Why I had to leave the Liberal Party of Canada...

...and why I should have left far sooner.

Way back in March 2018, I was a Young Liberal volunteering with other university students at the Liberal Party of Canada office in Toronto. Now, the idea of doing this makes me sick. | Copyright © University of Toronto Liberals, licensed under fair dealing.

Update (August 20^th): Due to complaints from one of the individuals picture above, I have redacted their faces. The original unaltered image is still available at the cited link.

Folks, I have reached the end of my rope, my line in the sand, the loss of all patience. The time has come for me to cease my involvement with the Liberal Party of Canada. No more membership, no more money, and no more effort.

For years now, I have been overlooking a growing number of differences between me and the LPC, and I was wrong to do this. I was wrong to think that all of this could be brushed away by a “big tent” philosophy, when the tent seems to be filled with terrible people.

Flight attendants for Air Canada placed themselves in a strike position because Air Canada refused to pay them for 35 hours of work every month. And within merely twelve hours, Minister-of-Suppressing-Labour Patty Hajdu declared that the stoppage was illegal, and that this union of largely women must work for free.

The federal government has used Section 107 repeatedly against other unions, but thankfully the flight attendants at CUPE stood with courage against the Liberal government, and resisted the attempt to break their strike and force an unfair deal.

This was my last straw. This is what finally broke my back and convinced me it was necessary to leave. And for the first time in a very long time, I can breathe free of partisan bullshit. Finally, I am no longer caught up in the tangle of these people and their lies.

As an opinion columnist, I’ve never shied away from public criticism of the Liberal Party in my work, as you can see here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or a bunch of other columns. My personal favourite is when I wrote in the National Post that the Liberal Party’s Yaroslav Hunka scandal will never “be forgiven or forgotten.”

So it’s not for the sake of my writing that I’m leaving the Liberal Party of Canada. My biases have been declared openly to my readers, and I can say that my body of opinion work calls the shots fairly against all political stripes, and that every claim I make is substantiated by fact.

No, I am leaving because my basic morals and ethics have clearly become incompatible with the actions of Liberal MPs and their staff. I am leaving because what the federal government lied to the public on virtually every topic while campaigning in this year’s election.

And to my great shame, I need to admit that I should have drawn the line far sooner.

When Mark Carney’s Health Minister said the government was backing away from the Pharmacare Act passed by the Trudeau Liberals and Singh NDP, it should have been enough for me to leave. And when Mark Carney traded “elbows up” for participation in Trump’s Golden Dome, it should have been enough too.

When the Liberals moved forward Bill C-2, which would give American police warrantless access to the records of women who get abortions in Canada, that should absolutely have been enough.

And as activists revealed that Canada’s “arms embargo” was total horseshit, and that we are actively arming Israel’s genocide of Palestinians? How could that atrocity not have been enough?

It should never have taken me this long. For all that I wrote criticizing those actions by the Liberals, I was still a Liberal myself! I was a fool who believed I could ethically participate in a political movement that refused to treat human beings with basic dignity!

I’m not angry at my sixteen-year old teenage self for joining the LPC in an era where it seemed Justin Trudeau could actually be a progressive. But I will be angry at myself for a very long time over how many years it took before I finally listened to my conscience about what his Liberals and Carney’s Liberals were doing, and left.

One important thing I would like to clarify is that I am not leaving the Liberals to join another federal party. I am leaving because they suck. But I will not free myself from the spectre of partisan bias only to replace it with another.

I am still a member of the Ontario Liberal Party, which as federal Liberals made painfully clear to Crombie’s team during the last provincial election, is a separate organization they will not provide assistance to. And I’ll make that clear in any columns which touch upon Ontario provincial politics.

But whether my membership continues past the Ontario Liberal annual meeting from September 12^th to 14^th? Honestly, I don’t know. My stance has been that I cannot remain in OLP if Crombie remains leader after that weekend’s vote. But there are a lot of problems with that party beyond just Crombie, and I may see myself pushed to a similar place.

In any case, I don’t see a future for myself in politics. I see much more value in my work as a writer, as a photographer, and as an interviewer. I seek to do that work without pretending to bear false neutrality, but instead by disclosing my bias very blatantly, so that people can make honest judgments of me.

And regardless of your political leanings as readers, I hope you can still trust me to do this work with integrity…because that is what I intend to do.