Anti-Immigration TikToker by Night, BC Conservative Staffer by Day

A few days after New Year’s Eve, a TikTok creator called Robin Skies uploaded a video of Vancouver’s Granville Street crowded with young men and a few women. The scene is peaceful, with no violence or harassment occurring.

But Skies, as his head pops up over the scene in the video, tells viewers they should be troubled by what they see.

“No, it’s not the fact that everyone in this video is brown,” he said of the New Year’s Eve scene. “It’s the fact that everyone in this video is a man.”

He went on to explain he was concerned that “there are no women in sight.”

“You have to ask yourself the question, why? It’s because these women don’t feel safe going out because these men make them feel incredibly uncomfortable when they do.

“This is due primarily to our broken immigration system: as it turns out, some cultures are just willing to scare the hos.”

The video description spells out Skies’ message even more clearly: “Not all cultures value making women feel safe. Not all cultures are compatible. #canadalife”

Most of Skies’ videos get tens of thousands of views, but the New Year’s Eve video was viewed 1.6 million times. A response video he made to counter the many commenters who told him his message was racist was viewed 1.5 million times. The videos were published at a time when South Asian people in Canada are facing a steep increase in racism both online and in person.

The Tyee has learned that Skies’ real name is Adam Beattie, and that he was a paid B.C. Conservative staffer in 2023 and 2024. His name appears on a 2023 post on X naming Beattie as a contact for media for a press conference for Conservative Party of BC Leader John Rustad. Beattie’s name also appeared on an unredacted list of party staffers that was briefly posted to the Elections BC website in January, before being replaced by a version of the party’s annual report that redacts the names of individual staff.

The Tyee has spoken to a source who knows Beattie who confirmed he and Robin Skies are the same person. The Tyee also obtained a screenshot of a now deleted or edited Facebook profile page showing Beattie’s name and profile picture; the photo shows the same man who fronts Skies’ social media accounts.

Neither Beattie nor the party responded to multiple requests for comment from The Tyee.

It’s not clear what Beattie’s job was or whether he’s still employed with the party, but his TikTok videos have become increasingly political over the years, and many of the videos now reflect the official positions of both the Conservative Party of BC and the federal Conservatives.

They also show that Beattie’s TikTok alter ego is an adept political communicator, able to connect with young people who are feeling unmoored because of the high cost of housing, mental health and relationship struggles, and expectations of masculinity.

A focus on immigration

Since 2023, Beattie’s videos have increasingly focused on problems with immigration. In 17 videos that focus on immigration, Beattie has complained that immigration is to blame for high housing prices, that newcomers aren’t able to find jobs or happiness in Canada and that immigrants are scamming Canada’s legal systems.

In a Nov. 27, 2024, video, he showed footage of South Asian people celebrating in a backyard and the original video taker’s complaint that the party was keeping her family up at night. In his commentary, Beattie says the video is an example of how being afraid of being called racist is preventing the authorities from enforcing rules.

In a Dec. 3, 2024, video, he said new immigrants are making women in Canada feel unsafe.

Rupinder Liddar is a researcher who has been tracking a sharp uptick in racism towards South Asian people in Canada, a troubling trend that is affecting both new immigrants and people who have lived in this country for generations.

“South Asians broadly, and anyone with brown skin, has felt a palpable change,” Liddar said.

“I’ve noticed that myself in the spaces I go into — it could just be a café, and all of a sudden you will get looked at differently. It's a weird thing to come to terms with, especially being born and raised here.”

Liddar said online comments, often focused on new immigrants from India, have been particularly vicious, and Beattie’s New Year’s Eve video reminded her of the reaction to videos that show groups of young South Asian people dancing at Toronto’s Dundas Square.

The videos have attracted a mix of positive and negative comments but have reliably attracted comments complaining about immigrants and South Asian immigrants in particular.

Liddar said Beattie’s New Year’s Eve video shows an older form of racism. People have painted Black or Brown men as a threat to women — specifically white women — for decades, a racist characterization that’s at the heart of one of the best-known novels about racism in the southern United States, To Kill a Mockingbird.

“It’s an old racist trope that ‘we have to protect our women,’” Liddar said. “It's been whispered, but it hasn't been openly said in the way that it is being said now. That’s quite scary.”

Over the course of the provincial election campaign this fall, the BC Conservatives repeatedly pushed back against criticism of past racist comments that had been made by many of their candidates, with party leader Rustad vowing to fight back against “cancel culture.”

Party strategist Angelo Isidorou has also boasted about gains the party made with South Asian voters and young voters.

Growing importance of online influencers to politicians

Steve Boots is a schoolteacher from Saskatchewan who started making videos about left-wing politics a few years ago. He said right-wing content creators in Canada have an edge when it comes to being more established on TikTok, YouTube and other platforms. That’s partly because of the example and financial model that has been demonstrated by right-wing influencers in the United States, who have attracted huge audiences over the years.

Boots said that when he looks at how effective parties in Canada are on social media, it’s clear the Conservatives are outperforming other parties.

“A lot of it has to do with the way that their message is clear, it's concise, and it's consistent,” Boots said. “I obviously have really deep disagreements with it, but I understand it the second I hear it.”

Canadian politicians have been experimenting with using content creators to reach voters: during the 2024 provincial election, BC NDP Leader David Eby made an appearance on the @thedarcymichael TikTok account, a channel with 3.9 million followers that humorously documents the daily life of Darcy and Jeremy, a couple living in the Lower Mainland.

Conservative politician Pierre Poilievre and his communications team have mastered some forms of social media: a YouTube video that explained why Canadian housing costs are so high effectively captured young people’s anger and despair over the issue and has been viewed 520,000 times.

But the leader’s official TikTok account has struggled to gain traction, with his videos often getting barely a dozen views. In contrast, Beattie’s influencer videos — often supporting Conservative policies or viewpoints — get thousands or tens of thousands of views, and some have broken one million views.

The party has also recruited Aaron Gunn, a political commentator with a large following on YouTube, to run in North Island-Powell River in the upcoming federal election.

In contrast to the Conservatives, Boots said, the NDP and Liberals have struggled to find a consistent method and voice on social media platforms that reward authenticity over stilted talking points.

While Beattie often responds to Boots’s videos in the “stitch” format that’s common on TikTok, Boots said he isn’t very familiar with Beattie’s content because Beattie blocked him on the platform several years ago.

Boots said it is common for political content creators to be accused of being paid by a particular political party. He said he has never been paid by a political party to make content.

“It's an allegation that gets thrown around a ton, and gets thrown around really loosely,” he said. “You hear it about everybody, including myself, a million times. There's no way to really know from the outside.”