Joel Etienne, Joseph Bourgeault, and Grant Abraham were all yanked from the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race, purportedly for not making the $300,000 fundraising threshold..Etienne is a pro-freedom lawyer, Grant Abraham was a pro-life, pro-freedom lawyer, and Bourgeault is a Saskatchewan pro-life and pro-freedom businessman. According to Lifesite News, the party stated the ejection of the candidates was due to not meeting a 15% administration fee. Abraham said he was never told there even was one, and Borgeault raised $400,000 anyway, so the explanation doesn’t make sense..Of course this is all just pretense. The Conservative Party doesn’t want to have these conversations because they can never be won on rational grounds and they’re afraid of how the media in Canada’s major cities will smear and misrepresent the party based on these “unacceptable” opinions..Some of the party brass wants to marginalize the social conservatives as much as possible, and that became glaringly apparent in 2019. The wife of a CPC nomination candidate who had been pulled from the race at the last minute said she knew of two dozen candidates in the GTA alone that had had the same experience. Dr. Anne Gillies was against the transgender agenda and the party ousted her for homophobia..One candidate I know who was pro life won by 11 votes in the first three counts for nomination, lost by more than 80 in the fourth count without explanation. She was told the decision was final and there could be no appeal..Salim Mansur, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Western Ontario, was yanked for no reason, but between the lines the party didn’t want to face accusations of Islamophobia. The problem was Mansur himself was Muslim! Albeit, he was a critic of what some Islamic groups were doing, to the point where he was banned from many mosques..The party wants to appear democratic and pretend to have processes that are open, but when it comes down to it — not so much. They probably hoped these people would sort themselves out, like Marc Dalton and Leona Alleslev did by not raising enough money. It’s like the wicked stepsisters saying Cinderella could go to the ball IF she had a proper dress. When she actually did — miracle of miracles — they cut it into rags..This also happens in provincial races. Ontario MPP Belinda Karahalios wanted to bring in a bill calling for criminal charges for malfeasance in nomination races. The Ford Progressive Conservatives weren’t sure at first if they wanted to support the bill and later efforts were made to gut it. Karahalios was kicked out of the PCs for not supporting Ford’s grab at indefinite emergency powers. No, such powers are supposed to be temporary. Now she leads the New Blue Party..Speaking of upstart right-wing alternatives, Max Bernier suffered similar pretenses — arguably twice. When he ran for party leader in 2017, 7,466 more people voted for Scheer than were eligible to vote, and his margin of victory was less than that discrepancy. However, the ballots, counted by Dominion voting machines, were destroyed the same night..Another strike-Cinderella-BEFORE-the-ball-not-midnight event happened to Bernier after he started the PPC. The Liberal minister of democracy (an oxymoron?) Karina Gould said, oh yes, the PPC could be in the debates IF they got candidates in 90% of ridings. Surprise! Bernier’s team pulled it off — the PPC found a purple dress to wear..That’s when the mainstream media debate consortium moved the yardsticks with new criteria, humourously and specifically designed to keep the PPC out. After public outcry and a poll made it marginally possible to reach a threshold, the PPC was let in. However, Lisa Laflamme of CTV took some half quotes of Bernier’s from Twitter to make him sound bad, asked why anyone should vote for someone like him, and then five other party leaders bash him in response to that question..It’s no wonder Bruce Cockburn cynically sang, “And they call it democracy.”.It’s hard to say we have even scales when they keep getting tipped by intrusive fingers.
