The anti-gay and anti-choice views that formed the basis of his campaign for the Conservative leadership were bad enough.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on December 7, 2020.

OTTAWA—Derek Sloan should be tossed from the Conservative caucus.

The anti-gay and anti-choice views that formed the basis of his campaign for the Conservative leadership were bad enough.

Last week, he went from the ridiculous to the delirious, sponsoring a parliamentary petition that discourages Canadians from vaccinating themselves against the worst public health scourge in a century.

Sloan actually went so far as to claim that the vaccination was human experimentation and within hours of its announcement, his petition had gathered more than 22,000 signatures. Even more frightening was the decision by Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole to sidestep the question when asked about it during a presser on the government’s handling of the vaccine. On this one, O’Toole is making a deadly mistake.

While he and his party were starting to develop some media traction in the attacks on government pandemic strategies, the Sloan petition has the effect of throwing all that under the bus.

It makes a number of egregiously false claims including the fact that “no coronavirus vaccine has ever been approved because of serious adverse effects, including death to test animals, due to pathogenic priming; COVID vaccines are not designed to prevent infection or transmission and bypassing proper safety protocols means COVID-19 vaccination is effectively human experimentation.”

This is not the first time Sloan has put his foot in the wrong place. Who can forget his claim that Dr. Theresa Tam was a Chinese agent, a statement for which he did apologize? He has not apologized for opposing federal legislation to end conversion therapy. Sloan stands with those groups that claim they can stamp out homosexual urges through shaming and bullying.

O’Toole is refusing to silence Sloan and by not doing so, he will alienate the majority of the thinking population.

How can the Conservative leader convince Canadians to vaccinate themselves when his own colleague is leading the warped world of online anti-vaxxers?

Before the recent American presidential vote, social media websites like Instagram and Twitter actually blocked false anti-vaccination claims, suggesting they were untrue and designed to have an influence on the election result.

But here in Canada, O’Toole runs the risk of losing the public completely by refusing to stop Sloan from peddling his false and dangerous claims.

It looks as though the Conservatives are backing themselves into the same corner that cost them the last election.

Their refusal to shake off the extremists in their caucus and party are going to do them grievous harm when most Canadians are looking for leadership on pandemic issues.

With the government launching another confidence vote on the $25-billion COVID-fighting investment announced by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland last week, the Tories could be facing the electorate sooner rather than later.

That means a clear, coherent strategy on the main issue of the day should not be muddied by caucus members with mixed messaging. Kicking Sloan out would mean a couple of days of internally negative headlines, but it would clear the way for an election that would not be affected by mixed Tory messaging.

O’Toole has struggled to place himself in the moderate middle when it comes to social issues facing his very conservative caucus. He made it clear immediately after his leadership that he was not going to follow the lead of Andrew Scheer and turn his back on the gay community.

But with colleagues who have no problem doing that, O’Toole’s brand is damaged when he does nothing about them.

Thus far, the Conservatives have not made much political hay out of the COVID challenge. Even with government missteps, the Tories have been kept off balance by bizarre claims from Sloan that question mask-wearing and accuse public servants of being in cahoots with the Chinese government.

Those statements were beyond bizarre but last week’s anti-vaccination rant makes Sloan’s previous missteps pale in comparison.

If there is one way that we are going to be able to end this collective, global nightmare, it is by massive immunization with a vaccine that can protect the globe from this deadly virus.

The opposition has every right to question the government on vaccine availability and rollout, and the federal/provincial cooperation that has characterized the last nine months could be shattered in the fight for vaccinations.

Under normal circumstances, that tension should provide a real opening for a reasoned, competent Opposition leader to show how his party could offer something better.

But when O’Toole refuses to fire a team member who is a delirious anti-vaxxer, all leadership claims ring hollow.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

If Erin O’Toole really wants to appeal to non-traditional Conservatives, he will have to cut ties with social conservatives and the far right.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 31, 2020.

OTTAWA—It would be a mistake to underestimate the electability of Erin O’Toole.

He has many things going for him, the first of which is that he is a relative unknown. These days, the shelf-life of a politician is generally one election. It used to be that if you were doing a decent job, voters might keep you around for a second term.

The longevity of a local politician is still in the double digits. Just ask Ottawa mayor Jim Watson how many ministers on the federal and provincial level that he has outlived. But party politics is one place where the more experience you get, the more people want to get rid of you.

Just look at how many people rabidly despised Hillary Clinton, even though she had more experience than any other candidate at the national and international level. She wore her husband’s warts, and then some.

Clinton was also suffering from the same swathe of sexism that came to the fore when Chrystia Freeland was recently named finance minister. Multiple journalists attacked Freeland’s lack of financial credentials. These same journalists never questioned the bona fides of lawyers cum finance ministers, like Jim Flaherty and Ralph Goodale. Freeland, like ministerial colleague Catherine McKenna, was dished up a particularly vitriolic dose of misogyny.

O’Toole has a chance to shape his brand, and in his early morning victory speech last week, he hit all the right buttons. He spoke at length about how to broaden the party base and invite those who have never voted Conservative to join him. He outlined his support of the LGBTQ community and his opposition to reopening the abortion question.

But O’Toole will also have to stickhandle the demands within his own party, as the radical right gained strength and visibility during the Conservative leadership race.

Tory pundits were lauding the fact that a Black woman surpassed Peter MacKay’s support in all western provinces. They claimed that the support for Leslyn Lewis was testament to Tories’ openness to diversity.

Hogwash. Lewis was a stalking horse for the anti-choice movement, which continues to grow deep and strong roots in the Conservative party.

