Erin O’Toole and Conservatives’ Silence on Grace Life is Deafening

Despite the fencing off of Grace Life Church becoming an international story, and one of the clearest examples of the government overstepping its role of enforcing public health measures, the Conservative Party under the leadership of Erin O’Toole has remained absolutely silent.

Not only has all the main CPC social media pages and Erin O’Toole’s pages not sounded off about the Alberta Health Service (AHS) official going overboard on enforcing health measures on a church with no cases of COVID-19 or variants connected to it, but even Conservative MPs from Alberta have not spoken a word about the massive civil liberties issue.

The Conservatives don’t even have to fully endorse the actions of Grace Life Church in order to seize onto the golden opportunity to simply condemn a church being made an example of by AHS and the RCMP far beyond what the law would require the punishment to be for violating provincial restrictions, whether you agree with them or not.

It seems likely that two different things could be at play here for why the Conservatives are refusing to advocate against these overbearing restrictions in Alberta and elsewhere.

1. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, although unpopular, is still an Erin O’Toole ally so regardless of what Kenney does O’Toole is unable to criticize anything he does.

2. Erin O’Toole actually agrees with what the Alberta government is doing, which is in line with his harsh “war footing” stance on lockdowns from the 2020 CPC leadership race.

CPC MPs are likely barred from saying anything about the situation, potentially facing similar threats of expulsion from the party caucus as Kenney levied against his UCP caucus in Alberta if any UCP MLA broke a public health restriction.

The situation with Grace Life Church gives the lie to the notion that any of the current CPC MPs are truly against the lockdowns in a principled manner. Michelle Rempel MP for Calgary Nose Hill was praised for, more than a year after lockdowns were put in place across Canada, demanding that Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal government create a plan for reopening the country, but all of a sudden when Kenney is enforcing lockdown rules in a clearly draconian way Rempel is MIA. 

Although it has never been a shock that Rempel will stand for a Conservative position when it is easy and then be nowhere to be seen when the smallest bit of controversy rears its head. No doubt MPs like Rempel would argue that Grace Life Church is a provincial matter and they will refuse to comment any further.

Currently, the only Member of Parliament actually advocating for the lockdowns to be severely eased or ended is Derek Sloan who Erin O’Toole kicked out of the CPC caucus back in January.  Sloan actually made his way out to Alberta to meet with Grace Life pastor James Coates to support his position that the lockdown measures being placed on his church are not justifiable.