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(LifeSiteNews) – A petition to oust Erin O’Toole as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada is rapidly gaining steam with more than 4,000 signatures.
The petition was started by Bert Chen, who holds a seat on the Conservative Party of Canada’s (CPC) national council in Ontario. It was launched a little more than a week ago and is fast approaching its goal of 5,000 signatures.
“Aside from the clear lack of integrity, success is also a measurement of leadership, and Mr. O’Toole failed in every metric. The fact that they have to boast about a convoluted statistic such as the gap in the popular vote in Ontario, indicates that O’Toole and his team are grasping at straws to justify his continued leadership,” Chen told LifeSiteNews.
“The worst thing that Erin O’Toole did that hurt the members is allowing Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh to take more seats away from us.”
Chen’s petition reads: “Erin O’Toole has BETRAYED the principles that the Conservative Party is founded on. Erin O’Toole has BROKEN THE TRUST of the members of the Conservative Party.”
“We, the undersigned, request that the National Council of the Conservative Party of Canada commence a referendum to recall Erin O’Toole as the leader of the Conservative Party.”
Chen told LifeSiteNews that he started the petition as many longtime CPC party members told him they were not happy with O’Toole taking the party in a leftist direction.
“I started this petition as a result of the request of many of my constituents that felt betrayed by Erin O’Toole’s promises made in the 2020 leadership race. As their elected representative to the National Council, I am proud to be a conduit for their concerns,” Chen said.
A portion of Chen’s petition reads that O’Toole betrayed the “principles of the Conservative Party” and its members by “trampling the freedoms of the individual in supporting vaccine passports.”
“He broke the trust of members who elected him as leader by embracing a carbon tax, despite his pledge to never implement one during the leadership race,” Chen said in the petition.
Chen believes the CPC’s constitution already has “all the provisions to hold the leader to account, including this petition and referendum process I started.”
“However, for me to have to resort to this step rather than simply waiting for the next Convention is a direct result of Mr. O’Toole and his team dodging accountability for another two years,” Chen told LifeSiteNews.
“My goal with this petition is to allow every single member of the Conservative Party to allow their voice to be heard on Erin O’Toole’s leadership at the earliest opportunity, rather than wait until after the next general election in 2023, where we would have already lost another election due to Erin O’Toole.”
O’Toole reaffirmed his stance that he was “pro-choice” during the election campaign, which put off a lot of traditional socially conservative voters.
Combine that with the fact O’Toole promised to enact a carbon tax price scheme of this own, while not calling it that, many conservative voters felt betrayed.
O’Toole was also on board with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to mandate COVID jabs as a condition to travel.
All of O’Toole’s failures to represent true conservative values resulted in many taking to the People’s Party of Canada under Maxime Bernier, who ran a campaign on freedom, no vaccine mandates, and no more lockdowns.
Wrote Campaign Life Coalition’s Jack Fonseca of O’Toole: “O’Toole moved to the left and alienated his party’s socially conservative base.”
“He shamelessly promoted abortion, LGBTQ ideology, oppressive lockdowns, and liberty-destroying vaccine passports which coerce Canadians who conscientiously object to taking the jabs for a variety of reasons,” Fonseca wrote.
In an opinion piece published recently, True North News writer Candice Malcolm said that O’Toole “misrepresented who he was too Conservative members.”
“During the CPC leadership race, he promised he was ‘true blue – a real and principled conservative. But once the campaign started, he revealed his true colours: he ran as a weak-willed Red Tory who refused to stand his ground or defend Canada,” Malcolm wrote.
The September 20 federal election saw Trudeau re-elected with a minority government. The Conservative Party under Erin O’Toole won only 119 seats, two less than in 2019.
Of the CPC MPs elected, 38 of those were pro-life candidates.