EDMONTON—A UCP nomination candidate says he’s “defected” to the Alberta Party after a lawyer who compared the Pride flag to the Nazi swastika was allowed to remain part of the United Conservatives.

Jeff Walters, a nomination candidate in Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview and a real estate agent, said on Thursday that being part of the United Conservative Party didn’t align with his values. It became clear after the weekend, he said, when the UCP was embroiled in controversy after lawyer and party member John Carpay made his statements about the Pride flag.

“I looked at that situation with Carpay and I thought, ‘Really? Again? Here we go,’” Walters said. “I mean, I have many friends in the LGBTQ community.”

Carpay recently gave a speech at an event organized by The Rebel, a far-right online publication, and asked, “How do we defeat today’s totalitarianism?”

“Because again, you’ve got to think about the common characteristics,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s a hammer and sickle for communism, or whether it’s the swastika for Nazi Germany, or whether it’s a rainbow flag, the underlying thing is a hostility towards individual freedoms.”

Carpay apologized for his comments, and UCP Leader Jason Kenney came under pressure to kick Carpay out of the party. After a speech to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, Kenney said he didn’t have the power to remove Carpay. Even though the lawyer’s comments were “vile and offensive,” he said, “it’s our board that deals with expulsions.”

It was a breaking point for Walters, who said he’s been considering leaving over the past month.

Before the Carpay controversy, Kenney had told reporters he planned to set up a database of extremists, so the party could flag them if they tried to join the UCP.

The move came after member Adam Strashok, who ran a call centre for Kenney’s leadership campaign, was found to be posting extremist views online and working for an internet store that sold white supremacist memorabilia.

“We’ve seen again and again and again, various issues of, I would say, extreme views. Whether it’s white supremacy, whether it’s the LGBTQ issue, the women’s rights issue. I just find it’s one thing after another,” Walters said of the UCP.

When asked if he thought he was going to lose the UCP nomination race for the riding, slated to take place on Saturday, Walters said that he didn’t and that his move to the Alberta Party was not opportunistic.

“The Alberta Party is, depending on the poll, somewhere between 5 and 8 per cent in the polls. How is that opportunistic?” he asked.

Walters said he sold about 300 UCP memberships. A spokesperson with the UCP said Walters was responsible for only selling about 19 per cent of the party’s 1,300 memberships in Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview, putting the number closer to 250.

Walters also said he didn’t feel the UCP was grassroots enough. Even though he was only a nomination candidate, he said “things were being controlled from the top all the way through and down.”

StarMetro reached out to the UCP for comment and received a statement in response.

“Whomever comes out of that race as the UCP candidate, they will be the only candidate on the spring 2019 ballot in Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview committed to repealing the Notley NDP’s damaging carbon tax and reigniting the Alberta economy,” the statement said.

Walters said he felt he was a front-runner in the UCP race. However, he said his gut instinct told him he couldn’t support the party anymore due to recent controversies.

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“Is it opportunistic? I actually see that I’ve moved from a party that’s considered to be riding high in the polls to quite low. I actually see it as I’m wanting to be true to my values, not opportunistic at all,” he said.

Alberta Party open nominations for the riding are closing on Nov. 30 and the vote determining who represents it will take place on Dec. 16.

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