life
POLITICS
Michelle Rempel Garner doesn’t care if you like her THIS WINTER, on the heels of a leadership shakeup in the Conservative Party of Canada, Michelle Rempel Garner found herself on the outs. The Calgary Nose Hill MP had been a fixture in the party’s inner circle for nearly a decade: A rising star in Stephen Harper’s cabinet in the 2010s, she went on to serve as health critic and then as natural resources critic under Opposition leader Erin O’Toole. Among Conservatives, Rempel Garner signified who the party could serve: young, socially progressive, fiscally conservative Canadians. But that came to a halt in February, when members of the party voted to oust O’Toole. Stepping in as interim leader was Manitoba MP Candice Bergen. In weeks, she would turf multiple members of O’Toole’s shadow cabinet. Rempel Garner, along with other outspoken social progressives, was out of the inner circle. It’s not the first time in her 11 years in office that the 42-year-old has found herself on the outside. When former Conservative cabinet minister Keith Ashfield made a sexist comment about a teenager at a 2013 media event, Rempel Garner face-palmed her way through his non-apology in the House of Commons while other Conservatives stayed quiet. “I’ve never been comfortable just letting shit like that pass,” she
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CHATELAINE • MAY/JUNE 2022
After a decade in the party, this Conservative insider is willing to make herself an outsider—all for the kind of conservatism she believes Canada needs Written by VICKY MOCHAMA Photograph by JESSICA DEEKS
says. She was also a vocal cheerleader in 2016 when the Conservative party, then a decade behind in public policy, struck language from its internal documents in order to recognize gay marriage. Five years later, she lobbied for more research into gay party drugs, colloquially known as poppers, amid a party still debating whether or not to support a ban on conversion-therapy practices across Canada. (She was one of the most outspoken Conservatives in favour of the ban.) She even called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “fake feminist” in the House in 2019.
