Green Party of Canada leadership candidates missed the mark by not aggressively countering Sinofascism in Beijing

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      On September 26, online voting begins to choose the next leader of the Green Party of Canada. And at 5 p.m. Pacific daylight time on October 3, the new leader will be crowned.

      There are eight candidates in the race.

      And after looking at their websites, it appears to me that they all missed an opportunity to win over the large number of Canadians who trace their roots back to Hong Kong and Taiwan and who are thoroughly disgusted with the behaviour of the Chinese government.

      It's currently gospel in Ottawa that Canada must adhere to the One China policy, under which the federal government acknowledges that there is only one Chinese regime.

      Any country that chooses to recognize the independent nation of Taiwan is forced to cut off relations with the bullies in Beijing.

      These are the same bullies who are trampling on the rights of Hong Kong residents and keeping more than a million Uyghurs in camps.

      It's worth noting that this Chinese government, led by Xi Jinping, has also kidnapped two Canadians and kept them in jail for more than 600 days.

      The detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor came in the wake of the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on a provisional extradition warrant.

      That led to MPs voting last December to create a special committee to re-examine the country's relationship with China.

      Road to victory was clear

      Here's all that anyone had to do to win the Green Party of Canada leadership: explicitly support Hong Kong's right to self-determination and declare unwavering support for the independence of Taiwan.

      That would have led to scores of party memberships being snapped up by many Hong Kong–born Canadians and Taiwanese Canadians, enabling the proponent of this policy to cruise to victory.

      But diaspora politics has never been a strength of the Greens, so this didn't happen.

      Ironically, Taiwan is ruled by the Democratic Progressive Party, which is the largest partner in the pan-Green Coalition. And Taiwan has vibrant environmental and Indigenous-rights movements, making a significant portion of its expat population a natural fit for the Canadian Greens.

      Progressive "Green" Taiwanese Canadians would have likely flocked to any candidate in the Green Party of Canada race who stated publicly what's obvious to them—Taiwan is a vibrant, democratic, independent country with its own national legislature, flag, currency, and health-care system.

      Similarly, some of the large Hong Kong expat community in Canada would have come out in force for any Green Party of Canada candidate who declared on their website that our country needs to respect the democratic desires of the former colony's brave, democracy-loving residents.

      Instead, the candidates all appear to drink the Trudeau government Kool-Aid that the true borders of China are those that existed before the first Opium War in 1839.

      It's worth noting that the website of one candidate, Dimitri Lascaris, explicitly condemned democratically elected hard-right leaders Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Narendra Modi in India. He also called on Canada to release Meng back to China, which might facilitate the release of Kovrig and Spavor from their prison cells.

      But none of the candidates made a major issue of countering the Sinofascists in charge in China.

      Video: Earlier this year, Green MP Paul Manly praised Taiwan's efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19.

      The deadline was September 3 to become a member of the Greens and cast a ballot in the leadership race.

      Therefore, it's too late now for any of the candidates to try to attract new members by doing something dramatic, like opposing the One China policy.

      Perhaps after the winner is announced, the Greens will rethink their foreign policy in East Asia to fully endorse the democratic desires of the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

      It would be a daring move—and it would set them apart from the four other parties in Parliament.

      Georgia Straight editor Charlie Smith spoke about Taiwan's history of colonization as part of TAIWANfest 2020, which continues through September.

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