Addressing an audience in Montreal, Senator Victor Oh said he is planning to rent buses to transport up to 3,000 people to Ottawa for an upcoming demonstration against proposed legislation to create a foreign agent registry aimed at combatting foreign influence.

“We need to rent buses to [transport people] from Toronto. I plan to rent 50 buses. … Each can accommodate around 55 to 60 people, so with 50 buses, that’s 3,000 people,” Oh told his audience in Chinese at an event held at the Montreal Chinese Community United Centre (MCCUC), according to a video posted June 13 on Weixin, the Chinese version of WeChat. The video’s caption said Oh spoke “yesterday,” indicating the event was held on June 12.

The demonstration, on Parliament Hill, is scheduled for June 24, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923. The act is commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion Act because it resulted from an effort to stop Chinese immigration.

Oh said he and Senator Yuen Pau Woo will be leading the demonstration to oppose “anti-Chinese sentiment,” highlighting the need to push back against a foreign agent registry.

The Canadian government is currently holding public consultations on establishing this registry to address foreign interference activities on Canadian soil, allegations of which have increasingly come to light in recent months. These include meddling by Beijing in the past two federal elections and the operation of at least seven secret Chinese police stations in Canada.

A Feb. 25 Global News report said irregularities in the 2019 election included Chinese international students with fake addresses allegedly having been bussed to certain ridings and coerced into voting for certain candidates.

Bill S-237, introduced in November 2021 by Senator Leo Housakos to create a foreign influence registry, is currently in second reading in the Senate but hasn’t received government support. An earlier bill, C-282, was introduced in the House by former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu in April 2021.

Chiu told The Epoch Times in a previous interview that neither his nor Housakos’s proposed legislation mentions “China” or “Chinese,” since a foreign influence registry is meant to comprehensively address interference attempts by all authoritarian regimes.

Senator Oh, for his part, told his Montreal audience that the proposed law in Canada is “unfair” and “very problematic” because it targets specific countries rather than preventing infiltration from all countries.

“The registration act for the transparency of foreign political intervention in Canada—this registration act is very important. Everyone needs to understand that this act currently before us only stipulates the inclusion of a few countries. This is very unfair to us,” Oh said in Chinese.

Housakos echoed Chiu’s earlier remarks, saying that his bill S-237 “does not single out any one regime” but rather “provides a tool for Canada to guard against foreign interference and intimidation targeting members of various diaspora communities, no matter from where they originate.”

“We owe that to people who come to Canada from afar looking for freedom and security,” he told The Epoch Times in an email statement, adding that “it’s a shame that some people are using this as a tool to pit Canadians against each other.”

Chiu reiterated Housakos’s viewpoint in an interview, saying that the allegation by senators Oh and Woo is “completely false.”

“There is no proposal. Even what Senator Leo Housakos had proposed in the Senate, … there is no mentioning of any country,” Chiu said. “To accuse them [the proposed bills] of targeting China, Iran, it’s just a complete lie, unfortunately, coming from an honourable senator.”

Chiu, who was defeated in his B.C. riding of Steveston—Richmond East in the September 2021 election, told the House of Commons ethics committee on March 31 that he was a target of Beijing’s disinformation campaign during the election due to his support of the foreign agent registry.

Oh urged his audience in Montreal to sign and help to promote a citizen petition, e-4395, launched by Li Wang, a resident in Coquitlam, B.C. The petition, drafted by Senator Woo, argued that a foreign agent registry “poses a serious harassment and stigmatization risk for racialized communities.”

Oh said he and Woo, as senators, are not allowed to sponsor a petition in the House of Commons, and they therefore asked Liberal MP Chandra Arya to do so in April.

The senator told the audience that he would liken the foreign agent registry to a “disguised Chinese Exclusion Act” that will be used to suppress future generations, adding that the Canadian intelligence agency could randomly target Chinese businesses should the bill pass into law.

“If we don’t stand up and demand fairness, our future young people will find it difficult to climb up [the ladder] within major organizations and the government. And you won’t be able to rise up, because you’ll always face suppression. This is why we must stand up, primarily for their sake, for the next generation, and the generation after that,” he said.

“Even in the future when you come to see me about an issue, our intelligence agency can say at any time, if you’re part of a business association coming to see Senator Oh, then ‘what are you discussing? Are you trying to influence our domestic affairs and influence Senator Oh?’ This could happen, if they think you haven’t registered. So this is a kind of disguised Chinese Exclusion Act.”

According to Oh, Senator Woo is also promoting their cause in British Columbia, while they and MP Arya have been participating in forum discussion with Chinese communities across the country on the issue.

On May 28, the three attended an event with a similar theme, also hosted by the Montreal group MCCUC, where the Chinese consul general in Montreal was a keynote speaker and which the Chinese vice consul general in Montreal also attended.

Oh and Arya didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

Woo told The Epoch Times previously about the Montreal event that he was “very pleased to show my support for members of the Montreal Chinese Community, who organized the event to remember the 100th anniversary of the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act. I have spoken at gatherings like this across Canada and hope to attend more such events in the second half of the year.”

Senator Oh said he is planning additional actions to push back against the so-called anti-Asian sentiment, with efforts to include creating a national Chinese foundation to raise funds to take legal actions against politicians or media outlets that say things or publish reports they deem to be slanderous to Chinese-Canadians.

“We will provide funding [to counter] the baseless accusation and defamation from politicians,” he said. “We need to take legal actions against those unreasonable journalists, news outlets, and politicians who slander and defame Chinese people. We must stand up against them in various forms.”

In March, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed former governor general David Johnston as special rapporteur to investigate Chinese interference in Canada’s elections and to decide whether a public inquiry is needed to study the issue.

In his first report, published May 23, Johnston decided against holding a public inquiry, saying he found no evidence to support allegations of Beijing interference cited in various recent media reports, including the allegation that 11 candidates in the 2019 election had received funding from the communist regime.

Johnston later said he did not review all intelligence before reaching his conclusion and producing his report. He subsequently tendered his resignation  on June 9 in the face of heightened criticism from critics and opposition parties.

The Liberal government has now said it is open to holding a public inquiry into foreign interference, but is asking the federal opposition parties to work together to come up with the terms of reference as well as a list of potential candidates to lead the inquiry.