How Aaron Gunn Riles Foes in a Coastal Riding

It’s a packed house at the federal all-candidates meeting in Powell River, with one very notable absence: Conservative candidate Aaron Gunn.

Outside the Evergreen Theatre, campaign volunteers staff a table stacked with placards bearing Gunn’s name and face, perhaps with the idea his supporters may hold them up in the crowd, conjuring the idea of his presence.

Inside, four candidates — the NDP’s Tanille Johnston, the Green Party’s Jessica Wegg, the Liberals’ Jennifer Lash and Independent Glen Staples — answer questions about crime, the toxic drug crisis, reforming the RCMP, Israel and Palestine, and what they’d do to ensure Canada implements the recommendations emerging from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

When Johnston’s name is announced, the crowd meets her with cheers. So much so that Staples cracks a joke: “Sounds like the NDP got this room sold out,” he says.

Gunn’s absence, similarly announced, is received with a smattering of boos.

Tension mounts in the room when a Tla’amin man poses a question about Gunn’s comments denying that Canada participated in a genocide against Indigenous Peoples.

“Canadians are very ignorant about First Nations people,” he begins.

His eventual question is heated, emotional. Some of Gunn’s supporters are yelling at him to get to the point.

He says he wants to know what the assembled candidates will do about Gunn, their political colleague, whom First Nations leaders have called on the Conservatives to drop.

A deeper implication hangs in the air: what will they do to address the people here who still support Gunn despite — or perhaps because of — what he has said about Indigenous Peoples?

The Liberals’ Lash gets the mic first. “I think it’s appalling that he can’t show his face and hear these things directly,” she says.

After news reporting in early April resurfaced Gunn’s 2019 and 2021 social media posts denying that Canada participated in a genocide against Indigenous Peoples, he’s skipped all-candidates meetings and skirted more public appearances in favour of private and registration-only events. He’s since appeared in a photo op on a fishing boat, a rally at a farm in the qathet regional district and another rally on private property in Comox.

“He’s not saying anything to anybody other than his own supporters,” Dave Clark told The Tyee. Clark, a resident of the small North Island-Powell River community of Lund, B.C., is a former journalist. He co-founded a strategic voting campaign called Stop the Split in efforts to keep Gunn out of office.

“How does he expect to work with anybody here if he isn’t showing up to anything?” Clark asked.

“He talks about free speech. He talks about being accountable. But he’s not doing it.”

In many ways, what’s happening in North Island-Powell River is a stand-in for what’s on the line as voters head to the polls across rural and northern B.C.

Early this month, when Gunn’s social media posts resurfaced in the public conversation, federal Liberal Leader and Prime Minister Mark Carney was leading federal Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre in the polls. Liberal candidates in historically blue and orange ridings have seen unexpected spikes in support.

The race has narrowed as of mid-April.

The work of moving forward with reconciliation — such as renaming cities named after harmful colonial figures — is being met with misunderstanding, backlash and denialism.

Some settlers even seem to pin the blame for resource sector slowdowns in part on the advancements of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the recuperation of lands at mill sites.

On the flip side, Gunn is running in a riding home to 22 First Nations, where just under 13 per cent of the population — and 6.5 per cent of eligible voters — have Indigenous ancestry.

The Assembly of First Nations has identified North Island-Powell River as one of 36 ridings that could be swayed by Indigenous voters.

In light of all this, the upcoming vote in North Island-Powell River can be seen as a referendum on how to meet the future.

Will voters believe the Liberals’ Lash, who is telling them she’s the strategic vote and will get them a seat at the table in a ruling government in Ottawa?

Will they place their faith in the NDP’s Johnston, Liǧʷiłdax̌ʷ from the We Wai Kai First Nation, who promises accountability, transparency and the development of green industry?

Or will they opt for the Conservatives’ Gunn, who has made no apologies for his comments on genocide, and whose campaign posts on social media have focused less on what he’d do for the region than on criticism of Justin Trudeau, Mark Carney and Jagmeet Singh?

Gunn did not respond to an interview request or emailed questions by press time.

Door knocking with the Tla’amin Nation

A few days before the all-candidates meeting in Powell River, Johnston is at the Salish Centre in the village of tišosəm, just north of Powell River. The event is late to start; Tla’amin drummers and legislators have just arrived from celebrating the renaming of the local ambulance station from Powell River to qathet.

“Removing the harmful name Powell from the ambulance station is yet another important step toward moving our relationship forward in a good way,” Tla’amin Hegus John Hackett tells the local newspaper, the Peak.

