This can’t be happening here

Dear editor: I never thought that what is happening down south in the political arena would creep up here into our city’s municipal elections!

Recently, I came upon a sponsored ad for a Facebook page entitled “Say No to Colin Basran.” It was an anonymously-created “community page” dedicated entirely to personal attacks against Basran — about his personal life, about his motivations for running, and more. All of it unfounded, all of it entirely anonymous. Besides being distasteful — it was the same brand of awful, negative politics that’s more characteristic of the dirty attacks made in campaigns south of the border — it was also illegal.

Under the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act of BC, any third-party advertiser paying money for election ads, whether they be for a candidate or against another, must comply with a strict set of regulations. They must identify themselves and they must register as a third-party advertiser, among other requirements.

I reported them to Elections BC, and received a slew of messages from the Facebook page about how “they’d done their homework,” they had a lawyer on-board “who is far more experienced than you.” They resorted to calling me a “liberal bully” for informing them of the laws, and they even went so far as to dig up an old picture of me in an attempt to discredit me personally.

There’s no indication of who did it, but the page did express, at many points, support for Tom Dyas. To Dyas’s credit, he stressed that he has no connection to the page, nor does he support what they were doing.

But this isn’t the first time that Dyas supporters have engaged in personal attacks. Andre Blanleil was victim to the same type of attack recently by a high-profile Dyas supporter, simply for professing public support for Colin Basran.

This type of behaviour really concerns me. We are strongest when we work together, and real societal problems emerge when the politics of division become the norm. I have really enjoyed the stronger and stronger sense of community that has grown in Kelowna lately, and I’m really proud of the role that the current council has played in this process. Election tactics that aim to divide our community and citizens are damaging to all and should never be tolerated.

As an aside, I received an e-mail on Monday stating that Elections BC had contacted the offending Facebook page and had shut them down for contravention elections legislation, so happily, the system works.

David Kemp Kelowna