More Than 50,000 Sign Petition Calling for Shen Yun’s Return to Ottawa

More than 50,000 Canadians have signed a petition calling on the National Arts Centre to allow Shen Yun Performing Arts to return to Ottawa, after the government-owned venue decided not to host the show for the 2026/2027 season.

Fans of Shen Yun Canada, a community of audience members and supporters, is requesting that Shen Yun perform at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre (NAC), which previously hosted the classical Chinese dance company for 18 years.

The NAC, which is a federal Crown corporation, declined to host the show in 2026 and 2027, citing commercial reasons. Records obtained through an access to information and privacy (ATIP) request show the decision was made just months after senior management of the venue met with Chinese Embassy officials.

Maria Matyiku, chair of Fans of Shen Yun Canada, delivered more than 50,000 petition signatures to the Prime Minister’s Office on Oct. 2.

Matyiku says the public’s response to the “Let Shen Yun Perform” campaign has been “remarkable,” and the number of signatures continues to grow.

“This milestone is significant because it shows that freedom of expression in art matters to Canadians and is something worth fighting for,” she told The Epoch Times.

“It demonstrates a strong Canadian desire to bring the Shen Yun Show back to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.”

Fans of Shen Yun Canada launched the petition and public awareness campaign at LetShenYunPerform.ca, documenting instances of Chinese interference with the show.

The petition calls on NAC’s board of directors to “restore Shen Yun to its stage.”

It also calls on Prime Minister Mark Carney, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller, the federal government, and all MPs to “help bring Shen Yun back to the NAC, ensure no Canadian arts institution yields to the CCP’s censorship, and never let relations with Communist China cost Canadians’ freedom.”

“Canadians’ Freedom is Not the CCP’s to Take. Defend it,” the petition reads, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

The Epoch Times contacted the NAC and the Prime Minister’s Office for comment but didn’t hear back by publication time.

The ATIP records show emails between February 2023 and April 2025 in which the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa reached out to NAC leadership with invitations to events and requests to meet, with efforts increasing after the arrival of China’s new ambassador to Ottawa, Wang Di, in mid-2024.

Shortly after Wang took up his post, then-NAC CEO Christopher Deacon said in a July 12, 2024, internal email that he had been advised to meet with Wang. The ATIP records do not specify who issued the “advice.” Deacon met with Wang at the NAC in August 2024, and at Wang’s official residence in October 2024, according to the emails.

The theatre informed Shen Yun’s local presenter in June 2025 that it had decided not to rent the facility to Shen Yun for the 2026/2027 season, after months of delaying confirmation of the show dates. The NAC’s new CEO, Annabelle Cloutier, has continued the refusal.

“Canadians, not the CCP, should decide what plays on Canada’s national stage,” the Fans of Shen Yun petition says.

Matyiku said efforts to bring the show back to the NAC will continue.

“We will stand up until Canadian voices are being heard and will be able to continue their journey into Chinese culture by seeing Shen Yun back to the National Arts Centre,” she said.

Based in New York, Shen Yun was founded in 2006 by leading artists whose stated mission is to revive China’s traditional culture, which the group says has been diminished under decades of communist rule. The company performs in more than 100 cities every year, with more than 1 million audience members each season.

Shen Yun’s artists are practitioners of Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The practice has been subjected to a persecution campaign by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 1999, resulting in the harassment, arbitrary detention, torture, and forced organ harvesting of practitioners.

Threats Linked to China

Shen Yun’s local presenters say venues hosting the show have been pressured not to allow the show to perform, including more than 150 fake bomb threats targeting theatres across the world over the past two years.

Authorities have linked a number of threats targeting Shen Yun in Canada this year to China.

After receiving hoax bomb threats, Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts cancelled the final six of eight scheduled Shen Yun performances in late March and early April, despite a police investigation confirming that the threats were unfounded. The theatre agreed a few weeks later to host rescheduled shows in late June, following persistent efforts by the local presenters.

The Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver also received hoax bomb threats ahead of Shen Yun’s April performances, but the theatre allowed the shows to proceed after the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) confirmed the threats were not credible. The VPD linked the email account used to send the threats to a phone number based in China. The same email account was used to send threats to the Toronto theatre.

News emerged in May that officials from the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver had met with with a city hall official in April to pressure the city not to allow Shen Yun to perform at Queen Elizabeth Theatre, which is owned by the City of Vancouver.

Omid Ghoreishi contributed to this report.