Hastings-Lennox and Addington MP Derek Sloan
April 27, 2020
Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Derek Sloan’s call for Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, to be fired while asking if she worked for China ignited strong reactions in the MP’s riding of Hastings-Lennox and Addington and beyond.
Some have applauded his comments while others, including his current Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer, fellow Conservative MPs from across Canada and Hastings County warden Rick Phillips, denounced Sloan’s comments. Some have labeled them as racist and called for an apology.
In an interview with the Napanee Beaver, Sloan reiterated he wouldn’t be issuing an apology and insisted race had nothing to do with his criticism of Dr. Tam.
“I was surprised,” Sloan said when asked about those who considered his comments racist. “Obviously going into this our intention was to criticize some of the steps that Dr. Tam and by extension the governing Liberals had made. But of course, anyone who reads my email or listens to the video can see very clearly that I don’t mention Dr. Tam’s background in any way. It was interesting to see that aspect of it replayed over and over again.”
Sloan is one of four candidates in the running to replace Scheer as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Were he prime minister at the start of the outbreak, Sloan says he would have called for travel bans to China and other areas as they got affected by the virus and recommended social distancing.
“I wouldn’t have recommended a complete economic shutdown, but just making people aware of the fact to mind your distance, potentially wearing masks, things of this nature would be useful and I would have provided masks and so on for people,” said Sloan. “Another issue as well, we needed to do early and often is testing both to see if someone has the illness but there’s a different type of test, it’s called a serological test. What that does is it will tell you if you had exposure to the illness and maybe recovered. If you already had the illness and recovered and you’re tested in a normal way, it doesn’t show up. The antibody testing gives you a good idea of how far the disease has spread in the community. For those who have already been impacted it’s likely that has conferred some kind of immunity on them.”
The World Health Organization, which Sloan has been highly critical of in his videos, issued a statement Monday saying scientists aren’t yet sure if antibodies give a person immunity to COVID-19.
Among those in the Conservative Party to speak out against Sloan’s comments were MP Michelle Rempel Garner, MP Eric Duncan, MP Tim Uppal and MP Dan Albas.
Scheer, who originally refused to comment on Sloan’s video, said Monday that he did “not agree with (Sloan’s) position, with what he said,” Scheer was quoted as saying by Huffington Post. “I believe it is not appropriate to question someone’s loyalty to their country. I believe that is a very serious accusation that you have to have some very substantial evidence to make.”
When asked about the response from MPs who spoke out against him, Sloan said he was ‘disappointed’.
“I know that some people are very sensitive to media criticism and they want to soften the blow as much as they can,” Sloan said. “As far as I’m concerned when you’re looking at national media, particularly on issues like this, they seem to really enjoy pushing these sorts of narratives when it comes to race and so on. It seems like they really enjoy making the story about racism for example, when in reality it should be about something else. We live in a world where news companies are incentivized to have salacious titles that people click on and get money through clicking on things. I understand the media criticism was there and sometimes people react and they try to soften the blow. I disagree and I think in a time like this we have to ask tough questions. I’m a little disappointed in some of my colleagues that they would have jumped to those conclusions.”
Sloan referenced a website, LetsVote.ca which includes short videos of Chinese-Canadians voicing their support for him.
