How an anti-SOGI activist with a history of opposing refugees and Muslims become CBC's go-to expert on anti-racism advocacy?
Record shows Pak has advocated against programs meant to protect LGBTQ people, homeless people, refugees, Muslims and journalists.
A few days ago, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) published a story headlined “3 years into the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian hate still prevalent in Metro Vancouver: advocates”. The report does cover an important social issue in Canada but the problem is – like many English reporters when it comes to the Chinese community – it appears the reporter didn’t conduct adequate research on the “advocate” whom they talked to.
Ivan Pak 白巍, a Richmond resident and Chinese Canadian community leader, was sought by the CBC for an opinion as the co-founder of the Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Advocacy Group (SAAHCAG) 反对仇恨亚裔犯罪关注组.
While Pak is the leader of an organization advocating for racial equality, he has a track record of advocating against programs meant to protect LGBTQ people, homeless people, refugees, Muslims and journalists, according to multiple reports on English and Chinese language media.
And most bizarrely, Pak and his anti-racism group, have openly sided with two people who deny the Xinjiang genocide.
Ivan Pak rallied against a Richmond project that would house homeless people
Pak was born in Mainland China, grew up in Hong Kong, went to university in the UK, and immigrated to Canada in the 1990s.
He rose to prominence in local politics in the spring of 2018 as a vocal opponent to Richmond’s temporary modular housing (TMH) project at 7300 Elmbridge Way which was designed to house hundreds of the city’s homeless people.
In April 2018, Pak, as a member of the 7300 Group, held a rally with 300+ other Richmond residents in front of Richmond city hall, claiming the project could cause public safety issues and calling for further public consultation.
According to a report by Richmond News, a man from the crowd at the protest asked people to shout the slogan “No TMH '' and then made a statement about how the project would decrease the property values in their neighourhood.
Ivan Pak protested against the SOGI policy and campaigned with LGBTQ-unfriendly activists in 2018
Pak was also strongly against B.C.’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) policy, an educational resource program designed to support marginalized LGBTQ students and create an inclusive environment for all the students whether they identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, two-spirit, heterosexual or cisgender.
The SOGI 123 program was created by the Ministry of Education of B.C., and the municipal school boards can choose to accept the program or opt to use their own teaching resources. During the consultation period of the Richmond school board, Pak established an organization with Richmond parents that touted “traditional family values”, and expressed their opposition to the SOGI policy at a number of public hearings. When the Richmond school board finally adopted the SOGI policy in June 2018, Pak decided to run for school trustee to reverse the “wrong policy”.
On July 1, 2018, Pak announced his decision to run in the 2018 civic election in B.C. at an event hosted by the Canada Wenzhou Friendship Society 加拿大温州同乡总会.
James Li 李剑如, another anti-SOGI parent in Richmond, also declared his decision to run for school trustee at the event. You Zhaofeng 游兆丰, the president of the Canada Wenzhou Friendship Society said the society would provide these two candidates with full support.
The Canada Wenzhou Friendship Society later faced allegations of a vote-buying scheme during the 2018 civic election (police later said they found no evidence to support the claims). In 2022, the Society was alleged to have a possible link to China’s unofficial “police stations” in Canada and the RCMP foreign interference investigators visited the society’s building in Richmond in December 2022.
In October 2018, Pak, Li, and three other anti-SOGI candidates formed a “Parents’ Slate” and campaigned together. Only one of them, Richmond Lee 李溢, won the election.
Despite the failures, Pak kept on with his political endeavor. He kept campaigning against the SOGI policy, sometimes with controversial personalities such as Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, a former Christian TV host and a well-known accused anti-'trans agenda' activist.
A photo taken by News1130 on Nov.8, 2018, shows Pak (4th from left) attending a meeting with a group of anti-SOGI activists after the civic election, including Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson (2nd from right) and Barry Neufeld (1st from left).
Pak’s meeting in Nov. 2018 also included Heather Leung 梁汉华 (1st from left).
Heather Leung 梁汉华 was the co-founder of “Parents’ Voice”, a local anti-SOGI organization in Burnaby, BC. In the 2019 federal election, Leung ran as the Conservative candidate but was later kicked out of the party after the media dug out comments she made claiming homosexuals ‘recruit’ kids.
Pak was strongly against the city of Richmond’s rainbow crosswalk project in the summer of 2019, claiming identity policies would destroy the nation.
Ivan Pak ran in the 2019 election as a candidate for the People’s Party of Canada
Ivan Pak was selected as the candidate for the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) in the 2019 federal election for the riding of Richmond Centre.
PPC, a right-wing to far-right party founded in 2018 by former Conservative MP Maxime Bernier, has undergone numerous controversies.
Besides Pak, there were a few other noteworthy candidates on the PPC’s slate in the 2019 election, including Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson (Burnaby South) and Rhonda Chen 陈蓉.
Rhonda Chen, a financial consultant, was reported to be harassing a Vancouver journalist in 2020 when the journalist exposed the possible link between the organizer of an anti-Asian hate crime rally and Guo Hong 郭红, a controversial lawyer in Richmond who had publicly claimed there are no human rights violations in China.
Ivan Pak’s website alleges Muslim groups have terrorist ties
On Pak’s personal website, ivanpak.ca, there is various content including but not limited to campaign materials for his 2018 civic election and the 2019 federal election.
Under the channel “Chinese prose”, Pak shares his thoughts and musings with the public. Some of the content there is uncomfortable to read.
