More than 50,000 Canadians have signed a petition calling on the National Arts Centre (NAC) in Ottawa to allow Shen Yun Performing Arts to return, after the federal government-owned venue decided not to host the show for its 2026 season.
Fans of Shen Yun, a community of audience members and supporters, is requesting that Shen Yun be restored at the NAC, which had previously hosted performances of the New York-based classical Chinese dance company for 18 years.
The NAC, a federal Crown corporation, declined to host the show in both 2026 and 2027, citing a combination of commercial reasons, operational matters, and contractual issues. Records obtained through an access to information and privacy (ATIP) request, meanwhile, also indicate that the decision was made just months after the venue’s senior management met with Chinese Embassy officials, and the Fans group allege foreign interference.
Maria Matyiku, chair of Fans of Shen Yun, a Canadian federal not-for-profit group, delivered over 50,000 petition signatures to the Prime Minister’s Office on Oct. 2.
Matyiku says that the public’s response to the “Let Shen Yun Perform” campaign has been “remarkable” and that 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 launched the petition and public awareness campaign in June at LetShenYunPerform.ca, documenting instances of Chinese interference with the show.
The petition calls on the NAC’s board of trustees 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 form 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.
One part of the ATIP records shows NAC internal emails dated from February 2023 to 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 after giving him a tour of the venue, and again two months later, in October 2024, at Wang’s official residence for dinner, according to the emails.
The theatre subsequently informed Shen Yun’s Ottawa local presenter in June 2025 that it had decided not to rent its performance hall to Shen Yun for the 2026 season, following months of delaying confirmation of the 2026 show dates. The NAC’s current CEO, Annabelle Cloutier, who took over from Deacon in December 2025, has continued the refusal.
“Canadians, not the CCP, should decide what plays on Canada’s national stage,” the Fans of Shen Yun petition says.
Meanwhile, another part of the ATIP records shows internal emails dated from January to May 2025 that specifically relate to Shen Yun and that contain concerns from various NAC managers mainly over staff grievances and contract compliance.
“Whatever the reason [for refusing rental to Shen Yun], Canada’s national stage delivered what the CCP wanted,” reads the petition form.
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.
Shen Yun was founded in New York 20 years ago by leading artists whose mission is to revive China’s traditional culture, which the group says has been nearly all but destroyed under communist rule. The company has since grown to having eight touring companies performing in over 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 that combines meditation and slow-moving qigong exercises with moral teachings centred on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.
The practice was introduced to the public in China in 1992 and quickly gained popularity, reaching an estimated 70–100 million practitioners by 1999, based on government figures, according to the U.S.-based Falun Dafa Infocenter. However, its rapid growth was not tolerated by the regime. Since 1999, it has been the target of persecution across mainland China, with the regime carrying out mass detentions, torture, and imprisonment in forced labour camps. Independent reports also indicate hundreds of thousands of practitioners may have been killed for their organs as part of a large-scale organ transplantation business in China.
Threats Linked to China
Shen Yun’s local presenter says venues hosting the show have been pressured not to allow the show to perform, including via 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.
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 that 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.
