On Wednesday afternoon, the federal Conservative Caucus made it official, expelling Derek Sloan into the political wilderness. He will now sit in the southeast corner of the House of Commons beside the Green Party, in Maxime Bernier’s old seat. Virtually at least.
The party did have cause to boot Sloan. Unfortunately for them, it’s not the one they used in time to save face from the episode devolving into a farce.
On Monday, O’Toole issued a white hot statement blasting Sloan for receiving a $131 donation to his leadership campaign from a neo-Nazi who sometimes goes by the name Paul Fromm.
“Derek Sloan’s acceptance of a donation from a well-known white supremacist is far worse than a gross error of judgment or failure of due diligence.”
Well, that excuse held about as much water as a pasta colander. None of it added up.
Very few people in 2021 know who Paul Fromm is.
Paul Fromm made the donation under the name ‘Frederick P. Fromm’.
The donation was for $131, and would attract the attention of precisely no one working for Sloan or O’Toole.
The donation slipped not just by the CFO of the Sloan campaign, but also through the Conservative Party of Canada who took their own 10 per cent cut without question.
The Conservative Party of Canada issued Fromm with a membership card and allowed him to vote in its 2020 leadership contest.
Most reasonable people smelled a rat. Clearly, O’Toole wanted Sloan gone, and this was the trumped-up charge he would use to make it happen.
It’s too bad, because O’Toole and his allies in caucus had cause to expel Sloan without the need for a farcical show trial.
Sloan has made genuinely extreme statements that allow the Liberals to paint the entire party as intolerant. And they aren’t just the usual Liberal accusations that ‘everyone that disagrees with me is a: racist, homophobe, transphobe, Islamophobe’, ect, ect, ect.
While seeking the Tory leadership in January 2020, Sloan told CTV: “Whatever the cause of sexual orientation, which I still maintain is scientifically unclear. That is the position of science right now.”
It’s not. Being gay is not a choice. For most of mankind’s history, those who were gay, wished that they weren’t. Even in broadly tolerant societies like Canada, many gay men and lesbian women still struggle with their innate identities.
Claims that being gay is a choice – implicitly or explicitly – is meant to buttress long-discredited theories that we can “pray the gay away.”
Sloan is welcome to hold these views. But most Canadians, most Conservatives, and even most social conservatives, do not.
His positions on other issues – abortion, child sex reassignment surgery – while controversial, are not necessarily extreme. They might go against the grain, but they should be a welcomed part of open debate in the political sphere, and within the Conservative Party.
But claiming that being gay is a choice? The Conservatives need to draw a line somewhere, and that seems like a good place to start.
Unfortunately, that’s not where O’Toole drew it.
After Sloan made these comments about gay-choice theory, O’Toole defended Sloan against attempts by mostly Peter MacKay-supporting MPs who were trying to expel him then.
At the time, O’Toole needed third and fourth-place down-ballot support from Sloan to secure the Tory leadership. These views – while not his own – were welcomed in O’Toole’s “True Blue” coalition.
Keen observers could see close parallels with Andrew Scheer courting support from social conservative Brad Troast in the 2017 leadership race, just to discard him once he had the job.
O’Toole needed Sloan in 2020. He didn’t in 2021.
Since 2020, Sloan has been mostly quiet, and hasn’t committed any political sin of note. O’Toole was grateful for the contrived scandal of a meager donation from a has-been hate monger made under another name.
If O’Toole had not defended Sloan in 2020, if O’Toole had not courted his support for down-ballot votes, if O’Toole had supported the move to expel Sloan when he first made his remarks, he might then have a leg of credibility to stand on.
Instead, he drummed up a fake scandal and played the self-righteous Liberal card.
And in the process, has made himself the bad guy, and Sloan the man who deserves justice.
Now O’Toole looks like a man caught playing dirty backroom politics, and leaves the social conservatives in his party asking themselves if they are just there to hand over votes and money.
Derek Fildebrandt is Publisher of the Western Standard
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