For example, on Oct. 21, 2019, Pak wrote,
“If you don’t want Canada to become a country of refugees, you need to understand that (Canada’s) current immigration system has its arms wide open (to refugees). Only 26% of the 320,000 immigrants each year are economic immigrants, and most Chinese immigrants fall under this category. The PPC promised to reduce the overall number (of immigrants) but to raise the economic immigrants by 50% or more. We PPC will eliminate certain kinds of immigrants who come to Canada to eat welfare and not work. The vast majority of Chinese immigrants are hard-working and wealthy people, so how can the PPC not welcome these immigrants?”
In the same post, Pak said,
“Canada passed Bill C-16 to grant special privileges to the LGBT community. The M103 motion suppresses free speech which is critical of Islam. What do these legislations mean to us? Prime Minister Trudeau went to the Muslim community and advised them to vote Conservative, saying that this would protect them in the future no matter who is in power. The Conservative Party met with Islamic organizations which are inextricably linked to overseas terrorists. ”
In a post on Oct. 12, 2019, Pak said,
“The Conservatives openly met with Islamic groups to court their votes. Those groups are inextricably linked to terrorists overseas. The Islamization of Canada is no longer a secret, and 500 ISIS terrorists have quietly returned to Canada while most Canadians are still asleep. ”
Pak posted a variety of anti-SOGI articles on his website, some of which were translated from English ones.
These articles sometimes were also posted on Rise Weekly 高度周刊, a Chinese-language WeChat channel that posted abundant right-wing content during the 2019 election. One of the most productive writers at Rise Weekly is Ally Wang 王立, who wrote numerous pieces under the pen names of Feng Sihai 风四海 or Xin Shangye 辛上邪, promoting anti-SOGI events and cheering for PPC candidates such as Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson.
Ivan Pak co-founded an organization to shut up a Canadian journalist that criticizes the Chinese government
On April 30, 2020, Canadian journalist Sam Cooper published a report on Global News headlined, “United Front groups in Canada helped Beijing stockpile coronavirus safety supplies”, which investigated the Chinese government’s influence operations upon overseas Chinese through the United Front Work Department (UFWD).
Although what under the report’s scrutiny was the Chinese government, not the Chinese people, some Chinese Canadians claimed Cooper’s report to be racist.
In May 2020, at a Zoom meeting co-hosted by Ally Wang, a group of Chinese Canadians declared their decision to launch a class action lawsuit against Sam Cooper and the Global News. A few days later, Pak and two other people founded the Maple Leafs Anti-Racism Actions Association (MLARA), a non-profit organization aiming to raise funds for the lawsuit against Cooper and Global.
The MLARA made national headlines when Maria Xu 徐凌, a Chinese Canadian community leader, was kicked out of MP Joyce Murray’s WeChat group when she posted the MLARA donation link in the group chat.
MP Murray quickly distanced herself from MLARA on May 26, 2020, claiming the MLARA post 'in no way' represents her views.
On the same day, when Canadian PM Justin Trudeau was asked why a Liberal MP’s WeChat group was promoting a lawsuit against a Canadian reporter that criticizes the Chinese government, Trudeau condemned MLARA’s action saying attacking the integrity of hard-working journalists ‘absolutely unacceptable’.
Ivan Pak and his anti-racism group silent on China’s atrocious repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang
In the spring of 2021, Ivan Pak (right), along with Ally Wang (middle) and businessman Bao Daoping 鲍道平 (left), founded the Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Advocacy Group (SAAHCAG) 反对仇恨亚裔犯罪关注组.
On the website of MLARA, Pak’s previous organization, there was a channel linked to SAAHCAG’s site.
Pak, as well as other SAAHCAG’s leaders, frequently appeared in the media, promoting racial equality and calling out systematic racism in Canada.
But the bizarre thing is, as an anti-racism advocate, Pak never criticizes the Chinese government, where racism is never absent in its policies, ideology and daily practice. When China’s atrocious human rights abuses against the Uyghur minority groups horrified the world, Pak and his SAAHCAG keep their mouths tightly shut.
In Feb. 2021, the Canadian Parliament passed a motion declaring China's persecution of Uyghurs a genocide. At a Zoom meeting on Apr 10, 2021, Ding Guo 丁果, a Chinese Canadian community leader who claims to be a good friend of B.C. Premier David Eby, said the Xinjiang issue is ‘China’s internal affair 中国内政’, which is a classic talking point of the Chinese Communist (CCP) when it tries to shut up international criticism against China’s human rights violations.
In April 2021, Bill Yee 余宏荣, an advisor to the then-B.C. Premier Horgan, caused intense public anger when he said the Xinjiang genocide were ‘lies’. Previous reports show that Yee had also denied the existence of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing. Shortly after a group of Canadian human rights activists pressured the Premier to remove Yee from the advisory board, Yee decided he wouldn’t seek re-appointment for the position.
But this time Pak didn't remain silent. He started an online petition to support Yee’s 'freedom of speech'. Ally Wang, Bao Daoping, Maria Xu, Rhonda Chen, were all co-signers in this petition.
In Oct. 2021, Ally Wang published a piece on Rise Weekly to defend Senator Yuen Pao Woo 胡元豹, another Xinjiang genocide denier, claiming people’s criticism towards Senator Woo to be racist.
One must wonder why it is so easy to get airtime on CBC and other English outlets with little scrutiny.
Great work, thank you for sharing this!!
It's obvious that this Pak' work is only based on supporting the line to take by the CCP regime and not really the universal value of human rights. His so-called "anti-Asian crime" is only the pretext for propagating the CCP propagandas.