RICHMOND, B.C.—Frank Huang fits the profile of half the residents in the Richmond Centre provincial riding even if he may not fit exactly the profile of what the governing B.C. Liberal party think of as the typical immigrant.

In a city where only 40 per cent of residents speak English as their mother tongue and 47 per cent speak Cantonese or Mandarin at home, the riding has become a battleground between the governing B.C. Liberals and the Opposition NDP.

The Liberals brought in a high-profile candidate Teresa Wat, a media executive from one of the multicultural television stations, to run in Richmond and late in the week, the NDP announced it had Huang, the former editor-in-chief of the Chinese paper Global Chinese Press, to run as its candidate.

“He’s an outstanding person in the media and an outstanding person in the community,” said Opposition NDP Leader Adrian Dix at a news conference in a Richmond restaurant. “Frank represents what we need more from, someone with great experience.”

Dix said it’s a tribute to Huang, who immigrated to Canada from China in 2001, that he chose to run for the NDP, which while expected to win handily the May 14 provincial election, has not won in Richmond Centre in almost four decades.

The issue of ethnicity has become a major one for the governing B.C. Liberals, who have been trying to stem the controversy over a leaked multicultural strategy the premier’s deputy chief of staff sent out. That bureaucrat, Kim Haakstad, a long-time adviser to Premier Christy Clark, resigned. Last week, Multicultural Minister John Yap also stepped down. There are now two investigations, one from the government and one from the party, into whether government funds were inappropriately used in a strategy to attract more ethnic voters.

One of the strategies outlined included getting the government to apologize for historic wrongs in the Chinese community and the South Asian community. For the Chinese, that would be an apology over the head tax that Chinese working class immigrants had to pay between 1923 and 1947, a tax no other incoming groups were charged.

Sid Chow Tan, president of the Head Tax Families Society of Canada, said the government insulted the community.

“Do not take an issue that is visceral in our community and play with it in this way,” Chow Tan said. “It is arrogant. It is dismissive and insulting.”

The B.C. Liberals appear to have conceded, at least in the leaked strategy, that they are failing to win over ethnic voters and must do more to attract them.

Why they were failing was puzzling to them in some ways. The “political centre-right is a natural fit for many immigrant/ethnic communities,” the memo said. “Education, economy, public safety, emphasis on self-reliance are government values that are shared by many ethnic voters.”

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Not so, according to Huang. He said he found the NDP a more natural fit for him.

“I’m a common immigrant, like most of the new immigrants from Mainland China,” he said.

“I can be an effective bridge.”