1 arrested at UBC campus as visit by MLA Dallas Brodie draws protest

Dallas Brodie is seen in Vancouver, B.C., on Oct. 15, 2024. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck)

One person was arrested at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus Thursday amid a chaotic visit by controversial MLA Dallas Brodie, according to the RCMP.

The OneBC party leader and a few other speakers had announced they were meeting outside the university’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, and were met by a large crowd of protesters.

Brodie has challenged accounts of possible grave sites at residential schools, and was ejected from the B.C. Conservative Party last year over comments then-leader John Rustad described as belittling the “testimony of survivors of abuse, including child sex abuse.”

She later introduced a bill in the B.C. legislature that would have banned publicly funded employees from making Indigenous land acknowledgments, which failed to pass first reading.

Social media videos show hundreds gathering at UBC to protest her visit.

In a statement, the University RCMP detachment said the situation “escalated to a point where police intervention became necessary to maintain public safety.”

“As a result, the involved parties were separated to prevent further escalation,” the RCMP said. “One individual was arrested and has since been released without charges.”

Authorities have not named the person they took into custody. Social media vidoes show RCMP officers carrying one of Brodie’s fellow speakers, Frances Widdowson, author of the book “Grave Error,” away from the crowd horizontally.

In a separate statement, UBC said the speakers were asked to leave campus after it “became clear that there were potential safety risks,” and that when they refused, RCMP officers “facilitated their departure.”

“The university has established policies and processes it follows when addressing behaviours or actions by community members or visitors where there is imminent risk of harm or a threat to safety, and will follow those processes as appropriate and as circumstances dictate,” the statement added.

UBC also pointed to a recent statement from the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre addressing attempts to “provoke controversy around the history of residential schools in order to draw Indigenous communities and institutions into an exhausting cycle of reaction.”

“The history of the Indian Residential School system does not require debate. It is established through the voices of Survivors, through government and church records, through the extensive findings of national commissions and inquiries, and through the ongoing work of Indigenous communities who have carried these truths across generations,” the statement reads.

“These records describe a system that separated children from their families, suppressed languages and forms of life, exposed generations to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and led to the deaths of many children under institutional authority.”

With files from The Canadian Press