The Conservative candidate for the Ottawa-area riding of Orléans says that he is unequivocally a conservative despite previous donations to the Liberals and a stint working for a Liberal cabinet minister.
Matthew Luloff, the current Ottawa city councillor for Orléans East-Cumberland was a member of the Liberal party for about a decade and donated over $3,000 to the party in 2014 and 2015, just before Justin Trudeau won a majority government.
Luloff had also worked for the Liberals in several roles from 2012 to 2018 as a staffer and campaign worker, culminating in a job working for the then-defence minister Harjit Sajjan.
During the Freedom Convoy in the winter of 2022, Luloff had publicly supported using the National Defence Act to call in the military to disband the peaceful protest.
However, Luloff claims he has become a conservative in recent years and that the Liberals have abandoned the values that once drew him to them.
In a speech to Orléans’ Conservative members, which he shared with True North, Luloff said that Liberal broken promises turned him away from the party.
“It is true that in 2015, I was excited about a platform that called for properly supporting our veterans, renewing our defence policy, and increasing defence spending,” said Luloff.
“I then worked for ministers to implement them, and I saw firsthand how little the party and this prime minister care about these policies.”
Luloff said that after leaving federal politics in 2018 to serve as an Ottawa city councillor, he decided to explore what he truly believed more deeply.
He claimed that he turned to conservative intellectuals like Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Edmund Burke, and Milton Friedman. He also turned to modern commentators including Conrad Black, Michael Shellenburger, James Lindsay, and Ben Shapiro.
“I came out of this knowing that I sure as hell was not a Liberal. That I desperately needed to find a new home, and I found it with the Conservative Party of Canada.”
Luloff had formerly served in the Canadian Armed Forces from 2003 to 2009 before entering politics.
According to 338Canada, the Conservatives are projected to win the Orléans riding, currently held by Liberal MP Marie-France Lalonde.
True North reached out to the Conservative Party of Canada’s media office for comment but did not receive a response.
