Juno News - January 20, 2021


Derek Sloan responds to expulsion from Conservative caucus

Topics
expulsion from caucus
Mentioned
Derek Sloan Erin O'Toole Andrew Lawton Show Leslyn Lewis Tom Kamich Peter McKay Derek
The Defenestration Nation O’Toole Cancels Sloan, Biden Cancels Keystone

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

188.78

Word count

2,292

Sentence count

159

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

After a day long caucus meeting, the Conservative caucus voted to expel Derek Sloan, the Member of Parliament for Hastings-Lennox and Addington, and a former leadership candidate, from the caucus. Derek Sloan joins me on the Andrew Lawton Show to talk about the vote and why he thinks it was a mistake.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:01.000 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:00:06.320 After a day-long caucus meeting, the Conservative caucus voted to expel Derek Sloan,
00:00:12.920 the Member of Parliament for Hastings, Lennox and Addington,
00:00:15.920 and a former leadership candidate from the Conservative caucus.
00:00:19.240 Derek Sloan joins me on the line now.
00:00:21.600 Derek, thank you for coming on so quickly.
00:00:23.700 I'm glad to be here. Thank you.
00:00:24.880 This is something that for a lot of Conservatives who were told by Aaron O'Toole during the leadership
00:00:31.660 that they had a place regardless of whether they were social Conservatives or not,
00:00:36.300 how are they supposed to take what's happened in the last two days and specifically today?
00:00:41.340 Well, this is bogus.
00:00:43.500 What has happened today with my expulsion from caucus is Aaron O'Toole and the other caucus members are saying,
00:00:51.300 Derek, not only do we want you in the party, we don't want anyone like you in the party.
00:00:56.420 And, you know, they're going to come out with all their communications and they're going to say this.
00:00:59.940 They're going to say, oh, it's not about Derek's beliefs. That's fine.
00:01:03.160 It's just about his personality.
00:01:04.980 But I'm telling you, Andrew, the sort of persona that I have publicly attracts a large portion of our base,
00:01:13.160 the issues I stand for, the persona that I have.
00:01:15.980 And if they think that this is just about me, they've got another thing coming.
00:01:19.380 This is a slap in the face to a large section of our base.
00:01:23.380 I want to read a statement that was just released moments ago by Aaron O'Toole.
00:01:27.180 He says the Conservative caucus voted to remove Derek Sloan not because of one specific event,
00:01:33.260 but because of a pattern of destructive behavior involving multiple incidents
00:01:37.620 and disrespect towards the Conservative team for over a year.
00:01:41.880 What's he referring to?
00:01:43.620 Well, they're referring to basically everything that you've seen throughout the campaign.
00:01:47.880 So when I called out Dr. Tam for what I believe to be, you know,
00:01:52.840 undue connection to the World Health Organization, that was considered to be, you know, beyond the pale.
00:01:58.780 That was, oh, that's racist. That's this.
00:02:01.480 Basically everything else I've done.
00:02:03.200 But I'll tell you, the last thing that really got under their skin is I have been actively organizing for this upcoming convention.
00:02:09.460 And they know that I have recruited many, many, many delegates and they were scared.
00:02:17.340 And so there, you know, this whole thing about, you know, you know, not listening to other people.
00:02:22.400 So when I was emailing and trying to get conventions to go to delegates, other MPs would be like, oh, well, you know,
00:02:28.760 why are you emailing into my riding and why are you doing this?
00:02:31.540 Nobody has a monopoly on their riding.
00:02:34.940 You as a Canadian, I as a Canadian, we have the right to encourage political participation.
00:02:39.160 And, you know, some of these MPs were upset that, you know, basically I had more sway in their riding than they did.
00:02:45.900 And they they got rid of me because of that.
00:02:48.640 And obviously they don't agree with the the the different things that I stand for.
00:02:52.960 So, you know, he'll find a, you know, a politically correct version of a socially conservative person or any of the other things maybe that I've stood for.
00:03:01.680 And I've stood for things far beyond a social conservatism.
00:03:04.680 But this is about the values that I stand for, you know, being against the Paris Agreement, being against this net zero stuff and my influence at the convention.
00:03:15.320 They were afraid that it was going to be a Derek Sloan convention and they pulled the plug.
00:03:19.700 This is a direct affront to grassroots engagement.
00:03:23.100 Do you know how much support, if any, you had in caucus in today's vote?
00:03:28.300 I was not privy to the numbers, unfortunately.
00:03:30.960 It was no, I don't believe anybody other than the caucus chair knows the final numbers.
00:03:35.980 Now, does that in and of itself disturb you or is that just how the process is supposed to work?
