Tanya Granic Allen removed as Ontario PC Party candidate

By News Staff and The Canadian Press

Ontario PC Party candidate Tanya Granic Allen will no longer run for the party in the upcoming provincial elections, leader Doug Ford said in a statement on Saturday.

The move comes after the Liberals revealed a controversial video of Granic Allen that afternoon.

The clip is part of a longer video originally posted on YouTube in 2014 by Croatian Catholic Youth North America.

In the almost 30-minute speech, Granic Allen covers topics including abortion, progressive education and gay marriage.

 

“When abortion was decriminalized in Canada, that was 1969,” Granic Allen says in the video. “And who decriminalized abortion? I’m going to say it — it was a cultural Catholic Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau’s father.”

“Now what do we have? What’s the fallout? Well … we have to immigrate a lot of new population to our country because nobody’s having babies. People are killing kids out of convenience.”

She went on to speak about sexual education and gay marriage in Croatia, saying she “almost vomited in disbelief” at their “lack of values”

The Liberals asked the PCs to remove Granic Allen as their Mississauga Centre candidate or justify why she should keep her job.

Hours later, Ford released a statement saying Granic Allen had been removed.

“Tanya Granic Allen will no longer be a candidate for the Ontario PC Party,” he said. “We are a party comprised of people with diverse views that if expressed responsibly we would respect. However, the fact is her characterization of certain issues and people has been irresponsible.”

“Our party remains focused on defeating Kathleen Wynne and bringing relief to families across Ontario.”

Granic Allen responded to her dismissal on Twitter, saying she was “disappointed” to be informed of the decision by Ford’s campaign manager.
“I’ll have more to say about this and Ontario politics in the coming days,” she wrote.

Granic Allen’s comments have landed her in hot water before. Last month, she defended comments she made online years ago about Muslims and gay marriage.

Before securing the PC nomination in Mississauga Centre, Granic Allen denied that posts in which she suggested gay marriage shouldn’t be legalized in the United Kingdom represented homophobic views.

She also said posts saying women should not wear burkas in public do not represent Islamophobia.

Ford has been under constant pressure from the Liberals and New Democrats to drop Granic Allen from the ballot, but repeatedly refused.

When her old posts surfaced in April, Ford said in a statement that “our base is growing, and we want all Ontarians to feel like they have a place in our party.”

On Saturday, shortly after Granic Allen’s dismissal, Ford said on Twitter that she would be replaced by Natalia Kusendova, the candidate who came in second in the Mississauga Centre Nomination contest.

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