(LifeSiteNews) — With Ontario residents heading to the polls on February 27 to cast their ballots in the provincial election after Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford called a snap election in late January, many are wondering where the three conservative parties stand on important issues.
Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party
When Ford was first elected premier in 2018, pro-life and pro-family Canadians were hopeful that he would live up to his party’s name and restore conservative values to the province.
However, during his time as premier, Ford imposed strict COVID protocols, including lockdowns, a vaccine passport system and the mandating of experimental mRNA vaccines for public sector workers, leading to many healthcare and other workers being fired from their jobs for refusing to take the shots.
Under Ford, the Ontario government also put COVID restrictions on houses of worship, drawing the ire of many conservative-minded voters.
In the lead-up to the 2018 election, Ford had promised parents that he would scrap former Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s sex-ed curriculum in schools.
When Ford finally replaced the curriculum in 2019, parents and pro-family organizations pointed out that like Wynne’s program, Ford’s program promoted homosexuality, gender theory and masturbation. In fact, many pointed out that the new curriculum mirrored that of the Liberal Party.
Ford’s government also supports abortion, which is permitted in Canada up until the moment of birth, and has never sought to repeal the Wynne government’s “bubble zone” law that prohibits pro-life activism outside abortion mills in the province.
In light of these actions among others, a number of grassroots social conservative parties have sprung up.
The Ontario Party
One such party, the Ontario Party, was founded and headed by former federal Conservative Party MP Derek Sloan.
Sloan’s party has promised to stand against many of the Ford government’s current policies, vowing to establish a Parent’s Bill of Rights, to ban gender ideology in schools, and to outright prohibit any future lockdowns such as those imposed during COVID.
“We recognize the family as the basic building block of a healthy and functional society and the best place for healthy and responsible citizens to be formed,” the party stated on their website. “We believe in honoring parents as the primary educators of their children and respecting the values they choose to live and raise their children by.”
While the Ontario Party does not explicitly promise to bring forward pro-life legislation, Sloan himself has long been outspoken about his pro-life views.
The New Blue Party
In a similar vein to the Ontario Party is the New Blue Party, led by Jim Karahalios.
The party, founded by Karahalios and his wife Belinda, the latter who served as a member of provincial parliament in Ontario as a member of the Ford government, vows to end “woke activism” in schools such as critical race theory and gender identity, enshrine a parents’ bill of rights, rehire those in healthcare fired under Ford’s COVID mandate regime and the defunding of “elective abortion.”
The party’s website specifically mentions it “supports the protection and dignity of all human life from conception to natural death,” also promising to stop the expansion of euthanasia under the “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAiD) program.