EDITORIAL – Credit to Milobar for standing up against racism; will others?
MLA Peter Milobar in the Ledge in 2021. (Image: BC Hansard file)
An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for the diverse collection of candidates calling themselves BC Conservatives to run into trouble with each other.
Marina Sapozhnikov, the party’s candidate in Juan de Fuca-Malahat, may yet become an MLA if a recount goes her way. At the end of election night, she was only 23 votes behind the NDP’s Dana Lajeunesse. On Saturday (Oct. 26, 2024) the difference grew to 106 with the addition of mail-ins but there are still 185 votes to count.
On election night, she granted an interview to a student journalist in which she asked the interviewer what she was studying. When the student replied that she was taking indigenous studies, Sapozhnikov is reported as saying universities are teaching a one-sided view of indigenous history and that First Nations “didn’t have any sophisticated laws. They were savages. They fought each other all the time.”
She then amended her comment to “maybe 90 per cent savages” and later clarified she was talking about the past, not today. But she also noted that they “didn’t have an alphabet” and added that 90 per cent of indigenous people use drugs.
Leader John Rustad says Sapozhnikov’s words were “profoundly harmful, painting a distorted picture” and “do not reflect the values of this party.”
And Peter Milobar, who will serve as a BC Conservative MLA after a career with the BC Liberals/ BC United, is understandably angry. He posted this on Facebook on Saturday:
“I am feeling outraged, and filled with sadness.
“I regard my family with love and respect, and am thankful that, as a white male that married into a First Nation family, they welcomed me with open arms. I do not take that for granted, and I try to be respectful of their values and perspectives.
“I want to be crystal clear, the comments made by BC Conservative candidate Marina Sapozhnikov regarding indigenous people are reprehensible and I do not condone them or share those views in any way shape or form.
“The only way real and meaningful reconciliation can happen is with genuine conversations, shared learnings and mutual respect.”
Good for Milobar for standing up for his family and for taking a fellow party member and potential MLA to task. The question is whether others in the party will do the same and, most importantly, what Rustad will do about the situation.
It’s not racist to question the content of a university program but the inflammatory way in which Sapozhnikov generalized certainly is. Will others in the party also have the courage to condemn her words?
Will, for example, Ward Stamer, the MLA-elect for Kamloops-North Thompson, speak up? (Maybe, by the time you read this, he already has.) Will others? Will they demand Rustad do something?
Rustad has given no indication that Sapozhnikov is no longer welcome in the party. One can’t help but wonder if it has to do with arithmetic — the outcome of the voting in her riding could be pivotal in who forms government. If she wins, she’ll have helped put the Conservatives over the top.
If she loses, well, she’ll sink back into oblivion and her outrageous comments, sadly, will likely be allowed to be forgotten. Either way, it doesn’t speak well for the party or for Rustad.
Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
He stood up harder pretending he was against free lunch. No wonder people hate politics.
LikeLike
I think we need to put this ugly situation into perspective, Dr Sapozhnikov was born and raised in the former USSR, when the Iron Curtain fell she immigrated to Israel before finally migrating to Canada 20 yrs ago. She’s a foreigner from the Soviet Union with deeply engrained beliefs from a bygone era from a culturural ideology hostile and ignorant of the “West”.
As repugnant as these beliefs are in our current culture, I think they’d be rather common in the culture she grew up in, thank goodness she wasn’t elected. What bothers me more than the ignorance of this candidate is how the Conservative Party could nominate such an unenlightened thinker in the 21st century. I realize they haven’t elected anyone since the ’50’s but I assumed their thinking would have evolved in the past 70 years.
LikeLike
Mat tells us that “She’s a foreigner from the Soviet Union with deeply engrained beliefs from a bygone era from a culturural ideology hostile and ignorant of the “West”.” What exactly are we Mat but foreigners fed a diet of Cold War propaganda, which infiltrated almost all aspects of society and its culture in America, including political rhetoric, education, film, television, literature and music. These Trojan Horses divided the world into ‘thinks and think-nots” where a whole industry called “Bamboozle” is our daily bread.
This anti union anti democratic socialism bamboozles started in the 1920’s becoming a flood in the 1950’s with McCarthyism targeting anyone who questioned and labelled them as communists. Actors like Ronald Reagan, Walt Disney, Charlton Heston and many others informed on their fellow actors, many who were blacklisted as ‘lefties” in a campaign of fear which directly damaged or ended the careers and incomes of scores of persons, thinking people, working in film, television, and radio. The bamboozle that I see in your comment is more common than not in our society.
Recently, in in the Canadian parliament, we insulted history, we insulted the men and women who died on the beaches in Dieppe and Normandy as we saluted Nazism with a standing ovation and allowed people whose ancestors had committed atrocities to convince us that the crimes had been committed by someone else.
Are you aware that this year, Russia, the liberator of Auschwitz will not be able to take part in the main events on the anniversary of its liberation. Is there a greater insult to common sense, historical truth, and the memory of all those murdered at Auschwitz, whose ashes were used to fertilize cabbages, than the fact that the liberating nation at the cost of tens of millions of Soviet lives has not been invited to the commemorative event, while the ancestors of those whose ideology and whose trains brought the victims to the ovens will be present.
The descendants of war criminals like Hunka, and 17,000 others who came to Canada from all over Europe, felt ashamed not of their ancestors’ crimes, that they now call “freedom fighters” but of losing the war. Mainstream Media has become a partner of the Achilles Heel in the revision of values that brought horror to the European continent in the 1940’s. In many of the countries that were former allies of Hitler fascists are sitting in parliaments blaming the victims for their crimes. What exactly is an “enlightened thinker” Mat that you write about or is this just another Achilles Heel protecting the truth which requires understanding and a lot of hard work in order to see through the bamboozle
LikeLike
given this party. I expect it won’t be the last time he is apologising for comments made by his fellow MLA’s, and I would be shocked if Rustad did anything about her.
LikeLike
Absolutely disgusting racist comments from Marina Sapozhnikov. Rustad needs to demonstrate that political power is not worth the drag of these kinds of people.
We need serious leaders from serious parties. A true sign of leadership would be to make Marina Sapozhnikov a backbencher for the remainder of her term, censure her completely, or better yet, kick her out of the party. I somehow doubt the latter will happen in a race so close.
Welcome to the sleeze game of politics.
LikeLike
I also respect Mr. Milobar for his stand against racism.
It could be a long four years for him if things don’t change. Or, he could sit as an Independent.
LikeLike