Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Hastings Lennox and Addington MP Derek Sloan cancelled a scheduled campaign meet-and-greet appearance in Fort Frances this morning, which was slated to take place at a restaurant whose owners announced money raised from the event would go to a local gay pride association.
When reached for comment from the Beaver, Sloan’s team was yet to respond as to why this morning’s breakfast session at Neighbours Modern Diner was cancelled at the last minute and abruptly moved to a nearby park. Radio station 89.5 The Lake says on its website a spokesperson for Sloan said the change in location was due to ‘unforeseen circumstances.’
Sloan, who is one of four candidates in the race to become leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, has been making stops across the country in one final push ahead of the mail in vote that wraps up later this month.
Prior to the cancellation, Jamie Pryde, one of the owners of Neighbours Modern Diner, said he and his partner announced they were going to donate any money raised from Sloan’s visit to Borderland Pride, which describes itself as the LGBTQ2A Pride organization for the Rainy River District in Northwestern Ontario as well as parts of Minnesota.
Last night the restaurant’s official Facebook page posted: “Breakfast anyone? We will be donating profits from all breakfast orders tomorrow morning to Borderland Pride. BTW Being gay is not a choice, climate change is real and masks are not a control mechanism, they save lives”
Pryde said he made the decision after reading about some of Sloan’s policies.
“A friend sent it to us through Facebook and said this person is coming to your restaurant, what do you think about that?” said Pryde. “We did a bit of research on (Sloan) and found that he had some controversial policies and opinions, on especially the LGBQT+ community. As a member of that community and a business owner, we of course, our views really don’t align (with Sloan’s policies). We were just put in a position of how do we handle this? It’s definitely a tricky situation for us because we consider Neighbours to be a safe space. We welcome everyone, any political party, any race, creed, religion. We’re a restaurant and we have fun and we have zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination.”
Pryde said he objected in particular to Sloan’s stance on Bill C-8, which seeks to criminalize and ban the act of causing a person to undergo conversion therapy against their will to change their sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender. Sloan has labelled the ban as ‘child abuse’. Sloan has also gone on record as saying it’s scientifically unclear whether or not someone has a choice in their sexual orientation.
“When you have someone like this coming to speak in your dining room, it definitely raises some eyebrows,” said Pryde. “We got some messages from the community asking if we were condoning this or if we were part of this. We definitely had some decisions to make. It was really difficult. We were especially concerned about what his LGBQT views were and we feel, myself and my partner, no one has the right to tell us who we are or what we are or that we are less than or that we should be a certain way, especially from somebody who is the potential leader of a major political party in our country. That drove us to allow him to come and make his own decision, based on the fact that we were going to donate any profits of our breakfast service to a local pride organization, Borderland Pride, who have done amazing things in the area. Myself and my partner, we showed up at 8 a.m. on the dot, to see him and watch him do his thing. A friend of mine actually sent us an updated Facebook post on (Sloan’s) page saying that at the last minute, I’m assuming he found out what we were doing, changed it to a local park instead. I think that really just illustrates how he feels about our community, especially the LGBQT community that he definitely does not want to support us financially or on a more personal level as a political leader. We’re kind of indifferent about it either way, he made his decision and we made ours and that’s that.”
Despite the fact Sloan didn’t show, Pryde said he would still be making a donation to Borderland Pride. He was still totalling how much the restaurant had brought in from this morning’s breakfast.
Since word got out of Pryde’s intentions to donate profits from Sloan’s appearance to a local pride group, he says he’s had messages of support come flooding in across social media.
“We didn’t expect anything, we’re just kind of a small town and we just thought it would be a neat thing to support our pride organization,” said Pryde. “We didn’t really expect it to get noticed it at all. I think part of the reason it got noticed is because he cancelled and he moved along and just really showed he didn’t want to support any kind of organization that has anything to do with LGBQT rights.”
Had he showed up Pryde said he would have let Sloan hold his meet and greet, but he did plan to speak to him about some of his views.
“Being gay is not a choice and conversion therapy is torture. He needs to understand this,” said Pryde.
Sloan has also garnered attention for recent stance against mandatory mask wearing in public.
“With cases of and hospitalizations due to COVID-19 trending way down, this sudden passion for mandatory masking that has been embraced by politicians and the media alike seems to have more to do with political control than with safety,” reads a letter posted to Sloan’s official campaign page and bears his signature at the bottom. “In my opinion, Canadians who feel more comfortable while wearing a mask should feel free to do so if they wish, but I am 100 per cent against ever making masks mandatory.”
Sloan’s team was yet to get back to the Beaver about his stance on masks as well.
Registered members of the Conservative Party have until Aug. 21 to have their mail in ballot vote received for it to count in the election. Sloan is running against Peter MacKay, Erin O’Toole and Leslyn Lewis to replace the outgoing Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer.