Photo courtesy Canadian Press

By Greg Fry

MP speaks out

Northern BC MP says rise of hate must be addressed

Jan 12, 2021 | 11:16 AM

SMITHERS — An MP from Northwest B.C. says last week’s events in Washington DC were not only troubling to watch, but a reminder that we need to do what we can in Canada to call out discrimination and hate in our own country.

Skeena-Bulkley Valley NDP MP Taylor Bachrach recently held a discussion on this topic. It followed a call by his own party to designate right wing extremist group the Proud Boys, which has roots in Canada and was involved in the events in Washington, as a terrorist organization.

“Canadians were watching the events in Washington unfold with horror, like the rest of the world was, and learning that one of the groups behind those riots, behind those events, was the Proud Boys, a group that has its roots in Canada and is still active in Canada,” he says.

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“I think that fact made a lot of people pay more attention to what’s happening here. And we’ve had incidents even here in the northwest, in our rural communities, where these symbols of hate are cropping up. Of course it’s not at the level we’re seeing in the United States but at the same time there’s a connection there, and people are starting to understand what happens if we don’t pay attention, and we don’t take these threats seriously.”

Are the Proud Boys present in the northwest?

“I haven’t seen direct evidence that the Proud Boys specifically are present in the northwest. There are certainly other groups that have cropped up from time-to-time. We saw the Soldiers of Odin advertising in local communities. And there are some individual instances of hate symbols in our communities that really give people a lot of concern because there’s a lot of Indigenous residents in the northwest, there are racialized communities, there are people that feel unsafe because of these activities.”

Bachrach estimates there are over 300 hate and white supremacy groups operating in Canada and as a result says we need to educate Canadians about the rise of domestic terrorism here.

He says a petition to designate the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization was so popular it temporarily crashed the NDP’s website.