Your Honour, I would like to exercise my right of final reply.

Honourable senators, I rise to offer concluding remarks on my inquiry calling attention to the hundredth anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act. I would like to thank Senator Jaffer, Simons, Omidvar, Oh, Kutcher, McCallum, Ravalia and Mégie for their contributions to the inquiry. Each of them offered fresh perspectives on the Chinese immigrant experience in this country as well as the broader story of immigration to Canada and the unfinished task of fighting prejudice, discrimination and exclusion of newcomers.

On June 23, 2023, Senator Oh and I, together with Action, Chinese Canadians Together, organized a national remembrance ceremony in this very chamber to mark the hundredth anniversary. The meeting was graced by Her Excellency the Governor General and Speaker Gagné. Nearly 200 Chinese Canadians and friends of the community filled this chamber. Thousands more watched a livestream at some 400 registered viewing parties across the country.

The ceremony included the designation of the Chinese Exclusion Act by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada as a national historic event and the commissioning of a bronze plaque. Here is the inscription on the plaque:

On 1 July 1923, Canada prohibited Chinese immigration. The Chinese Immigration Act, 1923 (Chinese Exclusion Act) was the culmination of anti-Chinese racism and policies, including the head taxes which it replaced. All Chinese persons living in Canada, even those born here, had to register with the government or risk fines, detainment, or deportation. The Act impeded family reunification, community development, social integration, and economic equality. Chinese Canadian men and women successfully challenged this law, leading to its repeal in 1947. Still, their fight to dismantle racist immigration restrictions continued.

The repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act ended the prohibition on Chinese immigrants, but Canadian immigration policy continued to be racially biased with the intake of newcomers almost exclusively focused on European settlers. This bias meant that Chinese who were already in Canada were largely unable to sponsor their family members in China to enter the country.

Worse, Chinese Canadians were subject to investigations by the government, which continued to harbour suspicions about their bona fides and loyalties. The recent release of previously restricted C.I.44 records by Library and Archives Canada has shone a light on the pervasive anti-Chinese sentiment that lingered well past 1947.

Archival researchers have so far been able to access only a small fraction of the Chinese immigration records from the exclusion period and its aftermath. Many of these documents remain restricted and are very difficult to navigate because of the complicated filing system used by government departments at the time. I am calling on Library and Archives Canada to make more records available and to invest in the development of finding aids so that historians and researchers can paint a more complete story of Chinese immigration both during and after the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The remembrance ceremony in the Senate of Canada was followed the next day by a rally on Parliament Hill attended by more than 3,000 Chinese Canadians who came from across the country. They were here to mark the Chinese Exclusion Act and to pledge opposition to ongoing discrimination, stigmatization and prejudice against Chinese people and other minorities.

The hundredth anniversary has also been remembered by community groups and educational institutions at dozens of events across Canada. It has mobilized the Chinese community in ways that I have not seen before and has forced the community to have some difficult conversations about the place of Chinese people in Canadian society and the ongoing challenges faced by the community.

It has also forced me to reflect more deeply on some contemporary public policy issues that impinge on Chinese Canadians, several of which have already found their way to this chamber. As these issues surface, I will be asking questions about justice, fairness and the rule of law that I wish my predecessors of 100 years ago had asked of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The fact that the Chinese Exclusion Act passed the House and the Senate with little opposition suggests that there was popular support for the bill and that MPs and senators were able to come up with rationalizations that fit with the dominant ethos of the time. Back then, it was about racial purity, economic security, cultural superiority and a protection of a way of life.

It is unlikely that anyone today would argue for a law based on racial purity and cultural superiority. We can take some solace in the fact that we are more enlightened than our forebears when it comes to foreigners, but we would be deluding ourselves if we thought that nativist and xenophobic attitudes have been expunged from the collective Canadian consciousness.

One of the controversies aroused by the centenary of the Chinese Exclusion Act is the question of whether a form of modern exclusion of Chinese Canadians is happening in our country now. Those who deny it often suggest that claims of modern exclusion are a sign of disloyalty and subversion.

