Green party drops controversial journalist as candidate

Last Updated: Sunday, April 15, 2007 | 11:16 PM ET

CBC News

A journalist who wrote that he initially cheered the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center has been rejected as a candidate for the Green Party of Canada.

Kevin Potvin has been told he cannot represent the party in the riding of Vancouver-Kingsway, party leader Elizabeth May said in a news release on Sunday.

Kevin Potvin's article is available on the website that archives his newspaper, the Republic of East Vancouver.
(CBC)

Potvin was acclaimed the candidate for the riding in east Vancouver, a seat currently held by Conservative MP David Emerson, but May now says she will not sign off on his candidacy because of what the journalist wrote after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Potvin wrote an editorial in his newspaper the Republic of East Vancouver in which he admitted to cheering the attacks.

He noted he entitled the column "A Revolting Confession" because he was repelled by his own thoughts. Last week, he said he never meant that he was jubilant about the violence and loss of life.

Potvin wrote that the only reason Sept. 11 merits so much attention is because the targets were so symbolic of "corporatism and militarism."

In the November 2002 column, he wrote that when he saw the first of the World Trade Centre towers fall, "there was a little voice inside me that said 'Yeah!'

"When the second tower came down the same way, that little voice said 'Beautiful.'

"When the visage of the Pentagon appeared on the TV with a gaping and smoking hole in its side, that little voice had nearly taken me over and I felt an urge to pump my fist in the air."

May said on Sunday that "non-violence is one of the Green Party's fundamental principles."

She said Potvin's views are "antithetical" to Green Party values. "We have irreconcilable differences."

Deputy leader Adrianne Carr said the party leadership believes Potvin stepped over the line.

"He certainly used the licence of journalism — and provocative journalism — to raise important points about our society ... but I think he's a better journalist than he is a politician."

Potvin, reacting to the decision, said the Green Party has missed out on an opportunity to defend freedom of speech.

"The house of Parliament is the only place in Canada where people are able to say what their thoughts are without legal consequences," he told CBC.