Sabrina Maddeaux: Liberals Reject Indigenous Lawyer As Teenage Loyalist

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On paper, Naomi Sayers sounds like a progressive political party’s dream candidate. She is a respected indigenous attorney, called to the bar in both Ontario and Alberta. She is a human rights advocate and in-demand speaker on issues affecting marginalized communities. She has worked as a counselor for Hydro One, has testified before Parliament and now runs a certified Aboriginal company.

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But Ontario liberals want nothing to do with her. When Sayers sought the party’s nomination in Sault Ste. Marie for the 2022 provincial election, she was rejected. Instead, the Liberals nominated a white high school student who lives three hours from the riding. Her old Instagram handle: “SlapMyNutsMC.”

In the time it took me to write this article, supposedly I thought twice about this and eliminated him as a candidate. Anyway, the scandalous part of this story is not about him, but about the liberals who despise Sayers.

There are a couple of things that can explain this seemingly inexplicable turn of events, and none of them look good for liberals. sayings said local media outlet SooToday was shunned due to her social media presence, unspecified legal proceedings, and “recent information.”

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One possible reason: Sayers is a former sex worker. This is not something she hides, and her experiences shape her advocacy for women and girls, support for vulnerable workers, and first-hand knowledge of the justice system.

Sayers’ pinned tweet on Twitter is a split screen of a photo of her as a former stripper juxtaposed with a photo of her wearing the robes of lawyers. She is practically a poster girl for female empowerment and overcoming systemic barriers.

If her history of sex work, or her outspokenness about it on social media, is the reason for the liberals’ snub, it would be an act of extreme hypocrisy. The Liberals, both at the federal level and under Steven Del Duca in Ontario, go to great lengths to present themselves as a feminist party, even creating female-only candidate races to improve gender parity.

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But liberals cannot credibly declare themselves feminists and then run their nomination processes as purity tests, favoring only those with privileged pasts and buttoned-down wardrobes.

This would not be the first time liberals have ousted a potential candidate for misogynistic moral panic. Just last summer, Nova Scotia Liberals sparked outrage when they unceremoniously fired candidate Robyn Ingraham for her “boudoir photos.” Probably knowing this would not go down so well with progressive voters and women in general, Ingraham says the party asked her to lie about why she left.

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However, there is something liberals may find even more insidious in Sayers’ social media story: criticism of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. While Sayers made it clear that she has long been a liberal “with a card,” she never hesitated to call out the party and its leaders on critical issues, including clean water for indigenous communities and their treatment by Jody Wilson-Raybould. she once tweeted“I’m a liberal, but I hate Trudeau (who doesn’t!!!)”

Today’s liberals demand extreme loyalty and treat even mild criticism of Trudeau as heresy, so it wouldn’t be surprising if this set off serious red flags. It doesn’t really occur to liberals that it’s healthy for a democratic party to hold itself accountable, or that someone willing to stand up for their principles rather than pander to the leadership might be a valuable addition. They claim to love diversity, but abhor diversity of thought within their own ranks.

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Ironically, last July, Sayers tweeted: “What is something that would get you out of the Liberal Party nomination but is a totally normal thing that a lot of people do? I’ll go first… Tweet stuff.” As a result, she was absolutely right.

This does not bode well for the future of the Liberal Party, at the federal or provincial level. If criticism of Trudeau or other high-ranking liberals marks one persona non grata in the future, liberals will increasingly name partisan fanatics over the truly qualified.

It’s one thing to enforce the party line for incumbent MPs, MPs, and nominees (although I’d say even this is toxic to democracy), but it’s quite another to require candidates to tweet and speak in unison long before they go into office. politics.

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Yet this explains the appeal of a high school student whose political experience consists of campaigning for Ontario Liberals, as part of “Students for Michael Coteau” and as a young liberal panelist on Sirius XM’s Canada Talks. Who knows, he may one day be a great politician, but it is his early indoctrination that is likely to put him ahead of a seasoned lawyer with more complex political views.

If this is their new standard for nominees, the Liberals will continue their descent into an echo chamber that works well in press conferences but falls short in government. This is bad for them and dangerous for the country, as rigorous debate is replaced by a culture of political fanaticism.

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