper has hit back at the Commission through the VanColour channel (31) on YouTube hosted by the pro-Eby talk-show host Mo Amir. Some believe Cullen either failed or was not given enough resources to prove Eby’s case.
The Chinese Threat narrative has since grown and taken on a geopolitical dimension in recent years. The media is no longer content with casting Canada’s ethnic Chinese population as perennial outsiders, speculators, criminals, tax evaders, and drug dealers as it has done so for over a century.
China’s transformation into a totalitarian regime under leader Xi Jinping has given a massive new boost to the threat narrative. Many people have difficulty separating ethnic Chinese people from the regime in Beijing, assuming that both are a single entity. Charlie and I are no fans of Xi, but this detail is lost when the popular mood, nurtured by politicians and the media, sees everything Chinese as a monolithic threat.
One of B.C.’s political stars riding on this new bandwagon is Brad West, the 37-year-old mayor of Port Coquitlam city. Like Eby, West has little appreciation and curiosity for the complexities of modern economics, so he has been quick and insistent in blaming Metro Vancouver’s housing problems on foreign capital from China (32). He likes being labelled a populist, which he associates with attacking foreign money, and the Chinese government. Like Eby, he has become enormously popular with the media.
Against the grain, the Georgia Straight published two articles in 2020 that annoyed the man who is seen as a future premier of the province.
Contributor Kevin Campbell (33) suggested that the spate of malicious anti-Asian attacks in Vancouver in early 2020 can be linked to influencers like West who had been broadly hitting out at “Chinese” and “China” in a series of comments to the media and on Twitter.
“You have the bully pulpit. You are aggressively out to advance your political career,” Campbell told West in his open letter.
“Be mindful of how your virulent words and Chinese preoccupation might play with those willing to vandalize a cultural centre or throw an old man to the ground.”
West has captured national attention for denouncing the Chinese government for its human rights violations, and for his call for action (34) against Beijing’s abuse of the people in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. He successfully lobbied for a ban on the Union of B.C. Municipalities accepting funding from foreign governments (35), triggered by China’s sponsorship of the union’s annual convention reception. So far, so good.
Last month, West took it a step further when he called for better disclosure of financial interests among elected officials, particularly if they are linked to foreign entities. Here is where West must lead by example.
For years, unknown to most people, he was on the payroll of a powerful U.S. labour union even as he began his descent into populism. In September 2019, Charlie broke the story that West was paid nearly as much for his work for the United Steelworkers union as his full-time job as mayor funded mostly by Canadian taxpayers and Port Coquitlam’s 60,000 residents.
In 2018 alone, the union paid West a salary of $113,009 and $19,641 in disbursements to be its communications and political-action coordinator. Charlie noted that West “collected more than $100,000 per year in several other years” for his less-publicized job at the union, a long-time hawk on US trade relations with China.
West was elected as a councillor in Port Coquitlam in 2008, meaning he was simultaneously a Canadian politician and an employee of a politically-connected US entity for many years.
There was little reaction from the Canadian media, which often takes an outraged stance against the potential and perceived conflict of interest by public officials. Canadian politicians (37), especially if they are of ethnic Chinese descent, are often called out for attending events hosted by the Chinese consulate in Vancouver.
“It’s possible to walk and chew gum at the same time,” West told The Tyee (38) with regard to his speaking out against China and serving as mayor at the same time. Reporter Christopher Cheung made a one-line mention that West was a communications coordinator for the United Steelworkers but did not press home the point that the politician himself had been on the payroll of a foreign entity for years.
Scapegoating and the CCP
On October 15, the people of Vancouver voted Ken Sim as their first mayor of ethnic Chinese descent (39), ending a sequence of 40 consecutive white men. It was a breakthrough for a city where the Chinese have played a key role since its founding in the 1800s, and where more than 28% of the population are ethnically Chinese, according to the 2016 census. Despite their contributions, B.C.’s various Asian communities are historically under-represented in its political, corporate, cultural, and media establishments.
