{"id":22656,"date":"2019-01-11T19:35:59","date_gmt":"2019-01-12T00:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=22656"},"modified":"2019-01-11T19:35:59","modified_gmt":"2019-01-12T00:35:59","slug":"being-called-a-traitor-was-the-hardest-part-of-floor-crossing-alleslev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/being-called-a-traitor-was-the-hardest-part-of-floor-crossing-alleslev\/","title":{"rendered":"Being called a \u201ctraitor\u201d was the hardest part of floor crossing: Alleslev"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, being called a \u201ctraitor\u201d after crossing the floor was the toughest part of a tough decision, says Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill MP Leona Alleslev.
\nMs. Alleslev, who was elected as a Liberal Member of Parliament in Aurora\u2019s southern riding began this new year, an election year, as a member of a new party after crossing the floor to the Conservatives on September 17.
\nLooking back, Ms. Alleslev says 2018 was a year of \u201cbig decision\u201d but her big decision is one she looks back on with a smile because now she feels she is able to do what her constituents asked of her \u2013 and that is \u201cinfluence the future shape and direction\u201d of the country.
\n\u201cI think the country is in one of those points in history where we\u2019re facing some big challenges and I didn\u2019t feel that we were able to have an open conversation about those big challenges,\u201d Ms. Alleslev tells The Auroran. \u201cNow, I am in a position to have those candid conversations with my constituents. When they say, \u2018These are big problems and you\u2019re not doing anything,\u2019 I can now say, \u2018Yes, I agree these are the big problems and I am working with the new team to shape how we can address those and what that needs to look like in terms of solutions, whether it is having a conversation in Question Period or at Committee to hold the government to account in terms of shaping as best we can where we are going, or whether that is shaping what a Conservative government would do, were they to win the next election.\u201d
\nAmong those top priority issues, she says, are the economy, increasing competitiveness, and making sure businesses can get their goods to market, whether it is through pipelines, airports and seaports. Defence and security, she says, are also critical going forward, and this includes cybersecurity.
\nAfter making her bombshell announcement on September 17, many of Aurora constituents wondered, along with Canadians from further afield, what exactly changed. It was less than two months after Ms. Alleslev welcomed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the riding at a party fundraiser during which she heaped praise on the Liberal leader.
\nThat very question of \u201cwhat changed\u201d is something she says is still \u201cvery difficult\u201d to answer.
\n\u201cI ran because I felt a sense of urgency and I campaigned on those issues because I felt a sense of urgency,\u201d she says. \u201cI did everything I could as a Liberal to influence and communicate and advocate from within that sense of urgency. I tried all of my plans and felt that I wasn\u2019t making enough progress as quickly as I felt that progress needed to be made. At some point, I looked at it and said, \u2018I only have a year left and I may or may not get re-elected. That\u2019s okay, that\u2019s the wonderful thing about our democratic process, but if I don\u2019t get elected, can I look in the mirror and know I did everything I possibly could while I was here?\u2019 Once that answer was \u2018no\u2019 I had no choice but to do something so I could do the best with the year I had left.\u201d
\n\u201cThere was no one point,\u201d she adds, about what made her come to that realisation, but pressed further, the former Air Force officer says, \u201cpurchasing used F18s\u201d set off alarm bells.
\n\u201cIt was like a cumulation with my project plan. I felt like I was running out of time and therefore at the beginning of that last session, [I felt] I really don\u2019t have any other choice. If I am going to serve my constituents and my country the way I said I was going to, and true to what they told me and what I believe needs to be done, I am running out of time and I better do something with this last year.\u201d
\nThe most difficult part of making that decision, she says, was leaving a team \u2013 both at the national level and at the local riding level. It wasn\u2019t about people, she says, and she would still like to consider the people on the other side of the floor \u201cgreat friends.\u201d
\n\u201cI accepted the possibility that I would have no friends or relationships on the old side and that I wouldn\u2019t necessarily gain any on the new side because politics, for many, is a team sport and loyalty is to a political party first and not necessarily ideas and the country first,\u201d she says. \u201cThe most rewarding thing was how overwhelmingly welcomed I was by the Conservative party and the Conservative team and right away they wanted my ideas and they wanted me to be a part of shaping the vision of the country and that has been very rewarding. And, of course, to have my entire team come with me, which was the other incredibly rewarding thing.
\n\u201cThe [fact my]whole team came with me didn\u2019t surprise me because I am not sure I would have made the decision I made if I didn\u2019t have my whole team with me. I can only do what I do because I have an incredible team. If they didn\u2019t think it was the right decision it probably wouldn\u2019t have been the right decision and I wouldn\u2019t have made the decision I made. Because all of them believed it was the right decision and came with me, I knew it was what I had to do and we did it together.\u201d
\nNext Week: The checklist for which Ms. Alleslev says she was running out of time to finish.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, being called a \u201ctraitor\u201d after crossing the floor was the toughest part of a tough decision, says Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill MP Leona Alleslev.
\nMs. Alleslev, who was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/2019-01-10-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5Tq","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 15:32:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}