CLC Blog

On behalf of CLC, I’d like to thank you for your generous response to our last-minute donation appeals on behalf of pro-life, pro-family CPC leadership hopefuls Grant Abraham and Marc Dalton.

Thanks to the strong response by CLC supporters, Grant Abraham raised the full $300,000 entry fee to get on the ballot, plus 598 nomination signatures.

Unfortunately, MP Marc Dalton raised only $200,000 in the end, and did not make the cut.

So, on Friday evening, our team here at CLC was pretty excited that 3 out of our 4 endorsed candidates made it onto the final ballot, including Grant Abraham, Joseph Bourgault and Leslyn Lewis.

However, that excitement turned to outrage when, on Sunday evening, we learned that Grant Abraham received notice from the party that he allegedly did NOT meet the financial requirements, in spite of having raised the stated $300K buy-in fee and having obtained the required signatures by the 5pm deadline on April 29th.

This did not make sense so we started to ask questions to our contacts in the party.

What they told us is that the party tacked onto the total donations a 15% “administration fee” that candidates would have to obtain on top of the $300,000, making the real total that a candidate had to raise $345K or even $353K, depending how it’s calculated!

Abraham is appealing the decision given the false advertising by the party, which always communicated $300K as the fee to get on the final ballot, and never any other amount.

An even more outrageous disqualification was that of Joseph Bourgault who had submitted almost $400K and more than 1,000 signatures by the April 29th deadline.

As with Abraham, the party claimed he did not meet the $300K buy-in fee. We’ve learned that Bourgault will also be appealing this ridiculous decision.

Something else we’ve discovered is that the party will be keeping at least the first $200,000 of the buy-in fee from each candidate. This money will not be refunded to donors, like you, even though your preferred candidate was blocked from running.

I have no doubt whatsoever that if the red Tory establishment swamp could get away with disqualifying Leslyn Lewis, they would've done it to her too.

However, Lewis is too high profile owing to her previous leadership run, and too popular among party members. The party elites know that the backlash for disqualifying Dr. Lewis would be too great, so they have no choice but to let her compete.

We hope that Bourgault and Abraham will appeal these disqualifications and win, in court if necessary, because it's totally unfair and undemocratic.

CLC is grateful that Dr. Lewis herself spoke out against the disqualification of Bourgault and Abraham, saying on Twitter:

Conservatives have always accused the Liberals of being the party of corruption and anti-democracy. That accusation has now come home to roost in the CPC party.

One of the pillars of the CPC, and of the broader “small-c” conservative movement, is democracy – letting the people, not the elites, decide who should represent them. Therefore, this sort of Cancel Culture has no business in the Conservative Party.

In the end, if Bourgault and Abraham are unsuccessful in their appeals, Campaign Life Coalition will do its best to ensure that Leslyn Lewis is victorious as the only green-lit, pro-lifer of the six “verified” candidates.

Unless the party reverses its decision about the falsely disqualified socon candidates, that “final” ballot listing will include Pierre Poilievre, Jean Charest, Patrick Brown, Scott Aitchison, and Roman Baber.

Poilievre, Charest, Brown, and Aitchison are all red-light-rated candidates who do not deserve a #2 ranking when it comes to voting time, owing to their support for abortion and LGBT ideology.

CLC is still in the process of evaluating Baber, and it’s possible he may end up with a yellow-light rating, although that has not yet been finalized.

We know it’s tempting to be so disgusted with the red Tory swamp and their continual efforts to purge social conservatives from the party, but please do not give up your seat at the table.

You must stay engaged to preserve our collective voice as a pro-life, pro-family, pro-faith movement. We must stay at the table in order to support Leslyn Lewis, even if she ends up the only social conservative in the race.

If you are a CPC member, you can express your disappointment to the Party by contacting the members of its Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC) and requesting that they reinstate Bourgault and Abraham on the ballot, without delay.

LEOC Members

To email all 21 member of LEOC and the CPC's Executive Director at once, copy the email thread from this link here. Or to email them individually, see the list below.

Wayne Benson, Director: [email protected]

Ian Brodie, Chair: [email protected]

Valérie Assouline, Vice-Chair: [email protected]

Shola Agboola, Manitoba: [email protected]

Hon. Leona Aglukkaq, Nunavut: [email protected]

David Anderson, Saskatchewan: [email protected]

Rob Batherson, Nova Scotia: [email protected]

Diane Carey, New Brunswick: [email protected]

Pete Aarssen, Ontario: [email protected]

James Dodds, Ontario: [email protected]

Rick Ekstein, Ontario: [email protected]

Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Ontario: [email protected]

Steven Dollansky, Alberta: [email protected]

Hon. Deborah Grey, British Columbia: [email protected]

Bruce Hallsor, British Columbia: [email protected]

Nelly Shin, British Columbia: [email protected]

Judy Manning, Newfoundland & Labrador: [email protected]

Darrell Pasloski, Yukon: [email protected]

Sylvia Poirier, PEI: [email protected]

Hon. Judith Seidman, Quebec: [email protected]

Claude Thibault, Quebec: [email protected]

Tim Syer, Northwest Territories: [email protected]

If you happen to have a Conservative MP representing your federal riding, you could also express your disappointment to them, and urge them to relate your demand to LEOC. You can find your local MP by postal code here.

Thank you for defending our values by staying engaged in the political arena.

See my comments to CBC about this CPC fiasco, here.