As a long-time member of the Conservative party of Canada (and its previous iterations), organizer, and conservative activist I regret being put into a position where I feel the need to speak out against the actions of our party’s leader, Erin O’Toole, and those members who voted to eject Derek Sloan from the federal conservative party caucus.
The decision to expel Sloan over a donation from alleged neo-Nazi Paul Fromm was a serious mistake.
Derek Sloan is best described as a maverick MP, with strong views on many issues not altogether different from many, if not most of his colleagues, depending on the issue. What sets him apart from other MPs is his willingness to state his positions publicly, and to defend those positions with passion and tenacity. He is neither a trained seal, nor is he a snowflake who melts at the first sign of determined opposition. Courage, conviction, and a certain toughness are part of his DNA.
Sloan is exactly the kind of politician many voters are yearning for in this country, especially conservative voters tired of being bullied. He’s the kind of politician we used to admire, even if we didn’t agree with them on issues of policy. Those of us old enough to remember Tom Cossett, for instance, will recall his entertaining interventions in House of Commons debates, and his thundering opposition to official bilingualism that included no-holds-barred public speeches and newspaper advertisements, the most controversial of which began with the words: “I’m not anti-French, but…”
No-one at the time suggested that Cossett be ejected from the caucus of what was then the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. On the contrary, the now-defunct Ottawa Journal crowned him “The Fighting MP from Brockville.”
But those were the old days when independent thinking was not just tolerated, but valued and even expected from our political leaders.
Not anymore. At least, not in the Canada’s conservative parties where an enforced conformity of thought has taken the place of strong opinion and vigorous debate.
To say the case against Sloan was paper thin would be to exaggerate its strength. It’s not surprising that neither he nor the volunteers working on his leadership campaign, nor even party staff, were unaware of Paul Fromm’s background, or that the Frederick P. Fromm in whose name the donation was made was the notorious Paul in the first place. When Sloan did learn of this person’s identity and past associations, he did exactly what he should have done. He informed party HQ and asked that the donation be returned to sender.
That should have been the end of it, except that PressProgress, a far-left publication with an obvious agenda, discovered the donation, coincidentally just one day after O’Toole had declared that there was no place in the federal conservative party for racists. O’Toole, drooling at the opportunity to prove to Canada’s neo-Marxist mainstream media that he was serious immediately announced that he would be asking his caucus to expel Sloan.
It’s now emerging that the Fromm donation was nothing more than a pretext for removing Sloan from the caucus, and that the real reason he was ejected was because he was encouraging social those who supported him in the leadership race to participate in the upcoming party convention. Given that these supporters are scattered across the country, Sloan’s efforts seem to have angered some of his colleagues who believe that they should have exclusive jurisdiction over what goes on in the ridings they represent, even if they do nothing to grow the party within that jurisdiction.
Pretext or not though, the justification offered by O’Toole for his actions was the controversial donation, not the territorialism of a handful of backbench MPs.
Consider the precedent this sets. In the future, instead of sending contributions candidates they like, Paul Fromm – or others of his ilk – will contribute to candidates they do not like, secure in the knowledge that when the donations are made public – and rest assured, they will make sure they are made public – those candidates will be expelled from the CPC caucus or forced to resign. That nobody seems to have thought about this is troubling, to say the least.
We all agree that there is no place for racism in the CPC, but Derek Sloan is no racist - his wife is black, for goodness sake, and his children are all mixed race.
As for anything else he allegedly said or did, that constitutes the “pattern of behaviour” O’Toole is now claiming compelled him to act, those of us who are either conservative politicians or commentators are all familiar with having our words and actions spun out of context by our political opponents and their friends in the mainstream media in an effort to demonize us and discredit our policy goals. I suspect that most CPC caucus members understood this and recognized the injustice expelling Sloan would represent, not to mention the damage it would do to party unity. Nevertheless, the majority of members voted in favour of O’Toole’s request, preferring injustice to giving their leader a well-earned black eye.
The only ones benefiting from this sad affair are the liberals and their progressive allies in the media and in the political field. Even Justin Trudeau took a moment to congratulate Erin O’Toole for having dealt with Derek Sloan so decisively.
What Trudeau should have done was congratulate O’Toole for leading his party so easily into one of the Canadian left’s most effective traps – divide and conquer.
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