Kate Marland: Mud-slinging Eby attempts to cancel his opposition

As we wrap up a month of what has the potential to be one of the biggest missteps in British Columbia, or Canadian, political history, it bears examining whether David Eby’s attempt to position himself as a modern day Joseph McCarthy dedicated to rooting out thought criminals from his opposition will be ultimately effective. If Eby somehow pulls together a victory on Saturday, it will likely be a ringing endorsement that cancel culture is alive and well in Canada.

In a sort of pseudo-McCarthyist attempt, the B.C. NDP has gone full throttle since the writ was dropped with attempted cancellations and censorship of B.C. Conservative candidates and staffers. The predominant narrative put forward by the B.C. NDP is the message that there are dangerous extremists that might be sitting at Lorne Doerkson’s table should the B.C. Conservatives form government. So concerned are they with a litany of old Facebook comments, X reposts and offhand remarks that they have put together a handy who’s who: “Meet Lorne Doerkson’s Team.” Like a very dull and farfetched version of Guess Who, the website conveniently lists the purported offenders and offences.

Since the campaign kickoff, the B.C. NDP has been committed to attempted cancellations and censorship of prospective B.C. Conservative MLAs. When asked whether British Columbians might look past controversial comments made by MLA candidates, Eby doubled down, stating “these views are relevant to voters as they consider who will best protect them and their family.”

But will this gamble pay off? While doubtless this strategy would have had a greater resonance during the 2020 “Summer of Love,” or the heyday of the “#MeToo” era, increasingly Canadians are fatigued with political correctness. A three-year-old Angus Reid poll found that over half of Canadians said the trend of cancelling public figures due to controversial statements suppresses free speech.

Since 2023, public attitudes towards cancelling have arguably gotten much less supportive. In a 2024 report from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Canadians rejected cancel culture, agreeing with the statement “political correctness has gone too far” by a margin of 78-22. Cancel culture fatigue has seen the rehabilitation of many previously cast aside from society, even seeing figures like persona non grata Don Cherry appointed to the Order of Ontario with minimal pushback.

Highlights from the final week of the campaign included attempting to cancel Lorne Doerkson for holding private fundraisers, and claiming that holding two private maximum-donor fundraisers at “swanky downtown Vancouver hotels” was a sign that a Conservative government would sell out to “private interests.” Not to be forgotten, Conservative candidate Heather Maahs has been one of Eby’s primary punching bags over the past days, with the NDP positioning Maahs as a dangerous homophobe who does not belong in the public sphere.

On Oct. 19, trying to capitalize off potential negative press surrounding the Alberta referendum, the NDP published a video of Michael Henshall, constituency president for Doerkson’s riding, drawing tenuous links between some of his remarks and the desire for B.C. separatism. Incumbent candidate for Langford-Highlands, the NDP’s Ravi Parmar, circulated screenshots from a Facebook group allegedly affiliated with a B.C. independence project showing several Conservative MLAs, including Bryan Tepper, Heather Maahs and David Williams as members. Unfortunately for Parmar, the screenshots seemed to show the MLA himself as a member of said group.

Kristina Loewen, Conservative candidate in Kelowna Centre, caught the eye of the NDP’s crack research team for sharing a video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The NDP’s press release claimed Loewen was spreading “false claims about vaccines, fluoride and sunscreen,” arguing that “an MLA spreading medical misinformation” could impact efforts to recruit doctors and nurses leaving the U.S. Loewen is the incumbent in Kelowna Centre, and the alleged offending comments had all been made prior to her 2024 election. Similarly, North Island incumbent Anna Kindy came under fire for remarks on the COVID-19 vaccine made years prior to her election in 2024.

Conservative MLA candidates were not the only target of attack, with campaign director Katy Merrifield coming under fire for briefly posted remarks on the grooming gangs scandal. The NDP wasted no time attempting to fault nine out of 10 B.C. Conservative candidates in Surrey for failing to comment on the matter.

The NDP called for the removal of Powell River-Sunshine Coast candidate John Henderson for having a copy of Tom Flanagan’s “Grave Error” at work while he was the mayor of Sechelt. In the NDP’s framing, merely having the book and discussing it with some senior staffers meant Henderson “pushed” the book.

When the NDP got wind that the B.C. Conservative candidate in Juan de Fuca-Malahat, beloved longtime local politician Mike Hicks, had misspoken in a clearly out of context clip at a local community event, they did not hesitate to blast his picture across British Columbia with the headline “Candidate who said ‘the First Nations have to be conquered.’”

Now there were a few success stories for this strategy, with the successful removal of the candidate in Victoria-Beacon Hill, Joachim Agou, for posting several memes and the immediate dismissal of Jordan McIntosh, Vancouver-Strathcona candidate, after Holocaust denial and other unsavoury rhetoric was uncovered. Justifiably, the NDP has highlighted that both these ridings are progressive strongholds, making the decision to dismiss these candidates to satisfy the woke mob easily made.

In the 30 days of the campaign, the B.C. NDP has devoted a significant portion of its energy to the attempted censorship and cancellation of Conservative candidates, primarily based on shaky foundations of old Facebook screenshots, X reposts and Instagram stories long since expired. The results on Saturday will likely prove an interesting indicator of whether the all bark, no bite strategy of censorship and cancellation remains an effective one in Canada. Is slinging mud an effective strategy or will the consequences of reckless, largely unsubstantiated character attacks manifest in the opposite result intended?

David Eby’s attempt to root out those he deems unacceptable from the B.C. Conservative ecosystem reeks of a McCarthyist ethos determined to police the bounds of discourse in a way that should send a shiver down the spine of anyone committed to free expression. Much like McCarthy, it’s doubtful that Eby has any real self-awareness of the shaky foundations many of his accusations rest upon, instead finding himself completely enveloped in his quest to root out any and all thought criminals from the B.C. Conservative tent. Playing on fear and resentment might have worked 10 years ago, but I would bet that such an approach, especially backed up with few successes and minimal policy prescriptions, will be soundly rejected at the polls.

Special to National Post

Kate Marland is executive director of the Free Speech Union of Canada and deputy editor of Without Diminishment, a political and cultural opinion site co-founded by B.C. Conservative candidate Caroline Elliott.