Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Hastings-Lennox and Addington MP Derek Sloan announced Tuesday he would be running in the leadership race for the Conservative Party of Canada.
The 35-year-old was a private practice lawyer before winning his seat last October. Following the election he has been busy establishing offices in Napanee and north Belleville, as well as several satellite offices in municipal centres while hiring staff and meeting with county and town councillors. His duties in Ottawa include being the official Opposition’s deputy justice and attorney general critic.
“I’ve been taking notes on ways I felt the party could adapt a more broad spectrum policy,” Sloan said of the events that led to him putting his name forward to be leader of the Conservatives. “Initially it was just sort of my own thoughts on how I would do things. Eventually I amassed a fairly big list of things. I had already begun to share this with people just to get feedback.”
Sloan says he didn’t have the role as party leader in mind prior to when Andrew Scheer announced his resignation on Dec. 12 of last year.
“I was surprised as anyone about Scheer’s resignation,” said Sloan. “I knew about it about half an hour before the rest of the world knew about it. He basically told us in a private caucus meeting and it was completely out of the blue to me.”
Shortly after that announcement, Sloan began to seriously consider putting his name forward.
“I just got to thinking and talking to other MPs and I really started to explore the possibility of running,” said Sloan.
“I felt that the middle of the road voter in the last election couldn’t really differentiate between the Liberals and the Conservatives,” said Sloan. “I feel obviously dyed in the wool Conservatives should see a difference and dyed in the wool Liberals should see a difference. But there was a lot of swing voters that couldn’t really tell. I felt that the message we were giving them on many issues was we’re not bad, we’re basically the same as the Liberals, we’re just not as corrupt and we’ll charge you a little less on your taxes. I just felt like that was not a compelling message.”
Sloan said while on the campaign trail and knocking on doors, he felt many undecided voters didn’t feel there was much difference between the two parties.
“There is a distinct difference between the way Liberal and Conservatives look at different things,” said Sloan. “For example, on the environment. I feel our message (during the election) was ‘we believe everything the Liberals do and we have a plan that is better.’ There’s distinct ideological differences in approaches between how a Conservative and a Liberal view the environment and climate change. It’s not so much that one believes we should treat the environment well and the other doesn’t. The differences on that particular issue is this: I believe I speak for most Conservatives when I say we are definitely anti-alarmist. We don’t feel like sending the message that the world is going to end does anyone any good. However we are fully okay with being aggressively conservative.”
He added the Conservative election platform on the environment was a poor alarmist plan but a good conservationist plan.
“I just feel the message was not there and the average person got the idea that we didn’t care about the environment,” said Sloan.
Running for the federal leadership will also give Sloan a chance to bring two local issues to the national stage, said Sloan. Those issues are high water levels on the Bay of Quinte and affordable housing.
“They probably won’t get much play in the leadership race, but they should,” said Sloan.
Information on his policies will be released bit by bit over the coming weeks, as early as next week on his website www.DerekSloan.ca. Anyone with questions relating to his leadership bid can contact DerekSloanLeadership@gmail.com.
Candidates have until Feb. 27 to enter the race. They’ll then have to pay a $200,000 entry fee, a $100,000 refundable compliance fee and obtain 3,000 signatures from party members across 30 districts in at least seven provinces or territories.
The winner will be announced on June 27 in Toronto.