Erin O’Toole, the beleaguered leader of the Trumpian-right Conservative Party of Canada
Poor Conservative Party of Canada leader Erin O’Toole. After winning the leadership of his party at the convention held on August 23rd, 2020, almost exactly one year ago, it’s been downhill for Mr. O’Toole ever since.
In order to secure leadership of the Tory party, and beat out rival, former Progressive Conservative Party leader & Conservative Party Cabinet Minister, Peter Mackay, O’Toole made a deal with the devil, in the form of far-right-of-centre leadership hopeful, anti-vaxxer & strident pro lifer, Ontario Conservative MP Derek Sloan, promising Mr. Sloan a prominent seat at the table of an Erin O’Toole-led Conservative Party of Canada.
When Mr. Sloan dropped off the ballot, he encouraged his supporters to cast their ballot for Erin O’Toole, in the process securing victory for Mr. O’Toole over Mr. Mackay.
Less than four months later, on Wednesday, January 20th, 2021, Mr. O’Toole ejected the controversial Ontario MP from the Conservative caucus, due to what he termed Mr. Sloan’s “pattern of destructive behaviour,” including the revelation that Mr. Sloan had accepted a donation in 2020 from a known white nationalist, causing Mr. O’Toole to declare that “there’s no room in (the Conservative Party) for far-right extremism or racism.”
During his 15 months as a Conservative Party Member of Parliament, Mr. Sloan had faced accusations that he was racist and had drawn condemnation for his views on LGBTQ rights and for his strident anti-abortion stance, all leading to repeated calls that Mr. Sloan be tossed from the party’s benches.
“I’ve worked well with many social conservatives in our party over the years. They are welcome in our party, but Derek Sloan’s behaviour is not,” wrote former Conservative cabinet minister John Baird on social media in the lead up to Mr. Sloan’s ouster.
Following on Mr. Sloan’s ejection from the Conservative Party, an as yet unhealed and destructive rift in the Conservative Party occurred.
Most recently, 62 of the 119 elected Conservative Party MPs and former Conservative MP turned Independent Derek Sloan drew outrage from Canadians across Canada, when they voted against legislation brought in by the Trudeau government that would ban “conversion therapy”, the widely condemned practice of trying to change someone’s LGBTQ identity to heterosexual. The final vote was 263-63 in favour of the Liberals’ Bill C-6, passage of the bill banning conversion therapy, include talk therapy, hypnosis, fasting and the use of electric shocks.
The Conservative Party had outed itself as a federal political party largely comprised of homophobes and transphobes, regressives in the manner of Donald Trump and his many hateful acolytes. VanRamblings will expand on this story and theme in a post to be published next month.
Tasteless, sexist, misognynist, objectionable Conservative Party ad attacking Justin Trudeau.
At campaign outset, the Conservative Party and Mr. O’Toole came under fire from their own members over a ‘tasteless’ Trudeau ad. Todd Doherty, a British Columbia Conservative MP wrote on Twitter that he expected the Conservative Party to be better: “This is embarrassing,” wrote Mr. Doherty.
On Sunday, the day the writ was dropped, Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole came out against the implementation of a vaccine passport, told the press that unlike the other major political parties, he would not mandate that his MPs or Conservative Party candidates be vaccinated, and if elected to government would revoke the Liberal party’s edict requiring all federal employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The deadline for full vaccination for employees in the federally regulated rail, air and marine sector would have to be completed by the end of October, according to Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who said that all public servants and employees in federally regulated sectors must comply with the vaccine mandate or risk losing their jobs.
The measure will also apply to all commercial train, air, and cruise ship passengers. Upwards of 500,000 people work directly for the federal government, the military, RCMP or a Crown corporation. Nearly a million more work in federally regulated industries, such as airlines and banks.
“Being vaccinated makes the workplace and travel safer for everybody,” federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced last Friday, August 13th. “We will work closely with key stakeholders, operators, and bargaining agents, in particular, to develop a measured and practical approach to requiring vaccines in these sectors as quickly as possible.”
Eighty-two per cent of Canadians 12 year of age and older have had at least one dose of vaccine, while 70+ per cent have been fully vaccinated.
The vaccine requirement for federal and federally regulated employees, however, would not be implemented by Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, despite garnering the support of public sector unions & 82% of Canadians.
To dig the hole even deeper for the prospect of Mr. O’Toole and the Conservative Party forming the next government of Canada, on Monday, despite the widely popular and economically sound initiative of the federal Liberal government to implement $10-a-day childcare across Canada — the first national, universal social programme to be implemented since 1964, when the Liberal government of Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson mandated universal medicare, and successfully moved legislation that brought the Canada Pension Plan into existence — and despite the fact that eight provinces and terrritories have enthusiastically signed onto the universal child care programme (including provinces led by Conservative governments), Mr. O’Toole went on record to state a Conservative Party would not implement any sort of national child care programme, but would instead create a tax credit for the parents of young children.
Make no mistake, the Conservative Party of Canada under Erin O’Toole is not your parent’s Progressive Conservative party, not the progressive party of Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark or Brian Mulroney.
Rather, the current Conservative Party of Canada under Erin O’Toole has become a far right, Trumpian party that ill represents the values of Canadians across our land, and as such have not a hope in hell of either being elected to national government, or even holding onto a goodly portion of the 119 seats held by the Conservative Party at dissolution.
Tomorrow’s VanRamblings column will explore in some detail, why it is that Erin O’Toole and the Conservatives have almost an insurmountable uphill battle to hold onto their seats in northern British Columbia, across Alberta and Saskatchewan, in Ontario — particularly in the 905 Metro Toronto region — in Québec, and across the Maritimes.
A dire situation, indeed, for Erin O’Toole and Canada’s Conservative Party.
Once again, the Curse of Politics panel — David Herle, Scott Reid and Jenni Byrne — weigh in on Elxn44, reviewing the release of the Conservative Party platform, among a raft of other issues that have come to the fore in Day Three of the current federal election.
Day 3 | The Curse of Politics panel weigh in on #Elxn44, and Charlie Brown … er, Erin O’Toole.