Sim faces several major challenges that have defeated his recent predecessors: unaffordable housing, homelessness, drugs, and the rise of violent crime. He will also face challenges unknown to Canada for most of this century: the scourge of inflation, and an increasingly hostile bilateral relationship between Ottawa and Beijing that will put the spotlight on his ethnicity.
Twitter has lit up with questions about his loyalty.
“Ken Sim’s cousin was top advisor to Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s ex-leader”, and “Chinese-language reports also say Sim’s uncle was the former vice chairman of a top-ranking United Front organization,” according to a website (40) that tracks the Chinese Communist Party’s global disinformation and interference campaign. The United Front Works Department (UFWD) is China’s main espionage and external influence-peddling agency.
Terry Glavin (41) a columnist for the National Post who promoted Sam Cooper’s book, tweeted out the story to his 31,600 followers.
Preston Jordan Lim (42), a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada, replied:
“Terry, you don’t choose your family. I have family members who are fervent supporters of the CCP. That has never stopped me from writing critically about the regime. Why don’t you see how Sim acts, rather than imply guilt by association?”
Glavin (43) responded: “Not implying anything. It’s newsworthy. He’s the mayor now.”
Margaret McCuaig-Johnston (44), a Chinese-fluent analyst, spoke for many when she tweeted that it was “so disappointing that @KenSimCity obscured his connection to Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leaders.”
An anti-CCP figure on social media, @Plan200_ca, delivered this mocking message: “Congratulations Beijing on yesterday’s success in the Vancouver municipal elections.”
Heiky Kwan (45), another anti-China activist, was outright alarmist. She tweeted that Sim’s election will make it “a whole lot more unsafe for dissidents, for Uyghur/ Tibetan/ HKer activists and the Taiwanese community cuz United Front has extended its arm into yet another election and succeeded.”
A day before the election, Sam Cooper (46) alleged that “Ken Sim parrots a well-known PRC (People’s Republic of China) intelligence talking point after his meetings with UFWD boss.” Cooper was referring to an article by Graeme Wood (47) that Sim had met with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) ahead of the election. Cooper did not mention who the UFWD boss was or what the PRC intelligence talking point was.
Sim will have to address these issues sooner rather than later. The media is ready to pounce, and the public needs to know.
With Xi Jinping winning a third term as China’s supreme leader, the Chinese diaspora around the world, including those in Canada, will come under increasing scrutiny for their loyalty. Xi has stepped up his campaign to “claim” the estimated 60 to 80 million members of the global diaspora as assets to help China become a superpower. While the vast majority are indifferent, unsupportive, or even hostile to Xi’s policies, there is a tiny minority of fanatical CCP members who could pose a threat to their host countries. This group will sacrifice the rights of others to further the interest of the communist party.
Canada increasingly faces this dilemma: at what point do security concerns cross the line into racist scapegoating? Looking past the race issue, is it not a legitimate question to flush out the bad actors in our midst? How should Canada deal with the threat of the Chinese state’s influence operations without blanketing an entire group simply on account of their ethnicity? These are some of the difficult questions that politicians, the security machinery, the media, and the diaspora themselves must address now.
The media plays a critical role because it creates the narrative around issues that influence the public and policy makers. On the Chinese Question, the mainstream media has largely failed Canada. The country’s most influential journalists and writers on Chinese and China issues have been drawing inspiration from the gutter. Over the past decade, they have caricatured “the Chinese” as housing speculators, tax evaders, criminals, drug dealers, money launderers, opportunists, and embedded warriors for the CCP. They have reduced Chineseness to a one-dimensional world of security and threat problems, perpetuating and exposing the dark side of the Canadian character that has sought to deny and keep out its Asianness.
Charlie’s Question
Charlie replies to my long list of challenges with a simple but huge question.
“What are they doing to our neighbours and friends? This is a question of right and wrong.”
