National Post (National Edition)
The case for and against Derek Sloan
Derek Sloan has stirred up a remarkably constant stream of controversy since being elected as a Conservative MP in October 2019, but his time in the party may be coming to an early end.
Conservative leader Erin O'Toole is seeking a vote on ejecting Sloan from caucus after Press Progress reported on Monday that Paul Fromm, a notorious white supremacist, had donated to Sloan's leadership campaign.
Sloan is fighting back, saying he never knew about the donation and that he asked the party to refund it when he found out. Furthermore, Sloan said Fromm had applied for and been given Conservative Party membership, and had even cast a ballot in the leadership election.
In the bigger picture, Sloan is likely finished as a Conservative MP given O'Toole has also said he won't allow Sloan to run for the party again. But in the short term, O'Toole needs a majority of the Conservative caucus to vote to give Sloan the boot. Anything less would mark a rebuke of O'Toole from the party's MPs just six months after the leadership election.
Here's what to expect going forward, and what brought things to this point.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
The Conservatives have adopted a provision of the Reform Act — legislation originally put forward by Conservative MP Michael Chong — that means an MP can't be rejected from their caucus without a majority of MPs voting for it.
To trigger that vote, at least one fifth of the Conservative Party's 121 MPs would have to call for it. That has already happened, and an emergency caucus meeting is now scheduled for Wednesday morning.
The COVID-19 pandemic adds a tricky twist to the proceedings. Normally the vote would be done by secret ballot at an in-person meeting. But because the meeting will almost certainly take place virtually, it will have to be a secret ballot cast online.
THE CASE AGAINST SLOAN
As anyone who's paid attention to Canadian politics over the past year knows, this is far from the first time Sloan has caused trouble for his party.
In the 2020 leadership race, Sloan — who had just been elected to Parliament a couple of months earlier — ran a hard-right, populist campaign backed primarily by the social conservative wing of the party's base.
Midway through the race, Sloan prompted outrage after he questioned whether Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam, who was born in Hong Kong, was “working for Canada or working for China.” A move by some MPs to eject him from caucus failed, and Sloan insisted he never meant to question Tam's loyalty. But numerous Conservatives slammed his comments publicly.
“The dual loyalty canard has long been an anti-Semitic trope, or used to perpetuate racist stereotypes,” Michelle Rempel Garner said in a lengthy Twitter thread at the time.
“While I might not agree with every decision (Tam)'s made, I've no doubt about her loyalty to Canada,” tweeted Michael Chong, whose father immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong.
Sloan has not changed his tone since the race ended, continuing to fundraise in particular off his opposition to the Liberal government's “insidious” conversion therapy bill.
“Even though the Leadership Race is now over, the fight for Canada is just beginning,” Sloan said in a Nov. 12 email to his supporters.
In December, he made headlines again for sponsoring a petition in Parliament that questioned the science behind vaccines and called the COVID-19 vaccines “effectively human experimentation.” Sloan told Global News that he might not agree with every part of the petition, but “there's some good points in there.”
In isolation, the Fromm donation might not have been enough for the party's caucus to try to give Sloan the boot. But it's part of a pattern of behaviour, and at least some MPs in caucus would be happy to see Sloan go.
Sloan's behaviour also clashes with the direction in which O'Toole is trying to take the Conservatives. The donation news comes just a day after O'Toole released a statement vowing that “there is no place for the far right in our Party.”
As one person close to O'Toole put it, the Fromm donation “was the straw that broke the camel's back.”
THE CASE AGAINST O'TOOLE
Despite the larger context of Sloan's time in the party, the Fromm donation is not the firmest ground on which to base Sloan's ejection.
“I was unaware of the donation, as was my campaign team,” Sloan said in a statement late Monday evening, noting his campaign had more than 13,000 donations. “When the problematic donation was brought to my attention, I immediately asked (the) CPC Executive Director to refund the donation.”
Although Fromm is one of Canada's best known white supremacists due to his involvement with the neo-Nazi Heritage Front, Sloan pointed out that the donation was made under the name Frederick P. Fromm. It was just $131, of which 10 per cent goes to the party.
Furthermore, Sloan said Fromm's membership application to the Conservative Party had been processed and Fromm cast a ballot in the 2020 leadership race. Fromm confirmed he'd been given a party membership (before O'Toole was elected leader), but said the party has now informed him it's being revoked.
Finally, Sloan said he had never heard from O'Toole or anyone representing O'Toole on Monday to get his side of the story.
There is also the context of the leadership race, where O'Toole was clearly courting down-ballot support from the social conservatives who backed Sloan.
When the vote takes place, Sloan will likely draw some support in caucus from MPs who either back his socially conservative stances or believe on principle it's wrong to eject him on these grounds. But Sloan needs at least half the caucus to take his side, and he may have simply burned too many bridges.