The past couple of years have flooded us with a flurry of outlandish political candidates for whom the term ‘conservative’ is simply too polite; take for example failed OneBC party MLAs Dallas Brodie and Tara Armstrong, both of whom have been the target of recall campaigns for fringe views including residential school denialism and transphobia. I’ve recently exposed Victoria municipal candidate Wendy Bowkett for harbouring transphobic views in alignment with the previous two. But believe it or not, even those three pale in comparison to Victoria mayoral candidate Mike Harris.
At first glance Harris looks like a respectable gentleman, who “spent more than 30 years working in real estate, housing, construction and business”. He ran for MLA in the Langford-Juan de Fuca byelection in 2023 for the Conservative Party of BC, and did no worse than getting fined $450 by Elections BC for distributing 45,000 flyers lacking an authorization statement. But hey, everybody makes mistakes.
Apparently he made another mistake, however, by uploading a video to his LinkedIn account which recommended using a hair dryer and sauna therapy to kill COVID-19. Harris denied it and blamed the mistake on an unspecified staffer, a claim which personally I find no more credible than if he instead had pointed the finger at the NDP. But hey, what do I know. Everybody makes mistakes, right?
But hold on, we’re just getting started. Harris also formally endorsed embattled Conservative Party of BC leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay, who is currently being investigated by the RCMP for offering an MLA a job in return for resigning so she could run for office in a byelection; no less than nine MLAs have resigned from the party in response. By the way, her agenda includes the repeal of DRIPA and opposition to SOGI, so she would be in excellent company alongside Brodie and Armstrong.
Of course everybody can make a mistake by endorsing the wrong leader, especially one as charming as Findlay. So what about his own views? Well, he’s bet on a few more losing horses, so to speak:
- Granting an interview to RebelNews, a notorious alt-right news outlet with a long history of defamation litigation, including accusations by former human rights commissioner Birju Dattani against Rebel Media founder Ezra Levant;
- Siding with Barry Neufeld, a former school trustee who was recently ordered to pay $750,000 in damages by the BC Human Rights Tribunal for injury to dignity and self-respect to Chilliwack teachers over hate speech against transgender people;
- Standing behind a recent motion by Armstrong to repeal the BC Human Rights Code, which protects British Columbians from discrimination, in retaliation for the Tribunal making the above decision;
- Approving of Harman Banghu, a staunch opponent of ‘woke’ sexual education who by the way has also recently launched a petition to repeal DRIPA.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. Here’s a summary of all the “woke shit” he seemingly condemns, according to his approval of a post by Sechelt District Council candidate Mark Emery:
• Land acknowledgements in any taxpayer paid for or subsidized facility
• Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity (SOGI) in school curricula.
• Gender neutral bathrooms
• pandering to the indigenous & giving them an inch more land, shoreline or waterways
• The flood of foreign workers while our Mayor asks for even more. Foreign workers suppress wages & change the culture of the Sunshine Coast
• Drag Queen Story Hours for children in the Sechelt Library-City Hall building
• Reduced garbage pick up to one barrel Every two weeks
• Taxes have increased 6-8% for each year since this last group of losers has “run” the district.
• Sechelt District has 4 bureaucrats earning ridiculous big city salaries of over $220,000 a year
• Inadequate pumps that bring too little water from the massive aquifer beneath the entire Sunshine Coast. They put in 5 inadequate water pumps so they can continue to lecture us every summer about conserving water. Woke is to blame, not a lack of water.
• the failure to provide adequate parking at St. Mary’s (Sechelt General) hospital
• anymore homeless shelters. The more we subsidize & enable crime & drug addiction, the more of it we will get.
Sechelt District Council candidate Mark Emery
To be honest, I might concede that hospitals never have too much parking space, just saying. I find in contrast that the remainder of his views are a little bit hard to swallow. But hey, what do I know; maybe I’m the one making colossal mistakes here.
I really don’t want to he too harsh on Harris here, who like every one of us has to learn from his mistakes—even though he makes a great many of them. That fact notwithstanding, I reach out to every one of you eligible voters for the upcoming Victoria municipal election, to please, for the love of whoever you’re praying to: Don’t make such a mistake at the ballot box. We don’t need Ontario Premier Doug Ford‘s evil twin for mayor of Victoria.
By the way Mike: Don’t bother deleting your tweets, I archived them all. Although if you want to delete your Twitter account altogether that’s fine with me!
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