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March 24, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Independent Ontario MP Derek Sloan, who was booted from the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) in January, said his former party has started the process to dissolve the Electoral District Association (EDA) that helped elect him because it is not willing to “toe” the party line.
An EDA, often called a riding association, is the basic unit of a political party at the level of the electoral district, which is called a “riding” in Canada.
“They’re going so far as to dissolve my EDA, because my EDA isn’t going along with what they did to me. So, it’s basically — they’re going after the EDA, they just want anybody associated with us, essentially … gone,” Sloan told LifeSiteNews.
“My EDA is not willing to toe their line, and they were actually pushing back and saying, ‘Listen, give us reasons like what’s going on here, on what basis are you doing this.’”
According to Carlo Petracca, who serves as the president of the Hastings-Lennox and Addington CPC EDA, the actual process has not been initiated yet, but they have been notified.
“The process hasn’t actually gone through yet. That’s a process that goes through the national council. They review and then they vote, but the vote hasn’t taken place yet. But they’ve sent us a notice of the process being started,” said Petracca in a Hill Times report.
Petracca said no reason was given as to why the party has deemed it necessary to start to process to dissolve Sloan’s EDA.
Sloan told LifeSiteNews that the party started the process to dissolve his EDA in early March, but that the entire process takes 60 days.
“I believe the process for the dissolution is like a 60-day process that would have to be ratified by national council, so we’re in the middle of that,” said Sloan. “So, the 60-day period hasn’t expired, so it will be up to the new national council to, you know, to decide what they’re going to do on that.”
According to Sloan, the CPC will most likely have a hard time to “blow up” — as he called it — his EDA, considering the fact he says it is full of those loyal to him.
“They could, they would have difficulty doing that, because they’d be just as likely to get a pro-Sloan board the next time,” said Sloan. “And it’s possible they could just do nothing and parachute a candidate in … it’s up to them, but they don’t have to re-establish [another EDA] prior to another election.”
Sloan, who has repeatedly stated his pro-life and pro-family views as an MP, ran as a candidate in the 2020 CPC party leadership race. The CPC elected pro-abortion O’Toole as the new leader of the party in August last year. Sloan came in fourth place behind Leslyn Lewis and Peter MacKay.
Sloan told LifeSiteNews that his riding was one of “only two ridings” that he won outright in the CPC leadership race, and the local board is in favor of him. He was booted from the party in January by his own caucus members after a vote.
After he was ousted from the party, Sloan said the board “pushed back” demanding reasons as to why he was ejected from the party.
The leader of the CPC, MP Erin O’Toole, claimed at the time that the booting of Sloan had nothing to do with Sloan’s staunch social conservative bent. O’Toole said he removed Sloan due to “destructive behaviour involving multiple incidents.”
However, when declaring his intentions to remove Sloan from the party, O’Toole cited as justification the acceptance of a donation from a white supremacist using an alias. He made no mention of “a pattern of destructive behaviour.”
Right before calling for Sloan to be removed, O’Toole said there was no place in the CPC “for the far right” and reaffirmed his pro-abortion position once again.
Sloan said that he was a “sacrificial lamb” in CPC’s purge of social conservatism.
According to Sloan, the “real reason” he was booted from the caucus was that the CPC had an “emotional/psychological meltdown” in the aftermath of the storming of the U.S. Capitol, which started a party purge of the social conservative voice.