City councillors express support for Filipino cultural centre in Vancouver

City councillors express support for creating a new Filipino cultural centre in Vancouver

Sinulog Festival in Cebu, Philippines. (Shutterstock)

Two city councillors with the ABC Vancouver party are making it known there should be a Filipino cultural centre in Vancouver.

Next week, Vancouver City Council is expected to approve a member motion by city councillors Rebecca Bligh and Lenny Zhou that would direct Mayor Ken Sim to write a letter to senior governments expressing the municipal government’s support for a cultural centre dedicated to celebrating and honouring the Filipino Canadian community.

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Sim’s letter would inform Premier David Eby; BC Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture, and Sport Lana Popham; and federal Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Infrastructure, and Communities Dominic LeBlanc of City Council’s support for such a cultural centre, and its ideal location within Vancouver.

“The City of Vancouver has been identified by the Filipino community as a desirable place to locate a Filipino Cultural Center to serve all of BC’s Filipino community,” reads their motion.

“British Columbia and Metro Vancouver’s Filipino community have long identified the need for a Filipino Cultural Center to enable local celebrations and cultural performances and to help connect Filipinos born in Canada to their heritage and ensure that younger Filipinos remain connected to their roots.”

According to the most recent census, there are over 36,000 residents within the City of Vancouver who are Filipino, behind the city’s two largest groups of visible minorities — over 37,000 South Asians, and more than 167,000 Chinese.

Moreover, Metro Vancouver as a whole has Canada’s second-largest Filipino community. Across Metro Vancouver, the Filipino community has a population of 123,170 residents — behind the 291,000 South Asians and almost 475,000 Chinese who live in the region.

Some of the largest clusters of Filipino shops and restaurants within the City of Vancouver include along Fraser Street and near SkyTrain Joyce-Collingwood Station.

City Council’s call for a Filipino cultural centre would align with Premier David Eby’s directions in his mandate letters to his new provincial cabinet members in December 2022. He instructed Popham to work with local communities to “advance emerging museum programs and proposals including the Chinese Canadian Museum, a South Asian Museum, and a provincial Filipino Cultural Centre.”

The Chinese Canadian Museum in Vancouver’s Chinatown will open on Canada Day 2023, after receiving $48.5 million from the provincial government and $5.2 million from the federal government.

There has also been talk of identifying potential funding sources for the Komagata Maru Museum at the Khalsa Diwan Society’s temple in South Vancouver. But so far, a potential project to establish a Filipino cultural centre appears to be the least advanced among the three museum programs listed in the mandate letter.

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