Tory MP Derek Sloan says he will fight attempts to expel him from the Conservative Party over a donation to his leadership campaign last year, which he says the party is also responsible for.
“If I am guilty of something, they are guilty of something,” Sloan said in a Facebook video late Monday night, Jan. 18. “I’m not going to go down without a fight.”
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole said on Jan. 18 that he is going to remove Sloan from the party over a $131 donation from Paul Fromm, saying “acceptance of a donation from a well-known white supremacist is far worse than a gross error of judgment or failure of due diligence.”
“In accordance with the Reform Act, I have initiated the process to remove Mr. Sloan from the Conservative Party of Canada caucus. I expect this to be done as quickly as possible,” O’Toole said. “Moreover, as Leader of Canada’s Conservatives, I will not allow Mr. Sloan to run as a candidate for our party.”
Sloan said he was unaware of the donation by Fromm, and only learned about it from a report in Press Progress. He added that the Conservative Party also didn’t flag the donation even though it took a cut, and it also allowed Fromm to become a member.
“After further investigation, it was clear the donation was made using the name Frederick P. Fromm. Using this obscure form of his identity, he donated $131 dollars, and 10% went to the party. His donation was processed without either my campaign or the CPC [Conservative Party of Canada] realizing who had made the donation, and the party accepted its 10% cut of the donation. I presume the party kept its 10%,” Sloan said in a statement released on Jan. 18.
Sloan added that the CPC accepted an application for membership by the same individual when he applied under the name of Frederick P. Fromm last summer, and noted that this individual submitted a ballot for the 2020 leadership race. He said none of the representatives of the different leadership candidates objected to the ballot.
“Therefore the Party, and the O’Toole campaign, failed to uphold the same standards to which they are now applying to me,” he said.
Sloan said that when he became aware of the problematic donation, he immediately asked the party’s executive director to refund it.
He also said that during his leadership campaign last year, his team received over 13,000 donations and “obviously did not scrutinize the donor names.”
“On any given day we had upwards of hundreds of different donations, and my team, which was run in many cases by volunteers, processed cheques and other things. At no time was I ever aware of this donation,” Sloan wrote on Twitter.
