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Have you ever heard of a group called Canadians United Against Modern Exclusion (CUAME)?

Don’t fret. Most people haven’t heard of CUAME either.

But last Friday in east end Toronto, CUAME held a swank fundraising gala at the Casa Deluz Banquet Hall. Tickets ranged from $188 per person to $5,000 for a VIP table.

Of note, Terence Shen, an independent China analyst and journalist, recently raised some red flags about CUAME which purports to be an anti-racism organization.

For starters, Shen notes CUAME’s fundraiser received coverage from at least two Chinese-language media outlets. One report comes from a Toronto-based correspondent affiliated with Chinese Communist Party’s Central Television. The other from a news website that features columns by Michael Chan, a Canadian politician often described as China-friendly.

Shen says this CUAME and its fundraising initiatives have also received coverage from community organizations such as the Chinese Canadian Alliance for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China (Toronto Area), which has been described as part of a broader united front or pro-Beijing network.

Shen notes CUAME was launched last year by a number of well-known figures in the Chinese Canadian community. It pitches itself as a civil liberties shop pushing back against “foreign interference hysteria”, “national security overreach”, and fear of “the other.”

States Shen: “Once you start reading what the group actually publishes – and look at who’s behind it -- the pitch starts to wobble.”

Translation: among the figures reportedly tied to CUAME are senator Yuen Pau Woo and former senator Victor Oh, both of whom are long viewed by critics as among the most Beijing-friendly voices in Canadian politics.

Another supporter is former MP Paul Chiang, who stepped down after a controversy over remarks related to China. (Namely, Chiang shockingly suggested last year that people could turn in Conservative candidate Joe Tay to receive a $180,000 bounty on his head by the mandarins in Beijing.)

CUAME’s central pitch is straightforward, that people are being unfairly targeted just for having “benign ties” to foreign entities. Shen notes that Canada does have a real history of discrimination, from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the internment of Japanese Canadians.

But he says this history shouldn’t be used to blur a different question: how does a country deal with covert or undisclosed political activity tied to foreign actors? Canada’s foreign interference rules are about transparency, not identity. These rules are aimed at undisclosed political activity linked to foreign governments — not at people because of where they come from.

“When every conversation gets reframed as ‘Sinophobia’ or ‘exclusion’, it gets harder to ask basic questions without getting branded a bigot for asking them,” says Shen.

CUAME’s own report leans heavily on historical injustice such as racism against black Canadians, Indigenous communities, and Muslims post-9/11. While Shen says these serious histories deserve serious engagement on their own merits, linking them directly onto today’s national security debate isn’t a neutral move. Rather, it’s a rhetorical pivot – and a powerful one at that.

“There’s a well-documented pattern in how foreign governments – China most prominently – try to shape political outcomes outside their borders,” says Shen. “Analysts and official reports have repeatedly described the use of community organizations, business associations, and cultural groups to do outreach, cultivate political relationships, and steer public debate around elections and policy. That work isn’t always direct, and it isn’t always visible. It often runs through narratives, networks, and advocacy that look completely independent on the surface but track closely with the interests of a foreign state. Which is exactly why transparency matters.”

Set against that backdrop, CUAME’s framing — and the network it’s building — raises real questions, notes Shen. Recasting foreign interference as “modern exclusion” is a powerful rhetorical move on its own. Building the donor base and political proximity that a $188-a-head gala generates is another kind of move entirely.

Bottom line: Canadians United Against Modern Exclusion frames the issue as “exclusion” and fear of the “other”. Yet, voices from inside the very communities CUAME claims to speak for are raising the opposite concern: that foreign state influence is bleeding into Canada’s democratic space, and that the country isn’t paying enough attention.

When Rebel News paid a visit to the Casa Deluz Banquet Hall last Friday to ask why people were attending the CUAME fundraiser, the four most common answers we received were:

• “I’m a plus one.”
• “Sorry, I don’t speak English.”
• “I’m not sure/I don’t know.”
• “No comment.”

Fascinating.

One other detail worth noting: the venue for the fundraiser, Casa Deluz Banquet Hall, has also served as a regular location for Chinese consulate events, including Communist China's National Day receptions.

Surely a coincidence…