BC PPC Candidate Smashed Into Flyer Comparing Vaccine Passports To Residential Schools | The Canadian News

Indigenous leaders are calling for the removal of a candidate from Canada’s Vancouver People’s Party, in a leaflet that equates vaccine mandates to residential schools.

The flyer, mailed by Renate Siekmann, Vancouver-Quadra PPC candidate, features a photo of indigenous children in a Methodist residential school in 1880, with the text “Discrimination is wrong” and “No vaccine passport.”

The British Columbia Assembly of First Nations responded Wednesday, calling the comparison “damaging and disgusting.”

“The analogy fails, trivializing the experience of indigenous peoples within (the) residential school system to a public health measure does not work,” BCAFN regional chief Terry Teegee told Global News.

“It is by no means the same in the same stadium, so to speak, in terms of what people experience in terms of the genocidal policies that were imposed on our indigenous peoples, some of whom never made it home, like us. I have seen it in the mass graves in the camps and in residential schools ”.

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that 38,000 of the more than 150,000 children who were forcibly separated from their families and sent to institutions were subjected to sexual or physical abuse.

The CVR has identified at least 3,200 confirmed deaths associated with the facilities, and in the past four months, more than 1,300 suspicious graves, many of them unmarked or undocumented, have been discovered at or near the sites of former institutions.

BC’s vaccination passport would restrict unvaccinated people from accessing certain non-essential services, such as restaurants, indoor sporting events, and movie theaters.

Teegee said the BCAFN wants the candidate removed and an apology from PPC leader Maxime Bernier.

Global News has attempted to contact Siekmann for comment on the brochures.

On Twitter, Siekmann, who calls herself “pro vaccine and pro choice,” said she had distributed the brochures to approximately 52,000 households.

“The history of BC has not always been great, we must learn from the past and improve,” he wrote. “This analogy may make some feel uncomfortable or angry, but it is a difficult and important conversation.”

It’s an explanation for which Teegee had little time.

“An inconvenience versus being ripped from their homes and taken to an institution to be assimilated, there is no comparison,” he said.

“Looking for far-right conspiracy theories and false information on a number of topics, and comparing it to (the) Holocaust … genocidal acts that we have seen in history, including indigenous peoples, is very dangerous. It is spreading false information and perhaps even trivializing some of the experiences of those who experienced these harmful acts. “

As of Wednesday, 86.1 percent of eligible British Columbia residents had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The province says that fully vaccinated people accounted for just 12.7 percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the past two weeks.

Taking age into account, he said that people who are not vaccinated are 37.9 times more likely to end up in the hospital than those who are fully vaccinated.