Conservative MP Derek Sloan says he will fight efforts by Erin O’Toole to kick him out of caucus.
“If I am guilty of something, they are guilty of something. This is ridiculous,” Sloan said in a Facebook video on Monday.
“I’m not going to go down without a fight.”
On Monday, O’Toole said he has begun the process of removing Sloan from caucus after it was revealed that Sloan’s leadership campaign received a donation from known white supremacist Paul Fromm.
“Racism is a disease of the soul, repugnant to our core values. It has no place in our country. It has no place in the Conservative Party of Canada. I won’t tolerate it,” O’Toole said in his statement.
However, the MP for Hastings – Lennox and Addington is accusing the party of hypocrisy.
According to Sloan, Fromm was a party member and voted in the party’s recent leadership contest — something that would have been known to all leadership candidates, including O’Toole, and party headquarters as well.
In a statement on Twitter, Sloan says he was unaware of this donation and that nobody made any effort to contact him.
“His donation was processed without either my campaign or the CPC realizing who had made the donation,” said Sloan.
“The Party must check each donor to ensure they have not exceeded the maximum, I did not hear from them, ever, on this matter.”
Sloan said it’s absurd to expect that any politician to be familiar with the names of every single one of their donors. Fromm’s donation of $131 was one of 13,000 donations to Sloan’s leadership campaign.
Leadership campaign donations are processed by both the campaign staff and the Party.
Under the Reform Act, O’Toole can initiate a vote within the party to remove a member of caucus should they lose the confidence of the party.
