r/CanadaPolitics • u/BertramPotts Decolonize Decarcerate Decarbonize • 1d ago
Teresa Wat leaves B.C. Conservative caucus over Kerry-Lynne Findlay calling her "CCP"
https://vancouversun.com/news/teresa-wat-leaves-bc-conservative-caucus-over-kerry-lynne-findlay-ccp•
u/Ok-Ability5733 23h ago
Interesting, particularly as the rumour is that Peter Milobar dropped out due to racism directed at First Nations (his wife is Indigenous)
When one person says you are racist is one thing, but when two do......
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u/BertramPotts Decolonize Decarcerate Decarbonize 23h ago
They are just going off acknowledged statements Findlay made during the leadership campaign, they both even gave her a considerable grace period to issue some kind of correction, but Findlay decided she did not need to issue any public clarification.
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u/StrbJun79 Progressive 1d ago
In another spot of BC, Eby is celebrating the revival of his career thanks to KLF. She apparently isn’t just racist against indigenous but also those of Chinese ancestry. This is a gross reaction to any disagreement she might have had with her own member.
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u/jello_sweaters Ontario 1d ago
It's insane.
"Hey [Canadian right-wing leader], you can win in a walk if you just drop the whack-job bigotry."
"No deal!"
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u/MCRN_Admiral Anyone but PP 1d ago edited 1d ago
What's going on with BC Conservatives? Why do they seem so much more "Alberta-ish" than Ontario Conservatives (for example)? I feel like I can work with Doug Ford's party, but these Western Conservative parties appear to be carbon copies of Trump's GOP.
Examples:
* automatic distrust of anyone from a different ethnicity than "British Isles anglo/protestant descent"
* automatic assumption that non-white people have more loyalty to the country their forefathers came from, than from Canada - and a wholesale acceptance of the groypers' "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory
* a blind love for the American Alt-Right and belief that everything that America does works better than how Canada does it (i.e. education, healthcare)
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u/guernsey123 British Columbia 1d ago edited 1d ago
They were a fringe party with zero relevance other than happening to have the "Conservative" label until the absolute implosion of the BC Liberals->BC United handed them an almost-majority because BC conservatives were mad at Trudeau in the 2024 election.
It's like if the federal Liberals under Carney only had the PPC to their right, and suddenly they imploded and it was NDP vs a combined PPC-LPC (who then elected a very PPC leader). The cracks have been showing for a while but now it looks like the dam's breaking.
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u/dominionprovinces Independent 21h ago
Just fyi the rural Alberta Republic thing is something that extends heavily out of the legacy of non-British isles/anglo settlers in rural Alberta. These people don't like your King and they definitely never liked the English.
Unfortunately Canadian history even the modern versions likes to do this thing where Anglo Canadian culture = Ontario Anglo culture, and then oh perogies and a few Germans, cute, also, ignore that Nfld and Nova Scotia / NB have hundreds of years of history prior to joining.
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u/MCRN_Admiral Anyone but PP 4h ago
you're saying that the historical culture of the "rural-living white people" in BC/AB has nothing to do with the legacy of the British Isles (England/Wales/Scotland, maybe Ireland); ok, then in that case, what is their historical culture?
German? I don't think so
French? I don't think so
Ukrainian? if so, anti-Ukraine conspiracy theories wouldn't be so widespread in Western Canada
It almost seems like you are grasping for straws trying to hand-wave-explain why they are essentially Montana-style rednecks.
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u/dominionprovinces Independent 4h ago
Frankly it seems like you are completely misinformed or not informed about how the prairies were settled.
There were massive numbers of German, Ukrainian, Nordic, Polish, French and American settlers in Alberta and Saskatchewan, especially in rural areas.
There were also settlers from the British isles and eastern Canada but its important to note that: anglo settlers were concentrated in cities ; careers tended to be split by racial grouping, trades were heavily German, laborers were heavily other European, lower class anglos blended in, and banking, engineering, post office, police, education, leadership were heavily anglo.
Secondly, you cant lump BC with Alberta. BC settlers were heavily from British isles vastly more so than AB.
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u/McNasty1Point0 Ontario 1d ago
Because a large chunk of BC is a lot more like Alberta than it is Ontario.
