“What’s your stance on the gay agenda and those Muslims?”

That’s a question that was asked recently at a political meeting. It was an event like pretty much any other. A group of people gather in a pub (or maybe it was a restaurant, maybe a community hall). As a growing party a lot of new people come to our events and we engage them by asking people what brought them out.

This time it was a couple who started asking pointed questions about race, and immigration and that awful question above. I’ve met people like this before. They’re very keen on politics, they have an agenda and they’ll bring a lot of their friends along to support a party. That is, so long as we’re willing to tolerate their racist nonsense.

We’re not.

We told them they won’t find what they want in the Alberta Party and they should vote for someone else. So they left.

It’s really not that difficult. The Alberta Party knows what we stand for. We will not tolerate racism, or homophobia, or gender discrimination or any of the other ways that people different from the powerful majority are seen to be just a little lower down the ladder. And we won’t work with, or stand for, people who hold those views.

And we certainly won’t use “media” outlets like The Rebel to do our bidding.

Someone once told me that if you attract bears, you’ll have a bear problem. Other political leaders seem to have realized they’ve got bear problems, and now they’re trying to back slowly away from one of the more odious and public sources of their problem. But they still quietly cozy up to people with these views because they’re politically useful. Our neighbours to the South have shown us where that can lead.

We don’t have that problem in the Alberta Party because we speak out when we see hate. We call it out, and we’ve made it clear we don’t have room for those who want to push that agenda. Period, end of story.

It shouldn’t be difficult to stand up against racism. But for some, the pursuit of power is the only focus, no matter what damage is done along the way.