TORONTO, January 7, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Campaign Life Coalition, Canada’s national pro-life and pro-family political lobbying group, is urging supporters to join the Conservative Party of Canada immediately to take part in what it says will be a watershed leadership race.
The party announced Friday the contest will end June 27 with the winner declared at the Toronto Congress Centre.
“Social conservatives cannot waste any time in mobilizing new party memberships and renewals of existing memberships in the Conservative Party,” says Jack Fonseca, Campaign Life Coalition’s director of political operations.
“We have to ensure we have a majority of the votes so that a pro-life, pro-family candidate comes out on top.”
Lisa Raitt, former Conservative MP and co-chair with Dan Nowlan of the leadership race organizing committee, echoed the sense of urgency, telling CTV News the party opted for a short race because the current minority government may not “go longer than the next vote of confidence. We want the party to be prepared.”
Nor should potential candidates delay declaring, she advised.
“People, if they haven’t made up their mind, they’re going to have to make up their mind in the next 10 days,” Raitt said.
Although the party has not formally released contest regulations, sources told CBC candidates will have to pay a fee of $300,000 and gather 3,000 signatures of support to enter the race.
Notably, the race will end one day before Toronto’s notoriously salacious “Pride” parade, Canada’s largest such pro-homosexual event, prompting suggestions the newly minted Tory leader will have an immediate opportunity to demonstrate his or her leanings.
Timing to coincide with the parade “wasn’t part of the decision-making process,” Raitt told CTV, adding that organizers wanted to hold the vote “as quickly as possible.”
But the date underscores the inevitable significance the infamously lewd “Pride” Parade has taken on in a race that is crucial for Canada’s social conservatives, who are essentially banned from running in the Liberal and New Democratic Party.
Outgoing leader Andrew Scheer, who resigned December 12, never marched in Pride events, although he vowed to uphold LGBTQ “rights.”
Two weeks after the October federal election in which the Tories gained 22 seats but lost to the Liberals by 36, Conservative strategist Jason Lietaer told CTV that Scheer not marching in homosexual parades was a “mistake.”
Kory Teneycke, Stephen Harper’s former director of communications, and one-time campaign manager for Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s, also told CTV at the time that Scheer’s position “could be fatal” to his future as leader.
Public opinion in Canada has evolved to the point that Teneycke believes it’s not acceptable to be personally opposed to same-sex “marriage” and lead the country, contrary to Scheer’s expressed view shortly after the election, CTV reported.
Indeed, the problem was not that Scheer didn’t march in Pride Parades, but that the Catholic father of five still views homosexuality as a sin, Teneycke told CTV.
“To view it as a sin means that you think that being gay is a choice and I think most people would say it’s not,” he said.
“Overwhelmingly Canadians do not accept that you can hold the position that ‘I am not in favour of equal rights for gays and that I have a moral, a personal moral problem with gay marriage.’ I think that is viewed increasingly as bigotry,” he said.
But such claims reveal an “anti-religious bigotry” on the part of those making them against Canadians whose faith teaches them that homosexual acts are morally wrong, Fonseca told LifeSiteNews.
“The left-wingers in the party establishment – folks who don’t even deserve the title ‘conservative’, like Kory Teneycke — are hell-bent on transforming the Conservative Party into a gay-pride-marching, abortion-loving, anti-free speech carbon copy of Trudeau’s Liberal Party,” he said.
“If an anti-religious, progressive bigot who echoes the discriminatory views of Teneycke is elected as leader of the Conservative Party, its socially conservative base would abandon the party in droves, and the only one coming out on top would be Justin Trudeau,” added Fonseca.
The Conservative Party “is the only mainstream party where pro-life and pro-family Canadians have a home, and that must remain the case,” he stressed.
“This destruction of the Conservative Party as we know it, as envisioned by Teneycke, must not be allowed to pass.”
Campaign Life Coalition “believes that there will be at least two or three strong social conservatives who run for the leadership – individuals with much stronger principles and convictions than Scheer ever had,” he said.
“So we encourage every pro-life, pro-family and free-speech-loving Canadian to join or renew their membership in the Conservative Party ASAP,” Fonseca said.
People can join the party as young as 14 years old.
“Campaign Life Coalition is asking pro-life and pro-family Canadians who join or renew their membership to shoot them an email at [email protected] confirming they have done so,” Fonseca said.
At this time, businessman Bryan Brulotte is the only declared contender, reported Canadian Press.
Rumoured potential contenders for the top job include Rona Ambrose, Peter MacKay, Pierre Poilievre, Michelle Rempel Garner, Candice Bergen, Michael Chong, Erin O’Toole and Gérard Deltell, reported CTV.
Queenie Yu, member of Parents As First Educators and founder of the Ontario Stop the New Sex Ed Agenda Party “is thought to be kicking the tires on a leadership bid,” according to TVO’s Steve Pakin.
Join or renew your membership in the Conservative Party of Canada here.