Mischa Popoff was fired last night as the BC Conservative candidate in Boundary-Similkameen for what the party called “insensitive and disrespectful comments” about the Missing Women Inquiry and single mothers. This followed an article in the Vancouver Sun that appeared on the Web last night and in the paper this morning.

Here’s a longer quote on what the party found offensive and what the party believes:

“Mr. Popoff’s various comments were insensitive and disrespectful, particularly to women and single mothers who are, in fact, heroes to their children and their communities in many cases,” said a party news release issued late Thursday.

“We are a party that believes in a respectful airing of views. Mr. Popoff’s statements were unacceptable and he has been removed as a candidate.”

What’s interesting about the party’s position is that there was no suggestion Popoff was wrong when he said single women make poor parents, or that the Missing Women Inquiry was useless. Instead the truth was “insensitive” and “disrespectful.”

And that, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with politics in Canada in the 21st Century.

You can’t tell the truth because it might hurt someone’s feelings.

There are innumerable studies and expert analyses that show children of single mothers are more likely to become involved in crime than children of traditional families. Here’s one reported by the Daily Mail in 2010.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said “Children from broken homes are nine times more likely to commit a crime than those brought up in stable families.”

Here’s more:

Iain Duncan Smith said the collapse of marriage had brought soaring crime rates, doubled the chances of living in poverty and cost the country an astonishing £100billion a year.
The Work and Pensions Secretary accused Labour of undermining marriage and family life and said the country had paid a ‘heavy price’ in deeper poverty, high crime and poor life chances for the children of families that failed to stay together.

Mr Duncan Smith’s speech to representatives of the Relate counselling charity was the strongest defence of marriage made by a major government figure in years.

The American statistics are just as bad if not worse. Here’s the appalling toll reported by the Separated Parenting Access and Resource Center:

• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes –U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census
• 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes –Center for Disease Control,
• 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes –Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 14, p. 403-26
• 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes –National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools
• 70% of juveniles in state operated institutions come from fatherless homes –U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report
• 85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home –Fulton County Georgia jail populations & Texas Dept. of Corrections, 1992

Translated, this means that children from a fatherless home are:

• 5 times more likely to commit suicide
• 32 times more likely to run away
• 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders
• 14 times more likely to commit rape
• 9 times more likely to drop out of school
• 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances
• 9 times more likely to end up in a state operated institution
• 20 times more likely to end up in prison

Well, that’s pretty clear cut isn’t it?

Popoff is correct and the BC Conservative Party is wrong.

The same is true with the Missing Women Inquiry; it’s been all talk and no action. As long as young aboriginal women turn to prostitution they will be at higher risk than the general population. The solution starts in the home, not out on the highway.

Which brings these two subjects together; good two-parent homes are much more likely to produce good, upright citizens.

If you agree, tell your friends to come out and vote for Mischa Popoff.

He’s still running, still truth telling in Boundary-Similkameen, no matter what the liberal media or the BC Conservative Party have to say.