By Leonora C. Angeles

A year like no other, 2020 is when we see many things in metaphoric 20-20 clarity.

This year exposed and magnified the essential work many Filipinos do in Canada to keep our homes, daycares, hospitals, long-term care homes, meat-packing plants, restaurants, and food outlets operational during the pandemic.

From hospitals and seniors’ homes in Victoria to Tim Hortons and Home Depot in Vernon, Filipinos are over-represented in the six Cs—caring, clinical, cleaning, cooking, cutting, and cashiering—service-sector components.

The pandemic has revealed both their structural vulnerabilities and who are largely doing these dirty, difficult, dangerous, and distanced work in these places. Racially stereotyped, along with other people of colour, they face interpersonal and institutional racism when typecast as fit for certain roles and not suitable for others.

Amid this contextual 20-20 clarity, Filipinos have come of age politically in British Columbia in 2020.

For this relatively young immigrant community, its political maturity has evolved since Mable Elmore, a longtime union leader and community activist, became the MLA for Vancouver-Kensington under the NDP.

Mable’s election to the B.C. legislature in 2009 followed that of Rod Belleza, a Richmond school trustee first elected in 2008.

Since their election, more Filipino Canadians have run for office and won. They include Kitimat councillor Edwin Empinado and Hospital Employees' Union activist and provincial executive member Betty Valenzuela, the first Filipina-Canadian woman elected financial secretary of the union. 

Across Canada, there have only been nine Filipino Canadians elected to provincial legislatures, compared to 86 Indian Canadians, 49 Chinese Canadians, 27 Lebanese Canadians, 16 Jamaican Canadians, and 12 Pakistani Canadians. Only one Filipino Canadian has been elected to Parliament (Rey Pagtakhan) and another appointed to the Canadian Senate (Tobias Enverga).

Politics is not for the faint-hearted and weak-kneed. And immigrant communities need to keep up with political gears that move quickly.

Leading up to the B.C. provincial government’s new cabinet announcement in early November, Filipino organizations mobilized individual and organizational signatures on an open petition letter to Premier John Horgan to appoint Elmore to the new cabinet. In just five days, the “Elmore for Cabinet” campaign was born with more than 2,000 individuals and 60 organizations signing the petition.  

When other novice legislators bypassed their beloved four-time elected MLA for a coveted cabinet position, the signatories did not let go of their petition. They called for resources toward a Filipino community centre, Tagalog language lessons in B.C. high schools, and the recognition of foreign credentials and work experience, especially as Canada needs more health workers during the pandemic. 

Elmore well represented the NDP with her long history of social justice work. For Filipinos in B.C., with more than 70 percent voting NDP in B.C., her plight in the B.C. legislature became emblematic of the broader Filipino saga in multicultural Canada. 

Ironic as it may seem, Elmore has become unwittingly a symbolic figure for Filipino Canadians’ longstanding perception of their “underappreciated” and “undervalued” labour in Canada.

This political snub was even more mockingly biting, as the Georgia Straight's coverage called it an “affront” and a “slap on the face”, since this four-time elected popular MLA is also the second openly lesbian woman in the legislature, a darling to BIMPOC, the Filipinx, and LGBTQ+ communities in B.C.

Individuals and organizations behind the “Elmore for Cabinet” have moved forward. They have been meeting every weekend to share campaign experiences, learning from each other and from invited resource speakers, and strategizing for better political representation in all levels of government.

Among these regular meeting participants are officers and stewards of the National Pilipino Canadian Cultural Centre (NPC3), whose own recalibrated 20-20 vision with robust governance structure, community consultations, and lobbying efforts happened in 2020.

Lending support to the ongoing campaign to establish a community centre for our growing community in British Columbia, NPC3 has been lobbying MLAs, offering online and “open-air” programs, and quietly contributing to building civic capacity of Filipino Canadians and the intercultural literacy of Canadians at large.

Filipinos are Canada’s third largest and fastest growing visible immigrant community. Tagalog, Visayan, and Ilocano languages are widely spoken in B.C. municipalities. It is a major growing immigrant group with no physical cultural centre.

No major Philippine languages are taught in B.C. high schools, colleges, and universities. It has little to no visible heritage and historical landmarks despite Filipino men’s early historical encounters and intermarriages with the Nootka-Tlingit First Nations since the 1790s, and on Bowen Island in the 1880s. Historians consider Filipinos as the “first Asian group” to reach Turtle Island via the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade dating back to the 1570s.

The historical neglect and socioeconomic and political marginalization of Filipino Canadians in B.C. and across Canada need redress. 

A physical space for identity formation, heritage retention, and civic capacity building is essential to valuing diversity as a real resource and asset in our cities. It can be a major historical landmark, a tourist destination.

It can be a critical-creative space, a place where plans, projects, programs, and other ideas percolate and persist. It is a place where future Canadian leaders can be born and nurtured from the ranks of Filipinos and other immigrant communities.

These leaders will create new empowering models of change and solutions to our challenges in trust building, housing, health, employment, job creation, recreation, and climate action.

Canadian political institutions and leaders are already building their own capacities and competencies to address the settlement and needs of immigrants from all national and ethnocultural backgrounds.

In tandem, Filipino Canadians also need to build our own capacities and competencies for empowerment-based community development, collaborative intercultural work, compassionate conversations, and empathetic listening and speaking from the heart.

These critical capacities and competencies will guide, inspire, and strengthen our community internally and across generations. 

Let our 20-20 clarity gained this year be our guiding vision beyond 2020.