Hatred for Trudeau seems to be a gateway for these sorts of people. We had an excellent example here this week...
A former Progressive Candidate candidate and Mayor of Roddickton-Bide Arm on the Great Northern Peninsula shared a Facebook status (not authored by her) that was explicitly anti-immigration, and of course had anti-Semitic dog whistles.
Sharing racist Facebook post gets president of Municipalities NL ousted from her position
Quote:
Sheila Fitzgerald is no longer the president of Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador, after the organization removed her from the role for sharing a racist Facebook post.
Fitzgerald shared a post, written by someone else, on her personal page over the weekend that included anti-immigrant rhetoric and made claims about Indigenous land rights and vaccines.
"I never even fully read it. I was just scrolling through, and you know, mindlessly shared the post," Fitzgerald, who is also the mayor of Roddickton-Bide Arm, said.
She said she was tired after wrapping up a 10-week provincial election — Fitzgerald unsuccessfully ran for the Progressive Conservatives in the district of St. Barbe-L'Anse aux Meadows — and shouldn't have been on Facebook in the first place.
The post states Premier Andrew Furey plan to grow Newfoundland and Labrador's population will involve "foreign immigrants" instead of people from the province who have moved elsewhere. "Goodbye NL culture!" the post states.
After someone flagged the post's contents to her, she said, she removed it and that she never meant to hurt anyone.
"I own it. I apologize for it. I feel terrible. I sincerely apologize to the people that I hurt, and that I offended," Fitzgerald told CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show on Tuesday.
The post caught Municipalities NL's attention, and on Monday night its board of directors met and voted to remove her as president of the group, which advocates for municipal concerns.
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What makes this case so interesting to me is... I believe her. I genuinely think she was scrolling through her Facebook feed, read the first line or two of the post and saw it was anti-Trudeau, and shared it. She obviously has all the ignorance that systemic racism engenders in us ("I'm not a racist!", "I never said a slur!", "I'm good friends with so-and-so!", etc.) but as far as I can tell she's been consciously pro-diversity and pro-immigration in the past. Certainly, the PC Party and Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador are both pushing for the province to significantly increase immigration. It's one of the main unifying issues across basically all of society here - from Chambers of Commerce to school districts to employers in many sectors, especially tech, aquaculture, and the fishery.
It would be highly unusual for someone who is anti-immigration to choose to run for the PCs. Certainly if she'd won a seat, she'd already be kicked from their caucus. Her whole career is finished now, likely because she just mindlessly thinks Trudeau is the worst leader ever.