(LifeSiteNews) – Branden Leslie, who is running in an upcoming federal byelection in Manitoba as the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) candidate, said he is fully “pro-life” and called out his main opponent Maxime Bernier from the People’s Party of Canada (CPC), as “an opportunist who has parachuted in from another province.”
“I am 100% pro-life,” Leslie told LifeSiteNews.
Leslie was nominated as the CPC candidate for the riding of Portage-Lisgar. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a byelection for the riding which will be held on June 19.
Portage-Lisgar has been a conservative stronghold riding for many years and was recently held by former interim leader of the CPC Candace Bergen.
UPDATE (05/30/23): Major victory as York Catholic District School Board votes against raising LGBT flag
Your committment to this campaign has paid off – please continue circulating the petition far and wide, and read below about our huge victory at YCDSB thanks to people like you.
(LifeSiteNews) – During a May 29 York Catholic District School Board (YCDSB) meeting, trustees voted 6-4 against flying the pro-LGBT flag atop of its schools and other buildings in celebration of so-called “Pride Month”, in a move that has been met with pleasant surprise by pro-family advocates.
While the decision brought cheers from the crowd, some angrily shouted in protest and had to be escorted out by YCDSB security.
“The Cross represents all!” Myles Vosylius, a former student at Cardinal Carter Catholic High School in Aurora, Ontario, tweeted, celebrating the decision.
“The cross represents all!” – Faithful Catholic attending the @YCDSB meeting tonight, where the victorious decision was made NOT to fly the ‘pride’ flag! #YCDSB #CdnPoli #OnPoli pic.twitter.com/CSNCEQbS0c
— Myles Vosylius (@TheMylesV) May 30, 2023
While the YCDSB represents a victory for faithful Catholics in York region, many Catholic school boards have caved to pressure by LGBT activists and will fly “pride flags” during the month of June. However, increasingly, Ontario parents are fighting back as hundreds of students, reportedly predominantly Muslim, stayed home earlier this month when their schools flew the flag.
Parents have also begun to speak out against LGBT agenda being promoted to their children in schools. Pro-LGBT trustee for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board (WCDSB) Wendy Ashby recently resigned after over 3,000 parents petitioned for her ousting.
Similarly, last month, a group of young Canadians protested a school-sponsored drag queen event in front of York Mills Collegiate Institute in Toronto.
Furthermore, Campaign Life Coalition is calling for parents to keep their children home from school on June 1 to protest schools flying the “pride flag.”
“Parents need to keep up the pressure, just like this, right across the country!” Fonseca encouraged.
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As Catholics, we are taught that we must love our neighbour and treat every individual as a child of God, accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.
Parents make a clear choice when they decide that their children will attend a Catholic school. They rightly expect that trustees, principals, teachers all partners in education will ensure that Catholic teaching is presented, lived and infused in all that we do. In that regard, the appropriate symbol that represents our faith, and the inclusion and acceptance of others, is the cross, which is visible at the entrance of every Catholic school. It is the primary symbol of our Christian faith.
We have created this petition to express opposition of flying the pride flag at schools for the month of June. Our kids should not be forced to celebrate anyones sexuality, and a flag will do nothing to keep anyone more safe. Its nothing more than a symbol of sexual celebration, completely inappropriate.
Catholicism and parental rights are being threatened, and we will not allow teachers who are LGBTQ to influence our children.
We are not homophobes. We are trying to shield our children from any sexual ideologies, both gay and straight. Children are minors who have a right to a normal and innocent childhood. We are not STAKEHOLDERS. We are parents. EQUITY is not and will never be the same as EQUALITY. Inclusion means EVERYONE and the York Region Catholic District School Board & its Union members are infringing upon our religious beliefs by suffocating our children with woke political agendas & indoctrinations when they should be focusing on educating our kids!
We love all humans equally. Hate is the wrong word to describe parents feelings about the climate in schools today. Parents protesting the pride flag at school do not harbour any negative feelings towards the LGBTQ+ community. We do however feel that their rights seem to supersede everyone elses. We also believe that kids should never learn about sex at school and we condemn any classroom discussion or public display that encourages or promotes gender confusion and same sex lifestyles in a classroom setting. We also strongly condemn the nature of several library books that contain sensitive material on homosexuality and transgender issues in elementary school libraries. Similarly, we harbour no contempt for transgenders as individuals but their insistence on using female-only spaces is invasive.
