Paul Tuns Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister announced on August 9 that he would not lead the Progressive Conservatives in the next provincial election. Pallister, a former federal MP, was acclaimed leader in 2012. In 2016, the Pallister-led PCs won 40 of 57 provincial seats. In 2019, returning to the polls early, the PCs were re-elected with 36 seats. But following supposedly insensitive [...]
The writ has been drawn and just under two years into the minority mandate of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canadians are returning to the voting booth to decide 338 elections for Member of Parliament. It is useful to remember that it is not a singular election, but multiple simultaneous elections. We are not electing a prime minister to lead us or party [...]
In what has become almost a ritual during elections, both the PCs and Liberals dropped a candidate after social media posts on LGBQT issues resurfaced during the campaign. Higgs announced that Roland Michaud was dropped as the candidate in Victoria-La Vallee after it was reported that he shared a meme that media reports said "suggested physical violence against transgender women when they [...]
Going back to the polls two years after winning a minority government, Blaine Higgs' Progressive Conservatives won a majority in Canada's first COVID-19 pandemic election in a campaign in which the abortion issue featured prominently. In 2018, the PCs won 22 of the New Brunswick legislature's 49 seats, while the Liberals won 21. PC leader Blaine Higgs became leader because of the [...]
A few months ago, I informed readers that The Interim offices were moving from Toronto to Hamilton. While some of my colleagues at Campaign Life Coalition still come into the Hamilton office regularly, some are working at home either part- or full-time. I fall into the former category, taking the GO bus twice a week, nearly two hours each way. Jim Hughes, [...]
The U.S. election is about many issues including the fitness of the two major candidates to lead and the president’s handling of the pandemic and the economy. A major difference between the parties and presidential candidates is their approach to abortion, which would have been important to many voters but will have a higher profile and could become the issue of the [...]
On August 24, Erin O’Toole won the Conservative Party of Canada leadership, mostly on the strength of support as a second- or third-choice of pro-life and other socially conservative members of the party who voted for Derek Sloan and Leslyn Lewis. O’Toole was behind presumptive frontrunner Peter MacKay after the first and second ballot. On the first ballot, Campaign Life Coalition green-lit [...]
CLC national president Jeff Gunnarson said the “pro-life candidates had stunning performances, representing a combined 35 per cent of the total vote on the first ballot.” He told The Interim that having “once again proved that pro-lifers are a large and important part of the Conservative coalition, Erin O’Toole needs to respect their views with more than lip service that social conservatives [...]
Social conservatives prove to be MacKay's albatross The two pro-life candidates, Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan, won more than a third of the points in the first ballot, more than twice the support than the two pro-life candidates—Pierre Lemieux and Brad Trost— won in 2017. Erin O’Toole defeated Peter MacKay, the presumptive front runner, on the third ballot. The leadership race for [...]
After what seemed like an eternity – both the seven-month campaign and the six-hour wait for the results to be announced on August 23 – the outcome of the Conservative leadership campaign should not have been a surprise, even if some of us were. The “natural” strengths of Peter MacKay never materialized as he did not win Quebec as expected, his victories [...]
Jeff Gunnarson, President of Campaign Life Coalition By Jeff Gunnarson Vote only for pro-life candidates I think it’s time we label voters like me and many other “social conservatives.” I would like to substitute the word virtue as the term used to describe a certain political type, a social conservative (socon). In my case, and my circle of friends, it [...]
The CPC leadership race may not end well The Conservative leadership race reflects an internal struggle for the soul of the Conservative Party between two main groups: the Eastern Establishment (made up mostly of Red Tories) and the social conservatives grassroots of the party. While these two groups may share some similarities with respect to the need for fiscal responsibility, they deeply [...]
Best way to limit number of candidates is to require they be bilingual The Conservative Party of Canada 2017 leadership race revealed that having more than a dozen leadership candidates is politically ineffective. For the 2020 race, the party establishment set very demanding qualification criteria: garnering 3,000 signatures from current members and $300,000 in donations. The purpose of the signatures is laudable [...]
Politics is about service, to God and our fellow man An early memory of party politics dates to July 8th 1974 as my dad drove our car on the crude track out of the rustic setting of jack pine-covered sand dunes near Grande Prairie, Alberta, at the conclusion of a week of church camp. I recall my dismay at the radio news [...]
Social conservatives are an unignorable part of Conservative Party Those awful social conservatives, how could they! They cost the Conservatives the election again! The “progressive” overtures the Conservatives had made on abortion and other issues near and dear to the hearts of woke culture were deemed insufficient offerings. The stinking albatross of the social conservatives had to be purged. With the rules [...]