The Vancouver Sun just published an op-ed so xenophobic, scaremongering and outright racist it could have been written by Donald Trump.
The column claims that Canada is “replacing its population” with “non-White” minorities and that we should be worried about it for some reason. It can’t even keep its story straight: it blames immigrants for both driving up housing prices and draining social services like health care and education.
The columnist is worried about protecting “Canada.” His Canada isn’t the Canada we know. We have friends, colleagues, family and neighbours who came to this country seeking acceptance, community and a better life. And we’re not going to let this racist garbage get a free pass.
Tell the Vancouver Sun to pull this racist op-ed, apologize, and make sure it never happens again.
The writer, Martin Collacott, is a fellow with the ultra-right-wing Fraser Institute, an organization famous for wanting to privatize health care, deny climate change and hand out tax giveaways to the rich. Ironic, then, that Collacott is wringing his hands over the “cultural values” immigrants bring to this country.
Like most Canadians, we know that cultural diversity is our strength, not our weakness. It’s the “cultural values” of climate-denying, anti-immigration, corporate-cheerleading Fraser Institute that we’re most worried about.
Join our call to withdraw the article and apologize. And then introduce an anti-racist journalistic policy to make sure this never happens again.
Do I sound angry? I am. And I’m not alone. Social media is lighting up with objections to Collacott’s disgusting op-ed. The Sun, owned by Postmedia, is almost certainly counting on this outrage to generate clicks for its website. Peddling hate for web traffic is about as low as you can go -- it’s exactly why hundreds of thousands of us have been taking on the alt-right hate site Breitbart, which has lost thousands of advertisers since we started alerting corporations they were profiting off of anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ garbage.
Don’t let the Vancouver Sun get away with it either.
More information
Vancouver Sun. 4 June 2017.