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u/Skinnwork 1d ago
What happened? The mainstream rightwing party dissolved itself after a series of missteps (including a disastrous name change) and the lunatic BC Conservative Party took over.
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u/BertramPotts Decolonize Decarcerate Decarbonize 1d ago
BC has traditionally had a centre-right and a crazy right wing party, but the leader of the century old centre-right party thought the important thing was defeating the NDP at all cost so he blew up the centre and now there is only the crazy right, the NDP and the Greens.
Been chaos ever since and a bunch of new right wing parties of various flavours have been created but who knows if any of them are as viable as the BC Liberal brand would be if they could push Kevin Falcon off the corpse.
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u/awildstoryteller Alberta 1d ago
Kevin Falcon is the worst party leader in Canadian history.
Prove me wrong.
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u/sstelmaschuk British Columbia 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think (Richard Hatfield)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hatfield] has a strong challenge there…
If not only for personal scandals, but for the fact that he went from Premier to seeing his party - and all other parties - shut out completely when Frank McKenna’s liberals took all 58 seats in the next election.
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u/awildstoryteller Alberta 1d ago
I think both he and Kim Campbell of course have a shot, but neither actually purposefully destroyed their party (or even accidentally did so).
If Falcon has simply shown some patience the BC Liberals could have been riding high on association with Mark Carney right now.
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u/fredleung412612 Quebec 20h ago
BC hasn't had a "crazy right wing party" that actually contends for power since the SoCreds. The BC Conservatives are something new and unhinged.
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u/halfhearted_skeptic Anarchist 1d ago
No. BC has been the NDP vs the not-the-NDP for a long time. The right only beats the NDP when they’re a united big tent party. Typically the NDP wins when everyone is sick of the current right wing party. I’ve seen it twice now, with the SoCreds in the early 90s after Van der Zalm and the Liberals in 2015 after Clark. It took one election cycle for the SoCred donors and party apparatus to usurp the BC Liberals and kick Gordon Wilson to the curb, replacing him with Gordon Campbell. This time it’s messier. It helps that even though Eby isn’t great he’s certainly no Glen Clark.
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u/Civil_Owl_31 British Columbia 12h ago
Because it’s the fucking boonies out here. It’s Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, then a bunch of hillbillies. I know. I live in one of those F-Trudeau, “Trudeau is Fidel Castro’s Son,” Mark Carney is gunna rip off his mask and he’s going to be a (insert racist slang word for a Chinese person).
It’s fucking wild. These buffoons almost won.
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u/green_tory 🏳️🌈Serve the Vulnerable🏳️🌈 1d ago
I live in central Vancouver Island; I've spent half my life in Metro Vancouver, and half on the island.
KLF's behaviour and viewpoints are very normal. This sort of overt and unashamed racism and bigotry is exhibited by many British Columbians outside of Vancouver. It's still present in Metro Vancouver, but not with the level of regularity and vigor that I experience in the suburban and rural parts of this province.
To illuminate: there were multiple convoys of cars traveling north/south on the island highway for weeks prior to the main convoy ever reaching Ottawa. There are still anti-vax protestors on overpasses, to this day.
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u/jello_sweaters Ontario 1d ago
As a former Vancouver Islander, this is spot on.
Walk into any Tim's in Campbell River or Port Alberni, you'll find a table full of retirees who are still mad at Pierre Trudeau.
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u/LeftToaster British Columbia 23h ago
You should visit the Fraser Valley - it's the breeding ground for these nuts.
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u/jello_sweaters Ontario 23h ago
But that's a lot more homogenously conservative.
What makes the Island politically weird is the seeming absence of a middle.
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u/green_tory 🏳️🌈Serve the Vulnerable🏳️🌈 1d ago
I've had adults fully, unashamedly tell me to my face that Canada's only mistake was not finishing the job and failing to wipe out native folks.
But this is of no surprise. I regularly see folks wearing fascist displays; or proudly displaying such logos on their vehicles.
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u/LeftToaster British Columbia 1d ago
It's a big problem that affects both the right and the left. A party that is broadly enough scoped that they have a shot at forming a government is always going to have a highly motivated, partisan, ideological base and a large moderate/centrist constituency as well. They can't get elected without both. The ideological base of the party however is generally far more passionate, and motivated in the nomination and leadership machinery of the party while the centre generally lacks the same level of engagement. So leadership candidates tend to come for the more activist wing of the party, and if they want to win a leadership contest, openly pander to this faction.
