{"id":35021,"date":"2026-05-07T00:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T00:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/35021\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T00:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T00:19:09","slug":"ndp-b-c-conservatives-push-out-surrey-and-south-asian-voters-in-leadership-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/35021\/","title":{"rendered":"NDP: B.C. Conservatives push out Surrey and South Asian voters in leadership race"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Jessie Sunner<\/p>\n

THE NDP on Wednesday slammed the\u00a0 B.C. Conservative Party for allegedly making several choices that reduce the influence of Surrey, and South Asian voters in particular, in their leadership race.<\/p>\n

This includes disqualifying South Asian members, not hosting an in-person membership verification site in Surrey, and a weighted voting scheme that reduces the value of votes in Surrey.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at that part of the BC Conservative leadership campaign where the culling of new South Asian members begins, for a variety of manufactured reasons,\u201d\u00a0posted radio host Jas Johal<\/a>, providing an email of a member being disqualified from voting without any explanation. \u201cOnce the race ends, the pandering to the community will resume right on schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johal said South Asian voters are being treated as \u201csecond-class citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA party that calls itself a government-in-waiting should have no problem being transparent,\u201d he continued. \u201cRelease the numbers. How many members were cancelled? For what reasons? Not all members are equal it seems, some are welcomed, others treated like second-class citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Jas Johal
Photo: Chandra Bodalia<\/p>\n

The B.C. Conservatives have announced 10 sites for in-person membership verification.\u00a0None are in Surrey<\/a>, despite the community representing nearly 20 per cent of the B.C. Conservative membership.<\/p>\n

The party\u2019s weighted voting scheme also makes an individual vote from smaller communities like Prince Rupert worth ten times more than a vote in Surrey.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a pattern of choices that limit the influence of Surrey and South Asian voters in the leadership vote,\u201d said Jessie Sunner, MLA for Surrey-Newton, \u201cWhy do the B.C. Conservatives ask for our community\u2019s votes at election time and then cut us out when it\u2019s time to pick a leader?\u201d<\/p>\n

This comes after Interim Leader\u00a0Trevor Halford praised the work of the Western Standard<\/a>, a far-right website that advocates for the deportation of millions of Canadian citizens based solely on their Indian heritage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard from people who voted B.C. Conservative who are disappointed with the way their party has treated our community since then,\u201d said Sunner. \u201cIt\u2019s outrageous to see the B.C. Conservatives backing racist websites and content creators and disqualifying voters without explanation.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cIt\u2019s hard not to notice the pattern: they come to Surrey and our South Asian community when it\u2019s convenient, and then return to pandering to racist platforms and the extreme right wing of their party once they\u2019ve gotten what they need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessie Sunner THE NDP on Wednesday slammed the\u00a0 B.C. Conservative Party for allegedly making several choices that reduce…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[15415,15416,214,8944,146,15417,97,516],"class_list":{"0":"post-35021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-surrey","8":"tag-bc-conservative-leadership-race","9":"tag-bc-conservative-party","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-jas-johal","12":"tag-ndp","13":"tag-south-asians","14":"tag-surrey","15":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}