What’s Behind Findlay’s Photo with a White Nationalist Influencer

Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s campaign for leadership of the Conservative Party of BC was already being denounced as racist when she posed for a photo with a young white nationalist commentator the night of the leadership vote.

The party says Findlay didn’t know who Max Genest was when the photo was taken Saturday evening, when he would have been among dozens of eager supporters clamouring for a selfie with the new leader.

But the photo was a trophy for Genest, a young social media commentator who is open about his white nationalist beliefs online. Genest repeatedly posts about the perils of white population decline, calls for South Asian Canadian politicians to be deported, supports mass deportations of immigrants and uses homophobic slurs.

In a May post on X, Genest told an Indigenous activist, “Without White Europeans, you’d still be living as a Stone Age savage.” On May 16 he responded to another X post asking if visitors from India would feel safe in Canada. “Our racistmaxxing is working,” he wrote. “Keep going loyalists.”

The day of the leadership vote, Genest posted photos from inside the leadership election venue in Vancouver, and then a photo of him sitting beside Findlay with the caption “We deported @KoryCPC back to Ontario tonight.” Kory Teneycke, a power in the Stephen Harper government and manager of two successful Doug Ford campaigns in Ontario, was the campaign manager for Caroline Elliott, who narrowly lost the leadership race in the fourth round of voting.

Genest did not respond to an interview request from The Tyee.

“Ms. Findlay is not familiar with the individual in question,” Angelo Isidorou, the executive director of the Conservative Party of BC, told The Tyee via email. “Like many leaders, she takes photos with hundreds of people, without knowing the background of each individual.”

When The Tyee pressed Isidorou on whether the party wanted to make a statement about Genest’s stated beliefs, he wrote, “We repudiate any racist or bigoted views.”

Jonathan Ross, a B.C. Conservative who said on X that Genest was “not welcome” at the party’s leadership event, told The Tyee, “I repudiate his vile views wholeheartedly, as does the Conservative Party of British Columbia and the new leader Kerry Lynne Findlay.”

Evan Balgord, the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said Genest’s behaviour is consistent with recent attempts by white nationalists to try to influence mainstream political parties. The Dominion Society, an organization that has been pushing a message of deporting 20 per cent of Canada’s population, recently protested at the federal Conservative convention with a banner that said “Conserve what?” and “Remigration now.”

“Remigration” is a term white nationalist organizations use for mass deportations, usually of non-white immigrants.

“Their strategy is to try to mainstream their politics and push the Overton window as much as humanly possible, and to have influence,” Balgord said. Balgord said that Genest has supported the Dominion Society by posting flyers around Winnipeg.

Both Findlay and Elliott presented a socially conservative vision during their leadership campaigns, focusing on opposing B.C.’s sexual orientation and gender identity policy for schools and pushing back on Indigenous rights in the wake of several court decisions that have raised fears about property rights.

Findlay is a lawyer and former Conservative MP for South Surrey-White Rock who served as a cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s government. She was widely criticized during the leadership campaign when she questioned whether opponent Peter Milobar would be in a potential conflict of interest on future government decisions involving First Nations because he has family members who are Indigenous.

In reaction to Findlay’s win, the BC NDP immediately denounced her campaign as racist because of that comment.

Findlay fired back. “They’re going to say what they say. I believe the NDP are the ideologues — they’re the extremists.”

Genest had been supportive of Findlay throughout her campaign, including posting a video explaining why he was endorsing her. In the video, he says that the “establishment” federal Conservatives who supported Elliott — a former legislature staffer in Gordon Campbell’s government and longtime BC Liberal volunteer — were an indication that her campaign was not to be trusted.

He also complains about “co-ordinated attacks” from other Conservatives who criticized Findlay’s comments about Milobar’s Indigenous family members. Toward the end of the video, Genest points out approvingly that a “young white Zoomer” man sitting beside Findlay in a photo, who Genest assumes is associated with her campaign, is wearing a Red Ensign pin. The Red Ensign — Canada’s flag before the adoption of the Maple Leaf flag in 1967 — has been adopted as a symbol by Canadian white nationalists.

The Conservative Party of BC did not respond to a question from The Tyee asking if the man in the photo is a member of Findlay’s campaign team.

Balgord said that when people with extreme beliefs manage to associate themselves with mainstream political parties, those parties need to repudiate specific racist beliefs.

“They should explicitly denounce their agenda, which is as simple as making a statement that ‘I oppose and will never support racist mass deportations,’” Balgord said.