Edmontonians join national effort to rebuild Chinatowns across Canada
CBC
Edmonton's Chinatown, unable to keep up with the city's growth, was struggling long before the pandemic and the LRT construction that cuts right through it.
Now, Chinese community leaders representing Chinatowns in Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto are advocating for government help with a strategy to revitalize and rebuild Chinatowns across the country.
The call for action comes after an increase in anti-Asian hate. A report earlier this year from the Toronto chapter of the Chinese Canadian National Council found there were 1,150 incidents of anti-Asian racism in Canada since the start of the pandemic.
"The Chinese have had a difficult time," said Hon Leong, chair of the Chinatown Transformation Collaborative Society of Edmonton.
"We've lost 30 per cent of our businesses alone this year in Chinatown."
Chinese leaders had originally planned to request members of Parliament to endorse the national plan to rebuild Chinatown during the federal election campaign.
Those requests were not well received, Leong said. He added that community leaders are thinking big in terms of asking for support from all levels of government because he said they'll need it.
Intelligence regarding foreign interference sometimes didn't make it to the prime minister's desk in 2021 because Canada's spy agency and the prime minister's national security adviser didn't always see eye to eye on the nature of the threat, according to a recent report from one of Canada's intelligence watchdogs.