Media Still Calls Conservative Party too Right-Wing despite O’Toole Pushing Left

Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole has been on a highly controversial campaign to push the party to the left.

Last Sunday in a statement where O’Toole said there was no place for the “far-right” in the Conservative Party described the party as being a “moderate, pragmatic, mainstream party — as old as Confederation — that sits squarely in the centre of Canadian politics,” this was only days after the Conservative Party rejected speaking to Rebel News.

In hindsight, this seemed to have foreshadowed the events later that week when Press Progress revealed Neo-Nazi Paul Fromm donated $131 to former Conservative MP Derek Sloan, under the name “Frederick P. Fromm”, which O’Toole jumped on as a reason to push for Sloan’s expulsion from the CPC caucus.

Strange O’Toole would move on reporting from Press Progress as they had previously smeared him as defending residential schools by taking his comments out-of-context.

The excuse of the Fromm donation did not hold up well as the Conservative Party itself allowed Fromm to become a member, and never flagged him when he voted, or when they verified the donation to Sloan.

Later O’Toole changed his reason for pushing the caucus to remove Sloan to a “pattern of destructive behaviour” which he never elaborated instances of, in part because O’Toole in the past had defended Sloan against false media smears of “racism” and “bigotry”.

Now that O’Toole has had Sloan removed and he now sits as an Independent MP, O’Toole, and the CPC’s inner circle may have expected the left-leaning media to embrace him and the Conservative Party with open arms as the “moderate,” and “pragmatic” party O’Toole thinks it should be. 

Instead what happened was what people like Sloan and other social conservatives had been warning would happen by moving the party to the political left, absolutely nothing.

The left-wing mainstream media has now been emboldened to continue attacking the Conservative Party as “far-right” with Sloan’s removal having just acted as blood in the water for the Liberal/NDP activist journalists. 

While Sloan’s removal was underway Toronto Star writer Susan Delacourt didn’t seem to care at all that the Conservatives were severing off part of the party’s base to please people like her. Instead, Delacourt simply asserted that not only was Sloan a man of “Trump-style intolerance” but that the Conservative Party is an intolerant party for every having had Sloan, and people like Maxime Bernier and Kelly Leitch as MPs.  

Supposed conservative writer Matt Gurney at the National Post wrote an article titled, “Jettisoning Sloan would be a good step for O’Toole. But how far dare he go?” where he argued that not only should Sloan have been removed sooner, but that the Conservative Party should further reject the “populist right”.

Gurney said:

Booting Sloan is a good start, but it won’t be enough. The next steps will be harder. But they won’t get easier as time drags on. If it needs doing, do it now, while the memory of the mob overrunning the Capitol is fresh in everyone’s mind.

Gurney is actively advocating O’Toole seize on the disgust the vast majority of people have for the small minority of Trump supporters in DC who stormed the Capitol Building, in order to create an excuse to reject more right-wing Conservatives without proper cause. 

What makes a Conservative too right-wing or “populist” is never explained which seems to indicate Gurney just wants a general shift left and not away from any definable negative ideology. 

If O’Toole didn’t foresee the media pressing him harder after he showed weakness by removing Derek Sloan for unexplainable reasons, then either he wants more excuses to pivot further left or he is evidently still a political rookie.

The media will always portray parties left of the Liberals as being somehow controversial and radical, and unless O’Toole is willing to just be the Liberals he will simply be inflicting political wounds to no benefit.