Three Wishes

(Gabriel Yiu) I'm not a superstitious person but one should live with objectives. Wishes could be an extravagant hope or an excessive expectation, or they could form the goal of one's striving.

As this year ends, I would like to make three wishes to set as goals of my striving for the next year.

My first wish is, I want a government with integrity that does not lie to the people.

A Chinese proverb says, A government cannot last without the trust of its people. An untruthful government is also an incompetent government.

BC's deficit has been increasing drastically, from $968M in February to $1.4B now, but our government keeps increasing spending on advertisement. The advertisement for the premier's so-called "Job Plan" alone costs $15M. The more disturbing part of such an act is that these ads are "partisan ads" using taxpayer's money, and the content is untruthful.

Even though many pundits and economists pointed out that the job figures cited by the premier are exaggerated and incorrect, our unrepentant government still keeps spreading the misinformation.

Every time when I heard the government ad claimed to have achieved a "balanced budget", I frowned. Since the last election, this government has not balanced a single budget! How could a government be that untruthful and unabashed?

My second wish is, our politicians and political leaders should set as their goal governing well. There are political leaders who care only about politics and election from the first day in office. A lot of people may not see the difference, but it lies in this: Governing is to put the interests of the people and of the province first, whereas electioneering politicians seek instant benefit for their political leader and their party. They are shortsighted. The policies of such politicians are often announced in a rush without going through the process of rigorous study and consultation. Their purposes are to make a good impression and to get a photo opportunity. Such a style of government makes a lot of noise to little effect. It goes for show, not substance. The measures taken often work out to be ineffective or disastrous, making the government look stupid, wasting the province's resources, and missing real opportunities.

My third wish is, to eliminate the major weakness of western democracy, i.e. its financing. If you take a look at many of the government's policies, you can see that, coincidentally, the beneficiaries of those policies are also generous contributors to the governing party. For example, the lucky buyer of BC Rail was a major supporter of the former premier. The private energy suppliers who have been selling electricity to BC Hydro, with rates double and triple that of the market price, happened to be donors of the BC Liberal Party.

I truly believe that a platform policy of the NDP which advocates banning corporation and union donation to political parties is a good way to remove financial influence on government decisions.

Although I've made three wishes, if I look deeper, I only need to make one wish and all my above wishes will be fulfilled - to elect an NDP government in the next provincial election.

Who created the Chinese foreign miners’ mess?

(Gabriel Yiu) During the month of October, the top front-page story of our major newspapers reported that 2000 Chinese miners would soon arrive as foreign temporary workers to work at a northern coal mine. The national news sparked the concerns of British Columbians. The labour unions filed a petition with the court to block the Chinese foreign workers from taking over local workers’ jobs. The media and court documents revealed that the mining company listed Mandarin-speaking as a recruitment condition, but the mining company denied it and threatened to withdraw their investment…

The mining project at Murray River is in a mess. If we look beyond the surface and examine this matter at a deeper level, we will see that the affair shows that an incompetent provincial government failed to look after the interests of British Columbians.

In 2007, the China-backed Canadian Dehua International Mines Group Inc. told the BC Liberal government that they “will require approximately 400 employees with specific skills in underground coal mining.” In 2008, the BC government spent $1.3M on a mining labour force study that recommends a new trade workers’ category to receive training called “underground mine worker.” The Liberal government has failed to act on that recommendation.

In November 2011, the notes of a meeting in Beijing between the premier and HD Mining International show that the premier and staff were aware that the company intended to fill over half of the workforce for their Murray River Mine Project with their own workers. Yet, our premier did not make an effort to ensure the project’s jobs go to British Columbians.

Last week, the federal court released a plan of the mining company. The document states that the company plans to use temporary foreign workers for 30 months to build the mine. Then, if the mine is approved, the foreign workers would operate the mine for another two years. After that, the company plans to train local Canadian workers and recruit local workers at the rate of 10% a year. Thus, it would take 10 years, or 14.5 years from the building of the mine, to have the entire operation run by Canadian labour.

