Opinion
Ontario mayor refuses to cave in to demands after town rejected ‘pride’ flag
Mayor Harold McQuaker of Emo, Ontario
From LifeSiteNews
Emo, Ontario mayor Harold McQuaker said he will ‘absolutely not’ pay a fine or attend re-education classes, emphasizing that ‘I will not be extorted.’
Last month, the Ontario Human Rights Commission ordered the township of Emo to pay the LGBT activist group Borderland Pride $10,000 for voting in 2020 not to fly a “Pride” flag. Mayor Harold McQuaker was ordered to personally pay $5,000 — and take a re-education course titled “Human Rights 101” to boot. We covered both the original story as well as a follow-up, detailing Borderland Pride’s threats and demands.
There is a new development in the case: Mayor Harold McQuaker is flatly refusing to do what is being demanded of him. Asked by the Toronto Sun if he will pay the fine or attending re-education classes, the 77-year-old McQuaker was blunt. “Absolutely not,” he replied. “I will not be extorted.” He also stated that he will not host Drag Queen Story Hour at the local library, either — one of the demands laid out in an open letter published by Borderland Pride.
Emo Township is a small town of just over 1,200 people located 380 kilometers west of Thunder Bay. The township now has to decide whether to pay the LGBT activist group as demanded by the Ontario Human Rights Commission or refuse to do so. McQuaker has made up his mind. “I utterly refuse to pay the $5,000 because that’s extortion,” he stated. “I have a lot of respect for our four councillors. We have a special meeting of council, and they will decide that and what to do next, either pay the fine or appeal it.”
McQuaker grew up in the area and owned a construction company there for 50 years, and he cannot be pushed around easily. “I will not pay the $5,000 I have been fined and will not take the training,” he emphasized to the Sun. “The council will decide on the fine levied to it. I did not do anything wrong … if anybody needs training it’s the LGBTQ2+ to quit pushing their weight around and making demand that people can’t live with.”
Ironically, the Emo town hall doesn’t even have a flagpole — but that didn’t matter to Borderland Pride, which has, in addition to other demands, stated that it expects a written apology as well as “diversity and inclusion training for council, and a commitment to adopt Pride proclamations in the future without stripping out their 2SLGBTQIA+-affirming language.” Borderland Pride insisted that despite the lack of flagpole the LGBT flag could have been displayed somewhere else, “such as in a window or on a counter in the municipal office.”
McQuaker emphasized that he “doesn’t hate anyone” and that he will not tolerate the accusations being leveled at him by Borderland Pride. “I am a husband to my wife for 51 years, father of two, a grandfather of seven and a great grandfather of one,” he said. “I consider myself a very reasonable person and a good leader for our community and I would have a lot of support if there was an election.”
In response, Doug Judson of Borderland Pride suggested that the mayor should be happy to learn from the LGBT group because his role:
(A)ctually requires that the mayor ‘participate in and foster activities that enhance the economic, social and environmental well-being of the municipality and its residents.’ Part of showing this kind of community leadership is to set the tone for civil debate and to demonstrate a willingness to learn and adapt one’s perspective on issues that, for various reasons, they may have more limited understanding of. It seems obvious enough that the mayor does not have many ties to the queer community. We hope that the training that was ordered by the tribunal will assist him in his leadership role moving forward.
In short, Judson and his LGBT activist buddies hope that forcing the 77-year-old mayor of a small town to take re-education classes will create “ties to the queer community” and that he will be a good boy from now on and do what they demand the first time. Harold McQuaker isn’t having any of it — and we need more like him. Godspeed to the mayor — I hope that the council follows suit.
From the X account of Andrew Scheer
Mark Carney spent his entire life promoting the carbon tax.
Now he’s trying to scam Canadians out of billions and to do it he’s put a whole crew together.
It could be the biggest con job in Canadian history. Only YOU can stop it! pic.twitter.com/1DyywsynBN
— Andrew Scheer (@AndrewScheer) February 22, 2025
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Newt Gingrich
In an amazing show of courage, Vice President J.D. Vance offered an intervention for some of our European allies.
That is the best way to think of the two historic speeches he made in France and Germany last week.
In Paris, Vice President Vance pledged the United States would do whatever it takes to lead the world in the development of Artificial Intelligence. He went on to assert that Europe’s automatic response to regulate technological change rather than adapt to it was doomed to fail.
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Vance warned the Europeans that the Trump administration would retaliate to protect American high-tech companies from being fined and regulated by the European community.
Then, Vance went to the Munich Security Conference. It is the annual meeting of European leaders concerned about defense and threats to peace. The Vice President shocked the Europeans by launching a frontal assault on the decay of their political system.
As Vance put it:
“But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values — values shared with the United States of America.”
He then went through a litany of specific complaints about the behavior of different European countries. They ranged from failing to control immigration, suppressing free speech, and Brussels seeking to control and define futures of independent countries such as Hungary and Romania.
The leading French newspaper, Le Monde (their equivalent of the New York Times) asserted that the American Vice President was declaring “ideological war on Europe.”
Le Monde was right. The European elites have been decaying for at least two generations. They hide behind their privileged status and take ideological positions that feel good but are destructive. Europe’s failures are devastating for most everyday Europeans.
I have personal knowledge about this. I have a Ph.D. in Modern European History – and I have lived in France, Germany, Belgium and Italy. As a young Army dependent, we were living in France when the French Army came back from Algeria, killed the French Fourth Republic and brought back General Charles de Gaulle to establish the Fifth Republic.
It is now the longest serving non-royal government in French history.
The European elites value each other’s opinions more than they value serving the people of Europe. The European elites live in a fantasy world of green policies that destroy industries and jobs, welfare policies which destroy the work ethic, and immigration policies which undermine the popular culture. They simply hope for a peaceful world without a strong military.
Meanwhile, state enforced speech codes protect Islamic extremists at the expense of local citizens.
The result has been a steady decline of European culture, economic development, and defensive capacity.
The Afghan Islamist who wounded more than two dozen people and killed a mother and her two-year-old daughter with a car two days before the supposed security conference signals the willful avoidance of reality at the heart of the elite European worldview.
To be clear, I admire European civilization. I believe America is far stronger and safer if Europe is healthy and capable of growing and defending itself.
I hope vice president Vance’s intervention at least starts European elites thinking about what must be done to revive their continent.
For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.
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