00:03:42.180 You know, I know the caucus chair well and he's an honorable person, Tom Kimmich.
00:03:46.820 So I certainly trust the results.
00:03:48.640 I would have preferred to get an idea of, you know, how close it was.
00:03:52.280 But unfortunately, I won't know that.
00:03:54.720 Do you think from private conversations you've had with MPs in the Conservative Caucus that this was literally just about getting a SOCON out?
00:04:04.600 Or did you actually get support from non-social conservatives privately that said they didn't like the process?
00:04:10.720 They didn't like that you were being blamed for someone who happened to donate alongside 12,999 other people to your campaign?
00:04:18.480 Yeah, I mean, listen, there were a lot of people that were upset by this for sure.
00:04:23.460 The problem is, is that Aaron O'Toole sort of crossed the Rubicon when he made the public statement that he was behind this.
00:04:30.320 So then the caucus literally had to say, well, listen, I don't really want to kick Derek out.
00:04:35.160 But if I don't, then we show weakness to the to the public.
00:04:39.020 So let's say they voted to keep me in.
00:04:41.780 Then the press cycle would have been Aaron O'Toole doesn't even have control over his own party.
00:04:45.840 They don't even like, you know, they don't trust his judgment.
00:04:48.780 So he he took the strongest step possible to eliminate me by doing a full frontal assault publicly.
00:04:55.620 And so I'm sure there's a lot of people that wouldn't have done this in in other circumstances that felt kind of compelled.
00:05:01.520 Now, it's still a wrong decision, but they felt compelled because of his doubling down in that in that way.
00:05:07.180 Right. Now, that statement I shared a couple of moments ago from Aaron O'Toole that says this is all part of a pattern.
00:05:13.100 You've said this is stuff that's already been made public.
00:05:15.600 Nothing unique apart from that.
00:05:17.780 Were you put on notice previously?
00:05:19.660 Had you been told that you were on thin ice and had to behave a certain way to stay in caucus?
00:05:24.840 Or has this ejection really been officially anyway?
00:05:28.260 You might have had inklings, but has this ejection really been an escalation from zero to 100?
00:05:33.300 Well, let me tell you, let me tell you as best as I can, sort of what has happened.
00:05:38.560 So there is there have been people who have been hostile to me, a minority of people ever since the leadership.
00:05:44.120 It's a combination of not liking my values, thinking I'm, you know, to sort of direct or outspoken on certain things.
00:05:52.180 So that is, you know, basically put me in their bad books just perennially.
00:05:56.480 After the leadership, I sent out two fundraising emails, one for my EDA, one for my riding, one for my leadership.
00:06:04.960 Now, I have every right to do that.
00:06:06.560 I've created a large list through the campaign.
00:06:09.280 But obviously those emails go to other ridings and I was collecting money from people in other ridings.
00:06:15.960 Now, these are people that may not have donated to that other person anyways, but MPs are very cagey about their territory.
00:06:22.260 So they're like, well, you know, Derek, you shouldn't be doing this.
00:06:24.940 I said, listen, I have to fundraise to, you know, finalize some of my last leadership debts.
00:06:29.660 It's the law.
00:06:30.660 And this is my list.
00:06:31.740 And frankly, for my EDA, I had to raise some money, too, to be able to be, you know, acclaimed as a candidate.
00:06:36.740 So those are the those are two of the, quote, unquote, you know, bad things that I've done.
00:06:41.580 And the third was sponsoring that petition, which, again, a lot of these conservatives are just scared to death of bad press.
00:06:49.980 So, you know, these kinds of things, there were some rumblings about, oh, you know, Derek's always getting us in the news.
00:06:54.700 It's always something, you know, whatever.
00:06:56.880 And then this sort of orchestrated attempt at the end, which, as I said, was related to my strength going into the convention, sort of pushed some people over the edge.
00:07:07.220 But nothing has happened along the way that would in any way be inappropriate.
00:07:13.780 I've just explained to you any charge that was leveled on me.
00:07:18.520 So let me ask you then where you go from here, because you sent out an email to your supporters in which you said, don't rip up your memberships, still be a part of the party, still go to the convention, the virtual convention up.
00:07:29.980 Why do you want this to happen?
00:07:31.540 Why are you not ripping up your membership at this point?
00:07:34.560 Well, listen, I'm still a conservative.
00:07:36.420 I may not be technically capital C conservative, according to, you know, the powers that be in Ottawa, but the Conservative Party has left me.
00:07:46.260 I did not leave the Conservative Party.
00:07:48.500 And our membership is a lot more like me than they are like Aaron O'Toole.
