National Post (National Edition)
Vote on MP's fate threatens to splinter Conservatives
OTTAWA • The Conservatives will hold an emergency meeting Wednesday to vote on whether to eject MP Derek Sloan from caucus, a move that will test Erin O'Toole's leadership of the party six months after he won it.
O'Toole's move against Sloan was prompted by the revelation that the
Ontario MP and former leadership candidate accepted a small donation during the 2020 leadership race from Paul Fromm, a well-known white supremacist.
However, given Fromm had donated under the name Frederick P. Fromm and even managed to hoodwink the party into giving him a membership, using the incident as grounds to boot Sloan raised eyebrows among some Conservatives.
The donation is largely viewed as a convenient excuse for O'Toole to move against someone who has repeatedly embarrassed the party and actively opposes the direction O'Toole wants to take it in.
“So many good reasons to kick him out. Not sure this is one,” said Chisholm Pothier, an experienced Conservative staffer who worked on Peter MacKay's leadership campaign, in a lengthy social media post that echoed what some Conservatives are saying in private.
To succeed in removing Sloan, at least half the Conservative caucus will have to vote in favour of it on Wednesday. Even if Sloan survives, however, O'Toole has also vowed to block Sloan from running for the party in the next election.
Sloan said he was unaware of the donation until it was reported Monday by Press Progress, pointing out it was made under a different name and the party itself received 10 per cent of the $131 donation.
“When the problematic donation was brought to my attention, I immediately asked (the Conservative Party) Executive Director to refund the donation,” Sloan said in a statement.
Fromm also confirmed to the National Post that he's a Conservative Party member and was planning to attend the next policy convention. He was informed on Tuesday that the party has suspended his membership rights “effective immediately” and is taking steps to revoke it.
Sloan, who advocates a hard-right, populist version of conservative politics, has frequently caused headaches for the Conservatives over his anti-LGBTQ views, his fierce fight against the government's conversion therapy bill, his sponsorship of an anti-vaccine petition to Parliament, and his attack on Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam last year in which he asked whether Tam — who was born in Hong Kong — was “working for Canada or working for China.”
Some Conservative MPs have made it publicly known they want Sloan gone.
“I have had enough too,” tweeted MP Eric Dundas, who represents a neighbouring riding to Sloan's in Eastern Ontario. “There is no room for this garbage in our party. Good riddance.”
“Thank you Erin O'Toole for doing what must be done,” tweeted Scott Aitchison, another Ontario Conservative MP.
O'Toole's attempt to eject Sloan is a key moment in his leadership of the party, said conservative commentator Tim Powers, vice-chair of Summa Strategies.
“If Erin O'Toole wants to win the next election, he's got to take risks,” Powers said. “Sloan is the symbol of all the misplaced, right-wing radical arguments that are fixed on the Conservatives by their opponents. If you take Sloan out, yes, there may be some internal damage. But if you're trying to say you're a modernizer, this is a takeout play that makes some sense.”
Due to the pandemic, the vote will take place at a virtual caucus meeting. Sloan will likely be given a chance to make his case, and other MPs may also speak up on either side. The vote will be conducted by secret ballot online, and it's possible MPs won't even know what the final margin is. It needs a simple majority to pass.
If O'Toole succeeds in having Sloan booted, it will be an ironic — his critics would say hypocritical — turn of events from the leadership race, when O'Toole actively courted Sloan's voters for down-ballot support. When some MPs attempted to eject Sloan from caucus over his attack on Tam, O'Toole advertised that he was the only Ontario MP to speak up in favour of Sloan.
But since being elected leader, O'Toole has changed his messaging from the hardline “True Blue” tack he took in the leadership race.
“The Conservatives are a moderate, pragmatic, mainstream party — as old as Confederation — that sits squarely in the centre of Canadian politics,” O'Toole said in a statement on Sunday in which he said there was no room for the “far right” in the Conservative Party under his leadership.
“If the Liberals want to label me as `far right,' they are welcome to try. Canadians are smart and they will see this as an attempt to mislead people and import some of the fear and division we have witnessed in the United States.”