Chinese Canadian National Council

The Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC), known in the Chinese-Canadian community as Equal Rights Council (平權會), is an organization whose purpose is to monitor racial discrimination against Chinese in Canada and to help young Chinese Canadians learn about their cultural history.

The organization was created in 1980, after an incident in September 1979 when the CTV Television Network incorrectly represented Chinese Canadians in an investigative show called W5. In a feature called "Campus Giveaways", CTV used allegedly incorrect statistics to conclude that foreign students were eroding other Canadians' opportunities for a secondary education and benefitting from public universities funded by Canadian taxpayers. All Chinese university students were treated as foreign students, regardless of their real nationality. The show also made numerous racial remarks about the Chinese students. The incident and the resulting campaign were reported in the Canadian media.

In response, Chinese communities across Canada staged protests against CTV and forced the President of CTV to publicly apologize for the W5 feature. After the incident, Chinese who protested against CTV across Canada staged a meeting in Toronto. The meeting called for a stronger voice representing Chinese Canadians nationwide, thus the CCNC was formed.

Since the formation of the CCNC, it has spoken out against racial discrimination against Chinese in Canada. The CCNC is also involved in controversial issues concerning Chinese in Canada, like forcing the Government of Canada to apologize and redress the Head Tax that Chinese had to paid from 1885 to 1923.

On November 28, 2005, the Toronto chapter of the CCNC was granted the William P. Hubbard Award for Race Relations by the Toronto city government, in recognition of the CCNC's advocacy for Head Tax redress.

Famous quotes containing the words chinese, canadian, national and/or council:

    Only by the form, the pattern,
    Can words or music reach
    The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
    Moves perpetually in its stillness.
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    We’re definite in Nova Scotia—’bout things like ships ... and fish, the best in the world.
    John Rhodes Sturdy, Canadian screenwriter. Richard Rossen. Joyce Cartwright (Ella Raines)

    The national distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from an innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be counted, stuffed, framed or mounted over the fireplace in the den.
    Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)

    There by some wrinkled stones round a leafless tree
    With beards askew, their eyes dull and wild
    Twelve ragged men, the council of charity
    Wandering the face of the earth a fatherless child....
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)