An Open Letter to Municipal Councillors of Quesnel, BC

From retired Canadian publisher Robert Roth

Quesnel City Council. Image Credit: City of Quesnel

If you missed my post from Friday - Empathy or Totalitarianism? - you missed a lot! In that post you can see the video of the now infamous Quesnel city council meeting/clown show in which the Mayor’s wife, Pat Morton, and Grave Error co-author, Frances Widdowson, were treated terribly by a hostile mob of woke activists. Below is an open letter from retired publisher, Robert Roth, to the Quesnel city councillors. - James Pew

An Open Letter to Municipal Councillors of Quesnel, BC

By Robert Roth

Dear Quesnel, BC, Councillors

I have just read a CBC report and viewed a video of the April 2, 2024, Quesnel Council meeting where the book, Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) was discussed. It is the most disturbing municipal council meeting I have witnessed in years.

Every principle of decency, decorum and democracy was ruthlessly eviscerated by mob behavior abetted by a complicit council.  

I am not going to comment on the book, itself. That is a separate topic. What I wish to address is the appalling, anti-democratic process I witnessed at the meeting.

The bias of the chair and council was astounding.

Numerous spokespeople for the anti-book side were given unlimited time to pontificate about anything they wished — including an attack on people’s skin colour — while the two lone speakers trying to explain or defend the book were told they could only ask one question and, even then, were cut off and drowned out by boos, hoots, cat-calls, and even drumming, by an uncontrollable mob. There was no effort by the councillor chairing the meeting to be fair and to intervene and halt this annihilation of the democratic process.

When an unruly, intimidating gang can selectively shut down certain speakers and eliminate rational dialogue at a council meeting, democracy has officially succumbed to tyranny.

Councillors were complicit in this naked assault on unfettered discourse by constantly shouting out “point of order” over and over every time they heard something they did not like from the two victimized speakers. Having served on two municipal councils, I can tell you that a point of order requires the chair to rule on it. The chair failed to rule on these points of order, instead letting the councillors continually raise and use them to interrupt the two speakers.  “Points of order” were not raised against the anti-book speakers although they, by far, failed to adhere to the rules of engagement and strayed all over the place. You folks need to read Robert’s Rules of Order, which is the go-to guide for running a formal council meeting. You have no idea how to properly run a meeting.

Forgive my impudence, but I like to hear all sides of an issue and then decide for myself what is truth and what is not. I don’t want a swarm of hooting, hollering hellions forcing me to hear only their viewpoint. 

I would have been far more impressed with councillors and the mob had they specifically pointed to pages in the book to demonstrate what was in error — assuming that is the case. Then I would have actually learned something. That’s how you deal with views with which you disagree.  You challenge them. You destroy the errors with logic.  You don’t destroy free speech itself by engaging in character assassination and refusing to listen to the other side. As the cleric Martin Luther once put it: You don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. But on April 2, that is exactly what Quesnel councillors did. 

Particularly incomprehensible is the fact that some councillors have denounced the book without even reading it. When ignorance is a prelude to action, society is truly doomed.

By allowing and contributing to this abhorrent behaviour, you did much more than take away the right of two people to speak. You took away everyone’s right to hear. That is the compound injustice that takes place when free speech is guillotined.

It does not matter what side of an issue you are on — the values of good manners and democratic principles should be maintained. That’s how democracy works. That’s how a council meeting should work.

I was brought up with the fast-fading value that free speech is the underpinning of democracy and when it falls, democracy falls. 

People have a right to be heard even if you disagree with them. I refer you to a quote/paraphrase of an old saying, variously attributed to both French author/philosopher Voltaire and English author Evelyn Beatrice Hall:

"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."  

The right to hold opinions with which others disagree — and the moral obligation of every democratically minded person to safeguard that right — is the lifeblood of democracy. Those who take a hatchet to that vital vein of freedom are deserving of the utmost contempt. 

Quesnel’s protocols and policies allow people to come and address council. But Councillor Laurey-Anne Roodenburg — after casting aspersions on Professor Frances Widdowson’s background and credentials — compounds her offence by telling Widdowson: “You really have no place here. We really don’t want to hear from you.” 

