The civic party aiming to knock off Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan in the upcoming municipal election is denying it’s behind an alleged rumour campaign targeting Mandarin-speaking Chinese voters that appears to be connected to the school district’s controversial anti-homophobic policy of three years ago.

Katrina Chen, who is running for school board as part of Corrigan’s Burnaby Citizens Association (BCA) team, said she laughed at first when a Mandarin-speaking acquaintance asked her two weeks ago if it was true that the BCA would allow Burnaby schools to use an injection on students that could turn them homosexual.

The acquaintance, who works at a restaurant Chen regularly frequents, said she was told this by a fellow parent at the local community centre.

Chen said the parent was a volunteer for the opposing Burnaby First Coalition.

“I was laughing and I thought nobody is going to believe this,” Chen told The Province Friday. “And she said ‘No, well, actually, a lot of parents gave their contact information because they feel so scared. So that’s when I started to feel that ‘Oh, my gosh, this is getting out of control.’”

The BFC categorically denied Friday that anyone associated with the party was involved in the spread of the alleged rumour, and even went so far as to suggest it was a campaign ploy orchestrated by the BCA to divert attention away from them.

“I’m still scratching my head … asking how such a strange rumour would get started,” said Bruce Friesen, campaign chair for the BFC. “A flat denial is what we are saying: we have no knowledge of anybody associated with our campaign that is doing this. I mean, they are certainly not getting any direction from anybody here.”

In 2011, the Burnaby School District adopted policy 5.45, a strategy designed to combat homophobia and provide support for students identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, two-spirited or queer.

The policy was the subject of much debate and protest, and led to the creation of the Parents’ Voice, a group opposed to it.

Three members of that group are now running under the BFC banner — Helen Ward and Charter Lau are running for council while Heather Leung is running for school board.

Friesen said that while the BFC represents a wide range of voices, he doesn’t think anyone from the parents’ group still considers policy 5.45 to be an issue.

“[M]any of the attitudes and perspectives from prior elections have been set aside or changed through dialogue, and I don’t think you are going to find today that Parents’ Voice people who were running on that particular batch are in the process of running on that issue anymore,” he said. “I think they’ve all learned something from their experience.”

Even before she heard the rumour, Chen said she read similar inaccurate allegations on an online forum catering to members of the Mandarin-speaking Chinese community. And more recently, she said she received a letter at her apartment, written in Mandarin, from the “B.C. Parents’ Voice” encouraging voters to support the BFC.