Oh Canada: The Campaign to Destroy Equal Voice
17th August 2019
The National Observer reported that, of the 338 young attendees, 146 “identified as a visible minority” and 39 were Indigenous. “Many of you,” Campbell acknowledged, “are activists…for issues about which you feel passionately…who want to make changes…to fulfill your vision for the country.” But, she warned, anyone serving in Ottawa must remember that everyone else there “had exactly the same right to express their views.” Civility, Campbell added, “is even more important in the age of social media.”
That didn’t work out so well:
Within an hour of Campbell’s plea, approximately 40 delegates stood up at their seats and turned their backs on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to protest his expulsion of two female MPs from the liberal caucus the previous day. In March, Equal Voice had presented Trudeau with their annual EVE award for his “commitment to amplifying women’s role in public life.” Now, at an event he had made possible by sending tax dollars their way, young women were accusing him of ignoring misogyny, indigenous genocide, Inuit suicide, and Islamophobia. When Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer spoke, dozens of delegates walked out of the chamber. The Green party leader Elizabeth May, on the other hand, was greeted with loud hoots of delight.
Unfortunately, Johnnie hit little Suzy back:
The protesting delegates were dismayed to find themselves criticized for these actions in the media and by many of their peers. Six of them contacted the National Observer, an independent newspaper, which then shared their story in a lengthy and highly sympathetic article. The six women, the Observer reported, had experienced “a series of discriminatory encounters” at the conference “that left them feeling unsafe, unacknowledged, and traumatized.” Equal Voice responded with an apologetic message on its website, which read, in part: “Of the 338 delegates, it was clear that the majority had an overall positive experience…Equal Voice sincerely regrets that some delegates experienced harassment in person or online.”
I tell ya, sometimes you just can’t figure out who’s the victim without a scorecard.