Okanagan MLA facing recall rebuked for using a Nazi slogan during speech

Members of the BC Legislature were outraged by Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream MLA Tara Armstrong yet again when she used a Nazi slogan in a rant about Indigenous people.

Armstrong was speaking against the K’omoks (Comox) Treaty in a speech to the legislature, April 23.

She said the government was giving First Nations people rights based on “blood and soil” in a speech filled with revisionist history. “Blood and soil” was a slogan used extensively by the Nazis to justify the entitlement of the Aryan race to expand in Eastern Europe.

Armstrong said that the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People was the same as the Nazi ideology and that the K’omoks Treaty did the same.

“It promotes UNDRIP’s blood and soil theory,” she said. “You had tribal warfare, night raids, captives taken as slaves, children traded away, even cannibalism.”

Reaction to her speech was swift.

“No one should ever be allowed to stand in the BC Legislature to use Nazi rhetoric to argue a point. This a line that should never be crossed. Every party should immediately denounce this abhorrent comment,” premier David Eby said on X.com.

Finance minister Brenda Bailey pointed out that Armstrong choose her language very carefully.

“If this member said these things outside of the chamber, we would see them as a bigot and a racist,” she said. “It wasn’t an error in language as she spoke, she read it from her prepared notes.”

“Not only did the member draw on a known Nazi slogan that we know has been employed by hate groups in our country, but also made reference to Indigenous peoples having been cannibals.”

Independent MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, Elenore Sturko, asked that Armstrong’s comments be struck from the record calling them “extremely offensive” and “disgusting.”

Surrey Centre MLA Amna Shah was also vocal about her disgust at Armstrong’s comments and supported Sturko’s request to have them struck from the record.

“It’s an incredibly dark day here at the BC Legislature. I never thought that I would hear such disgusting rhetoric from the member from Kelowna,” she said.

Armstrong is currently facing a recall campaign to oust her from office, although the start of the campaign was delayed until after the BC Conservative leadership race so that people from the party could help with the effort.