Justin Trudeau's Liberal party appears prepared to kiss off any chance of winning seats in Burnaby in the next federal election.

And this isn't only because the Liberal government has decided to buy the Kinder Morgan pipeline and complete the Trans Mountain Expansion Project, which will triple diluted bitumen shipments through the city.

Burnaby is also home to the country's largest community of Taiwanese Canadians.

And many of them are feeling miffed by the Canadian Border Services Agency's decision to refer to Taiwan as "Chinese Taipei" in a recent news release.

According to the 2016 census, there are 25,855 Burnaby residents whose mother tongue is Mandarin, though a fair number are from mainland China and not Taiwan. But Burnaby has two MLAs in the legislature who were born in Taiwan.

When Air Canada started calling Taiwan "Chinese Taipei" earlier this year in response to pressure from the People's Republic of China, it prompted protests outside the airline's offices in Montreal.

And when the Royal Bank of Canada put Chinese Taipei on its website, Taiwanese Canadians started to organize a boycott. That forced the financial institution to back down.

Taiwanese Canadians resent the words "Chinese Taipei" because they falsely imply that Taiwan is a province of China.

In fact, Taiwan is an independent country with its own flag, constitution, national anthem, president, multiparty democracy, national health-care program, and national legislature.

The People's Republic of China has no say whatsoever in how Taiwan is governed.

China's president, Xi Jinping, has tried to claim that Taiwan is part of China because it was a colony of the Qing dynasty before it was given up in the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki.

However at various times, Taiwan has also been a colony of the Netherlands and Japan.

The Canadian Border Services decision to use the offensive "Chinese Taipei" term came shortly after Bill Blair was named minister of border security and organized crime reduction. Blair is a former chief of the Toronto Police Service.

"Chinese Taipei" appeared in a news release about a federal probe into corrosion-resistant steel from several East Asian countries.

It's an idiotic phrase, especially when one considers that millions of Taiwanese residents don't live in Taipei, which is the nation's capital.

Canada has opposed Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Yet with the Canada Border Services Agency news release, the Trudeau government appears to be giving tacit approval to China's desire to annex Taiwan.

Meanwhile, a federal by-election is expected to be called in Burnaby South. This is because the NDP MP, Kennedy Stewart, has resigned to run for mayor of Vancouver.

In 2015 Stewart won the seat by just 547 votes over Liberal Adam Pankratz.

Burnaby North–Seymour is represented by Liberal MP Terry Beech, who won by 3,401 votes over NDP candidate Carol Baird Ellan in 2015.