It is a deeply ethical question tied to an awareness that actions have consequences and implications. It is an awareness that feels and worries for not just the people directly being targeted, but for society as a whole. The talking heads who undeservingly dominate the Canadian media on China and Chinese issues are incapable of such a question. They lack the character, curiosity, and courage to seek out the whole story. In place of understanding and empathy, they use fear and sensationalism to drive their reporting. Fu Manchu was born in these circumstances, delivered in dark times by petty minds on their way to becoming hate merchants.
A handful of us standing against the mob already recognise Charlie’s legacy.
Frances Bula (48), Vancouver’s highly respected veteran journalist, spoke for the constituency on learning of his departure from the Georgia Straight. Bula and Charlie have known each other as friends and professionals for more than 30 years.
“He is an ethical, loyal person who is a credit to journalism, to the publication he led, to the city,” she tweeted.
“Charlie also fought to make people think about the lack of diversity in places like local city councils and the inherent racism of certain parts of the Vancouver city conversation.”
The Georgia Straight is preparing for “a new era” following its purchase by the Victoria, B.C.-based Overstory Media Group.
In an open letter, publisher Stephen Smysnuik (50) graciously acknowledged the role played by “long-time managing editor Charlie Smith and the skeleton crew he managed at the tail end of his tenure.”
He thanked them for “an admirable job” when the paper struggled to “the brink of oblivion. They did everything they could to save it.”
Diplomatically, Smysnuik also embedded criticism of the old crew. The paper’s influence had waned, he noted, the result of “a long decline in print revenue and industry-wide disruption and evolution; of questionable management and something like complacency in the ranks.”
For the Georgia Straight, Charlie’s era of “stick it to the man” is over.
The contrarians will need another media outlet to continue the fight against hate and scapegoating. Will they find one soon? The odds have worsened amid the deteriorating economic outlook.
The contrarians face a full-blown war, and will need resources to fight on two fronts. First, against old-world racism. Sinophobia remains embedded in the Canadian psyche, the result of nearly two centuries of white supremacism and the othering of Chineseness in the western world. Sinophobia is back with a bigger vengeance today.
Second, against Xi Jinping’s Sinofascist ideology and his brand of wolf warrior diplomacy. Xi’s promotion of a Han-based race system of governance is as bad and dangerous as white supremacism. I have written about this in earlier pieces here (51) and here (52), and will continue to expand on this theme.
I shouldn’t be too pessimistic. History provides great references for those taking up the never-ending fight against extremism, prejudice, and hate.
Something tells me Charlie isn’t done yet. His legacy at the Georgia Straight is underrated, overlooked, and still unfolding.
Vancouver is a gorgeous city, filled with friendly, helpful, polite Canadian people. To that list, I add Charlie Smith, and his ethics, loyalty, and deep sense of right and wrong.
Word count: 5,262
FOOTNOTES
1. Charlie Smith’s Substack blog, October 5, 2022
2. Steve Newton, @earofnewt, September 29, 2022
3. https://www.straight.com/news/573631/matt-hern-vancouvers-core-real-estate-problem-profiteering-and-not-whether-buyers-are
Matt Hern, November 9, 2015. Vancouver's core real-estate problem is profiteering and not whether buyers are of Chinese ancestry
4. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/david-eby-become-premier-canadas-british-columbia-province-2022-10-20
Nia Williams, October 20, 2022. David Eby to become premier of Canada's British Columbia province
5. https://www.timescolonist.com/bc-news/vancouver-real-estate-a-buyers-market-for-mainland-china-study-4628682
Sam Cooper, November 2, 2015. Vancouver real estate a buyers’ market — for mainland China: study
6. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/real-estate/video/how-an-ndp-government-in-b-c-would-tackle-vancouver-housing-costs~1140739
Greg Bonnell, How an NDP government in B.C. would tackle Vancouver housing costs
7. https://torontosun.com/2016/05/12/311-million-vancouver-mansion-owned-by-student
Cassidy Olivier, Postmedia Network, May 12, 2016. $31.1-million Vancouver mansion owned by ‘student’
8. https://www.greaterfool.ca/2015/11/02/yellow-peril
Garth Turner, November 2, 2015. Yellow peril. What caused the Sun and the Province to turn over their front pages to a massive anti-Chinese assault?
