"The Globe and Mail"
Thursday, November 16, 2000

Troubles dog Day, Chrétien
DAY: Furor erupts over allegations of racism in Alliance

SHAWN McCARTHY

With reports from Brian Laghi and Mark MacKinnon in Winnipeg,; Susan
Bourette and Heather Scoffield in Toronto

REGINA -- Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day found himself on rocky
ground yesterday, defending his party against allegations of racism and
deflecting questions about his own controversial religious beliefs.

Mr. Day, in the midst of a high-octane Western swing, was forced onto the
defensive at a morning news conference as he responded to accusations by
Liberal Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan that his party is a hotbed of
racists, anti-Semites and people opposed to immigration.

He also confirmed his own support for creationism, a conservative
Christian doctrine that rejects the theory of evolution in favour of a
strict biblical account of the world's creation and Adam and Eve.

Yesterday, on a campaign swing through Winnipeg, Liberal Leader Jean
Chrétien joined the attack. He said Ms. Caplan was simply stating facts
when she branded some supporters of the Canadian Alliance as racist and
bigoted.

On Tuesday, Ms. Caplan launched a vitriolic attack on the Canadian
Alliance, saying party supporters include racists, people opposed to
immigration, and anti-Semites who deny that the Holocaust, in which six
million Jews were killed, took place.

She linked Mr. Day to Douglas Christie, a Victoria lawyer who has long
defended Holocaust deniers.

"I don't have very radical people supporting me; that's because we're a
Liberal Party," Mr. Chrétien said yesterday. "When you're a party that
claims the right-wing agenda, you end up with support of that type," he
added. "That doesn't mean that they believe exactly what these groups are
supporting."

Other parties turned her remarks back onto the Liberals.

In Toronto, NDP Leader Alexa McDonough said that if racists and intolerant
people back the Canadian Alliance, it's partly because the Liberals have
created the conditions to make people feel hateful.

Conservative Leader Joe Clark, who has attacked his Calgary Centre
opponent, Alliance MP Eric Lowther, for suggesting a referendum could be
held on immigration issues, backed away from Ms. Caplan's comments.

"I hope that Elinor Caplan has some evidence," he said while campaigning
in Winnipeg yesterday.

"I never liked what Doug Christie represented, but he has a right, as
other individuals do in a free society, to arrange rallies for whom he
would. . . . I know some Reformers who would be very nervous about that
kind of association, and I'm not going to generalize about it."

Mr. Day said the Liberals are stooping to a new low by seeking to tie the
Canadian Alliance to racist organizations.

"There is no other way to describe these very disappointing attacks than
as lies," Mr. Day said in response to Ms. Caplan's comments.

Mr. Day said he has no personal relationship with Mr. Christie, and that
the lawyer has nothing to do with the Alliance.

While defending Ms. Caplan, Mr. Chrétien referred to some individuals by
name, including Jim Keegstra, a former Alberta teacher involved in a
Holocaust-denial controversy that cost him his job, and Mr. Christie, who
was Mr. Keegstra's lawyer. He also referred to a meeting being organized
by them to rally behind Alliance Leader Stockwell Day. "She said there's a
group of Holocaust deniers who are supporting them. I know Mr. Christie
and his group is organizing a meeting. Not for me, I guess. So she stated
a fact."

Asked if he agreed that the group was racist and bigoted, Mr. Chrétien
said that they were.

"This group, in my sense, they are."

Robert Goldin, the Alliance candidate running against Ms. Caplan in
Thornhill, Ont., said he fielded calls all day yesterday from Jews
concerned about her remarks.

"As she well knows, thousands and thousands and thousands of Jewish voters
have come over to the Canadian Alliance. She is just trying to recover the
Jewish vote that she has lost."

At a luncheon in Kamloops yesterday, Mr. Day said the Alliance has Jewish,
Muslim, Sikh and Chinese candidates, who are angry at the Liberal "smear
tactics." And he accused Mr. Chrétien and his Liberal team of engaging in
gutter politics.

"This is a new low in the level of attack ads, personal attacks and scare
tactics," he said. "Jean Chrétien, call off your dogs and tell them to
stop with these inaccuracies and slurring activities."

Mr. Day also slammed as "yellow journalism" a CBC television documentary
that revisited the Alliance Leader's evangelical Christian background. The
documentary interviewed a Red Deer professor who said he attended a 1997
conference in which Mr. Day professed his belief that the world was
created 6,000 years ago, that Adam and Eve were real people and that man
co-existed with dinosaurs.

Creationists argue that their theory of the creation is as scientifically
valid as evolution and should be taught in public schools.

In the news conference, Mr. Day refused to say whether he believes the
creationist doctrine, saying it was not relevant to his bid to be prime
minister of Canada.

"I don't see why that should be used in any kind of a detrimental way
during an election campaign. I work with people from a variety of faiths,
a variety of spiritual beliefs, some of which are vastly different from
mine, and I never ask them questions about their particular beliefs," he
said.

Oryginal: http://www.globeandmail.ca/gam/National/20001116/UALLIM.html