Booting Sloan just a start for O'Toole

When I first read Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole's assertion that “there is no room for the far right” in his “modern, pragmatic, mainstream” Conservative party, my plan was to write a column indicating it wasn't good enough.

Words are just words. He'd have to do more than that. He should start by dumping Derek Sloan, a festering sore of ignorance and ambition, from the party caucus. There's no point pretending to be a tolerant, broad-minded or conscientious organization when you welcome someone like Sloan in your midst.

On Monday, O'Toole announced he'd block Sloan from running again as a Conservative. On Wednesday, his caucus backed their leader in voting to expel Sloan from their midst. So that's good. Ruined my plans for this column, but still good.

The question that remains is whether O'Toole really found God, or is just praying and pretending. There are plenty of reasons for ejecting Sloan — his sins have been well-documented — but it's not like they just popped up a week ago. Sloan has been objectionable since the day he assumed office just over 15 months ago.

Other Conservative members of Parliament want nothing to do with him, as evidenced by Wednesday's vote and the fact that not a single one supported his bid for the party leadership. Municipal authorities in his own riding asked for him to be expelled for suggesting Canada's chief medical officer was in league with the Chinese government. O'Toole not only ignored the request, he boasted of protecting Sloan. So why wash his hands of the man now?

One reason is that he no longer needs Sloan's followers to win the leadership. O'Toole's bid against rival candidate Peter MacKay was considered so close, he judged he couldn't afford to write off Sloan's tiny fan base. He calculated correctly: once Sloan was eliminated in the first round, O'Toole picked up enough of his votes to pass MacKay, a lead he carried through to victory.

More compelling, however, was the assault on the United States Capitol, which handed the Liberals a handy opportunity to link Conservatives to U.S. Republicans, and in particular to Donald Trump and his MAGA-hatted mob.

It's the Tories' own fault for leaving themselves vulnerable: Trump's loathsomeness has been plainly obvious for a very long time, yet Conservatives made no great effort to say so publicly, or to distance themselves from him, his cult or his antics. O'Toole denounced the attack in Washington as “an astonishing assault on freedom,” and retweeted a statement from foreign affairs critic Michael Chong blaming Trump, but it was a bit late in the game to be discovering that there was no bottom to the depths Trump would explore.

It's a good time for O'Toole to decide whether he really wants to set firm new standards for the party. The Conservatives may soon represent the only party in Canada not engaged in a drive to move ever further to the left. Green Leader Annamie Paul set down an important marker when she made clear in a recent interview that the Green party aims to become the northern iteration of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her ranks of impatient American activists with their Green New Deal and its utopian agenda.

“There is no plan for a balanced budget from us,” Paul told The Canadian Press. A guaranteed livable income, universal pharmacare and childcare, free post-secondary education and a ban on privately owned long-term care homes are all on the Green agenda. Paul's predecessor, Elizabeth May, may have been popular with the Ottawa establishment, but her greenism was a mishmash of barely comprehensible pipe dreams. Paul seems determined to clarify the program.

That could turn federal politics into a lopsided spectrum, with four parties — the Liberals, Greens, New Democrats and Bloc Québécois — fighting it out for the “progressive” vote with vote-buying programs requiring ever-greater quantities of borrowed cash. The NDP could find itself being chewed at from both sides, Greens on one flank and Liberals on the other.

When voters eventually tire of the Liberals, as they always do, they'll once again look to the Conservatives as the obvious alternative. O'Toole better have the party ready, and he won't succeed if he persists with the dog-whistle approach that eventually spelled the end of his two most immediate predecessors. The moderate, pragmatic suburban voters he needs won't be any more eager to ally themselves with gay-bashers, vaccine-doubters, closet Trumpites or conspiracy-mongers than they've ever been.

More to the point, Conservatives don't need extremists, and shouldn't want them. They need to be treated with the same careful avoidance as COVID-19. Conservative Deputy Leader Candice Bergen and her MAGA hat may have seemed like harmless fun at the time, and O'Toole may have thought that echoing Trump with his “Take Back Canada” slogan was no worse than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau copying Joe Biden's “Build Back Better” theme, but aping American politics is a dangerous game and — frankly — paints Canada as a bit bush league. Gee, look what the Americans are doing, let's be just like them!

O'Toole's goal should be to identify Canadian conservatism as an entirely unique and separate entity, which may share some generalized aims as other versions — less intrusive government, the notion that individual responsibility goes along with rights, a realistic plan for sustainable finances — but answers to no one but Canadians and offers its own unique ideas. It also doesn't need to carry anyone else's baggage.

If the expulsion of Derek Sloan is a signal that O'Toole intends to clear the party, root and branch, of the bad habits of yesteryear, good on him. But he better be serious. And diligent. Backsliding will only convince more people the Conservative party is incapable of doing better.