00:07:52.400 And frankly, I think the only reason he won is because, yeah, I was a new face.
00:07:56.020 Lesley Lewis was a new face.
00:07:57.340 And Aaron O'Toole was like, oh, I'm with you guys.
00:07:59.380 I stand up for Derek.
00:08:00.540 I stand up for Lesley.
00:08:01.680 And he juxtaposed himself against Peter McKay.
00:08:04.600 But, you know, we're at base purely on sort of the persona and the values, you know, experience aside.
00:08:13.020 I believe someone like Lesley and I very easily could have won if experience and so forth were equal.
00:08:18.080 So, listen, this is something that, you know, our base reflects is a lot more like me than they are like Aaron O'Toole.
00:08:25.920 And they're going to learn that quickly.
00:08:27.500 I will say this in the caucus call.
00:08:29.980 What many people were concerned about is they were saying, guys, I'm getting calls not just from like the local pro-life dude, but from some of my like most hardcore supporters, board members, donors.
00:08:41.840 And they're livid.
00:08:43.460 So this is something that is really going to rip the party.
00:08:48.060 You know, it's going to damage the party for certain.
00:08:51.140 You and I spoke in the leadership race a couple of times about cancel culture and free speech.
00:08:57.100 And you're very aware of the cultural battles around this.
00:09:00.600 And one thing that I find really unsettling, even if people are used to just the left throwing around slurs and names and all of that, to have it come from within your own party and within your own movement.
00:09:11.260 And especially the justification that Aaron O'Toole used to initiate this process, which was that racism has no place in the party.
00:09:19.100 Didn't call you a racist, but was ejecting you in the same breath as he was saying that he needed to take a stand against racism.
00:09:25.680 Does that sting?
00:09:27.580 Does that sting for you?
00:09:28.700 Not really.
00:09:31.500 It just validates sort of the experience that I've had over the last nine months.
00:09:35.920 And it's just been basically this.
00:09:38.460 It's been amazing acceptance from grassroots conservatives and continual backbiting and trying to tie my hands behind my back within the MPs that are there.
00:09:49.860 So many of these guys think that they're little princes that rule their little riding fiefdom.
00:09:55.340 And they can come to Ottawa and do whatever it is that they want. 0.97
00:09:58.000 It's disgusting.
00:09:59.500 These people were put there by their local party members, by their local constituents. 0.91
00:10:04.680 And there's a complete disconnect.
00:10:06.760 So we will see who speaks for the membership leading into the convention and beyond.
00:10:12.220 But they've made a grave error.
00:10:15.260 Would you rejoin the caucus if invited, if the party had a mea culpa?
00:10:19.760 I don't expect that that would happen under the current leadership.
00:10:23.860 They're of a mind that they kind of have to, you know, show unity, show a face of strength and all that.
00:10:30.680 And they wouldn't be able to do that based on what they've done.
00:10:33.500 But I'm not making any decisions today about what I might or might not do.
00:10:37.360 Just before I let you go here, Derek, what do you want to tell your supporters?
00:10:41.360 I know a lot of people, even those who might not have been your supporter in the leadership race, have really come around or are tweeting about their support for you, wanting to go to the convention to stand up for some of the values.
00:10:52.260 What do you want to say to those people right now who, by your indication, seem to make up the party more than the voices in Ottawa do?
00:10:59.240 Stay involved.
00:11:00.380 Keep your membership.
00:11:01.440 Go to convention.
00:11:02.820 And we're going to do a lot of good there.
00:11:05.840 And this is just, you know, some rumblings.
00:11:10.540 But we are going to go to convention.
00:11:13.200 We're going to do well there.
00:11:14.260 When it comes to me personally, I'm going to stay fighting for all the values I've fought for before.
00:11:18.780 Family values, you know, against the Paris Agreement and this climate alarmism, the excessive government lockdowns, which our party has been completely silent on.
00:11:28.940 They haven't said a word about it.
00:11:30.280 All they can talk about is, oh, a vaccine this, vaccine that.
00:11:33.800 We need more vaccines.
00:11:34.760 Well, listen, there's a lot more going on here right now than just getting a vaccine.
00:11:39.180 There is a real conversation to be had about the government control and the true way to deal with this thing here.
00:11:46.620 So they have been missing in action.
00:11:49.460 And that's why they're not, they're barely even registering right now on the public radar.
00:11:53.060 And they'll learn soon enough the mistake they've made.
00:11:55.580 Independent Member of Parliament, Derek Sloan.
00:11:57.960 Derek, thank you so much for joining me.
00:12:00.000 Thank you.
00:12:01.160 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:12:03.360 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.