The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 4

A4 THE OTTAWA CITIZEN SUNDAY, MAY 21, 1989 CANADA Peace acttiviistts ARMX organizers predict record attendance ill! gut acmms tirade on mhUc tiroa! By Richard Oslund Citizen staff writer l5 I fig' By Richard Oslund Citizen staff writer With two days left until the controversial ARMX '89 exhibition gets under way at Lansdowne Park, organizers are predicting a doubling of attendance. Exhibition organizer Wolfgang Schmidt said he expects as many as 15,000 defence contractors, soldiers and procurement officials from Canada and abroad will visit the three-day show. That's almost twice the number who attended the previous ARMX at Lansdowne in 1987. One of the main reasons is the prospect of increased trade across the border since the free-trade deal came into effect Jan. 1.

Don Businger of the U.S. Embassy's commercial office in Ottawa said several high-level Defence Department procurement officials will be visiting the show to seek Canadian suppliers. Businger said he also expects 55 American exhibitors to attend ARMX '89, up from 30 in 1987. Several peace groups have organized protests against ARMX, saying it puts Canadian arms manufacturers in touch with oppressive regimes who want to use Canadian weaponry against their own people. Ottawa Council has voted not to allow arms shows on municipal property in the future.

But Schmidt objects to the image of ARMX as an "open market" for repressive Third World regimes. Schmidt said less than 10 per cent of the products on display at ARMX '89 will be weaponry, with the great majority consisting of training and support equipment such as tents, communications systems, trucks and computerized simulators. Schmidt said he has invited the embassies in Ottawa to send representatives, and 80 are expected to attend. -Chris Miknla Piti7An Rolling into town: Soldier directs tank as ARMX '89 sets up at Lansdowne Park About 65 peace activists getting ready to protest an Ottawa arms show heard first-hand Saturday the effects of military purchases on Third World countries. The testimony was part of a day-long "public inquiry" at Saint PauJ University into the moral and legal implications of Canada's involvement in arms exports.

Veronica Sanchez, a 15-year-old survivor of the civil war in El Salvador, said her homeland's government uses the weapons it purchases abroad to terrorize its own people. Sanchez said she and her mother both survived several attempts on their lives before their family found asylum in Canada. She said their only crime was trying to bring medical supplies to impoverished villages in territory under guerrilla influence. Others Salvadorans were not as lucky as the Sanchezes. More than 60,000 have died at the hands of government troops, right-wing death squads or leftist guerrillas in the past decade.

want pity from you," said Sanchez, breaking into tears. "What I want from you is to try and stop other human beings from killing each other." Tariz Ahsan, 37, told of the torture and two years of imprisonment he suffered in Pakistan after joining a group of university professors opposed to the autocratic military regime of Zia ul-Haq. Pakistan has bought or been given millions of dollars worth of Western military hardware since Veronica Sanchez Not looking for pity the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan in 1979. "I often feel a part of my emotional self died in prison," the Carleton University political science student said. "I tend to be a loner now." After hearing the testimony of Sanchez, Ahsan and several legal experts, a five-person panel headed by former Ottawa mayor Marion Dewar recommended Canada cease all arms exports.

The panel also called on the federal government to take over arms manufacturing, switch as many weapons factories as possible over to civilian production and support an international arms trade registry to discourage arms sales to repressive regimes. And the panelists urged the Ontario government to stop exports of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that can be used to make vitation only" admission policy. Schmidt said ARMX '89 is a trade show and "it's nothing unusual" for trade shows to be closed to the public. Chuck Pittman, spokesman for Litton Systems Canada Limited, said ARMX is "a very efficient way to expose our products to a wide range of military and civilian personnel." Pittman said his company's main targets will be procurement officials from DND and the Department of Supply and Services, which purchases all goods for the federal government. Litton will be exhibiting its aircraft navigation systems, airborne radar systems and diagnostic systems for aircraft electrical systems.

Pittman said Litton officials The only embassies not invited, Schmidt said, are those of Warsaw Pact countries and their allies. Schmidt said no sales are made at ARMX, and no weapons brokers will attend. Schmidt said 400 companies from 16 countries will have booths at the show. All of the countries are in Western Europe, except for Israel, the U.S. and New Zealand.

He said the main attraction for the foreign suppliers is a chance to make their pitch to Canadian officials face-to-face and seek out partnerships for possible joint bids on future Canadian defence contracts. Peace activists have attacked the secrecy surrounding ARMX '89, but Schmidt defended the "in don't expect to make any sales. He explained that Canadian contractors need an export permit from the Department of External Affairs for any sales to countries other than the United States. Chilean military attache" Gabriel Allende said he's looking forward to attending the exhibition, where he expects to be Chile's sole representative. "I want to see everything," Allende said.