9. https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/is-racism-part-of-the-housing-issue-of-course-it-is
Pete McMartin, July 11, 2016. Is racism part of the housing issue? Of course it is
10. Jimmy Yan, November 21, 2018. My criticism in both English and Chinese in 2015
11. https://www.straight.com/news/733346/human-rights-activist-tears-strip-vancouver-journalists-one-dimensional-coverage
Charlie Smith, July 7, 2016. Human rights activist tears a strip off Vancouver journalists' one-dimensional coverage of Vancouver housing market
Charlie Smith, July 9, 2016. Generational divisions underlie debate over Vancouver's housing market
13. https://www.straight.com/news/734491/history-shows-racism-has-always-been-part-vancouver-real-estate
Travis Lupick, July 11, 2016. History shows racism has always been a part of Vancouver real estate
14. https://www.straight.com/news/523771/malaysian-state-owned-energy-company-petronass-liquefied-natural-gas-investment-bc-faces-hurdles
Ng Weng Hoong, November 6, 2013. Malaysian state-owned energy company Petronas's liquefied natural gas investment in B.C. faces hurdles
15. https://www.petronas.com/media/press-release/petronas-and-partners-will-not-proceed-pacific-northwest-lng-project
Petronas, July 26, 2017. Petronas and partners will not proceed with Pacific Northwest LNG project
16. https://www.straight.com/news/what-chinese-scapegoaters-didnt-know-about-metro-vancouvers-housing-boom-or-crisis
Ng Weng Hoong, March 11, 2021. What the Chinese scapegoaters didn’t know about Metro Vancouver’s housing boom or crisis
17. https://www.straight.com/news/1099146/open-letter-attorney-general-david-eby-and-investigator-peter-german-bcs-dirty-money
Ng Weng Hoong, July 5, 2018. An open letter to Attorney General David Eby and investigator Peter German on B.C.'s Dirty Money report
18. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/vancouver-s-dirty-money-figures-the-smoking-gun-that-wasn-t-1.1259381
Natalie Obiko Pearson and Natalie Wong, Bloomberg News, May 15, 2019. Vancouver’s dirty money figures: The smoking gun that wasn’t
19. https://www.straight.com/news/1245571/david-ebys-trail-embedded-bombshells-about-money-laundering
Ng Weng Hoong, May 25, 2019. On David Eby's trail of embedded bombshells about money laundering
20. https://theprovince.com/news/bc-politics/mike-smyth-eby-set-to-tackle-mind-blowing-money-laundering-in-b-c
Mike Smyth, June 23, 2018: Eby set to tackle 'mind-blowing' money laundering in B.C.
21. https://www.bcndp.ca/latest/updated-2020-bc-liberal-decade-dirty-money
Heather Libby, BC NDP, February 23, 2020. The BC Liberal decade of dirty money
22. https://asiatimes.com/2019/10/canadian-money-laundering-probe-will-rock-beijing
Jonathan Manthorpe, October 26, 2019. Canadian money laundering probe ‘will rock Beijing’. The CCP may also face revelations on officials who smuggled large sums to Vancouver
23. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/former-director-of-casino-investigations-political-will-1.4317138
Clare Hennig, CBC, October 2, 2017. 'Political will' needed to stop money laundering in casinos, former investigator says
24. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-dirty-money-casinos-1.4985203
Eric Rankin, Liam Britten · CBC, January 18, 2019. 'Rat's nest of rot': Up to $2B in dirty money laundered in B.C. casinos, real estate in 1 year, AG says
25. https://globalnews.ca/news/4491774/exclusive-documents-allege-complicity-in-money-laundering-in-major-investigation-of-river-rock-casino
Sam Cooper, Global News, September 28, 2018. Exclusive: Documents allege complicity in money laundering in major investigation of River Rock Casino
26. https://cullencommission.ca/files/reports/CullenCommission-FinalReport-Full.pdf
Cullen Commission, June 2022. Final Report: Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia
