B.C. Premier David Eby has called on a controversial MLA to apologize for using “Nazi rhetoric” while criticizing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the provincial legislature Thursday. Tara Armstrong, representative for Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream, made the remark during a debate over the K’ómoks Treaty Act, which the NDP government hopes will bring an end to treaty negotiations that began in the mid-1990s. Armstrong said the treaty “promotes UNDRIP’s blood and soil theory that people with Indigenous ancestry have their own inherent rights, based upon what are described as inextricable links to the land.” The comment was met with swift backlash, including from Independent MLA Elenore Sturko, who was formerly a B.C. Conservative alongside Armstrong. Sturko—who was ousted from the Conservatives last fall, months after Armstrong quit the party—called the remark “extremely offensive” and “disgusting.” Armstrong eventually agreed to withdraw the comment after Speaker Raj Chouhan declared it out of order, but repeated the language multiple times on social media Thursday afternoon. She had not deleted the posts by the evening. The slogan “blood and soil” was used by German Nazis to both “evoke the idea of a pure ‘Aryan’ race” and “justify land seizures in eastern Europe” leading to the Second World War, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Others who spoke out against the remark included Nico Slobinsky, of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, who wrote on the X platform that evoking the term minimized the “memories of victims and lived experiences of survivors of the Holocaust.” In his own post, Eby called doing so in the legislature a “line that should never be crossed.” Armstrong responded to the premier by calling him “a racist” for his support of UNDRIP principles. The MLA previously made headlines trying to ban Indigenous land acknowledgements and scrap B.C.’s Human Rights Code, and faced criticism after blaming the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting tragedy on “transgender ideology.” A recall campaign is currently being organized against her in her Okanagan riding. With files from The Canadian Press