A particular source of friction is the proposed foreign influence transparency registry that the government plans to introduce. A discussion paper on the proposed registry, as well as private members’ versions of the bill introduced in the House of Commons and the Senate, suggest that anyone with links to legally constituted entities in the People’s Republic of China, or PRC — universities, business associations, cultural groups, sporting bodies, et cetera — could be required to register. Further, anyone who espouses views that are in line with a foreign government and who has had contact with a foreign official could be required to register because that person is deemed to be a source of malign foreign influence.

Colleagues, I support an expanded registry of lobbyists that fully captures agents of foreign states, but what we could be getting instead is a registry of foreign influence. Think about it — a registry of Canadians who are deemed to be subject to influence from foreign governments, even if they are not in the employ or under the direction of that government. For Chinese Canadians, it would mean having to disavow professional, cultural and — in some cases — familial ties in China or run the risk of having their names on a registry. Is there any wonder that I and many others worry about modern Chinese exclusion?

It is not only in the proposed foreign influence registry that we see such signs. We also see warning lights in the heightened immigration screening of students from China, the oversecuritization of research collaboration at our universities, claims of foreign interference and disloyalty that focus on politicians of Chinese ethnicity, forcing Chinese Canadians to dispose of their assets using extraordinary powers of the state, police investigations of Chinese cultural organizations that are threatening their very survival — and the stigmatization of anyone who questions these troubling trends as a foreign agent.

This is not to minimize the importance of national security or the suffering of Canadians who are subject to transnational repression. It is also not about defending human rights abuses or militarism in the People’s Republic of China. But we only harm ourselves by embracing a sweeping definition of a “China threat,” and we harm our reputation as a country that sees itself as progressive, fair-minded and open to the world. The rhetoric of an all-encompassing China threat propagated by politicians who are trying to out-hawk each other sets a tone for how we see and treat Canadians who have ties to the PRC. Let’s be very clear: We are talking about protecting the rights of Canadians, not foreigners. Canadians who deserve all the rights and privileges of fellow citizens, including the right to not be stigmatized because of their links to China.

I think about the senior Chinese Canadian official who was advised by bosses to not attend the remembrance ceremony in the Senate because it might “send the wrong message”; the Chinese Canadian academics who are treated with suspicion because they work with colleagues in China; users of Canada-based Chinese-language social media platforms, who are assumed to be unable to think for themselves and accused of being dupes and vectors of foreign interference; and Chinese scientists in Canada who are punished for their past work with Chinese research institutions. How many more Chinese Canadians will be subject to this kind of modern exclusion? How long before we wake up to the injustice of such actions? Not, I hope, as long as the 24 years it took to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act.

I will end on a more positive note. I have already lamented the complicity of Canadian parliamentarians in making possible the Chinese Exclusion Act of 100 years ago. The Senate of Canada was part of that shameful past, and it was senators from British Columbia who delivered some of the most repugnant speeches. But the Senate also played a role in making the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 less harmful than it could have been. By amending the bill that came from the House of Commons, the Senate removed the requirement for a language test to apply to Chinese already in Canada. The original provision would have led to mass deportation of Chinese who were deemed to not be sufficiently fluent in English. Perhaps the thought of having to transport tens of thousands of Chinese across the Pacific prompted this outburst of sober second thought, but it was, in any event, a slim lining of silver in an otherwise very dark cloud that hung over the Chinese community for more than two decades.

That is why, honourable colleagues, my inquiry on the one hundredth anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act is as much an inquiry about our institution as it is about Chinese Canadians. For us, the remembrance of the act must be about being alert to modern exclusion and preventing it from spreading — because when modern exclusion rears its ugly head, it will not come in the exact same form of the exclusion act. Rather, modern exclusion will be constructed around a set of contemporary fears and phobias fed by political and populist pressures from within and without. It will not be the same as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 100 years ago, but it will be just as seductive, just popular, just as “politically necessary” — and just as wrong. Thank you.