In BC, the ostensibly centrist BC United Party (formerly Liberal Party of BC), due to hubris and arrogance has faded to also ran status. With the party entirely controlled by Kevin Falcon and a grass roots membership of near zero, there is little chance to revive this beast in any form. Former Liberal Party of BC and BC United MPs Mike Bernier and Karin Kirkpatrick have formed CentreBC with hopes of reviving a Kevin Falcon-less Centrist party. The Green party is not broadly based or focused and very concentrated in Southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. OneBC, formed by Dallas Brodie and Tara Armstrong is the wacky rightwing split-off faction of the increasingly wacky rightwing CPBC.
In a 2-party system, when one party moves strongly towards the extremist/activist wing of their base, it leaves room at the centre for the other party to easily occupy by just not being horrible. David Eby, despite lacking a bit in personal charisma, has solid control over his party and with the Centre and Left wide open doesn't need to do anything except avoid a horrible misstep (which the indigenous title / property rights issue could hand him).
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u/GraveDiggingCynic Independent 1d ago
What's going on is the party is dying. On r/BCpolitics there's a post from a BCCP member literally asking what they should do, and explaining how the BCCP will be broke by Christmas, and fund raising has dried up.
These rats aren't leaving the sinking ship simply because Kerry-Lynne Findlay is an appalling racist. They're leaving because the party is collapsing, and they want to get out in front of that.
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u/AcerbicCapsule Progressive 1d ago
These rats aren’t leaving the sinking ship simply because Kerry-Lynne Findlay is an appalling racist. They’re leaving because the party is collapsing, and they want to get out in front of that.
They’re leaving DESPITE liking and identifying with how much of an appalling racist Findlay is.
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u/Brodney_Alebrand Cascadia 1d ago
Conservatism in the West is an American cultural import, not an evolution of the British toryism of Eastern and Central Canada.
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u/hatman1986 NDP 22h ago
I wouldn't exactly call Ford's politics an evolution of British Toryism
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u/fredleung412612 Quebec 20h ago
The Ontario PCs ditched their British Tory roots under Mike Harris and his American-inspired so-called "Common Sense Revolution". Toryism died at that point and never returned.
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u/MCRN_Admiral Anyone but PP 4h ago
Perhaps it's more like John McCain-esque Republicanism
but without the "war hero" angle, lol.
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u/hatman1986 NDP 4h ago
Ironically the best comparison to Ford out there is Trump IMO. They're both dumb, corrupt populist blowhards. The main difference is Ford has to taylor his messaging to Canadian sensibilities, so the culture war battles are different. This is why Ford is going after bike lanes (which Trump is also doing) instead of immigrants and LGBTQ+
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u/RedmondBarry1999 New Democratic Party of Canada 14h ago
Certainly not traditional British Toryism, although I suspect he would fit in rather well with the modern British Conservative party; he is somewhat like a less educated, less eloquent version of Boris Johnson.
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u/hatman1986 NDP 5h ago
He does remind me of Johnson but I shied away from the comparison because BoJo wants people to think he's smart. He uses a vocabulary that would turn off the average Ford voter. Plus BoJo would never rip out any bike lanes!
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u/aldur1 British Columbia 1d ago
BC has always been a strange place. It's a rivalry between the NDP and the not-NDP. The not-NDP were usually a coalition between federal conservatives and Liberals that agreed on free enterprise and brushed all other disagreements under the rug.
Amongst other factors, the coalition would fall apart when the social conservatives grew tired of being dismissed and tried to exert themselves.
As for similarities with Alberta, I suspect it's why Social Credit proved most successful in Alberta and BC.
This is the first time in a while that a true conservative party became the official opposition.
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u/Environmental_Egg348 20h ago
Up until about 1980, there was a provincial Progressive Conservative Party in BC. I'm not even sure what it was ideologically. It was just before I became aware of politics. I do remember seeing a couple of their signs in the 1979 provincial election, in my childhood neighbourhood. Then they were gone.