"It's like a hobby." But Allende said he won't be; making any purchases for the Chilean armed forces, saying procurement is "not my job." External Affairs spokesman Abby Dann wouldn't say whether Chile is under a military embargo, saying the list of such countries is kept confidential because of diplomatic considerations. VANCOUVER BACKLASH Asian immigrants feel not completely welcome Fy Ken MacQueen Southam News Indifference to Asian and especially Hong Kong immigrants is one trait Vancouver cannot be accused of. Mayor Gordon Campbell is in the midst of three public forums on racism and immigration meant to air concerns and defuse mounting tensions. "I'm frightened for the Caucasians; I think that we are a doomed race," said Vancouver resident John Smythe, who complained at the first such forum that he is "absolutely surrounded by new people of Asiatic origin." Hong Kong arrivals to B.C. doubled to 5,000 people last year, representing almost one-quarter of all immigrants and a disproportionate share of the province's new investment income.

Within the past six months, virtually every major media outlet in the city has studied this influx. The stories and broadcasts have examined the free-wheeling business ethics of Hong Kong; the extensive Hong Kong investment in residential real estate (estimated at $500 million a year); the changing face of Vancouver's wealthiest neighborhoods; the disruption to a school system where half the students have English as their second language; the dread of Asian youth gangs. In isolation, most of the stories are factual, says Hanson Lau, executive producer of the Overseas Chinese Voice radio, which broadcasts 12 hours daily in Cantonese. Taken together, the sudden attention has made the century-old Chinese community here feel exploited, stereotyped and under siege, he says. The tension reached a peak this spring when the local CBC television station and the lower mainland's dominant newspapers, Southam-owned Vancouver Sun and the Province, all ran a series on Hong Kong within a three-week period.

Lau, who hosts a phone-in show, was deluged with calls from both newly arrived Hong Kong immigrants and Chinese-Canadians established here for decades or generations. The newcomers seemed hurt and confused, says Lau. "We thought we were welcome here," was a frequent complaint. Established Canadians of Chinese origin were angry. A doctor who settled here more than 20 years ago spoke for many when she described how a driver cut her off, flashed a rude gesture and shouted that she should go back to Hong Kong.

"We don't have to put up with this," she said. The stereotype of the Chinese as underpaid coolie that fuelled resentment, brutal beatings and riots at the turn of the century has been replaced. Today, the target is Chuppies Chi nese Urban Professionals who are resented, paradoxically, for their success. They are said to be aloof, educated and hard-driving, with the resources to wear designer clothes, drive the best European cars and build huge houses in the best neighborhoods, inflating land values, ripping down trees and paving lawns. Lau tells of a wealthy Hong Kong immigrant who settled recently in the elite Shaughnessy district of Vancouver, beside an equally rich Caucasian family.

Both had nine-year-old sons and, for a time, the relationship was cordial. The children played together and the adults exchanged visits. One day, the Chinese father telephoned Lau, distraught, because the Canadian had severed all contact. "The Chinese guy is nonplussed. He says, 'I haven't cut down any trees, what have I done to offend you? "The Canadian neighbor very reluctantly explained to him.

He said, 'Your kid on Saturday went to Chinese school, took piano lessons and takes ballet on Saturday afternoon. Now, my kid wants to take Chinese lessons, piano and ballet. I won't have it. I don't want to put that pressure on my What is the Chinese father to do, Lau asks angrily, force his son to give up his hobbies? The rules keep changing, Wilking agrees. There are complaints that the Chinese are a drain on schools and social services.

Then, too, they are chastised for their academic ambition and their financial success. "On one hand, 'Hey, you're a Canadian now, so start behaving and be part of this whole And on the other hand, they are told, 'You're an immigrant. Know your place'," she says. There is some basis for resentment. Monster homes do exist, isolation is a problem and foreign investment not all Asian is stripping the city's west end of much of its affordable rental accommodation.

Wilking advises new immigrants to remember common courtesies, chat with neighbors over the backyard fence, seek opportunities to volunteer and remember that the trees and flowers and "livability" of the city are venerated here. Misunderstandings on both sides of the fence are inevitable, says Wilking. This is the hardest lesson of all. "They have to understand that in Vancouver, or in Canada, we haven't defined what it is to be Canadian. "We're really in the process of defining it now.

