Frederick,

According to a story in The Globe and Mail yesterday (“Ontario Liberals to change rules, lower fees to ensure more female candidates”), the Ontario Liberal Party has set a goal to become “the most open and equitable party in Canada”, and they have a plan to achieve that end.

Their plan is to increase the percentage of female candidates they field in the next Ontario provincial election to at least 50% of the party total by launching an aggressive search campaign, lowering registration fees for women only, and—if necessary—having only women run in the nominations.

I believe there’s a lesson in this for the Conservative Party of Canada: this is NOT how to do things.

Merit, and merit alone, should be the primary criteria when considering someone for a job, including the job of running for political office.

We should judge people on the quality of their talents and on the soundness of their ideas, not on their sex, colour, age, religion, or anything else.

And who should evaluate the merit? The local party members, in a democratic vote! Not the bureaucrats at CPC HQ!

Ontario Liberal Kate Graham has said that having more women in elected politics “leads to better decisions”. She’s wrong.

Electing better decision-makers will lead to better decisions, and we can’t assume someone’s ability to make decisions is based on their sex or race or religion, etc.

Letting identity politics trump actual ideas will lead to a stagnant culture and stifling lack of innovation. Eventually, it will destroy our democratic institutions.

Related to this, I was disappointed to hear Leslyn Lewis speak of a desire for “equality of outcomes” during the leadership debate. This sounds like Leslyn Lewis might actually support affirmative action, which I hope is not the case.

The idea that we can ensure equality of outcomes necessarily involves rigging the game—like the Ontario Liberal Party is doing—and letting merit take a back seat. At its heart, the very idea of “equality of outcome” is a socialist concept.

That’s why, in the debate, I corrected Dr. Lewis in asserting the non-socialist idea we must pursue, which is to provide equality of opportunity for all. Is Leslyn Lewis for any form of affirmative action either in government or in CPC candidate recruitment? You should ask her—and Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole as well, for that matter.

But there is more to it than simply banning the practice of “affirmative action”. We also need to “cancel” the “cancel culture” in our party.

The CPC has, in the recent past, “cancelled” the nominations of candidates because of their ideas. In this leadership contest, for example, Richard Décarie and Jim Karahalios were both disqualified from the current leadership race because of positions they expressed.

There are numerous other examples of conservative-minded and other freedom-loving party members being denied the opportunity to seek local CPC nominations in the 2019 Federal election. No wonder thousands of CPC members have already defected to Maxime Bernier’s PPC.

In allowing the “cancel culture” to spread, our Party has not acted any better than the Ontario Liberal Party is planning to act by enforcing a candidate quota based on sex. The Conservative Party of Canada, if the name means anything, should set a perfect example in promoting free expression.

“Diversity” doesn’t consist of people of different sexes, religions, and races bound to express one narrow set of acceptable beliefs. True diversity entails a real variety of ideas expressed and debated in political parties and in the public square.

As Leader of the CPC, I will promote true diversity of ideas, both in Canadian society and in our Party.

Principled conservatives will no longer be “cancelled” at any level of the CPC, even if their ideas fall outside of the increasingly narrow scope of those tolerated by the “Red Tory” faction of our Party.

The triumph of identity politics has no place in the truly diverse CPC and Canada that we should all strive to promote. Under my leadership, there will be no “affirmative action” for local nominations, and no “cancel culture” either.

If you support merit over identity politics, please donate today to help our campaign continue to advance truly conservative ideas.

Sincerely,

Derek Sloan Member of Parliament https://www.dereksloan.ca

PS: I’m running for leadership of the CPC to stand up, without apology, for true freedom of sp