Tory byelection candidate sorry for residential schools comments

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BRANDON — A Progressive Conservative candidate in an upcoming Manitoba byelection has apologized for comments she made in the past about residential schools.

Colleen Robbins, the Tory candidate for Spruce Woods, wrote on X in July 2021: “I don’t believe for once that any human ever started the residential school to abuse children. I agree it was what they thought at the time to help the Indigenous, which didn’t happen.”

On Monday, the 61-year-old said she never learned about residential schools while she was in school.

“I apologize for my ignorance,” she said in an interview with the Brandon Sun.

“I believed — honestly at the time — that they were just like a regular school that people moved to, to be educated,” she said. “But since the truth and reconciliation has come to light, and all of this, we’re all learning and reading about it more and more. I just didn’t think that they started it out to be like that. But in fact, residential schools were to take the culture out of them, and that is just so wrong in every which way. And I apologize.”

Kelly Saunders, a political science professor at Brandon University, said the optics of this are bad for the PCs.

“I don’t think this is good for the party, because it’s only going to remind Manitobans of the fact that the party has had a troubled record when it comes to Indigenous issues,” she said.

Earlier this year, the PC party apologized for its stance during the 2023 election to not fund the search of a Winnipeg-area landfill for the remains of Indigenous women murdered by a serial killer.

“Those issues have been a bit of an albatross around the party’s neck,” Saunders said. “This statement made by a candidate, even given the fact that it was made a few years ago, this is not the kind of bad press that the party is looking for these days.”

Robbins also defended comments she made earlier this year regarding U.S. President Donald Trump, when he imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico, citing drugs going into the U.S. from both countries.

“I am so sorry you have to do this to us … Thought our countries were friends,” she commented in early February.

Phrasing it that way was both sarcastic and a bad choice of words, she clarified on Monday, especially when readers don’t know who she is as a person.

Robbins said she was mad at the American president in that comment.

“Friends don’t put tariffs on or hurt each other,” she said, calling herself a patriotic Canadian. “And I was being sarcastic there. That was not me apologizing for anything.”

She said that comment, along with others regarding U.S. politics, are being taken out of context by the people reposting them.

Robbins said those people are “fear mongering” and running a “smear campaign.”

Stephen Reid, the Liberal candidate for Spruce Woods called Robbins’ comments “terrible” and hopes she learns from the experience.

“When someone shows you who they are, listen,” he said. “That’s something that people need to keep in mind.”

The Sun reached out to NDP candidate Ray Berthelette, but a campaign manager said he was door-knocking and wasn’t available for an interview.

The byelection is set for Aug. 26.

— Brandon Sun