Controversial candidate Aaron Gunn wins seat for Conservatives in B.C.

Aaron Gunn, the Conservative candidate who courted controversy with comments about Canada’s residential schools, has been elected in the British Columbia riding of North Island-Powell River.

CTV News has declared Gunn the winner in the Vancouver Island riding, defeating New Democrat candidate Tanille Johnston, Liberal challenger Jennifer Lash and Green candidate Jessica Wegg.

Gunn was leading with 39.6 per cent of the vote to Johnston’s 34.5 per cent with 260 of 310 polls reporting before 10 p.m.

Lash had secured 23 per cent of the vote, while Wegg had garnered 2.2 per cent when the race was declared for Gunn.

During the election campaign, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre rejected calls to remove Gunn as a candidate after several Indigenous and municipal leaders demanded his removal from the ballot.

Gunn’s comments included social media posts in which he claimed Indigenous groups in Ontario had “asked for” residential schools, which he described as “much-maligned.”

“There was no genocide,” Gunn wrote on his Twitter account in 2020. “Stop lying to people and read a book.”

B.C.’s First Nations Leadership Council was among the groups that condemned Gunn’s comments.

“Such attitudes are extremely harmful and divisive and should not be held by those in public office,” the leadership council said in a statement earlier this month.

Gunn responded to the calls for his ouster with a statement saying he has “always been firm in recognizing the truly horrific events that transpired in residential schools, and any attempt to suggest otherwise is simply false.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was tasked with researching the residential school system, found the schools were designed to carry out cultural genocide, describing them as a systematic “attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples.”

Gunn had sought the leadership of the B.C. Liberal party in 2021, but party officials declined his bid, saying his views were inconsistent with the party’s commitment to diversity and Indigenous reconciliation.

In response, Gunn posted on social media that “conservatives, and all British Columbians who believe in common sense and freedom of speech, are no longer welcome” in the B.C. Liberal party.

With files from The Canadian Press.