Lawyer Roman Baber, a former York, Ontario, provincial member of parliament (MPP), has won the nomination for the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) in the riding of York Centre for the next federal election.
He said he was “honoured and humbled” by the nomination and thanked his loved ones, supporters, and campaign team.
“I will work tireless to win the York Centre seat and help Pierre Poilievre become Canada’s next Prime Minister,” said Mr. Baber.
“I am most of all grateful to my beloved country for the blessing of Canadian democracy and opportunity,” he added.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Baber, who turned 43 on Aug. 2, was kicked out of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government in January 2021, less than three years after being elected to serve York Centre. This occurred after Mr. Baber wrote an open letter to Mr. Ford urging him to end the province’s lockdowns and restrictions.
“I did not hesitate to speak out against lockdowns and mandates and passports when it was politically incorrect and when it was challenging politically to do so,” he said in March 2022.
He was barred from running for the party in the June 2022 provincial election and decided not to run.
Mr. Baber was born in the former Soviet Union, moved to Israel with his family in 1989, and immigrated to North York at the age of 15. He obtained an undergraduate degree in political science at York University and a law degree at Western University. He then focused on commercial litigation for 12 years before entering politics.
During the pandemic, he said he believed lockdowns would be remembered as a failure of public policy and suggested the government’s pandemic response was a sign of “cancel culture and political correctness.”
Mr. Baber said Canada’s democracy has been “somewhat eroded, with censorship, with mandates, with invocation of the Emergencies Act.”
He referred to himself as a “democratic conservative,” adding, “I believe that we must commit to respect basic democracy and to the difference of opinion within our own Conservative party—and I speak from experience.”
In a speech in Ottawa in September 2022, during the CPC leadership race, Mr. Baber famously said, “I’m not going to eat crickets.” He was one of five candidates vying for leadership at the time, running on a campaign with the tag line “People before Politics.”
Ultimately, Mr. Poilievre won 68.15 percent of the first ballot and went on to take the win with more than 70 percent of the popular vote. Jean Charest was a distant second at 16.1 percent support, followed by Leslyn Lewis at 9.7 percent and Roman Baber at 5 percent. Scott Aitchison came in at 1.1 percent.
The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
