Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is facing an internal revolt and some members of his caucus are prepared to trigger a vote on his future as early as Wednesday, sources told CBC News.
MPs opposed to O’Toole’s leadership have collected enough signatures — 35 so far — to hold a secret ballot to decide his fate, sources said.
The organizers of this effort have brought a letter with the names of the anti-O’Toole MPs to Scott Reid, the Conservative caucus chair. In a memo to all Tory MPs on Monday, Reid said he is prepared to have the vote on Wednesday’s national caucus meeting.
A vote by 50 per cent plus one of the 119 sitting Conservative MPs calling on O’Toole to step down would force him to make way for an interim leader immediately.
Sources tell CBC News that O’Toole’s caucus opponents believe they have the necessary votes, with at least 60 MPs agreeing that he has to go.
But in a statement Monday night, O’Toole said he has no plans to step down.
“I’m not going anywhere and I’m not turning back,” he said in a Facebook post. “Canada needs us to be united and serious.”
Sources said the anti-O’Toole contingent has had more than enough signatures to prompt such a vote for weeks, but they held back triggering the secret ballot process until they could be sure a majority of MPs were ready to cast him aside.
“He’s done it to himself,” a source said of O’Toole. “He’s done nothing to endear himself to caucus.
“After the election, the support from caucus was a reflex. It wasn’t support for Erin, it was, ‘C’mon guys, do we really want to do this again?’ Erin has done nothing since then to win them over.”
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal party matters.
Tories have choice of 2 paths, O’Toole says
In his statement, O’Toole said he is ready to square off with the MPs intent on bringing him down.
He said Conservative MPs have a choice between “two roads” in the upcoming caucus vote, one is “angry, negative and extreme,” while the other will take the party in a more modern direction with an embrace of “inclusion, optimism, ideas and hope.”
O’Toole said the first option is a “dead end” that will see the party become “the NDP of the right,” a protest party rather than a viable alternative to the Liberal Party. The second road will ensure the party “better reflects the Canada of 2022.
‘There’s a lot I have to learn,’ O’Toole says following post-election report
5 days ago
Duration 1:44
Opposition Leader Erin O’Toole says his election studio sessions cut him off from meeting more Canadians and that he was told that during the last week of the campaign he sounded “scripted.” 1:44
Amid the fracas over his future, O’Toole said “it’s a time for a reckoning” and MPs must decide if they’re with him — or with the likes of Randy Hillier and Derek Sloan, two right-wing politicians who were ejected from the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario and the federal Tories respectively.
O’Toole said he will accept the result of the caucus vote and “the signers of the letter must accept it too. They brought it. They’ll have to live with it.”
Conservative sources were floating several names Monday night of possible candidates for interim leader, but a source close to former leader Andrew Scheer said the Saskatchewan MP will not put his name forward.
Conservative MP Bob Benzen, seen here addressing supporters in April 2017, says O’Toole has failed to deliver on promises made during the Tories’ last leadership race. (Todd Korol/The Canadian Press)
Disappointing results
Conservative MP Bob Benzen, who represents the riding of Calgary Heritage, said in a statement that caucus must have a say on O’Toole’s future because he produced disappointing results in the last election. Benzen is one of only seven sitting MPs who backed O’Toole in both the 2017 and 2020 Conservative leadership contests.
Benzen said O’Toole won the last leadership race in part because he promised to be a “principled conservative voice,” and yet adopted what Benzen called a “de facto carbon tax” and flip-flopped on firearms policy midway through the campaign.
O’Toole also won the leadership by promising to make inroads in the Greater Toronto Area. “Yet the Conservatives have, on net, lost a seat in the GTA under his leadership,” Benzen said, adding the party also dropped seats in Western Canada.
Benzen’s statement did not give a clear indication what if any involvement he might have in the effort to oust O’Toole.
Saskatchewan Sen. Denise Batters launched a petition last fall calling for a vote on Erin O’Toole’s leadership. (Chris Rands/CBC)
He also criticized O’Toole for failing to “clearly stand up for the charter rights of Canadians during a pandemic,” a reference to vaccine mandates.
A senior Conservative source close to O’Toole, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said this revolt stems from the December vote on the conversion therapy ban.
That source said the “far right of the party” is angry that O’Toole let that Liberal government legislation pass through both chambers at the end of the last session.
This source said Conservative MP Garnett Genuis is “spearheading the coup because he was in Latvia when we gave unanimous consent to make conversion therapy illegal.”
“This was all started by the group that are internally referred to as ‘the conversion crew,'” the source.
In a statement on social media, Genuis said members of O’Toole’s communications team are trying to “personally smear me by misstating my position on conversion therapy,” something he said was “beyond the pale.”
Faced criticism since election defeat
While he said he is not an organizer of the effort to remove O’Toole, Genuis said he did sign the letter calling for a leadership review. He said at least a third of the caucus, representing what he called a “broad cross-section of opinion,” want O’Toole out of the job.
“Mr. O’Toole should recognize that his position is untenable, rather than using lies to publicly attack members of his own team,” Genuis said.
O’Toole has faced criticism about his leadership since the day after the September election when Bert Chen, a now-suspended member of the party’s national council, called for his resignation.
“The feedback I have gotten over the past several months is that Mr. O’Toole has failed as a leader,” Chen told CBC News at the time, calling his flip-flops on carbon pricing, firearms and balanced budgets a “betrayal” for those who backed O’Toole in the leadership race.
Bert Chen, a two-term member of the Conservative party’s elected national council, launched a petition calling for O’Toole’s ouster after the last federal election. (CBC)
Saskatchewan Sen. Denise Batters later went public with her concerns, calling for an early leadership review well before a planned vote on his fate at the 2023 Conservative convention.
While O’Toole campaigned as a “true blue” Conservative in the leadership race, Batters has said he subsequently ran an election campaign “nearly indistinguishable from Trudeau’s Liberals.”
“Mr. O’Toole flip-flopped on policies core to our party within the same week, the same day, and even within the same sentence. The members didn’t have a say on that, but we must have one on his leadership,” Batters said in November.
O’Toole booted Batters out of the national caucus of MPs and senators after she launched a petition urging party members to back an earlier vote on his leadership. The Conservative Senate caucus and the Saskatchewan regional caucus subsequently agreed to keep her as a member of their respective groups in defiance of O’Toole’s wishes.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
