BURST
A Chinese-language post circulating in Richmond is warning that if the city’s Chinese Canadian majority doesn’t vote in October, it could elect an Indo-Canadian mayor .
The post, published on the social media app WeChat, has been condemned as divisive by Kash Heed , a Richmond councillor and the only Indo-Canadian in the mayor’s race, who said it stokes division along ethnic lines.
Heed said he wasn’t surprised to see it.
“Over the last month-and-a-half, the pendulum has really swung to this divisiveness in Richmond based on ethnicity,” he said. “We’re starting to see more of that surface.”
At the top of the article is an illustration that juxtaposes two crowds. On one side, labelled 54 per cent — the Chinese Canadian share of Richmond’s population — a group of Chinese Canadian residents stands holding ballots. On the other, labelled 7.4 per cent, a turbaned man in a suit waves in front of a large Indian flag, backed by a cheering crowd.
Heed, who is Sikh, says the image and the argument around it trade on ethnic stereotypes.
“Instead of looking at each candidate … based on their qualifications, based on their experience,” he said, “we’ve got this movement towards just do it based on ethnicity in Richmond.”
The article was written by realtor Jason Liu and carries the branding of his company, Luxmore Realty.
Liu confirmed the post is his and defended it, saying it was published on his personal WeChat account and shared organically. He said he didn’t pay to promote it, has received no payment connected to it and isn’t supporting or advising any candidate.
He said the post’s argument is about turnout.
Chinese Canadians make up 54 per cent of Richmond, it says — the highest proportion of any Canadian city — yet turnout in the 2022 municipal election was just 24.5 per cent. In the 2025 federal election, when turnout in the Richmond Centre riding reached 59.6 per cent, a Chinese Canadian candidate won the seat.
Liu’s central appeal is that Chinese Canadian voters could decide the race if they turned out.
“If Chinese Canadian voters who are eligible to vote show up at the polls on Oct. 17, the Richmond mayoral race could very likely be turned around,” he wrote. If they stay home, “a city with a Chinese-majority population electing an Indo-Canadian mayor” could move “from a polling prediction to a historical reality.”
He frames the piece as admiration.
“I do not believe the rise of the Indo-Canadian community is a bad thing,” he wrote. “On the contrary, they have spent a century transforming historical hardship into organizational strength, and turning that strength into political influence. It is a lesson worth studying for every immigrant community.”
The post also generalizes about that community, describing Sikh temples as vote-mobilizing hubs where “a single word from respected community elders can influence the voting decisions of dozens of extended families.”
In a written response, Liu said he respects that Sikh Canadians “vote as individuals” and that the passage was meant to describe institutions that encourage civic engagement.
“I accept that summarizing another community’s civic life from the outside can read as reductive, and I could have written that passage with more care,” he said. “If members of that community were offended, that was not my intent, and I regret it.”
He rejected the charge that the article is hostile, noting it calls the rise of South Asian communities “a textbook worth studying for every immigrant community.”
Liu said the piece is a call for non-voters to participate, “not a call against anyone.”
Heed didn’t point to specific lines. He said people are “weaponizing race in order to get whatever advantage they would like,” instead of debating the issues facing Richmond.
Heed, a former West Vancouver police chief and B.C. solicitor general, said the hostility has grown more personal in recent weeks. He said he has been told to “go back to where you came from.”
“Just so you know, I came from Kamloops,” he said. “I was born in Kamloops and my mother was born in Kelowna.”
Heed stopped short of calling the post illegal. He said it hasn’t, in his view, crossed the line under B.C.‘s election law, but has “crossed the line” morally. He isn’t seeking an apology or a takedown.
“I’m asking for people to really look at this and say, ‘Does that represent what they want Richmond to be?’” he said.
The race to succeed Malcolm Brodie , Richmond’s mayor for 25 years, is the city’s first seriously contested mayoral election in a generation.
Also running are three-term councillor Alexa Loo and former NDP MLA Henry Yao.
The vote is Oct. 17.
With files from Joanne Lee-Young