[ UPDATE: Candidate skips news conference. Now says he is "reflecting" on his future.]
Back during the Oka Crisis, the Liberal candidate for the riding of ‘Quebec’, Simon Bédard, said this on local radio:
“You go in there with the army, then you clean up all that. Fifty dead, 100 dead, 125 dead, that would put it out. We bury it and life goes on.”
It’s extreme, but if he’s repented, then maybe, maybe we could let bygones be bygones. Problem is, he hasn’t repented. After winning the Liberal nomination, he discussed his previous statements with the local press, saying:
“maybe we should have done it because 17 years (sic) later, it’s still the same.”
The Liberal Party calls him “A great communicator“!
Read on through the interview with him in Le Soleil – he says that the reason he’s running for the Liberals is that he expects them to crack down on natives:
«C’est une situation pourrie. On a tassé les ministres plutôt que de régler le problème. Le gouvernement fédéral s’en est toujours lavé les mains. Les libéraux n’ont pas fait mieux et ils ont une mission à accomplir dans ce sens-là. Stéphane Dion a assez de colonne vertébrale pour le faire. [Tr. Stephane Dion has the backbone to do it] Il n’a qu’une seule voix.»
This blood thirsty racist has NO place in Canadian politics. Dion should dump him as a candidate, throw him out of the party, and condemn him in the harshest terms possible. That type of language is absolutely inexcusable in the public sphere. That borders on incitement to commit murder. Will Dion do the right thing?
Filed under: Politics , Canada, election, Liberals, Politics
I don’t read it as racist, Jago. Had he said, “let’s go onto all reserves and kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out so that we whites can live in harmony,” that’d be racist. But responding to an illegal occupation (whether Oka or Caledonia) with necessary force so as to end the occupation is simply enforcement of the law.
I suspect that Bedard was engaging in hyperbole when talking about deaths. Or perhaps simply musing (I can’t imagine Caledonia ending peacefully should law enforcement decide to move the occupiers off of the land). But there’s nothing in his language that overtly suggests that he is desirous of wholesale murder of anyone.
With that said, I’m pleased to see any left-of-centre party get bad press. However, the pervasive branding of virtually anyone and everyone as a racist these days, in my mind, never helps to actually make sense of the opinions and circumstances surrounding controversial issues.
The recent comment he made “we should have done it because 17 years (sic) later, it’s still the same.” says that it has nothing to do with an illegal occupation. There aren’t any Mohawks camped out on the Mercier Bridge today – and he made those comments today.
Even when using a hyperbole – talking about killing 125 people ‘to clean up’ is not acceptable.
I don’t know if he has this attitude specifically against Native Canadians, or if he thinks that this is a generally good way to keep law and order and this particular instance involved Natives…
Either way, that is not a very nice attitude towards law-enforcement – and having ‘trigger-happy’ individuals pass law-enforcment legislation does not seem prudent. If he had said 50, 100, 125 arrested and tried – that would be a different matter altogether. But he said ‘dead’…
I can accept that analysis. I still say that the word “racist” is losing its impact when so freely applied. If anything, I suspect Bedard is merely imprudent and/or obtuse. He certainly doesn’t sound like someone I’d want anywhere near the hands of government, but there’s nothing to suggest that he’s an actual racist.
I wonder when Warren Kinsella will notice?
Can I take “never” in the pool if its still available?
Of course, if a Tory or even and Knee-dipper said anything close to this, we’d get the Full Kinsella, wouldn’t we?
Maybe – I sent him an email. Who knows, he could respond any time now … tic … tic … tic …
[...] ACTUAL HATE: Liberal candidate muses about killing natives …. [...]
Well, I guess he’s busy dragging up mud to use against Ezra Levant, including a decade old column. He’ll get around to this about the fifth of Never.
[...] Published September 11, 2008 Politics Tags: Canada, election, Politics I wrote about this here and [...]
Three’s another question here. It isn’t just that he’s a ‘redneck’, but that he got the nomination, fair and square. The local party people are cool with his past, which they certainly would know.
I bet that, if you went to Caledonia right now, you’d find a lot of people who know what he means.
My point is, it is entirely possible that he was genuinely representing sentiment in his riding. However distasteful his statements seem, years later, it seems to me that people should be able to choose their reprsentatives without interference from outsiders. But a lot of people in Oka probably shared his feelings.
Isn’t this. after all, what all this governing apparatus is supposed to do? To accurately represent interests at the riding level in the circles of power?
please ……………………………