Councillor Roodenburg, I have viewed your LinkedIn profile and while I respect your background as a “retail clerk” at “Suzannes” clothing store for nine years (the only real work experience I could find on your profile outside of politics), let me politely suggest that a long-time university professor such as Widdowson — imbued with doctoral credentials and years of professional, academic research into sociological matters — should at least be given the courtesy of equal standing to your own lived experience and the unparalleled wisdom you choose to grace us with. Let me put it more succinctly: In a democracy, your opinion is not the only one that matters. 

More to the point, if you did not want to hear Widdowson speak, why did you and your fellow councillors implicitly invite her by leaving her on the agenda and letting her come to the podium in the first place? Was it just a ruse to lure her into a public lynching? Shame on your contradictory behaviour (come and speak to us, but “we really don’t want to hear from you” and “you really have no place here.” Duh?)

It's a good thing hypocrisy isn’t painful or the screams coming out of the Quesnel council chambers would be loud enough to break eardrums. 

The other outrageously objectionable behaviour at the meeting was the demand after demand after demand that the mayor step down for something his wife did. She committed the heinous, unforgivable crime of circulating a book. (Never mind burning the book — or the witch — burn the witch’s husband.)

This hateful illogic is a classic manifestation of sexism.

But none of you spoke up to challenge this attack on equal rights for females. Instead, you toppled yet another pillar of democracy.

The mayor’s wife is not a slave. She is a person in her own right. She has a right to her own opinion. We are long past the days when a man can browbeat his wife into submission.  But that is precisely what speaker after speaker implicitly demanded.  And not one councillor challenged this sexism.  

Shame on all of you for taking us back to caveman days.

The fact that this brutal act of patriarchy was carried out by several women speakers only demonstrate​s how the struggle for modern feminism launched in the 60s and 70s is being undermined by a brainwashing “woke” ideology that is so pernicious it even blinds latter generations of women to their own self interest.  

In short, what I witnessed on April 2 was a disgraceful abandonment of every principle of sound municipal management and a profound betrayal of the public trust. 

The mob behaviour — shouting down speakers, casting aspersions on someone’s skin color (the accusation of “white” privilege that vomited from the mouth of more than one speaker), drums beating, hooting, hollering — all made the council meeting look more like a Ku Klux Klan rally than a rational exercise in democratic process. You people have totally abdicated your responsibility as faithful guardians of our public institutions.  

Quesnel Council’s rudeness, contradictory behavior and disregard for fundamental democratic concepts is beyond distasteful — it is frightening. It is frightening because such vicious intolerance of dissenting views is becoming all too commonplace in far too many of our Canadian institutions.  

These outrages in word and deed by Quesnel Council are so massive and blatant that they can only be explained by understanding the myopic, self-induced sense of false virtue that is typical of all true-believer zealots who labour under the self-delusion that they, and they alone, are the repository of absolute truth. In sociological terms, we call this “fanaticism.”

It is profoundly ironic that those who claim to be champions of “inclusivity” are the very ones who denounce, demean, deny and “exclude” anyone who disagrees with them. 

Frankly, councillors, people like you — those who would commit genocide against free speech — are today’s greatest threat to democracy and our liberal democratic way of life.

​Sincerely

Robert Roth

(Robert Roth is a retired newspaper editor and publisher and has held positions with a variety of news media, including the Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in sociology from York University and a Master’s degree in journalism/communications from Carleton University. He was the founding publisher of Media Magazine, the official publication of the Canadian Association of Journalists. He is also a former lecturer in journalism/communications/political science at Carleton, Algoma and Laurier universities. In addition, he was a councillor and deputy reeve in two Ontario municipalities for a total of 10 years of elected municipal service.)

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Thanks for reading. For more on indigenous activism vs. free speech, read Frances Widdowson takes Lethbridge University

BREAKING NEWS:

1. A new long-form essay by Dr. M - Fulcrum and Pivot: The New Left Remaking of Toronto School Policy

2. James Pew has contributed a chapter to the new book Grave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers

Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!

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