Sloan was born in 1984 and raised near Waterford in Ontario. He attended Kingsway College, a private Seventh-day Adventist high school in Oshawa. In 2003, Sloan enrolled at Pacific Union College, a private university in Napa Valley, California associated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church. There he completed a bachelor degree in business in 2007. While attending PUC, Sloan served as president of the university's student association in 2007. After graduating, Sloan moved to Toronto, Ontario to work at a water-fuel systems company. Then, between 2011 and 2014 he ran Sloan's Furniture Liquidation in Oshawa. In 2014, Sloan began a law degree at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and he finished articling in 2018. Sloan has said he pursued law because he was interested in "defending religious liberties against political correctness." Sloan is married to his wife Jennifer, and they have two daughters and a son.
In 2018, Sloan announced that he would seek the Conservative Party of Canada nomination for the riding of Hastings—Lennox and Addington. At the nomination meeting, Sloan defeated three other candidates: a city councillor who had served for fifteen years in Belleville, a lawyer who had lived in the area for twenty years, and a local business owner. Sloan defeated Liberal incumbent Mike Bossio in the 2019 federal election.
Sloan announced his candidacy for the 2020 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election on 22 January 2020. On January 27th, Sloan made national headlines after tweeting in response to fellow leadership candidate Richard Décarie his belief that being gay is a choice. During an interview on the CTV Power Panel Sloan went on to elaborate that he felt that the science of whether sexual orientation is a choice is unclear. Sloan's comments were criticized by his former election campaign manager, Eric Lorenzen, and fellow leadership candidate Marilyn Gladu. A self-identified social conservative, Sloan has attracted controversy for the policy positions he has endorsed throughout the leadership race. Sloan has stated that were he elected leader he would permit Conservative MPs to reopen the abortion debate or introduce private member bills aimed at over-turning same sex marriage. He also voiced opposition to Bill C-16, which protects people from discrimination on the basis of gender identity. He also vowed to vote against a federal ban on the pseduoscientific practice of conversion therapy, arguing that parents should be able to make children identify with the body they are born with. Sloan has been widely criticized in the media and even within the Conservative Party for these views. On February 6th, 2020, members of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte blockaded the Canadian National Railway north of Tyendinaga, in support the Wetʼsuwetʼen hereditary chiefs' opposition to the Coastal GasLink Pipeline within Sloan's riding of Hastings—Lennox and Addington. Sloan spoke publicly about the blockade for the first time on February 18th, stating the Liberal government should have responded faster to the protests. Three days later Sloan characterized the protesters as "radical extremists" and called on the Ontario Provincial Police to enforce an injunction to remove the blockade. On April 23, 2020, Sloan again made national headlines after tweeting a video in which he asked whether Canada's Chief Medical OfficerTheresa Tam worked "for Canada or for China?" Sloan's comments singled out Theresa Tam, a Chinese Canadian, and were perceived as racist on social media; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called them intolerant, saying they had no place in Canada, and several fellow Conservative MPs denounced them as personal attacks. Conservative Party leaderAndrew Scheer initially declined to comment on Sloan's remarks, but stated that it was "inappropriate to question someone’s loyalty to their country" the following week. The municipality of Hastings County condemned Sloan's remarks as “cruel and racist” and unrepresentative of the people of his riding, before calling on him to be expelled from the Conservative Party. Sloan said the following day that he would not apologize, because "the idea people would think it was racist was not even on my mind. I would have said those statements about any public health officer that made those decisions in her spot". The Chinese Canadian National Council submitted a letter to the Conservative Party demanding that Sloan be expelled from the party's caucus and denied the opportunity to run for its leadership. In an emergency session on April 29, 2020, Conservative MPs demanded Sloan apologize for his statements. In a statement on April 29th, Sloan said his comments were "rhetorical" but declined to retract them.
