Derek Sloan

Derek Sloan MP (born November 11, 1984) is a Canadian politician who was elected to represent the riding of Hastings—Lennox and Addington in the House of Commons of Canada in the 2019 Canadian federal election. He is the first Seventh-day Adventist ever elected to the Canadian House of Commons. Sloan is running as a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, and has gained notoriety for his anti-LGBTQ views.

Sloan was born in 1984 and raised near Waterford in Ontario. He attended Kingsway College, a private Seventh-day Adventist highschool in Oshawa.

In 2003, Sloan enrolled at Pacific Union College (PUC), a private university in Napa Valley, California associated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church. There he completed a bachelor degree in business in 2007. While attending PUC, Sloan served as President of the university's Student Association in 2007.

After graduating, Sloan moved to Toronto, Ontario to work at a water-fuel systems company. Then, between 2011 and 2014 he ran Sloan's Furniture Liquidation in Oshawa. In 2014, Sloan began a law degree at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and he finished articling in 2018. Sloan has said he pursued law because he was interested in "defending religious liberties against political correctness."

Sloan is married to his wife Jennifer, and they have two daughters, Fiona and Nora, and a son Callum.

2019 Federal Election

In 2018, Sloan announced that he would seek the Conservative Party of Canada nomination for the riding of Hastings—Lennox and Addington, despite having only recently moved to the riding. At the nomination meeting, Sloan defeated three other candidates: a City Councillor who had served for fifteen years in Belleville, a lawyer who had lived in the area for twenty years, and a local business owner. Sloan would go on to defeat Liberal incumbent Mike Bossio in the 2019 Federal Election.

2020 Conservative Party Leadership Election

Sloan announced his candidacy for the 2020 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election on 22 January 2020. On January 27th, Sloan made national headlines after tweeting in response to fellow leadership candidate Richard Décarie his belief that being gay is a choice. Sloan went on to say that "L-G-B-T-Q is a Liberal term" and argue that the science of whether sexual orientation is a choice is unclear during an interview on the CTV Power Panel. Sloan's comments were criticized by his former election campaign manager, Eric Lorenzen, and fellow leadership candidate Marilyn Gladu.

A self-identified social conservative, Sloan has attracted controversy for the policy positions he has endorsed throughout the leadership race. Sloan has stated that were he elected leader he would permit Conservative MPs to reopen the abortion debate or introduce private member bills aimed at over-turning same sex marriage. He also voiced opposition to Bill C-16, which protects people from discrimination on the basis of gender identity, thereby protecting the human rights of transgender individuals. He also vowed to vote against a federal ban on the pseudo-scientific practice of conversion therapy, arguing that parents should be able to make children identify with the body they are born with. Sloan has been widely criticized in the media and even within the Conservative Party for these anti-LGBTQ views.

On February 6th, 2020, members of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte blockaded the Canadian National Railway north of Tyendinaga, in support the Wetʼsuwetʼen hereditary chiefs' opposition to the Coastal GasLink Pipeline. The blockade fell within Sloan's riding of Hastings—Lennox and Addington. Sloan was criticized by his riding constituents for not taking time away from his leadership campaign to help end the blockade, instead spending the second week of February campaigning in Toronto. Sloan spoke publicly about the blockade for the first time on February 18th, stating the Liberal government should have responded faster to the protests. Three days later Sloan stated that while he had not met with the protesters, they were "extremists," and he called on the OPP to enforce an injunction against them.