The United Conservative Party candidate for Lethbridge-West has resigned after a ‘damaging’ campaign video referencing the LGBTQ2 community surfaced on social media.
“Alarmingly, we are seeing increasing instances where kids — even those attending kindergarten — are being exposed to pornographic materials, or worse yet, having teachers help them change their gender identity with absolutely no parental consent or knowledge whatsoever,” Torry Tanner said in the video.
In a statement on the United Conservative Party’s Twitter feed, Tanner said the video spoke to her commitment to protecting children.
“However, it’s clear that my choice of words have distracted not only from the issue I was trying to discuss, but are being used by my political opponents to hurt our chances of winning across the province,” Tanner said.
Before Tanner resigned, a statement from the UCP said the video did not align with the views of the party and the party asked Tanner to remove the video.
In an emailed statement, party leader Danielle Smith did not address the content of the video but said she accepts the resignation and is working with the constituency and the party to find a replacement.
Kristopher Wells, an associate professor and Canada Research Chair for the public understanding of sexual and gender minority youth at MacEwan University, said he was glad to hear Tanner had stepped down but thought more action was necessary.
“An apology is still in order,” said Wells. “Those comments were completely inappropriate, unacceptable, based on stereotypes and outright lies and were very damaging – the harm has been done.”
The president of the Alberta Teacher’s Association (ATA) said there is no proof of the claims Tanner made in her video.
“There’s no concrete evidence being shown by this UCP candidate that this is what actually is going on,” said Jason Schilling.
“(Tanner) disrespected and misconstrued the good work that teachers are doing across this province.”
Trevor Harrison, a sociology professor at the University of Lethbridge, said this incident mirrors the “Lake of Fire” scandal from 2012, where a Wildrose candidate’s views on the LGBTQ2 community were unearthed in a blog post.
At the time, Allan Hunsperger, a pastor in Tofield, wrote that gay people would “suffer the rest of eternity in the lake of fire, hell, a place of eternal suffering.” Smith, who was the leader of the Wildrose Party at the time, stood by her candidate.
“The Lake of Fire comments, which were also very much around gender issues and gay rights – it kind of spread from there. It didn’t stay contained to one person or one area, but it coloured the entire party,” said Harrison.
“Right now what we see is that certainly there are some candidates in some of the ridings who do seem to hold some fairly fringe ideas around this.”
Wells agreed and suspects the candidate could have been pressured within the party to step down.
“I think in this case, perhaps Premier Smith has learned the lessons of history – with the infamous Lake of Fire comments that many believe cost her an election more than a decade ago – and is not making the same mistake twice,” said Wells.
The comments prove the UCP is “extreme,” according to a statement from Shannon Phillips, the NDP MLA for the riding, and NDP 2SLGBTQ+ issues critic Janis Irwin.
“(The UCP is) unpredictable and focused on the wrong things — namely, today, perpetuating harmful lies that hurt the 2SLGBTQ+ community and all Albertans, and making baseless allegations against Alberta teachers,” read the statement.
–with files from Jaclyn Kucey, Global News