First Nation Leaders Call Upon Conservative Party To Drop Aaron Gunn As A Candidate

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -First Nations leaders are calling upon the Conservative Party of Canada to drop Aaron Gunn, candidate for North Island-Powell River, due to a series of tweets he made between 2019 and 2021.

More than 150,000 First Nation, Métis and Inuit children were taken out of their homes and forced to attend residential schools between the 1870s and 1997. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission called the residential school system "cultural genocide" in its final report released in 2015.

Gunn tweeted: “Why are the report authors (and now Trudeau) sensationalizing truly horrific events, that need to be examined honestly, with a loaded word like ‘genocide’ that does not remotely reflect the reality of what happened.”  

More tweets followed:
“There was no genocide. Stop lying to people and read a book. The Holocaust was a genocide. Get off Twitter and learn more about the world”
“I understand that people have a misinformed view of history which they have reached following a steady and persistent attempt to discredit Canada’s past in order to undermine its institutions and future.”
“Residential schools were asked for by Indigenous bands in Eastern Ontario when John A MacDonald was still a teenager, but hey, why let the truth get in the way of a good headline.”  

“ I think Mr. Gunn's comments about Canadian Indian residential schools are absolutely appalling and utterly unacceptable for someone that is seeking public office. It shows me that he is completely untethered from the reality that First Nations have experienced in this country and completely absent from knowledge of what the government has done and spoken of. I believe it was in 2022 when the House of Commons spoke about what happened to First Nations people as genocide, and when the Pope of the Catholic church also spoke of it as genocide. For Mr. Gunn to just disregard these statements based upon reality of this country, it's absolutely appalling.  There's no way that I can envision anyone should be able to sit in public office with such blatant, racist perspectives,” explained Bob Chamberlain, a Powell River resident who served as the Union of BC Indian Chief’s Vice-President for 10 years and elected chief of the Kwikwasut'inuxw Haxwa'mis [quick-wa-sut-uh-nook / hakwuh-meesh] First Nation for 14 years. 

The First Nations Leadership Council (FNLC) echoed this opinion in a press release issued on April 3:

“the FNLC is joining calls for the Conservative Party of Canada to drop Aaron Gunn, the candidate for North Island-Powell River, due to his horrific and offensive posts on X between 2019 and 2021 refuting that Indigenous people faced a genocide in Canada and that ‘residential schools were asked for by Indigenous bands.’ Such attitudes are extremely harmful and divisive and should not be held by those in public office.”

Terry Teegee, BC Regional Chief for the Assembly of First Nations, added "It's really concerning that perhaps the Conservatives can't work with First Nations peoples across this country, especially with a party that supports an individual of this type of view." 

Gunn has not responded to Cortes Currents requests for comment.  

When he was rejected as a potential candidate of the BC Liberal party in 2021, because of his views, Gunn claimed he had been blindsided:

“At worst, it could be argued that one of the tweets was more terse than necessary. But it is difficult to see how any of these tweets expressed extreme or factually dubious opinions that fall outside mainstream Canadian political thought. Especially considering “genocide” is most commonly defined as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group” – a rather serious accusation which, I believe, should only be used in those rare, extreme circumstances (such as the Holocaust, for example).”