A pair of Fort McMurray-Cold Lake candidates are condemning the recent hateful rhetoric directed at the Liberal party’s Maggie Farrington.
Last week, Farrington arrived at her downtown campaign office – to discover racist and sexist messages plastered all over it.
Following the incident, she called on her fellow candidates to denounce the acts.
Matthew Barrett of the People’s Party of Canada tells Mix News there’s no place in politics for this type of hate.
“Our candidates have experienced defacing of signs and name-calling. It’s stupid, broad-based name-calling that is irrelevant – the same as Maggie received. It can really demotivate you.”
Many of the comments attacked the Prime Minister’s recent ‘black-face’ scandal – while one of the messages specifically mocked women in the LGBTQ+ community.
While disappointing, Barrett feels it’s not a total shock that this type of thing might happen.
“This election has become really polarized and instead of being able to talk about things, people are doing really stupid actions and it is just not cool.”
Brian Deheer of the Green Party also condemned the acts, stating his party does not condone hate of any kind.
He says this type of bigotry has no place.
“Everyone in Canada deserves the right to be treated with respect and the right to feel safe in their own community. Those are things that threaten that feeling of safety. So, that’s very important. I feel that should be one of our top Canadian values.”
Deheer notes the similarities between these acts and ones that took place in Fort McMurray and Lac La Biche during the provincial election campaign.
He notes while it’s unfortunate to see similar things happen this time around – he doesn’t feel these acts represent the values of Fort McMurray.
“I’m aware that it is a very strong conservative riding but two of the Green Party’s principles are respect for diversity and non-violence and both of those speak directly to this kind of absolutely unacceptable behaviour,” Deheer continued. “That is not who this community is, it is not who Fort McMurray intends to be like and it is not welcome, in the riding of Fort McMurray-Cold Lake, Alberta”
Mix news reached out to Conservative incumbent David Yurdiga, but did not receive a response.
Overnight our campaign office was vandalized with racist, misogynist hate speech and death threats to “purge” us for being @liberalca
This is unacceptable. We live in Canada, and diversity of people, opinions & beliefs is what makes Canada great. But this racist… 1/2 pic.twitter.com/nq5P0ZozOt– YMM-Cold Lake LPC (@LiberalsFMCL) October 4, 2019
2/2 – …White Nationalist, misogynist, threatening BS is way over the line. My son is with me at the office today and had to witness this! We remain resolved and resilient – we will not back down
#positivepolitics #notinmycanada #notinmyalberta #chooseforward
– YMM-Cold Lake LPC (@LiberalsFMCL) October 4, 2019