The fact that a candidate for leadership, who could not speak French, would get 20 per cent of the party’s vote on a first ballot is truly frightening. When you couple her party support with that of Derek Sloan, the pair of proudly evangelical politicians garnered 40 per cent of the Conservative Party’s 174,404 voters. That is scary.

Lewis is now being touted as a new leading light in her party. That blows up O’Toole’s shout-out to inclusivity on election night. Her leadership transcendence was driven by those who would like to turn back the clock on issues like abortion.

Sloan had a 12-point plan on the issue. His first commitment was to promise to work with party grassroots to revoke Conservative Party policy No. 70. That policy, slimly endorsed at their 2018 Halifax policy convention, states that “a Conservative government will not support any legislation to regulate abortion.”

Lewis was ranked No. 1 on the voter’s list recommended by the anti-choice group RightNow. Sloan was ranked second. O’Toole was ranked third, and MacKay came dead last.

RightNow describes itself as the political arm of the pro-life movement and promotes a mandate to work full-time to secure nominations and elections for candidates who oppose abortion. No surprise that Lewis was their chosen candidate.

Like Sloan, she does not support abortion and is opposed to a government ban on conversion therapy, a controversial practice to modify the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians.

MacKay, who ran behind Lewis in all western provinces on the first ballot, was directly attacked by her for claiming that social conservatism was like a “stinking albatross” around the neck of party in the last election.

At some point during the race, one-third of Tory voters cast a ballot for Lewis.

Lewis, who has four degrees including a master’s in environmental science, opposes the carbon tax. She also received support during the race from the gun lobby. She and Sloan both oppose Canada’s current immigration policy and Lewis promised to roll back legalization of marijuana.

If O’Toole elevates her to a senior party position, he will be playing right into the hands of RightNow, whose stated intention is to re-criminalize abortion.

During his victory speech, O’Toole promised to reach out to a broad coalition of Canadians. To do so, he needs to visibly cut ties with his own party’s radical right.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Lame duck leader Andrew Scheer continues to shoot from the lip in his criticisms of everything the government is doing to minimize impacts of the COVID-19 world pandemic.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on May 4, 2020.

OTTAWA—The biggest political victim of COVID has been the national Conservative Party.

Lame duck leader Andrew Scheer continues to shoot from the lip in his criticisms of everything the government is doing to minimize impacts of the COVID 19 world pandemic.

In the face of the pandemic, we have the unusual picture of provincial premiers and the prime minister working together on a daily basis to manage the health crisis and plan for a staged reopening of the economy.

Thus far, even Ontario premier Doug Ford is regularly praising the prime minister and all the premiers of other provinces across the country.

That air of camaraderie may be blown out of the water as Quebec moves to reopen its economy while the province still has the highest rate of infection and death in the country.

As Quebec Premier François Legault promises to free up roads leading into his province, Ford may be forced to close Ontario’s doors. On April 30, his province reported the largest number of COVID-19 deaths since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Given the curve has not fully flattened, the last thing the country needs is the spread of infection through unnecessary travel.

The decision to open child-care centres and elementary schools, but keep secondary schools closed does not seem to be based on the best science. If I were a Quebec parent, I am not sure I would want my children at school while the virus is still killing people in large numbers.

Quebec’s decision may cause a rebound of coronavirus cases, making the situation even worse for a province that has already suffered more than 26,500 COVID cases and almost 1,800 deaths. Their mortality rate is currently larger than the combined death rate for the rest of the country.

It is understandable that Quebec teachers, and workers have serious questions about the government’s move to be the first out of the gate when it comes to social reintegration.

Quebec is banking on herd immunity, with the belief that the large number of COVID carriers may provide a reduction in the spread of the disease.

But that is a huge gamble, because if it fails, the Quebec economy will sputter while the deaths will continue to rise.

But all provinces and the federal government have been careful in refusing to comment on the Quebec decision, not wanting to be drawn into an interprovincial fight at a moment when Canadians expect all provinces to be working together.

The only one who has not gotten that message is the outgoing leader of the Conservative Party.

Andrew Scheer’s ad hominem attacks on everything that has been done by the federal government ring very hollow to the population at large.

It may be playing well to his base, but it is certainly not helping his party position itself for an election that might come sooner rather than later.

The racist attack by leadership candidate Derek Sloan on Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam fuels the impression that the Conservative Party has lost its way.

While the Conservative’s own caucus in Ontario is trying to get Sloan to apologize or be turfed from caucus, not a single opponent in the leadership race stepped in to attack his claim that Tam is a pawn of the Chinese government.

Peter MacKay, the onetime frontrunner in the leadership race postponed because of COVID, missed an opportunity to cut ties with Sloan by a public disavowal of his claims.

Instead, MacKay and all other leadership candidates refrain from criticism in an effort to build bridges with Sloan, whose previous public outbursts include the claim that being gay is a choice.

Sadly, Sloan’s viewpoints appear to be fairly popular with the rank and file of the party, which is why other leadership candidates do not want to attack him.

They need the support of his followers.

And Scheer’s public attacks on the government’s COVID-fighting plans is equally out of step with the rest of the country.

It would be so much easier for the next Conservative leader to fight the Liberals on the economic front in the aftermath of the financial cost of COVID.

The Parliamentary Budget Office says the government could face an economic contraction of 12 per cent this year, which would result in a potential $252-billion deficit.

With those numbers, all the opposition leader has to do is wait for a recession to do the government in.

Instead, extreme Conservative views are serving to strengthen the government’s potential pre-election hand.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.