Vancouver's lawyer challenges candidates seeking Chinese names on ballots

Candidates in Vancouver’s municipal elections are required to use their “usual” name on the ballot, the city’s lawyer told a provincial court hearing on Wednesday.

The city’s chief election officer, Jason Twa, filed two identical applications against seven candidates in total asking the B.C. provincial court to forbid the use of their names in Chinese characters alongside their English names, arguing they were not part of their usual names.

The candidates, including current ABC councillor Lenny Zhou and a OneCity candidate for council, Iona Bonamis, opposed the order, saying the Chinese character names they use alongside their English names are indeed their usual names.

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“It’s been part of my identity my entire life, it’s a name that my parents gave me at birth,” Bonamis said outside court before the hearing started. “It’s what my relatives call me, it’s what many in the Chinese community call me.

City lawyer Grant Murray told Judge Roger Cutler that all the candidates, with the exception of Bonamis, appeared to exclusively use their English names and not their Chinese names on social media.

The case was heard by Cutler by video from Duncan to eliminate any perception of bias from a Vancouver-based judge.

Murray told the court in Zhou’s case, “All of the correspondence (with the electoral office) is signed Lenny Zhou or Lenny, not the name in Chinese characters.”

It “doesn’t appear that he typically uses” that Chinese name and in the 2022 election he said it was not his usual name, he said.

He said most of the candidates had originally filed their nomination papers using only their English name using the Latin alphabet and returned to the electoral office on Friday, the final deadline for nomination papers to be filed, and asked to add their Chinese character names.