Minister Jason Kenney: Ethnic Communities

Ethnic Communities Dept: Unsurprisingly, the memo in question is being condemned for its plans to use public resources to research and communicate the Liberals vote-seeking messages to ethnic audiences. It a line-crossing not wholly different in kind than the nearly $750,000 spent by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration on monitoring Minister Jason Kenney image in ethnic media over three years including at partisan events during the 2011 election campaign , according to The Star. In a rich irony, the memo itself warns that the ethnic outreach strategy it recommends might appear as time-limited pandering and opportunist and now it being seen as just that. But the responses from BC ethnic communities go beyond those epithets into the realm of moral hurt and outrage. A leader in the Chinese-Canadian community which has long sought more provincial recognition of past injustices to Chinese immigrants has denounced the memo as an immoral and disrespectful effort to manipulate ethnic communities. Within the Indo-Canadian community, the president of the Komagata Maru Heritage Society is questioning the sincerity of the provincial government apology for that incident and facing demands to resign following a leaked memo detailing her government plans for winning over ethnic voters to the provincial Liberal party, British Columbia Premier Christy Clark is embroiled in a mess that has elements quite familiar to watchers of federal politics. Somewhat more surprising, however, is the uproar over the memo proposed actions. The document suggests that electoral quick wins could be gained by correcting historical wrongs done to ethnic communities along the lines of the apology the BC government offered in 2008 for the Komagata Maru incident, in which a ship carrying more than 350 passengers was forced to return to India in 1914 after a two-month stalemate in Vancouver harbour. It also calls for communication tactics that include the use of ethnic spokespeople and validators to write letters to newspapers and voice support on radio call-in shows. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.