A B.C. Conservative candidate awaiting the results of a recount that could determine who forms the provincial government used a racist slur to describe Indigenous Peoples during an election-night interview.
Marina Sapozhnikov, who finished only 23 votes behind the NDP’s Dana Lajeunesse in Juan de Fuca-Malahat, said that before Europeans came to North America, First Nations Peoples “didn’t have any sophisticated laws. They were savages. They fought each other all the time.”
When the Vancouver Island University student interviewing Sapozhnikov challenged the candidate, she replied: “Not 100 per cent savages, maybe 90 per cent savages.”
During the hour-long interview, a recording of which was given to Postmedia News late Thursday, Sapozhnikov spoke about her concerns with Indigenous history courses being taught in B.C. universities, her view that B.C.’s adoption of the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act renders every non-Indigenous British Columbian a “second-rate citizen,” and said that “90 per cent of Indigenous people use drugs.”
Sapozhnikov elaborated on those views in a 30-minute phone interview Friday with Postmedia, saying Canadian university courses “only teach a one-sided story” when it comes to Indigenous history.
B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad said in an emailed statement Friday he was “appalled and deeply saddened” by Sapozhnikov’s comments. He said her “remarks do not reflect the values of our party or the vision we have for a united British Columbia, and we are taking this matter seriously.”
“Her words are not only inaccurate but profoundly harmful, painting a distorted picture of the communities I have worked alongside for many years,” Rustad said. “Our party stands for unity, respect and reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. We must continue to move forward by embracing truth and compassion — not harmful misconceptions that only divide us further.”
But Rustad made no indication he was considering her removal from the party.
Sapozhnikov is key to the Tories’ hopes for forming government. Her Vancouver Island riding is the most-watched district in the province following last weekend’s tight election. Depending on the result of this weekend’s recount in that riding and others, Sapozhnikov could be elected as an MLA, which could be crucial to helping the Conservatives potentially form a majority government.
Terry Teegee, elected regional chief of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, said: “I’m appalled that John Rustad doesn’t kick her out of his own party.”
Rustad’s condemnation of his candidate’s comments appears to be “just lip service,” Teegee said, “because he’s done this before with the other candidate that had disparaging remarks against Palestinians,” referring to Conservative South Surrey MLA-elect Brent Chapman, who drew criticism before the election over his own racist comments, but wasn’t removed from the party.
“He should be kicking these people out of his party. If he wants to demonstrate what B.C. is about, they don’t deserve to make government. These are people who are supposed to be making, potentially, the government of British Columbia,” Teegee said. “These are very racist comments.”
Former Vancouver Sun columnist Stephen Hume, a journalism professor at Vancouver Island University, had assigned every student in class to contact a different candidate on Vancouver Island and ask if they could accompany them on election night as the results came in, interview them and report on it.
Student Alyona Latsinnik contacted Sapozhnikov by email the day before election day and asked if she could “report live from the location of your office while the results are being announced.”
The candidate replied that the student would be “very welcome to join” their team’s election-night party and provided the address.
On election night, Latsinnik asked Sapozhnikov a series of questions, and they had a wide-ranging conversation. Latsinnik didn’t ask Sapozhnikov about Indigenous issues or reconciliation. But the conversation veered in that direction when the candidate asked Latsinnik about her studies and she replied she was taking Indigenous studies.
“It’s all a lie,” Sapozhnikov said.
“What do you mean?” Latsinnik asked.
“They rewrite Indigenous history,” Sapozhnikov said. “They make them some enlightened people. They didn’t have an alphabet.”
On Friday, Sapozhnikov told Postmedia that she worries that Canada’s university courses on Indigenous history “does have some agenda in it.”
Asked what agenda she meant and who was behind it, she replied: “I really don’t know what the purpose is, and I don’t want to attribute motives to people. But if somebody doesn’t represent the whole story, then you should ask those people who teach it what the agenda is and what their motives are. But all I can say is that certain things don’t add up.”
She clarified that she didn’t mean that Indigenous Peoples in the present are “savages” but “hundreds of years ago.”
“I think we need to speak with actually Indigenous people and find out what they think about it. I try to speak with some of them and they’re not, they avoid this conversation,” Sapozhnikov said.
Later, Sapozhnikov, a former family doctor, said: “When I used to see Indigenous people as patients, I wasn’t able to talk to them. Because they don’t talk. As soon as I’d ask just, sometimes, very innocent questions, they just shut up. They don’t talk.”
The NDP MLA-elect for Langford-Juan de Luca, Ravi Parmar, said in an emailed statement that Sapozhnikov’s comments are “racist and abhorrent.”
“John Rustad has protected each of his candidates who have spread hate. Now, he says he’s appalled by these statements, but we’ve heard that before. If he truly believes these racist remarks are unacceptable, he will remove this candidate from his party immediately,” Parmar said. “If John Rustad doesn’t act, he is once again confirming that there is no consequence in his party for spreading hate.”
Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau said: “It’s not enough for a leader to be appalled and saddened. Actions speak louder than words.”
“These comments are an extremely troubling pattern of dehumanizing comments from B.C. Conservatives about Indigenous people. The sheer volume of racist comments made by B.C. Conservative candidates indicates a systemic problem within the Party that John Rustad has yet to address,” Furstenau said.
“While we have seen a disturbing trend of normalizing problematic statements in politics, it is important to acknowledge that these comments are being made by people expecting to earn a tax-payer-funded salary to make decisions on behalf of all British Columbians. Their decisions in the Legislature have tremendous weight, and we cannot simply brush these comments to the side.”
At one point in the election-night interview, Sapozhnikov told Latsinnik: “If you want me to tell you what I think, you go ahead and print it, I don’t care,” adding that if her professor would “dare to invite” her to come speak to her class, she would do it.
Near the end of her Friday interview with Postmedia, Sapozhnikov said she was “glad that we’re having this conversation.”
“It’s all very good, it will create some kind of discussion,” Sapozhnikov said. “We need a discussion to happen on a personal level, this needs to be talked about.”
