Rick Nicholls is the first sitting MPP for the Ontario Party. He represents the riding of Chatham-Kent—Leamington.
As an MPP in Ontario, I’ve not been afraid to stand apart from the crowd. I said it was Twrong for the government of Doug Ford to force people to be vaccinated or get fired. That stand got me booted from Ford’s Progressive Conservative government.
I don’t regret it. Good came from it. I now sit as the first MPP for the Ontario Party, a choice that keeps my integrity intact.
I know the good of standing apart from the crowd, but this week I was reminded of the regret that comes from following the group.
On Thursday, I made a significant, unintentional error when I voted in the Ontario Legislature for Bill 67, the Racial Equity in the Education System Act.
My error was unintentional in that I read the bill innocently, not knowing that the language in it purports to say one thing but means something completely different.
Like all citizens of Ontario, I abhor any treatment that denigrates or disadvantages someone because of their race; I find discrimination motivated by race, sex or creed disgusting. When I voted in favour of the bill, I thought the bill stood against these things that I and my fellow Ontarians find evil. But it doesn’t. In fact, it promotes them.
The bill is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and it slipped by because people, including myself, are not understanding its true content and intent. Like most citizens of Ontario, I’m not very familiar with Critical Race Theory (CRT), the new pedagogical movement now being pushed into every schoolboard and classroom by Leftist activists. To win approval, the ideas of the movement are presented using the purposely misleading term “Anti-racism.” Ironically, the actions promoted by the “anti-racism” of CRT are explicitly racist.
The two most well-known promoters of “anti-racism” ideology are US university professors Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi. While many books and articles from numerous “anti-racism” academics comprise the extant literature, DiAngelo’s White Fragility and Kendi’s book How to Be Anti-Racist are the most read sources on the topic.
The extent to which these “anti-racism” texts, like Kendi’s and DiAngelo’s, explicitly berate whites and advocate discrimination against them is sickening. Furthermore, they make the implicit claim that people of colour can’t succeed on an equal playing field without rigging the game; this suggestion that expectations must be lowered for some is the most insidious racism of all.
In her work DiAngelo tells us that only whites exercise power and thus only whites can be racist. Moreover, she demonizes whites saying they are inherently racist, prone to oppressing others.
In his book Kendi categorically rejects the idea of treating all people equally. Instead, he insists that to make society “equitable” whites must be denied equal treatment and be made to pay for any past historical wrongs. Specifically, he writes: “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination.”
For Kendi discriminating against whites is not racist, it is anti-racist and we see this warped definition is the same one applied in Bill 67.
As written by Lindo “anti-racism” is defined as “the policy of opposing racism including anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Black racism, anti-Asian racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia.”
In the definition above, note which racial group is excluded. Under the bill it would be perfectly fine to be aggressively racist, as long as it is against white people.
To further legitimize “anti-racist” discrimination in our schools, this new bill will compel new teachers to receive training vindicating this detestable practice. Furthermore, the advancement of all teachers will be linked to their willingness to subscribe to this indoctrination; the bill states “a performance appraisal of a teacher shall include competencies related to a teacher’s anti-racism awareness and the teacher’s efforts to promote racial equity.”
Clearly, the ideas promoted in Bill 67 must be resisted. In fact, as a core policy, the Ontario Party will make it illegal for any educator or school administrator in our public system to teach that an individual, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.
We’ll also rid our schools of the notion that an individual living today should bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.
I’m sorry I voted the way I did, but I began by saying that good can come of a bad situation. Now that my eyes have been opened, I’ll do all I can to fight this bill. So will my party.