And when people come here, they are part of the process." VANCOUVER Hypocrisy has replaced violence as the new face of racism in British Columbia, say some leaders of Vancouver's Chinese community. The anti-Asian backlash of today is different, more genteel, than the riots, strikes and legislative barriers that have marked the province's long and ugly history of racism. Immigrants and investors flooding to British Columbia's lower mainland from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan face an unsettling welcome: part enthusiasm for their money, their education and their connections, part barely suppressed hostility. "It's not overt, it's a feeling, a sense," says Vancouver Alderman Sandra Wilking, raised and educated in Hong Kong before moving to Vancouver 20 years ago. The Chinese don't wish to call it racism, says Wilking, who won a seat on city council last fall and says she is the first Chinese woman to hold elected office in B.C.

"It's a feeling that I'm being looked at differently; it's not the same feeling as a few years back when cared." Chinese-Canadian lieutenant-governor tries to bridge gap $ffe. ajl isJLr i I rlili ft rf J. 1 tii" vv r5 He has watched the difficult adjustment of some of the recent wave of monied investors leaving Hong Kong in advance of the 1997 return of the British colony to China. "In Hong Kong, if you have lots of money, you are like a king, and people will look at you with awe. Awesomeness is something that rich people in Hong Kong enjoy that they will miss so much in this society," Lam says.

"But," he says with a sigh, "nobody gives a damn whether they are awesome or not. If anything, they just get the reverse result." He tells them that respect must be earned by participation. Newcomers must force themselves to build bridges with other ethnic groups and with the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture, he says. "This (isolation) is where the Chinese fall into so easily. It starts with a ghetto of the mind." He wants to start a volunteer corps, "the lieutenant-governor's 100." He wants Chinese to join the B'nai Brith, Jews to join the Chinese Cultural Centre.

"These volunteers must promise me, the lieutenant-governor, to cross the line. They must be a volunteer in another ethnic group, in another community." Lam crossed that line years ago. Immigrants, he says without apology, must do more. Lam is disturbed that the Vancouver media's fascination with Hong Kong has created the incorrect impression that waves of super-rich investors from the colony are responsible for soaring house prices, the disappearing rental market and the changing face of the city. Not all Hong Kong immigrants are rich, he notes, nor are they even the majority investing in an overheated housing market.

It is time for the Queen's representative to encourage the dousing of overheated emotions. "Let us be a little numb in our observation, blind a little bit," he advises all sides. "Let us be a little deaf. Let us be a little dumb in jumping to criticism. Give people a little time." Southam News VANCOUVER The lieutenant-governor of British Columbia watches the insecure strut of the new wave of Hong Kong immigrants, and the protective hysteria of the Anglo-Saxon mainstream.

David See-Chai Lam the first Chinese-Canadian lieutenant-governor can see better than most the tumult caused by the recent flood of Asian investment in his province. He sees, too, a duty to speak out. From his appointment last September as the Queen's representative, he has been an anomaly: a crusading figurehead. He has raised eyebrows and won plaudits by jumping headlong into a delicate racial debate, stretching the limits of his office far beyond its perceived ceremonial role. "I want to be relevant," the 65-year-old Lam said in a recent interview.

He has asked Asian immigrants to stop speculating in the housing market, urged them to adopt Canadian ways and requested that they to refrain from hacking down trees to build monster houses. He has asked the mainstream to put aside pettiness and insensitivity. He has said things, he cheerfully admits, that would get him branded as racist if he had not been born in Hong Kong. From his 24th-floor penthouse apartment, Lam can see much of what drew him to the city in 1967 from the concrete and the crowds of Hong Kong. Freighters steam toward the Pacific across the blue expanse of English Bay.

The business district towers reach out from the southeast. Directly below is Lost Lagoon and the leafy canopy of Stanley Park. As newcomers, he and his wife Dorothy pledged that one day they would live as close to this spot on the fringes of everything as they could afford. Today, they own the building. Canada and Vancouver have been very good to CP photo David and Dorothy Lam have done well in, and by, British Columbia the right to dismiss a government, but one more usually limited to reading throne speeches, giving royal assent to bills, toasting the Queen and making bland but patriotic speeches.

There is also a loosely defined mandate to encourage worthwhile endeavors and to warn of looming problems, areas where Lam has focused his energies. "I cannot warn," he says, "by sitting across the table and frowning." David Lam, and he has never worked harder to show his gratitude. He amassed a fortune in real estate and business before retiring in 1983. Since then, he has used a family foundation to donate as much as $1 million a year to worthy causes. His biggest contribution may yet stem from Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's decision to offer Lam the vice-regal appointment.

It is a position with such rarely used clout as.