'Charles McVety is no ordinary or mainstream Christian. He has been at the centre of many of the most unpleasant campaigns in Canada against LGBTQ equality and modern sex education, and is considered on the right-wing fringe, even within the evangelical church.'

Sometimes mailing lists can be worryingly out-of-date and inaccurate. This weekend, I received an emailed letter from Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College, addressed to “Pastor Michael.” (No, I haven’t suddenly been elevated to clerical status.) “I want to extend a personal invitation to you and your pastoral staff to come to the platform and pray for Premier Doug Ford at the Christmas Celebration on Sunday Night,” it announced. “It is my hope that we can surround the Premier with Pastors on the platform and pray for him. … After the prayer sessions and musical concert, the Premier wants to meet pastors at a reception.” The letter continued with references to biblical calls to pray “for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.”

I’ve a feeling I wasn’t supposed to be on the list, but I’d be more than happy to pray that Doug Ford change his ways, stop making life more difficult for the poor and marginalized, and inject some civility, decorum, and moderation into Ontario politics. But my views aside, this email and the event itself — which has now led to questions from the opposition at Queen’s Park — provoke some very worrying questions about the nature of the relationship between Doug Ford and one of the most high-profile and radical social conservatives in Canada.

Charles McVety is no ordinary or mainstream Christian. He has been at the centre of, and often led, many of the most unpleasant campaigns in Canada against LGBTQ equality and modern sex education, and is considered on the right-wing fringe, even within the evangelical church. He also disputes evolution, is fiercely opposed to campaigns against climate change, and wrote in 2009, “I believe this taxing and trading of air will fund the one world government of the Anti-Christ.” He also has radical opinions about other faiths, once stating that, “Islam is not just a religion, it’s a political and cultural system as well and we know that Christians, Jews and Hindus don’t have the same mandate for a hostile takeover.”

For more than 12 years, I hosted a nightly television show on CTS, a faith-based station managed by people with strong conservative beliefs. Even so, they removed his show from their lineup after the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council found it made “malevolent, insidious and conspiratorial” remarks about the gay community. I also worked at Sun News Network between 2012 and 2015, and even though that television station was vehemently conservative, it effectively banned McVety for being too extreme and even a caricature.

If his ideas are raw and harsh, his presentation of them is equally sharp. He once tweeted about me, for example: “Michael Coren defends Dr. Ben Levin’s radical sex ed teaching in Toronto Star.” This was because I dared to support the new sex education curriculum. Ben Levin, of course, is a convicted child pornographer. The implications were vile and hurtful.

So the litany of the man’s extremism is long and proven, but while he may be outrageous in so many ways, he can’t be discounted. McVety attracts numerous followers and substantial support, and his college in Toronto is about to be replaced by a 12-acre multi-building campus in the Port of Whitby, just outside the city. It will include a 4,000-seat auditorium, 80,000 sq. feet of classrooms, and a number of soccer fields and basketball courts. It is also, apparently, debt-free.

For an Ontario politician who wants to mobilize his right-wing base, this is an irresistible package, and Doug Ford and his people made this abundantly obvious during the election campaign, when McVety could be seen sitting as a special guest during a public debate, and when he was invited to the ceremony when the Progressive Conservative leader was sworn into office. Some commentators have argued that Ford’s jettisoning of former leadership rival and hard-right Roman Catholic Tanya Granic Allen was a sign that his interests were purely economic, and that he was indifferent to social conservatism. The coming weekend’s Christmas party would indicate otherwise.

In 2006, former Tory MP Garth Turner claimed, in reference to then-prime minister Stephen Harper, that McVety had once boasted: “I can pick up the phone and call Harper and I can get him in two minutes.” McVety denies he ever said that, and it may not have been the case. But one wonders how long it would now take for him to reach the current premier of Ontario. Not, it would seem, very long at all.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.