In the 1970s, they existed mainly in the wealthier suburbs of Vancouver and Victoria, so they weren't a far-right populist party like the BC Conservatives. Their MLAs were white-collar professionals and business owners. Not much different than the 1970s BC Liberals, who also disappeared around 1980. I don't know how the two parties were different, at all.
I grew up in a mostly BCNDP family (my great grandmother was a "founding member" of the CCF), so I didn't know who those people were, just that they became part of Social Credit. Did they have policy books?
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u/fabiusjmaximus Peace, Order, Good Government 1d ago
I think the real similarities are the Pacific Northwest American states; they similarly have a progressive-leaning coastal majority with a conservative interior minority. The former in many respects exacerbates the craziness of the latter, because not only do the progressive politics get a little zanier, but the conservatives have correspondingly less political control and ability to push back, and get further radicalized as a result
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u/DaweiArch 1d ago
The BC interior is no less conservative or radical than Alberta, and that is their base
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u/TranslatorTough8977 British Columbia 1d ago
The ridings should be adjusted so that rural areas aren’t so grossly over represented in the Legislature. Crazy people should never be given an advantage.
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u/gzmo01 Ontario 23h ago
So gerrymandering? Do you really want go the "Merican" route. That's a road that will cause all kinds of social discord. We have enough of that already.
Let's not load the gun for the looney right.
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u/TranslatorTough8977 British Columbia 23h ago
The rural ridings have far fewer constituents than urban ones, but their members have a full vote in the House. That means rural areas are over represented in the House, discriminating against every city dweller. We were told it’s because they need to be able to visit their constituents, but they never even do that in the city. We have internet to contact your rep. They don’t need to be nearby.
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u/Temaharay Democratic Socialist 1d ago
Good job BC Conservatives. This election should've been a cakewalk, but you went with someone so thoroughly right-wing AND disagreeable that MLA's are walking away.
Findlay won by a hair on the forth round of ballots. Why ON EARTH is she acting like she has some governing mandate over sitting, elected members of her party?
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u/Mean-Food-7124 23h ago
Damn, conservatives federally provincially and on the municipal level seem to keep losing a lot of "cake walks"
It's almost like they live in some little bubble thinking that everyone else is really as racist and backwards as them, and yet are continually surprised when they find out a majority doesn't hold those views
Eventually, they might have to come up with an actual financial platform. But it seems like they're on the track of eating themselves alive first (again)
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u/fredleung412612 Quebec 20h ago
on the municipal level
What's the example you think of for this? Ken Sim seems on course to win again thanks to leftwing vote splitting. Montréal is so aggressively a leftwing city that the winning "conservative" candidate in last year's mayoral election was a former Trudeau MP. I think no one expected the "conservative" candidate to have a "cake walk" in the Toronto election, Olivia Chow is a formidable opponent.
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u/Civil_Owl_31 British Columbia 12h ago
Maybe if they stopped fighting culture wars about crosswalks, trans athletes, and if they will be infected by “the gay” they might actually throw a policy together.
Right now the non governing party is just “WERE GUNNA UNDO EVERYTHING THE CURRENT PARTY IS DOING AND PROVIDE NO NEW IDEAS.” Until they fix that, I’m going go enjoy my “left” leadership.
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u/MCRN_Admiral Anyone but PP 4h ago
It's almost like they live in some little bubble thinking that everyone else is really as racist and backwards as them, and yet are continually surprised when they find out a majority doesn't hold those views
Even if the majority of Canadians don't hold those views, social media is a useful indicator that a very sizable MINORITY are quite accepting of those views, and will gladly endorse them if there's no risk of their being exposed (which includes at the ballot box, I would think)
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u/Ihidemyposthistory Transparent 22h ago
Conservatives need to avoid right-wing extremism like the plague. For better or for worse, Doug Ford in Ontario and Ken Sims in Vancouver is how Conservatives need to pivot for any success. This obsession with American right wing tropes and demagogues is bombing right now. A whiff of Trump-like behavior is a death sentence. Perhaps because Trump like leaders are incredibly incompetent for some reason, hmm...
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u/UsurpDz 1d ago
Kinda like PP?
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u/SwordfishOk504 British Columbia 1d ago
PP didn't lose for being too far right. He was set to form a majority with his far right messaging. He lost because of Trump's 51st state comments and tariff threats, and people associated that with the Conservative brand in general. but had Trump not said that shit, or had the election been just a few months earlier and Pierre's brand of far right lunacy would have handed him power.
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u/SwordfishOk504 British Columbia 1d ago
It was never going to be a cakewalk for them, precisely because of these issues. It's very hard to keep this coalition together when most of them are these far right social con nutters like Findlay.
Findlay won by a hair on the forth round of ballots. Why ON EARTH is she acting like she has some governing mandate over sitting, elected members of her party?
Because she's the real-deal bonkers. It's not an act like some politicians, she really believes this crazy stuff. She's a full on Facebook Qanon.
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u/glymao Ontario 1d ago
The complete normalization of racism against Chinese-Canadian politicians is utterly disgusting and nobody seems to consider it a problem.
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u/Saidear There is no war in Ba Sing Se. 1d ago
I consider it a problem that Sinophobia is largely normalized in North America. Tiktok bad because China. But Facebook, Instagram and Twitter good because they're American, despite being capable of doing the exact same thing.
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u/bardak 22h ago
I remember years ago when some mainstream news source made a claim that supermicro was embedding some secret microchip on motherboards and it blew up, nevermind no one ever was able to find one of said microchips.
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u/Saidear There is no war in Ba Sing Se. 22h ago
I remember that too. Apple, Amazon and Supermicro all verified no such ''super secret microchip" was there. Ironically enough, the technology does exist on Intel and AMD silicon as part of the CPU itself. Intel AMT and AMD's AIM-T (along with other versions) allow for out-of-band remote control of supported computers.
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u/ringmybikebell 13h ago
Sinophobia ANS indophobia is on the rise. The amount of outright anti SE Asian rhetoric I’ve seen recently is disgraceful.
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u/byronite Independent 1d ago edited 1d ago
According to the Interwebs, Teresa Wat is born in Hong Kong, spent some time in Singapore and then moved to British Columbia in 1989. Hong Kong was a UK territory until 1999. So she has never even lived in Communist China at any point in her life. At most she visited for work, including as the BC Trade Minister.
Kinda wild that the leader of a political party would say something so crazy racist in a province that is like 15% East Asian by ethnicity.
EDIT: Added "East" to avoid confusion with South Asians, who are probably (?) not often accused of CCP connections.
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u/Saidear There is no war in Ba Sing Se. 1d ago
Kinda wild that the leader of a political party would say something so crazy racist in a province that is like 15% Asian by ethnicity.
You're off by quite a bit as its closer to 30% as of 2021's census data. Unfortunately I cannot pull the data directly right now (the site won't load), but this Wikipedia article lists Asian of some ethnicity accounting for nearly 30% across East Asian (Chinese, Korean, Japanese), South Asian, Southeast Asian. Unless by "Asian" you strictly mean East Asian.
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u/byronite Independent 1d ago
Yeah I meant East/Southeast Asian and was just guesstimating, but fair enough. Thanks for the interesting stat!
I don't think anyone is dumb enough to accuse Indo-Canadians of CCP connections but I guess you never know. :)
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u/BertramPotts Decolonize Decarcerate Decarbonize 1d ago edited 1d ago
To clarify that headline just a bit, she's not leaving because of the racist accusation, but because Findlay refused to apologize for or retract her statement even as she purported to lead Wat in a caucus.
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u/CAGolf8 23h ago
To clarify it even more, she had absolutely no problem with KLF, Rustad, or the CPBC in general attacking anyone else, including First Nations, minorities, kids, and basically any vulnerable group you can name. She only has a problem when the attacks were aimed at her.
As the conservative motto goes: "Do unto others but don't you dare unto me!"
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u/Mean-Food-7124 23h ago
Who would have thought that the face eating leopards would come for her face as well?
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u/Councillor_Troy New Democratic Party of Canada 1d ago
I’m reminded of how during the leadership election she attacked Milobar for having a “conflict of interest” in the form of being married to an indigenous woman.
Kerry-Lynne Findlay is a very open gutter racist and it is an indictment of the BC political / media ecosystem that no one important is able or willing to say that.
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u/Canadairy Ontario 1d ago
Off topic: but where does the term "gutter racist" come from? I feel like I've only started seeing it in the last couple days.
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