A camera-recorded incident in Richmond, BC has generated more than 300,000 views on TikTok.
Alberta resident Donna Damaso said she was on her way to Vancouver Airport on August 11 when she encountered two women trying to buy tickets for the SkyTrain.
She said they spoke Chinese to each other and a man was standing nearby watching them.
Then he started asking them where they came from.
“In the beginning I was really excited. I saw a lot of people walking by and not saying anything and then I decided to confront him,” Damaso told Global News.
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In the video, the man can be heard saying, “You are in Canada now.” Damaso can then be heard calling him a “racist.”
The man poses as a lawyer and says to Damaso: “Why do we have to bend over backwards? If you move to Japan, you will learn Japanese because you live in Japan.”
Damaso said the women are only minding their own business and the man does not need to interfere in the situation.
“I called him a racist. Maybe he doesn’t like Asians?” she said, adding that she was surprised to see an incident like this in Canada.
Damaso said the two women thanked her for stepping in and saying something but told her to be careful next time.
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Doris Wai Ki Mah, a co-founder of the Stand With Asians Coalition, said when she first saw the video she was very angry.
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“I always thought that might be my mother,” she said. “She drives alone on public transport all the time.”
Mah said Damaso was brave to step up and say something to the man seen in the video.
“All Canadians need to realize that we all need to think about our own biases,” she said.
“When this white man yelled at these women, I think his first question was, ‘Where are you from?’ Which might be a friendly question, but in this case, in my opinion, is totally unacceptable and inappropriate. The reason he asked where you are from is, as you can see from the video, what he said is: ‘Why don’t you speak English because we are in Canada?’.”
Mah added that Canada is meant to be a multicultural and inclusive society and we need to embrace and celebrate diverse ethnicities.
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A local MP called the incident an indication of the rise in hate crimes in Canada.
Peter Julian, MP for New Westminster-Burnaby, said in a statement that “the number of hate crimes reported by police has increased by 72 per cent over the past two years since 2019, according to the latest Statistics Canada report.
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“Most concerning was a 67 percent increase in hate crimes motivated by religion, a 64 percent increase in cases by sexual orientation, and a six percent increase in cases targeting race or ethnicity,” the statement said .
Julian said incidents like this prompted him to support measures such as a motion to combat all forms of hate and discrimination, hate crimes and incidents of hate and Bill C-229 amending the Criminal Code to ban symbols hate.
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