Johnston is here to make the case to Tla’amin citizens on why they should vote for her. The drummers welcome her with a warrior song.

The warrior song meets the moment well, says Tla’amin Nation legislator Erik Blaney. When the campaign trail gets rough and tiring, he urges Johnston to look “to the sky, and look to the ancestors, and bring them down to your heart.”

“The people in this room,” Blaney says, “we’re working on continuing down the path we’ve started on with our treaty partners. We’re a modern-day treaty nation.”

“We’ll go backwards if Gunn gets in.”

Johnston begins by mentioning her connections with the Tla’amin Nation. She’s played soccer with the nation’s women’s soccer team for a decade. She is Liǧʷiłdax̌ʷ from the We Wai Kai First Nation, from the Dick family. Many people in the room, she says, will know her great-uncle Ralph Dick. (That’s true, judging from the crowd’s response.)

She got her start in student politics and social work; later, she was elected to Campbell River city council, where she’s been the only progressive amidst a sea of conservative voices. In a break with municipal political norms, several of her colleagues, including Campbell River Mayor Kermit Dahl, have officially endorsed Aaron Gunn.

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Johnston answers a question about Indigenous initiatives with the federal government from Elder Eugene Louie, who opened the event with a prayer. She answers another about how climate issues have seemed to go by the wayside lately. And another about homelessness, the toxic drug crisis and what the NDP will do to make meaningful treatment options available to First Nations peoples, in particular First Nations women.

Johnston, who’s worked in health care for over seven years, and with the First Nations Health Authority for the last three and a half, says a problem she’s currently helping the Klahoose First Nation solve provides a good example: they need their visiting doctor to be a regular face, instead of a revolving one. It’s key, she says, to listen to what nations say they need, and figure out how to get it to them.

She tells people: She will show up. She will be accountable. She will be transparent. She will live her values and principles if she is elected. Canada needs more First Nations voices in government, she says, and she’s ready to be one of those voices.

After the event, Johnston goes door knocking with her daughter Collins and a local NDP volunteer.

She starts at a building that houses Elders, before moving on to Elder Elsie Paul’s house.

Here in tišosəm, support for Johnston and the NDP seems secure.

In an interview, Johnston tells me she’s aiming to get to every small community, including all 22 First Nations, in the riding.

It’s not only important to show up, she says — it’s important to show up and answer the questions, even the sometimes rude questions, that constituents want to ask.

“It shows your ability to navigate difficult situations and difficult conversations, which is arguably 99 per cent of the job,” Johnston says.

“If you can’t take a really tough question or field a question that you really disagree with and respond to it in a way that demonstrates your ability to represent across difference, are you going to be the most effective MP? Probably not.”

What the polls say, and what the platforms offer

In 2021, Rachel Blaney won an NDP seat in North Island-Powell River with 39.5 per cent of the vote. Trailing her was Conservative candidate Shelley Downey with 36 per cent of the vote and Liberal Jennifer Grenz in a somewhat distant third with 13.1 per cent of the vote.

In an interview, the 2025 Liberal candidate Jennifer Lash makes the case that this time around, it’s different — she’s the best choice for progressive voters looking for strong representation in Ottawa.

Lash, who made the jump to the Liberals after a lifetime of voting for the NDP, says she finds that the NDP too often offers platitudes rather than specificities. The Liberals’ plans for strengthening the economy and meeting climate targets are practical and detailed, she says, and that’s what won her over.

Though the Liberals haven’t won a seat in this geographic area since 1974, Lash believes the current national trend towards cratering support for the NDP will be reflected here.

For her part, the NDP’s Johnston says she doesn’t put much stock in the electoral projections. The tried-and-true method for keeping the Conservatives out in this riding, she says, is to vote for the NDP.

As of Tuesday, the electoral projections have diverged sharply. 338Canada shows Gunn winning easily, with 51 per cent of the vote, Johnston at 26 per cent and Lash at 16. Poliwave shows Johnston losing narrowly with 37 per cent of the vote, Gunn at 41 per cent and Lash at 18. Mainstreet Research, according to a post Lash makes to Facebook, shows the Conservatives taking the seat, with the Liberals in second place and the NDP in third.

This divergence is representative of the frictions and tensions facing the riding.

As a media personality, Gunn has made several documentaries about the toxic drug crisis and at least one about resource projects.

