Upcoming Ontario Election Sees Prominent Neo-Nazi Running for MPP

Peter Smith
Canadian Anti-Hate Network

Source:  Element5 Digital/Unsplash 

As Ontario prepares for a snap election at the end of the month, one riding in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is running multiple candidates with questionable platforms — including one avowed white nationalist. 

On Thursday, February 13, the 2 PM deadline for candidates to enter the race passed and the list of those in the running was finalized. 

Running in the west GTA riding of Etobicoke Centre is longtime self-professed white nationalist and perennial political candidate Paul Fromm.

Fromm has been active in white supremacist circles for nearly 50 years, sometimes attending protests uninvited, often holding the Red Ensign. Though he’s less prominent than previous generations, at his peak Fromm travelled to network and connect disparate far-right and neo-Nazi organizations. Often making international trips, Fromm gave talks to racist skinhead crews like Volksfront and the terrorist-designated Blood and Honour. 

He still arranges the sparsely attended lectures at private venues, including a stop in November 2023 in Truro, Nova Scotia, to give a talk to the Maritime chapter of the neo-Nazi Active Club at a local Best Western hotel. 

An image posted to a since-shutdown encrypted social media application showing Paul Fromm giving a talk to the neo-Nazi Active Club at a Truro, Nova Scotia, Best Western hotel. Source: Telegram

In a post about the event, the Active Club credited Fromm, saying he “laid the foundations of WN [white nationalism] 1.0.”

Active Clubs view themselves as the leaders of “white nationalism 3.0,” the next evolution of the neo-Nazi movement from National Socialist and racist skinheads (1.0) and the alt-right (2.0). 

A frequent candidate in a variety of Southern Ontario elections, Fromm ran for mayor of Hamilton in 2022 (receiving 898 votes) and 2018. 

His activism and political ambitions go back much further. 

In the late 1960s, he and two others founded the Edmund Burke Society. The organization forged links with US neo-Nazi groups and transformed itself into the more extreme Western Guard. 

By 1981, he was fired as treasurer of the Federal Progressive Conservative Party's Metro wing. A high school teacher by profession, repeated complaints about his extracurricular activist activities saw the Peel school board reassign him to teaching adult education and eventually fire him, according to a 1997 report by the Canadian Jewish Congress Ontario Region. Fromm’s teaching licence was revoked in 2007, though it was reported he had not worked inside a classroom for 10 years at the time. 

Fromm is running for the Canadians’ Choice Party, a self-described “Party of Independents” that has never had a candidate elected to office since its founding in 2011. It is currently only running two candidates in the election, including Fromm. 

New Blue

Running for the New Blue political party in the same riding is Mario Bilusic, an electrical engineer who also ran for the party in 2022. He did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.

Bilusic has several social media accounts, including one on X that has not posted anything new since 2022. Having used it to promote his previous campaign, then in Toronto’s Davenport riding, the account is often used to reply to prominent media and public figure accounts with insults. 

The last post visible on the account was sharing a post from Alex Vriend, a prominent figure and organizer within the white nationalist Diagolon network. 

New Blue is a political party founded in 2022 by former Progressive Conservative (PC) Member of Provincial Parliament Belinda Karahalios. She continues to run under the party banner but was unseated in the 2022 election in her riding of Cambridge after one term. 

Positioning themselves further to the right alternative to the Progressive Conservatives, on its website, New Blue says “The Ford PCs and their left-wing ideologues and lobbyists are determined to leave Ontario ‘woke’ and broke, just like their predecessors.”

The same page says the party plans to “renew accountability and promote meritocracy” by eliminating “critical race theory, gender identity theory, and all DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives from government.”

PPSN

Other parties in the Etobicoke Centre riding with questionable platforms include the Party for People With Special Needs (PPSN). Broadly defining special needs as not “limited to those who are physically, psychologically, or emotionally challenged,” PPSN says “everyone has their own special needs.” This definition includes single parents, students, small businesses, and more. 

The party’s website includes a simple video narrated by party “President and CFO” Lionel W. Poizner, that lays out some of the PPSN’s grievances and areas of focus. One of these is the “woke agenda” that the video alleges is grooming children to “hide things from their parents.”

Screen capture of a video on the Party for People With Special Needs website that discusses the alleged grooming of school children. Source: PPSN website

When asked for comment, Poizner said the “focus in schools seems to be more oriented to teaching girls that they may actually be boys and teaching boys that they may actually be girls, rather than the core subjects needed to survive in this current upside down world we live in.”

He reiterated his concern about students being instructed to hide “certain information with their parents.”

“This woke nonsense is going to stop... It is just a matter of time and PPSN as well as other parties and parents associations will not rest until this situation has been corrected and those responsible have been appropriately punished.”

He did not respond to follow-up questions by time of publication about who he feels is responsible or what punishment is appropriate. 

Running for PPSN in the riding is Signe Miranda, a musician and insurance advisor. She has made no public statements related to the campaign we were able to find. She did not respond immediately to a request for comment.  

The Ontario provincial election is on February 27.