The promotion of a pride sticker and the likelihood that a flag will go up in June at all schools suggests a particular political agenda, which warrants examination. Concern about alleged incidents of bullying directed at the LGBTQ community within schools has been raised. However when requesting specific information on the actual number of such reports, it was communicated that the data is currently confidential and not publicly available. Despite clarifying that only the number of incidents was desired, the same response was given.
The lack of transparency and information provided by the York Region Catholic District School Board concerning alleged incidents combined with these extreme campaigns using safe space stickers to promote political agendas, raises necessary questions about their motives. Despite facing opposition from relevant individuals, including the Archbishop of Toronto and Cardinal Collins, who have both explicitly expressed their disapproval of such displays, the union and its members have vehemently insisted the stickers remain.
We must stand up against this before the Board caves to the pressure of political correctness and decide to raise the pride flag too.
Please share this. We must get as many signatures as possible before May 20th so that we may present a united front at this months meeting with this petition in hand that will speak for itself and will represent all of us.
Thank you.
Sheree D
Leslie was recently voted as the Conservative candidate to run in the riding.
Leslie said that as an MP he will also work towards ending “the Liberal culture of death.”
“Instead of offering assisted suicide to the homeless, the disabled, and people struggling with mental illness, we will give Canadians the help they need and turn hurt into hope,” he wrote on social media last month.
“I know what life is like on a farm,” said Leslie, who grew up on one in southern Manitoba.
“That is why I will always defend our farmers. I will continue to fight back against Liberals telling farmers how much fertilizer they can use,” he noted.
As for Bergen, she served as interim leader of the CPC from the spring of 2022 after Erin O’Toole stepped down, until the election of current leader Pierre Poilievre last year.
She stepped down as an MP on February 28, 2023.
While the interim leader of the CPC, Bergen was more vocal than O’Toole in opposing COVID mandates and did show some support for the trucker Freedom Convoy.
In the 2021 federal election, the local PPC candidate for Portage-Lisgar, Solomon Wiebe, had the best results of any PPC candidate in the country, getting about 22% of the vote. However, he was up against the popular Bergen.
Leslie, Bernier criticize each other
Leslie’s main rival is Bernier, who lives in Quebec and is a former MP and cabinet minister from the CPC who left the party to form the PPC in 2018.
In 2017, Bernier lost by a slim margin to Andrew Scheer who became the leader of the Conservative Party.
Leslie told LifeSiteNews that Bernier, who has promised to re-open the abortion debate if elected, is someone who will do “anything” to get attention.
Meanwhile Bernier blasted Leslie as a “fake” conservative, who he said “believes in the Liberals’ climate agenda and has been working with them as a lobbyist to impose it on farmers.”
Bernier recently announced he is running in the Manitoba by-election in Portage-Lisgar on a campaign focusing on the fight for traditional family values against a society “overtaken by evil,” including “transgender madness,” he has said.
Two weeks ago, Bernier promised his party would overturn a slew of extreme pro-transgender laws should it ever form a government, after announcing his official policy on what he called an “evil agenda” of “radical gender ideology” targeting kids in the nation.
Bernier also announced that if elected as an MP in the June by-election, he will introduce a private member’s bill to try and ban late-term abortion, calling the practice “abhorrent.”
The nation’s top pro-life and pro-family group, Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), has given Bernier a C-plus grade, noting he has a mixed voting record on issues related to life and family, despite making a shift towards a more socially conservative stance in recent years.
Leslie told LifeSiteNews that Bernier would have to “explain his decision to go to the World Economic Forum to meet with billionaires, the corporate elite, and celebrities including Bono, Hamid Karzai, Carl Bildt and Jean Charest.”
He said all those elites “want to destroy our rural way of life.”
Current CPC leader Poilievre has also called out Bernier for having gone to Davos in 2008 as well.
Bernier, while a member of the cabinet under former CPC Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has explained why he went to a World Economic Forum meeting.
In March, Bernier said, “is Pierre Poilievre seriously trying to imply that I’m a globalist for a trip to Davos I did 15 years ago while serving his corrupt party. Really?”
“How about you come clean about the globalist policies you are promoting right now?”
Bernier in March clarified in a video that he was there “as Foreign Affairs Minister.”
“My only goal, and only job when I was there was to meet other Foreign Affairs Ministers, to have a discussion about Canada and our role in Afghanistan.”
He added that the “did not” attend debates and left after his meetings, adding that he would never “go there [to WEF meetings in Davos] in the future.”