Jim Karahalios spent much of the 2018 Ontario PC leadership campaign providing help and support to Tanya’s campaign behind the scenes, though he was also quietly helping Doug Ford as well. 

Ultimately, Ford won the leadership. A few weeks later, Jim Karahalios’s wife Belinda sought, and won, the PC nomination meeting in Cambridge, on April 21, 2018.  One week later PAFE’s then-president, Tanya Granic Allen, also won the PC nomination in Mississauga Centre.

PAFE endorsed Belinda Karahalios’s campaign for the Cambridge PC nomination, which she narrowly won.

In return Belinda said in her letter to prospective voters at the time that:

“I am also running because I want to help new PC Leader Doug Ford and PC leadership candidate Tanya Granic Allen repeal and replace Kathleen Wynne's sex-ed curriculum. 

Of fundamental importance to me is the right of parents as first educators of their children.”

Next, Ford betrayed Tanya, and democracy. After Tanya’s convincing first-ballot nomination win in Mississauga Centre, Team Ford engineered the overturning of Tanya’s nomination win, and even appointed one of the defeated candidates to be the new candidate. PAFE, and many social conservatives in Ontario, were outraged and called, emailed, and even publicly protested Ford and the Ontario PC Party, demanding that Tanya be reinstated as the candidate.

Belinda and Jim Karahalios were nowhere to be found among those publicly protesting Ford’s betrayal of Tanya and the pro-family movement. This, even though Jim had spent much of the previous year, through a group called “Take Back Your PC Party”, promoting democratic principles within the PC Party, protesting the idea that the PC leader could overturn democratic meetings and, especially, objected to the idea that the PC leader could appoint candidates. 

Having secured the PC nomination for his wife Belinda, Jim Karahalios decided to “go quiet” on what happened to Tanya. 

For his part, Rick Nicholls, MPP, was also silent on Ford’s anti-democratic actions. This was no big surprise, as Nicholls had stood silently by when the previous leader, his friend Patrick Brown, had initiated the anti-democratic measures that Ford pursued.

The not-unexpected silence by Nicholls and the Karahalioses went unreported by PAFE at the time. But Jim Karahalios’s recent campaign of lies against PAFE now demands that we speak out.

Did PAFE criticize the cowardice of Rick Nicholls, or the silence of the Karahalioses? No. Perhaps we should have. Indeed, not only did PAFE say nothing, but, with Tanya now back as PAFE president, she actually endorsed Belinda Karahalios in her effort to get elected in her riding. Why? Because Kathleen Wynne and her Liberals were so bad, that after 15 years of their anti-family policies, PAFE and Tanya realized that relief would only come if the PCs won, and the Liberals lost. And Ford still maintained he would repeal the Wynne sex-ed.