Federal Conservatives slam Patrick Brown over war on so-cons
Federal Conservative Leadership candidate, MP Brad Trost, expressed concern this week about emerging divisions within the Ontario PC Party over social issues, and warned it could split the party and cause the Patrick Brown PCs to lose the 2018 election.
“This is bad,” Trost warned on Tuesday, according to iPolitics. “The Ontario PCs are heading for a split here if they try to push out the social conservatives.”
Trost's warning was a reaction to Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown's public humiliation of his own socially conservative MPP, Rick Nicholls. Brown forced the devout Christian MPP from Chatham-Kent-Essex to grovel to the media and beg forgiveness for the "sin" of standing up for family values.
On December 7th, MPP Nicholls along with pro-life MPP Sam Oosterhoff, and a few other PC's, held a private reception at Queen's Park to receive delegations from the Canadian Christian Association and the Canadian Multicultural Care Group. Unbeknown to him, two reporters from the CBC Radio french affiliate, TFO, snuck into the room, apparently pretending to be members of the delegations.
They recorded, and later posted online, Nicholls' statement to the Christian and cultural groups in which he reassured them that: “social issues are very, very important (to the PC Party), but we need to form government. Then watch us go... watch us go.”
As expected, the liberal media viciously attacked Nicholls and the PC Party. Brown responded not by defending his MPP, but by joining the attack and chastising Nicholls for making such a pledge, and demanding that he recant the statement. From the Toronto Star:
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Brown, who has recently had to quell concerns about the party’s direction after the recent byelection victory of 19-year-old social conservative Sam Oosterhoff in Niagara West-Glanbrook, said he was not aware of the “full extent” of Nicholls’ comments until Tuesday. “As leader, and as premier, I will lead an Ontario PC party focused on reversing the economic damage of the Wynne Liberals . . . I will lead an inclusive government where intolerance will have no place,” Brown added. “Any statement or implication to the contrary, including the comment made by MPP Nicholls, is false and needs to be immediately retracted.” Nicholls (Chatham-Kent-Essex), who was co-chair of Brown’s leadership campaign two years ago, issued a statement Tuesday saying he “fully supports” the party’s direction under Brown and reversed course on his remarks of last week. “I retract and apologize for my comments. Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown has made it clear that he is committed to leading a modern, inclusive and pragmatic Progressive Conservative Party,” Nicholls said. “The party will not be revisiting divisive social issues, either as an opposition party or if we are fortunate enough to form government.” |
CLC supporters know all too well that both the Liberals and the NDP are bent on the social re-engineering of Ontario through a radical LGBT lens that is very much opposed to parental rights and people of faith. Tragically, the left now enjoys Patrick Brown's support and complicity with this anti-family agenda. It is very timely and important, then, that Brad Trost, who is one of two outspoken pro-life/pro-family candidates for the federal Conservative Party Leadership, is warning the Ontario PCs to keep the party's base united, including social conservatives, or risk losing the 2018 provincial election to the Liberals or NDP.
Trost reminded Brown that conservative parties are “coalitions” of citizens who bring a range of conservative ideals to the party, each deserving to be heard.
“At least 30 per cent of Ontarians are social conservative on a wide range of issues. That 30 per cent of the population overwhelmingly votes PC. If you tell them to stay home, not vote, or only vote and then have their issues completely ignored, you’re going to end up splitting your party,” Trost cautioned in the iPolitics digital news service.
“I’m from Saskatchewan, when the NDP faced a divided opposition they ran roughshod over them. Alberta’s next door to us. You never thought the NDP could win in Alberta.
“Have we forgotten why the federal Conservative party was formed from the PCs and the Canadian Alliance Reform party?”, Trost told iPolitics, in a reference to the strength that comes from building solidarity amongst conservatives of various backgrounds and interests.
According the CBC, Patrick Brown flatly told reporters at a recent press conference that principled, socially conservative candidates who stand on what he dismissively called “divisive social issues” aren’t welcome in his party.
“People can have their private religious views, but just know where I stand and what the focus of our party is,” Brown declared, relegating the killing regime of abortion and the sexual re-tooling of society, parental rights, and the vulnerable minds of young school children to mere religious biases.
On Friday December 16, a second federal Conservative Leadership contender, Pierre Lemieux, joined Trost in castigating Patrick Brown, stating in an email announcement to supporters:
| "Every day, in my home province of Ontario, social conservatives are being told to sit down and shut up. They are frozen out of provincial politics. Their views are not wanted. They need to be “put in their place". This contempt exists across Canada: you don't deserve an opinion if your views do not align with liberal values. This needs to stop. Everyone has the right to express their views in respectful debate." |
Lemieux, a pro-life/pro-family former MP in the Ottawa area, called on social conservatives to hold their ground and push back against the liberal progressives, like Brown, who would marginalize them and take away their right to engage in politics:
| "If social conservatives don't stand up, they will be shut down. We need to show social conservatives in Ontario and across Canada that they are not alone. That their views are not only legitimate, but shared. And that these views matter on voting day." |
Lemieux encouraged social conservatives to support his own Leadership bid in order to prevent a similar liberal take-over of the federal Conservatives.
Brown has openly betrayed social conservatives within the party, as demonstrated by his notorious flip-flop in support of the Liberal's sex-ed scheme being forced on Ontario's school children, and now, telling social conservatives that they don't belong in the party.
Campaign Life Coalition agrees with Trost and Lemieux that the cost of such duplicity may be paid at the polls in the 2018 provincial election, if the PC Party doesn't reverse course on the expulsion of its socially conservative base.
Campaign Life Coalition maintains its call for grassroots PC members and EDA Boards to push for an emergency Leadership Review, or for Brown's resignation as Leader.