I find the HD plan puzzling. The controversy of this matter has been represented as over the question whether Canada has or has not enough skilled underground mining workers. Nevertheless, the work of the early stages in exploration and building the mine site involves work on the surface, not deep underground. It’s amazing that the mining company can’t find Canadian workers able to do the work overground. I find it incredible that for the first four and a half years, the company has to rely entirely on Chinese temporary workers to build and operate the mine.

The intriguing part is, when the mining company’s stewards met with Premier Christy Clark a year ago, they requested bringing in foreign workers to fill more than half the workforce to operate the mine. When our premier seemed not to care about it, the company now wants to operate the mine entirely with foreign temporary workers.

When foreigners invest in China, the Chinese government would require the use of local workers.

Yet, our government has not done its job in this coal mine project; they failed to train local skill workers and they haven’t looked after Canadian workers’ employment opportunities.

As a result of our incompetent provincial government, an uproar has been created in our community. After a great many of our manufacturing and call-centre jobs have been moved to Asia, people worry that high-paying resources jobs would also be taken away from local workers.

If the BC government has accepted the recommendation of their mining labour force study and started training underground mining workers years ago, or if our premier would press for more local workers being hired for the mine project when she met with the executives of the company, we wouldn't have to face this mess now.

Even if the company could operate according to their plan, since there’re significant differences in the mining industries, environment and labour standards and regulations between China and Canada, plus the language barrier, a mine which is wholly operated by foreign temporary workers from China will meet lots of challenges on a bumpy road ahead.

Yaowei Wu Supports Civil Liberties Protection with Donation to BCCLA

(Gabriel Yiu) Last week, the Vancouver victim in a police assault incident in 2010, Yaowei Wu, who recently reached an out-of-court settlement for his civil case against the City of Vancouver, donated $7,000 to the BC Civil Liberties Association through the concerned community group that assisted him in his case. The donation is meant to support BCCLA’s work of civil rights protection in the Chinese community to assist those who need help.

Soon after Wu’s story of police assault was reported in the media, a group of concerned citizens rallied around Wu to raise funds for him and his family and help them through the ordeal with professional counselling. All the funds raised for him by the group, including interests, have now been donated by Wu to the civil rights organization. With the donation, Wu aims to help others in need. Members of the Concerned Group are Bill Chu, Thekla Lit, Gabriel Yiu, Tommy Tao, Chak Au, and Thomas Lou.

Wu’s action received high praise from Thekla Lit of the Concerned Group: “Many Chinese people would simply put up with it when they are bullied, never mind standing up for themselves against authority. Wu deserves our admiration. After he got his justice back for himself, he turned his attention to the care of the less fortunate in society.”

Gabriel Yiu, another member of the Concerned Group, pointed out that both Wu and the Concerned Group agreed that donating the money to a local civil rights organization would be the best thing to do. Yiu said that former BCCLA executor director, David Eby, had indicated before leaving the organization that a portion of the money would be used to build a Chinese webpage to introduce the association’s mandate and work to the Chinese community, so they would know to contact the association when in need of assistance. Eby mentioned that the association had a Chinese-speaking staffer serving the public already.

Yiu said that Wu’s story would appear in the BCCLA Chinese webpage once it is constructed, which he hoped would encourage members of the Chinese community to speak up and speak out for their rights.

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Wu Wei Yao (middle) presented a cheque to BCCLA through Bill Chu (right) and Gabriel Yiu (left) of the Concerned Group:

'We Support Gabriel' Fundraiser a great success...

We had a great fundraiser on December 1st.

Some 150 people attended, with performances by such local talents as Beijing opera performer Geng Qiaoyun, China's national champion opera singer Peter Zhang, erhu ('Chinese violin') master Nicole Li, singers Janice Yu and Genevieve Guerrero, and soprano Mary Ma.

Many thanks to the many volunteers who helped make this such a memorable event and all those who came out to support Gabriel.

Click here for more photos