27. https://www.straight.com/news/attorney-general-david-eby-expresses-regret-over-his-role-in-2015-study-on-non-anglicized-names
Charlie Smith, April 30, 2021. Attorney General David Eby expresses regret over his role in 2015 study on non-anglicized names of homebuyers
28. https://bccla.org/2021/06/challenging-anti-asian-racism-at-the-cullen-commission
Jessica Magonet, June 1, 2021. Challenging anti-Asian racism at the Cullen Commission
29. https://globalnews.ca/news/6858818/coronavirus-china-united-front-canada-protective-equipment-shortage
Sam Cooper, Global News, April 30, 2020. United Front groups in Canada helped Beijing stockpile coronavirus safety supplies
30. https://www.straight.com/arts/wilful-blindness-of-wilful-blindness
Ng Weng Hoong, August 8, 2021. The Wilful Blindness of Wilful Blindness: A review of Sam Cooper’s book about China in Canada
31. Mo Amir, July 3, 2022. Sam Cooper uncovers some gaps in BC's public inquiry into money laundering
32. https://www.tricitynews.com/local-news/off-shore-money-affects-port-coquitlam-real-estate-says-coun-west-3028455
Janis Warren, March 3, 2016. Offshore money affects Port Coquitlam real estate. City councillor says he's willing to put his reputation on the line to voice his concerns about the amount of foreign wealth coming into the community
33. https://www.straight.com/news/kevin-campbell-mayor-brad-west-be-mindful-of-how-your-words-might-play-out-in-public
Kevin Campbell, May 23, 2020. Mayor Brad West, be mindful of how your words might play out in public
34. https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/60-mps-urge-sanctions-against-chinese-officials
Marie-Danielle Smith, July 14, 2020. 60 MPs urge sanctions against Chinese officials
35. https://bc.ctvnews.ca/ubcm-to-ban-funding-from-foreign-governments-after-china-controversy-1.4707135
Andrew Weichel, November 28, 2019. UBCM to ban funding from foreign governments after China controversy
36. https://www.straight.com/news/1306856/brad-west-often-quoted-china-pocos-mayor-lets-not-forget-about-his-links-united
Charlie Smith, September 25, 2019. Brad West is often quoted on China as Poco's mayor, but let's not forget about his links to the United Steelworkers
37. https://thebreaker.news/news/diplomatic-boycott-disobeyed
Bob Mackin, February 19, 2022. Spirit of Trudeau’s Beijing Olympics diplomatic boycott not followed at home
38. https://thetyee.ca/News/2019/12/09/Brad-West-Taking-On-China
Christopher Cheung, December 9, 2019. Why Brad West, mayor of Port Coquitlam, is taking on China. He sees it as a fight to protect the rights of ordinary British Columbians.
39. https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/ken-sim-vancouver-first-chinese-asian-mayor
Kenneth Chan, October 17, 2022. The significance of electing Vancouver's first Chinese Canadian mayor
40. Found in Translation, October 18, 2022. Ken Sim’s cousin was top advisor to Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s ex-leader who fostered the draconian National Security Law
41. Terry Glavin, October 18, 2022
42. Preston Jordan Lim, October 19, 2022
43. Terry Glavin October 19, 2022
44. Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, October 18, 2022
45. Heiky Kwan, October 15, 2022
46. Sam Cooper, October 14, 2022
47. https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/local-news/vancouver-mayoral-candidate-ken-sim-met-with-csis-5910212
Graeme Wood, October 14, 2022. Vancouver mayoral candidate Ken Sim met with CSIS
48. Frances Bula, September 30, 2022
49. Frances Bula, September 30, 2022
50. https://www.straight.com/news/new-era-for-the-straight
Stephen Smysnuik, November 3, 2022. A new era for the Georgia Straight
51. Ng Weng Hoong, September 26, 2022. Sinophobia and Sinofascism in the time of Xi Jinping
52. Ng Weng Hoong, July 9, 2022. Sinophobia with Canadian characteristics