O’Toole had to cut Sloan loose

Shed no tears for Derek Sloan, the MP who was just unceremoniously booted out of the federal Conservative caucus.

His protestations he was unaware a notorious neoNazi donated money to his 2020 Tory leadership campaign may, in fact, be true. His claims of being treated unjustly are false. Sloan’s fatal error wasn’t knowingly or unknowingly accepting that tainted contribution. It was turning himself into an odious, cancerous extremist that any party hoping to govern this country would have to excise.

The revelation white supremacist Paul Fromm had backed Sloan — coming just days after white supremacists stormed the Capitol in Washington, D.C. — was merely the match that torched his future with the Conservative Party of Canada.

After — and because of — Donald Trump’s disastrous presidency, the times have changed. Although Sloan stubbornly failed to change with them, the Conservatives and their leader Erin O’Toole are beginning to do just that.

Sloan’s ouster can be applauded as the first downpayment in securing a Conservative party that, as O’Toole pledged last weekend, “has no place for the far right.” To be sure, O’Toole seems a late convert to this position and, as result, is open to charges of hypocrisy. In last year’s Conservative leadership campaign, O’Toole promised to “Take Back Canada,” a clear and intentional echo of Trump’s “MakeAmerica-Great-Again” rhetoric. It was O’Toole and no one else who, borrowing another page from Trump’s playbook, vowed to put “Canada First,” and attacked the “elites” who’d “betrayed” this country.

Even more to the point, it was O’Toole who boasted in the leadership campaign that he’d bravely voted against expelling his rival candidate, Sloan, from the Tory caucus. That was a cynical strategy designed to win the backing of Sloan’s far-right supporters. And it paid off for O’Toole, too.

But while some Canadians might want to hold O’Toole accountable for these past actions, his realization that the loose-lipped Sloan had to be cut loose serves the interests not only of the Conservatives but the country.

It’s a reasonable bet that 2021 will witness a federal election in Canada. When weighing the fate of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority Liberal government, voters need to have viable alternatives that could govern in the interests of all Canadians. A party with members of Parliament such as Sloan would not qualify.

Sloan won notoriety by accusing Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam — a Chinese Canadian — of being loyal to China, not Canada, during the COVID-19 pandemic. That smacked of bigotry. He fed crazed conspiracy theories by speculating the government is telling people to wear masks to control them, rather than protect them against the coronavirus. That betrayed appalling ignorance.

In his view, homosexuality is a choice people make. When anti-vaxxers spread disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines, Sloan assisted them. And even as the party debated his expulsion on Wednesday, he reportedly refused to become a team player.

Would the Conservatives have kicked out Sloan if Liberals hadn’t begun accusing them of being wannabe Trumpists? Would the Conservatives, who in the 2015 election advocated a “barbaric cultural practices” police hotline, have suddenly come down so solidly on the side of tolerance and moderation had Trump supporters not attacked the Capitol building?

Whatever the answer, whether they were motivated by noble principles or good-old pragmatism, it was timely that the day Trump slunk out of the White House, the Conservatives dumped Sloan. Out with the old and worthless. In with what we believe will be better.