OTTAWA -- The Green Party is moving to kick out former candidate Monika Schaefer after the Jasper woman posted a video YouTube, in which she denies the Holocaust.
"I am shocked by comments made by Ms. Schaefer and I condemn her terribly misguided and untrue statements," Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said in a statement last Friday. "Ms. Schaefer does not represent the values of the Green Party nor of our membership."
The party's executive director also condemned Schaefer's comments, calling them "outrageous and shocking."
"Ms. Schaefer has no standing within the Green Party of Canada, and her views are exclusively her own,” Emily McMillan said in the statement. "Ms. Schaefer was rejected as a potential Green candidate for the riding of Yellowhead prior to the 2015 federal election, and also rejected as a potential candidate for the 2014 by-election in Fort McMurray-Athabasca."
Schaefer ran for the party in 2008 and 2011. A month ago, a video was posted to YouTube featuring an apology to her German-born mother for asking, as a child, why her parents hadn't done anything to stop the Holocaust. In the video, she says that her mother responded that they didn't know it was happening.
"Now I know why she did not know. It is because these things did not happen," Schaefer says in the video.
"What a relief it is to learn that my parents and grandparents were not part of a people that suddenly became monsters overnight."
Schaefer's video was posted to a YouTube account featuring other Holocaust denial videos and conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 terror attack.
The party will move at its next federal council meeting to terminate Schaefer's membership, McMillan said in the statement. The termination requires a majority vote.
There is a federal council meeting scheduled as part of the Green Party convention in Ottawa Aug. 5-7.
