Day steps down from Telus board and law firm after remarks on racism
A former Conservative cabinet minister resigned from the Telus board of directors and a business law firm on Wednesday after comments he made on TV about racism.
Stockwell Day was on a CBC Power & Politics panel Tuesday discussing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s response to protests over the police killing of George Floyd, a black man in the U.S. Day said systemic racism was not an issue in Canada and compared people’s experiences of racism here to him being mocked for wearing glasses as a child.
Wednesday afternoon, Telus released a statement announcing it had accepted Day’s resignation.
“The views expressed by Mr. Day during yesterday’s broadcast of Power & Politics are not reflective of the values and beliefs of our organization,” Telus said in a statement. Day had been on the board since 2011.
Soon after, Teresa Dufort, partner and CEO at McMillan LLP, released a statement saying the law firm had accepted Day’s resignation as a strategic adviser.
Day also said he would step down as a commentator for CBC.
“We all watch in horror and consternation (at) what’s going on in the United States,” Trudeau said during a Tuesday news conference. “It is a time us as Canadians to recognize that we, too, have our challenges.”
On Power & Politics, Day said that he rejected “the prime minister insinuating that all Canadians are somehow racist because our system is systemically racist.”
“The Canadian system is built and every day functions to defend the rights of minorities, and it should, and we celebrate that,” he said.
Day said that while there are a “few idiot racists” in Canada, he believes most Canadians are not racist.
Wednesday morning on Twitter, Day doubled down on his assertion that there is no systemic racism in Canada before writing another tweet asking for forgiveness.