On a recent Saturday morning, the NDP candidate for Vancouver Kingsway, Don Davies, sparred with Liberal candidate Wendy Yuan on a Vietnamese radio talk show.
In the evening that same day, Davies went to a dinner and dance event at the St. Patrick Recreational Hall on Main Street, upon the invitation of one of his Filipino-Canadian supporters. At one point, the Teamsters lawyer danced with Leony Cajigas, a nurse from the Philippines.
The next day, Davies was scheduled to attend a dim sum party, this time to court Chinese-Canadian voters.
“There are over 60 languages spoken in Vancouver Kingsway,” Davies told the Straight.
Of the riding’s 119,815 residents, 42,130 have English as a mother tongue only, according to the 2006 census. Moreover, the riding has a visible-minority population of 81,385, of whom people of Chinese descent number 47,605, and those of Filipino origin 11,930.
“I really respect and appreciate and like the multicultural fabric of our riding,” Davies said. “That’s why I live in Kingsway. I’m the only candidate who lives here with roots here.”
Yuan, who came to Canada in 1984, has her own story to tell.
“I came to this country just like most immigrants with $50 in their pockets and a dream,” Yuan told the Straight. “I came with limited means but through hard work, I got recognized and became a successful businesswoman. I understand what immigrants have to go through to reach what they want.”
Once an NDP bailiwick, Vancouver Kingsway has gone Liberal in recent elections. Its current MP, David Emerson, was elected a Liberal but crossed the floor to the Conservative side days after the 2006 vote.
Doug Warkentin, who is running for the Green Party of Canada in Vancouver Kingsway, acknowledged that the ethnic vote has been traditionally one of the areas that his party has a hard time cracking into.
A resident for the past three years in the riding, Warkentin, an engineer, hopes that his personal connections to small business owners that are mostly of immigrant extraction could win him a number of votes.
“Beyond that, just being the Green party candidate, I think anyone who’s interested in the future of Canada, it’s in their interest to support the kind of things that were supporting as well,” Warkentin told the Straight.
The Straight wasn’t able to get a comment from Conservative candidate Salomon Rayek. In a phone conversation on September 19, one of his staff members said the Mexican-born politician “isn’t available for media interviews at this point”.
On October 16, 2007, the Globe and Mail reported on the details of a Conservative operation to target select ethnic and religious groups across Canada to get their votes.
“With their struggles to win seats in Canada’s three biggest cities in 2004 and 2006, Conservatives are convinced that the support of new Canadians is crucial in taking over a number of urban ridings that are currently in Liberal hands,” the paper reported.
The report also cited a document that stated that there is “growing anecdotal evidence that New Canadian values are more aligned with the values of the Conservative Party of Canada”.
But this last point, according to UBC political scientist Fred Cutler, is overemphasized.
“Immigrants aren’t any further conservative on social issues nor are they more spread out in their opinions,” Cutler told the Straight in a phone interview. “There’s variation among immigrants, and there’s variation among nonimmigrants all the way from left to right or Liberal to Conservative or whatever you want to call it.”
Cutler added, “There are just as many Conservative Canadians who are conservative because they are older or they were brought up in a time where values were different or both. And so, it’s a dangerous simplification to think that new Canadians are social conservative in general.”
In Vancouver-Kingsway, David Emerson's old riding, the Conservatives aren't considered to really be in the running; the real competition is between the Liberal's Wendy Yuan and the NDP's Don Davies with Green's darkhorse candidate presumed to be not in the front.

The history of the riding can, in some measure, be read in the parties fielding candidates; in addition to the four national parties there are contestants from Libertarian, Communist, and Marxist-Leninist parties. The rich diversity of the riding has less than half of all households reporting English as the first language at home.

Emerson cited this diversity after announcing he would not be running for a third term. "The reality is, Kingsway was an eminently winnable seat," said the Conservative Minister. "Not because I'm a hugely popular fellow in Kingsway, but because of vote splits and the way the first-past-the-post system works."

Key in those vote splits are issues dividing the Liberal and NDP candidates. Naturalized Canadian Yuan points to her immigrant history, giving her an empathy with the immigrant and ethnic neighborhoods of the riding. “I came with limited means but through hard work, I got recognized and became a successful businesswoman. I understand what immigrants have to go through to reach what they want.”

“I really respect and appreciate and like the multicultural fabric of our riding,” says her NDP opponent Davies. “That’s why I live in Kingsway. I’m the only candidate who lives here with roots here.” The Teamster's lawyer is originally from Edmonton, but has been living in Vancouver environs since 1991.

The Conservative party candidate Salomon Rayek is not responding to press inquiries from several sources, and is cited as an example of a long-shot candidate - a candidate with little likelihood of being elected yet represents the party anyway. 

Doug Warkentin, the Green Party candidate, ran for Member of Legislative Assembly in BC's 2005 elections in the Vancouver-Langara provincial electoral district, coming in third to the Liberal's Carol Taylor. He's lived for the past three years in the riding, an engineer and small business owner who has a history of community involvement across south Vancouver. "I see the neighbourhoods in and around Kingsway as a great place to build on the natural vibrancy of the small business sector as a backbone for ethnically and economically diverse communities."

Matt Kadioglu of the Libertarians is a relative newcomer with one previous campaign, while Donna Petersen (Marxist-Leninist) and Kimball Cariou (Communist) each have four previous contests according to  Pundits Guide.

The stage for this fight was set in 2006, when newly-elected Liberal Dave Emerson crossed the floor and directly into the Conservative Cabinet, first as Minister of International Trade then as Minister of Foreign Affairs following the resignation of Maxime Bernier. His defection stirred a firestorm of controversy locally in the staunchly left-leaning riding, which had elected a Progressive Conservative candidate exactly once since it's creation in 1953 - during the 1958 Diefenbaker landslide.

In 2004 then-Prime Minister Paul Martin parachuted Emerson in, displacing the brewing contest between incumbent Liberal Sophia Leung and Ms Yuan. Emerson won the riding against Ian Waddell, the NDP candidate who had represented the riding from 1979-1988, and again by a wider margin in 2006 when other Liberals fell as victims of the Sponsorship Scandal.