TORONTO -- The emergence of a Tory leadership candidate committed to repealing Ontario's sex-ed curriculum may yet see the Progressive Conservative party, which was pushed to the centre under former leader Patrick Brown, shifting to the right -- at least until the spring election campaign gets underway.
While observers say it's unlikely that Tanya Granic Allen will end up as party leader, social conservatives who feel betrayed by Brown are delighted with their new-found voice.
"We worked hard to help Patrick Brown become the leader," said evangelical activist Charles McVety. "Once he became the leader he took an about-face turn. Not only did he change the (sex-ed) policy, then he basically banned us from the party."
Brown, who recently stepped down as leader after denying allegations of sexual misconduct toward two young women, may yet have another crack at stamping his vision on the party, announcing on Friday that he was entering the leadership race.
"We can't lose the project we've been working on," Brown said at the Tory party headquarters in Toronto after filing his papers. "It's far too important."
Brown, who had actively courted the social conservative vote in his first run to become leader before realizing the party risked alienating the wider voting population, followed a well-worn path.
Former Ontario premier Mike Harris firmly banished what became known as the "family values coalition" to the backbenches after he won office in the 1995 election. Among them was the late Jim Flaherty, who later went on to become provincial and federal finance minister, and whose wife Christine Elliott is running against Granic Allen.
Similarly, former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper refused to allow anti-abortionists to gain traction -- particularly in his first two elections.
"Most voters hover around the centre of the political spectrum -- that's where the votes are," said Anna Esselment, an associate professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. "What Mike Harris wanted was to ensure that they won, and Harper knew that they were not going to win the election if they were perceived as being branded as the scary hidden agenda."
McVety said the Ontario leadership candidates could also be making promises to social conservatives they will renege on later.
"You're always worried about that," he said. "But then you have to look at the promises and the character of the people making the promises."
Among other things, Ontario's three-year-old sex-ed curriculum has modules on same-sex relationships for Grade 3 students, lessons on masturbation for Grade 6ers, while anal sex is discussed in Grade 7 as part of a broader approach to avoiding sexually transmitted infections.
In Thursday's televised debate, Granic Allen, 37, slammed Brown's past flip-flop on "radical sex ed," repeatedly raising the spectre of "anal sex in the classroom" as she attempted to set herself apart from her leadership rivals, including former Toronto city councillor Doug Ford and lawyer Caroline Mulroney.
"Where were these candidates when (Liberal Premier) Kathleen Wynne was ramming through crazy policies to our province, for example, like her sex-ed agenda?" Granic Allen said. "I was out there in the trenches with the grassroots speaking out again and again on these issues."
In response to her loud denunciation of the curriculum, all three of her rivals at the debate sought to condemn it as well -- although Mulroney said she wouldn't scrap it if she were elected leader and became premier. Ford was clear he, too, would change the sex-education curriculum if he manages to find his way into the premier's office.
Brown expressed surprise at finding the sex-ed issue back on the party's agenda.
"Some of the debates that we're devolving into are debates that I wish we'd already move on from," Brown said late Thursday on Toronto radio station AM640. "The fact we're talking about sex ed again and climate change -- I thought that that page had been turned."
Granic Allen, a married mother of four, is president of the group Parents As First Educators. She also sits on the board of the Catholic Civil Rights League, an anti-abortion advocacy group, and has been a spokeswoman for Campaign Life Coalition. She describes herself as a businesswoman, writer, commentator, and "staunch defender of parental rights."
Nelson Wiseman, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto, said candidates like Granic Allen inevitably pull the debate to the right.
"One should not underestimate (her) potential impact," he said.
On the other hand, Esselment said, Granic Allen's impact is likely to be moderated when Tory members and the leadership candidates themselves look beyond the immediate race.
"You're not always going to win based on the ends of the spectrum," Esselment said. "So, the other three candidates will be careful about being drawn too much one way or the other."
For the moment, however, social conservatives like McVety are rejoicing at having both Granic Allen and Ford as leadership contenders of a party they feel has long ignored them. We aren't asking for much, McVety said.
"We just want one thing, at least," McVety said. "Something, give us a bone to chew on."