In many ways, his rhetoric is representative of where the Conservative party is at — Canada is “dying” and Indigenous Marine Protected Areas are “disastrous.”

It’s time to “get tough” on “repeat, violent” offenders. He will “bring back common sense,” and instead of “tearing down statues,” which Gunn refers to as “disgusting” and “shameful” and “like something out of 1984,” we should recognize that Sir John A. Macdonald was a man with a “grand vision of a country that stretched from sea to shining sea” and “a leading progressive voice for his time.”

Gunn’s campaign website says his priorities for the region include forestry, fishing, energy and mining jobs, building pipelines and axing the carbon tax.

Neither Indigenous rights and sovereignty nor the environment, nor the fact that B.C. is running up against its limits when it comes to logging or salmon, are mentioned.

Both Johnston and Lash offer visions for the future of the riding that don’t seem to hearken back to a past that may not be recuperable.

Johnston, who comes from a family active in logging, mining and fishing, says she believes there are sustainable ways to continue forestry in the region, and to encourage young people to work in the sector.

Riding-wide, she says, families are still reeling from the closures of the mills. “But there are some really cool opportunities in our riding to grow the aquaculture industry and get into some new markets that will create a new, sustainable economy,” she says.

By way of example, she notes how North Island College has been engaged in research to grow kelp as a regenerative crop, potentially useful in food and household products.

Lash underscores a need to ensure that the resource sector, including forestry and commercial fishing, is sustainable.

The salmon farming industry needs support to transition to closed-containment farming, she says, and shellfish farmers need help overcoming what she says many have described as a “burdensome” regulatory environment.

The Liberals will make investments in trades, for students, schools and employers offering apprenticeships, and that in turn will feed into a boom in the construction of housing. Trades jobs, Lash says, help young constituents stay in their communities.

While Lash and Johnston both make good cases for what they’ll bring to the riding and to constituents, neither can sidestep the fact that much of what is galvanizing progressive voters in the riding is the drive to keep Gunn out.

On the day of the Powell River all-candidates meeting where Gunn is absent, a video of him speaking at Carihi Secondary School in Campbell River starts to circulate on social media.

He tells the gathered students that he made the comments when he was “younger,” conceding that they may not have been the most “sensitive.” But he’s been busy making 25 documentaries in the time since he’s made those comments, and he hasn’t “given much thought” to them since.

His views aligned with the Conservative party at the time, he says — what Canada did was a “cultural genocide,” but not an “official genocide.”

“I've never said anything positive about residential schools. This is a horrible chapter in Canadian history,” he says in response to another question.

He’s been getting the “same question” over and over again, he says, “which gets a little redundant.”

It’s the closest Gunn has come to publicly addressing his comments in a venue less easy to control than a social media post.

Judging by the comments left under the video, and others on social media, Gunn’s responses have only made a chunk of his potential constituency angrier.

The vote split and what hangs in the balance

Dave Clark, the former journalist and co-organizer of the Stop the Split campaign, also co-organized a “Drop the Gunn” rally outside of Gunn’s campaign office in Campbell River.

Clark looked at the historical voting data from the riding, he said, and made the calculation that Tanille Johnston and the NDP would be the best bet to keep Gunn out.

Unsurprisingly, Johnston agrees, though she makes it clear her campaign isn’t affiliated with Stop the Split.

Johnston’s campaign ordered 100 more signs than Rachel Blaney ordered in 2021, she says, and ran out in record time. That’s one indication she has strong support.

Lash says that as she’s been door knocking and phone banking, she’s been hearing something different.

“I constantly hear people saying, ‘I used to vote NDP, and now I’m voting Liberal,’” Lash says. “I hear it all the time.”

“I think there’s actually a groundswell of people that are moving towards the Liberals, and in the end, Stop the Split is telling people to vote for the wrong team.”

At the pool in Powell River the day after the all-candidates meeting — the meeting was held just upstairs, in the same building — a woman in the next lane over tells me she saw one of Gunn’s supporters stroll by in front of the meeting stage, waving one of the mini-placards bearing his name and face.

“I yelled at him,” she says. “I told him his candidate is a coward.”

The woman says she also witnessed people she presumed to be NDP supporters confronting Lash after the debate, asking her to step down to keep Gunn out.

This is something Lash confirms on our phone call. “It is constant and it’s very assertive and it’s not kind,” she says.

The woman swimming laps goes a step further. “People died to get the right to vote,” she says, and to honour that, we should get to vote for the candidates we believe in.