LETTER: Letter writer was wrong about Chinese

LETTER: Letter writer was wrong about Chinese-Canadian voters

Published 9:00 am Sunday, October 4, 2026

I am a Chinese-Canadian citizen and Surrey voter. How ballots should be formatted is a fair debate, and I take no position on it here. What I cannot let stand in Malcolm J. Cant’s letter on Peach Arch News of October 1, 2026 is his claim that Chinese names on the ballot “will definitely give these two candidates a decided advantage with the Chinese voters.”

That sentence says more about his view of his Chinese-Canadian neighbours than about any ballot. The supposed advantage exists only if Chinese voters choose by name and ethnicity instead of by platform, record and character. We do not. We are taxpayers, parents, volunteers and business owners who argue about taxes, community safety, housing and transit at the kitchen table like everyone else — and we vote on those issues. To suggest we march to the polls behind whoever prints a familiar character is to dismiss the judgment of thousands of Canadian citizens, and it is wrong.

As for the ruling itself, Mr. Cant misrepresents it. The judge granted Chinese candidates no special favour. He applied the law’s “usual name” test: a candidate may appear on the ballot under the name they ordinarily go by. The applicants had to prove their Chinese names are genuinely the names given to them at birth and used throughout their lives — in one case for more than 40 years. That same test, and that same burden of proof, applies to every candidate of every background. A name invented for an election would fail it.

Mr. Cant is entitled to argue the ballot rules should be written differently. He is not entitled to build that argument on the assumption that his Chinese-Canadian fellow citizens vote without thinking. That assumption — not a judge doing his job — is what deserves correcting.

Thank you for your attention to this opinion.