(LifeSiteNews) — An Alberta Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP has criticized his leader Erin O’Toole’s shift of the party to the left for causing the Liberal party to gain favor and win the election.
CPC MP Chris Warkentin told his local newspaper, the Town & Country News, it was after O’Toole started to “waffle on some of the policies that we had brought forward and hadn’t been clear” that he believes “Canadians became uncertain and unwilling to continue to look to our party as an alternative.”
“I believe that that was the beginning of polls shifting back in favour of the Liberals,” said Warkentin.
Warkentin ran as a candidate in the Grande Prairie-Mackenzie riding, winning a total of 35,106 votes.
The local NDP candidate garnered 6,200 votes, while in third place was the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) candidate with 5,263 votes. The Liberal candidate only received 2,314 votes.
According to a Western Standard report, Warkentin said many of his members are not happy with how O’Toole ran the campaign, nor with his leadership.
O’Toole ran on a campaign that swayed to the left and he routinely brought up the fact he was “pro-choice,” which irked many CPC social conservative voters.
Not everyone in the party ranks administration is happy with O’Toole as CPC leader. One person involved in the party has launched a petition calling for an accelerated leadership review.
A petition launchen by Bert Chen, a CPC member who has a seat on the party’s national council representing Ontario, reads: “Erin O’Toole has BETRAYED the principles that the Conservative Party is founded on. Erin O’Toole has BROKEN THE TRUST of the members of the Conservative Party.”
“We, the undersigned, request that the National Council of the Conservative Party of Canada commence a referendum to Recall Erin O’Toole as the Leader of the Conservative Party.”
Chen said he has spoken to many long-time CPC party members who are not happy with O’Toole taking the party in a left direction.
Chen said O’Toole needs to “take responsibility” for a “disappointing” campaign.
A portion of Chen’s petition reads that O’Toole betrayed the “principles of the Conservative Party” and its members by “Trampling the freedoms of the individual in supporting vaccine passports.”
“He broke the trust of members who elected him as leader -by embracing a carbon tax, despite his pledge to never implement one during the leadership race,” added Chen in the petition.
Chen’s petition has over 3,500 signatures thus far.
In an opinion piece published last week, True North News’ Candice Malcolm said that O’Toole “misrepresented who he was to Conservative members.”
“During the CPC leadership race, he promised he was ‘true blue’ — a real and principled conservative. But once the campaign started, he revealed his true colours: he ran as a weak-willed Red Tory who refused to stand his ground or defend Canada,” wrote Malcolm.
“Instead of running as a law and order conservative, he capitulated to Trudeau on so-called assault weapons while turning a blind eye to the real crime problem in this country: illegal guns, gang violence and Canada’s revolving-door prison system.
Last Monday’s federal election saw Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau re-elected with a minority government. The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) under Erin O’Toole won only 119 seats, two fewer than in 2019.
Of the CPC MPs elected, 38 were pro-life candidates.
The PPC, while not winning any seats, almost quadrupled its vote total from the 2019 election. They won 5 percent of the popular vote, according to Elections Canada. PPC Party leader Maxime Bernier ran a campaign on fighting against vaccine passports, mandates, and masks, as well as government overreach.