Kellie Leitch, who has pledged to screen potential immigrants to Canada for Canadian values, least represents Canadian values among the Tory leadership hopefuls, according to a Google Survey conducted by ThinkPol.
The survey asked 501 Canadians “Which Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate LEAST represents Canadian values?” among the six front-runners for the Conservative Party of Canada leadership.
Nearly 15% of those polled selected Leitch, the Conservative MP for Simcoe—Grey and former Minister of Labour and Minister for the Status of Women, who pledged to set up a hotline to report neighbours suspected of “barbaric cultural practices” at the last election, well ahead of her rival Michael Chong, who received just under 9% of the vote.
Leitch, who has pledged to bring Trump’s message to Canada, led the pack with both men and women voters, and in all regions of Canada except Quebec, where Steven Blaney was seen as least representative of Canadian values.
Leitch’s plan to screen potential immigrants for Canadian values has come under heavy criticism, even from fellow Tories.
“This suggestion, that some immigrants are “anti-Canadian”, does not represent our Conservative Party or our Canada,” Michael Chong said in response to Leitch’s announcement last year. “In order to win in 2019 we need to build a modern and inclusive Conservative Party that focuses squarely on pocket book issues that matter to Canadians, and not on issues that pit one Canadian against another.”
“I think it’s ironic that the candidate who wants to screen for anti-Canadian values wants to undermine one of our most fundamental and cherished values which is that we look out for each other in this country, where we have a public healthcare system which ensures that when people get sick they don’t have to pull out their credit card to pay for it,” Chong said last week, after Leitch, a former pediatric surgeon, criticized Canada’s universal healthcare system.
“Leitch called Trump’s message ‘exciting,'” Lisa Raitt. “She wants to bring it to Canada, she wants to test immigrants on her undefined Canadian values. She wants to destroy one of the pillars of our party’s success, a decade of work becoming the party of immigrants.”
Leitch denied that she was racist, and blamed her critics as “Liberals and media elites”.
“If you are not a Liberal elite, apparently you are a racist,” Leitch stated in a post on her Facebook group. “Specifically, you are anti-Muslim but you’re not picky. Frankly, you will hate anything that’s different.”
“Kellie Leitch has no idea what Canadian values are,” Steve Szilard of Courtice, Ontario, responded to Leitch’s post. “She has demonstrated that her idea is to intrude into everyone’s life to persecute people who are different from her. What we should do is have a Canadian values test before anyone can run for politics, and if they are not tolerant of the values in our Constitution, they should be barred from representing Canadians.”
“You would think that a person with enough education to be an MBA holding surgeon would be able to smell the irony of blathering on about ‘the elite’,” Missie Brown of Halifax, Nova Scotia responded. “You can certainly hear the dog whistles you’re blowing. That level of divisive politics had better be on purpose.”
The poll, carried out on December 28, 2016, is accurate within plus or minus 3.5 points, 19 times out of 20.”
