Following online outrage over comments about the need to preserve Canadian and Christian values in Canada, the vice-chair of the Vancouver Police Board has stepped down from her role.
Comfort Sakoma’s initial comments on Instagram were screenshotted and shared on Reddit on Friday. A social media mob labelled her as transphobic and accused her of being a “Christian fascist” and wanting to uphold a culturally homogenous white Christian ethnostate in Canada.
In an interview with True North, Sakoma, who immigrated to Canada from Nigeria as a child, rejected these labels and said her posts were taken out of context.
“First of all, I’m black. Okay, so the idea that I’m advocating for an all-white Canada would mean that I’m asking for my own removal, which is insane,” Sakoma said. “I’m not calling for an all-white Canada. I’m not calling for an all-Christian Canada. I’m calling for Canada to have a bit of a backbone, for Canada to set a baseline of who we are.”
Her comments online discussed the need to preserve Christian values and Canadian culture amid Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mass immigration policies, which are causing demographic changes in many Canadian cities.
She also raised the issue with the idealogy behind Trudeau calling Canada a “post-national state” with “no core identity,” comments she later said were echoed by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre just days later.
Sokama argued that it is legitimate to raise concerns about large volumes of immigrants coming from countries which may hold racist views about other minority groups who live in Canada.
“A black mother is more concerned about racism, potentially from places like India, where there has been a 3000-year-old caste system, where the darker you are, the less you’re able to move along society lines (than from other Canadians),” she said. “We have a lot of people coming from places where they have never met a black person or have never had to think very highly of black people.”
The caste system in India has been outlawed since 1948, though some argue its effects still permeate Indian society.
She said she’s concerned that her child will grow up in a Canada which doesn’t respect the rights and dignity of everyone if Canada’s culture is replaced.
In her posts, Sakoma also noted that her son’s school learns about the religious significance of the Hindu Diwali holiday and that discussing Christmas’s Christian significance has become taboo.
She clarified that these comments were taken out of context and that she was not advocating that Hindus be excluded but that Christianity should receive equal treatment in Canada and the government school system.
Another source of outrage from Sakoma’s comments was statements she made about ending the incarceration of parents who push back against their children undergoing gender identity changes. She told True North that calling her transphobic was absurd as she was responsible for rebuilding relationships between the policing community and the LGBT community.
“There was nothing in that comment about the transgender community. It wasn’t even a commentary on whether or not children should be able to transition,” she said. “It was strictly a reflection on parental rights.”
In an interview with True North, Sakoma said that she faced vilification and pressure to resign from board members, including the Chair of the board, Frank Chong, after the board received four emails from Vancouverites demanding her resignation.
“The board made it extremely untenable for me. On Friday I was being really demonized by everybody. Nobody even asked questions to say what happened,” Sakoma said. “The board chair, Frank, specifically told him that he had not yet read the comments or my post when asking me to resign.”
Chong didn’t respond to True North’s request to comment before the deadline.
Following an interview with the CBC, Sakoma released a video response to the allegations herself, as she felt the CBC mischaracterized her by omitting her key arguments. Sakoma said the CBC didn’t include her arguments and clarification on several issues, including parental rights, equal instruction about Christian roots of holidays in schools, and not wanting an all-white ethnostate in Canada.
“They interviewed me for 20 minutes, and in the end, I looked at the article, and all they said was, ‘she says she’s sorry,’ and ‘what she was really speaking for was unity,’ really?” she said. “(The CBC) didn’t say anything that would clarify or help to reduce the flames against me.”
A spokesperson for the CBC told True North that the article “accurately summarizes Sakoma-Daugba’s perspective” in the story’s context, which focused on her apology and resignation.
