Vaughn Palmer: Conservative MLA-elects and scrutineers among those defending elections agency from conspiracy theorists

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VICTORIA — While many of us were clicking — and clicking — and clicking — for an update on election night, a student journalist was interviewing the Conservative candidate in one of the tightest races in the province.

Her professor had dispatched his class to work in the field with instruction in the basics.

“Ask the question and wait,” Stephen Hume told them. “Politicians can’t stand dead air.”

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For student Alyona Latsinnik, the opportunity paid off in journalism gold. Ensconced at Conservative headquarters in Juan de Fuca-Malahat, she asked candidate Marina Sapozhnikov a range of questions until talk turned to the reporter’s own area of academic study: Indigenous studies.

Then it was only a matter of her sitting back and listening, with the occasional reportorial interruption of the do-go-on variety.

Indigenous Peoples had been “savages,” said Sapozhnikov. Indigenous studies, as taught in Canadian universities, was “a lie. They make them enlightened people. They didn’t have an alphabet.”

All of that capped by the retired medical doctor turned Conservative hopeful telling the reporter: “You go ahead and print it, I don’t care. … This needs to be talked about.”

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