B.C. MLA the latest politician with mixed messaging for non-English media

VICTORIA – British Columbia’s Liberal leader Kevin Falcon says he supports monitored drug injection sites, but when MP Teresa Wat addressed the audience of a Mandarin news program last week, she had a different message.

Wat said in a speech on Phoenix TV’s Daily Topic show, “We are very much against so-called safe injection sites,” later noting that she “inadvertently misrepresented” her party’s position.

The liberal MLA, which represents the Richmond Center, is the latest politician to be accused of deviating from an official line or tailoring a message to a non-English speaking audience.

“There’s something very powerful about the situational context for delivering a message,” said David Black, Associate Professor of Political Communication at Royal Roads University.

“If you’re talking about a policy that you think might be difficult for a certain audience to understand, you’re going to adapt it, change it, maybe even change that message because it’s almost more important that the message gets across better than it does.” to be very precise.”

Victor Ho, the former editor-in-chief of the Vancouver edition of the Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao Daily, said Wat’s remarks were one of the biggest gaffes he could recall as there were mixed messages to different communities.

He said that Phoenix TV’s viewership is heavily biased towards people of mainland Chinese origin, and it allows politicians to forget their broader constituency in discussions with specific groups.

But the duty remains with a politician to be accountable to all voters for their positions, he said.

“You should have a standardized opinion, whether it’s for the Chinese community or mainstream society here in Canada,” Ho said, adding that “otherwise you can’t hold all your stakeholders accountable.”

In Wat’s case, she said in a video broadcast by the BC Liberal Caucus on Wednesday that she “used the wrong choice of words” to describe the party’s position on injection sites in the Phoenix interview posted online Feb. 9 became.

There have been other cases of Canadian politicians being accused of broadcasting tailored messages to non-English speaking audiences in situations that have cost some more.

In 2019, then-Canadian Ambassador to China John McCallum told Chinese-speaking journalists that Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou had “strong arguments” against her extradition to the United States, where she was wanted on fraud charges.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau initially resisted calls to sack McCallum, but then fired the ambassador when he made further comments on Meng’s case a few days later.

In the 2019 Burnaby South by-election, won by NDP national leader Jagmeet Singh, federal Liberal candidate Karen Wang posted messages on the Chinese-language social media platform WeChat, saying she was the only Chinese candidate while Singh was “of Indian descent”.

Wang withdrew from the race after English media reported the post.

Falcon, who has previously described himself as a supporter of “safe injection sites,” said Wednesday his party supports “monitored points of use” and he has spoken to Wat about her comments.

“I think she would be the first to tell you that she didn’t put it as perfectly as she intended,” Falcon said, adding that he believes Wat – the BC Liberals spokeswoman on multiculturalism and anti-racism -Initiatives, art and culture – misspoken and made an “honest mistake”.

“I am very satisfied that she has not formulated a new position or (was) suggesting that we as a party have a different position.”

BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau said she was rather concerned that the incident signaled increasing partisanship in the legislature and diverted attention away from the handling of the drug crisis itself. Wat’s comments first surfaced in English media via the BC NDP Caucus YouTube and Twitter channels.

“Unfortunately, as we see this becoming more and more of the so-called debate that we are having, which is trying to pit parties against each other and wedge them, it does no good to serve the people of this province that we are should serve,” said Fürstenau.

Black said that a politician must not lose sight of his or her role in representing the views of his party, especially in a multicultural society where communication is increasingly taking place via languages ​​other than English and French.

“You have to espouse ideas that you don’t necessarily believe in or that your audience might not find comfortable, and that’s the burden of leadership,” Black said.

– With files from Nono Shen

This report from The Canadian Press was first published on February 16, 2023.