With Eby’s polling numbers limp, NDP attack lines jump from blackface to separatism to Wainwright

VANCOUVER — With final voting day days away and polls soft, the NDP’s campaign attack lines jumped Monday from accusations that Heather Maahs is a blackface apologist, to claims that she and Lorne Doerkson’s constituency president are separatists, to remarks that drew fire for politicizing the deaths of Canadian soldiers at CFB Wainwright.Reid Clark, president of the Chilliwack Teachers’ Association, posted the 'blackface' claim on Sunday.“I’m glad the rest of BC has noticed @HeatherMaahs and her awful views,” Clark wrote. “One thing that’s been missed: her blog post supporting a slave auction in a school, and putting a student in blackface in school productions of To Kill a Mockingbird.”.Clark, who has criticized Maahs before in her role as former Chilliwack school trustee, attached screenshots from the blog..Sheila Malcolmson, the NDP MLA for Nanaimo-Gabriola Island and a former federal MP, quoted the post on Sunday evening.“What? Blackface?! Where is the line for Doerkson? What would it take for him to stop protecting this Conservative candidate he admits is spreading hate?” Malcolmson wrote..Maahs replied early Monday morning. She asked whether it was the job of a teachers’ union president to defend teachers, and whether Clark was “vilifying teachers who were using drama for instruction, and a student who was simply playing the role of the protagonist in a dramatic presentation of To Kill a Mocking Bird.”.In the March 28, 2021 post on her education blog, Maahs, then a school trustee, wrote that a high school had featured “a student (in black face) playing the role of the protagonist in the play, To Kill a Mocking Bird.” She argued that without a Black person in the role, “the entire premise for the story and the inherent racism in the story is lost.”On the fundraiser, she wrote: “A school that had a fundraising event called Slave for a Day… this was always a fun event for both students and teachers. It is truly such a shame that it has been infested with the accursed title of political correctness. Incidentally, the money raised went to good causes which was the entire point of the event.”The post criticized what Maahs called the “primacy of political correctness in education” and cultural sensitivity training..Later Monday morning, at a Stanley Park campaign stop, Eby named three Conservative candidates — Bryan Tepper, Heather Maahs and David Williams — as present in openly separatist Facebook groups, including the BC Prosperity Project, which the NDP described as a spinoff of the Alberta Prosperity Project. The NDP also pointed to Doerkson’s constituency association president, Michael Henshall, who has advocated for western independence.“They are enabling and legitimizing a fringe political project in British Columbia to try and separate us from Canada, and that is how you end up with a referendum on separation,” Eby said.In the same remarks he referenced the CFB Wainwright fire that killed four Canadian Armed Forces members, including two from British Columbia.“Crucially, today as Canadians, we all are in mourning about the loss of lives of our true heroes,” Eby said..By Monday afternoon, Eby and the NDP's attack lines on Alberta independence and blackface were practically all but forgotten, as the public responded to Eby's politicization of the Wainwright tragedy with outrage and derision.Interim Conservative leader Doerkson called the remarks unacceptable.“It is beyond disgusting and desperate for Mr. Eby to invoke the lives of the soldiers lost over the weekend in an effort to save his own political skin,” Doerkson said. “And frankly, what is wrong with this man?”Hours later, speaking in Hope, Eby said he did not use the tragedy for political gain and would not do so through to voting day.“Let me say unreservedly I would never, ever use the sacrifice of these young men, the grief of their families for political advantage to attack another party,” Eby said. “The deaths of these young men, their sacrifice is sacred, the grief of these families is sacred, and to ensure that there is no confusion going forward, I will keep any comment related to this horrific tragedy completely separate from conversations about the campaign.”.It was not the first time Eby’s fire imagery had drawn criticism for insensitivity. When he called the snap election on September 22, he repeatedly described the NDP as building a “firebreak” against Trump and “Trump-style politics,” weeks after the Bald Range wildfire west of Summerland had forced some 20,000 evacuations and killed an 80-year-old woman.The latest posts and remarks land as multiple polls show the Conservatives ahead of the NDP. Liaison Strategies had the Conservatives at 43% and the NDP at 37% in a survey fielded October 7–8, with Eby’s approval at 34% and net disapproval of 14 points. Other recent surveys from Leger, Ipsos, Research Co., and Pollara have shown Conservative leads ranging from two to six points.Since early October, no major polling firm has shown the NDP or Eby ahead of the Conservatives.

With Eby’s polling numbers limp, NDP attack lines jump from blackface to separatism to Wainwright

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