Aaron O'Toole's first day on the job, and the CBC goes in for the kill. Ezra goes over his press conference on Parliament Hill, and why he chose to focus on a great obsession. Plus, Ezra shows you the tapes.
00:01:10.760Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:01:14.480There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the
00:01:20.020government of a wire publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
00:01:29.140I'm not sure if you were one of the 100,000-plus people who watched our Sunday night special
00:01:34.740live stream, co-hosted with Sheila Gunn-Reed, and we had guest appearances by Kian Bexte.
00:01:39.860We were up all night and into the wee hours as the Conservative Party chose its new leader.
00:01:45.660It went to three ballots, as you know. Aaron O'Toole won. Surprisingly strong showing by
00:01:51.640Les than Lewis, or maybe not that surprising. Certainly, it was a surprise to the left and
00:01:56.540the CBC. But of course, I repeat myself. Well, because it was such a late night, Aaron O'Toole
00:02:03.300didn't have the same prime time moment to introduce himself to Canadians. So he tried again today
00:02:10.280with a press conference on Parliament Hill, where he pretty much gave his speech again,
00:02:17.400this time during daylight hours to the rather refreshed media, as opposed to those who were
00:02:24.280yawning. I was yawning, I admit, on Sunday night. Here's a quick clip from his press conference today.
00:02:30.200Here's all you need to know about me. I'm here to fight for you and your family. And Canada needs a
00:02:37.820fighter because everything is not okay. From coast to coast to coast, Canadians are losing their jobs,
00:03:03.580their homes, and their hope. Even before the pandemic, half of Canadian families were just
00:03:10.300one surprise $200 expense away from not being able to pay their rent or their bills. Now millions of
00:03:17.580Canadians are barely getting by. I know how many of you are more concerned about the future than ever
00:03:24.340before. My family and I feel the same way. Parents are up late at night worrying about what might happen
00:03:31.220during a second wave of COVID-19 or when emergency programs end. My wife, Rebecca, and I understand
00:03:38.640the challenges, fears, and hopes of the middle class because we live them and we have our whole lives.
00:03:46.680We know what it is like to save for your first home, what it is like to save for things like
00:03:52.260childcare, tuition, and family vacations. It was a fair enough introduction. He gave it partly in English,
00:03:59.240partly in French, and that's fine. But then he opened it up to questions. And it was the same old,
00:04:06.740same old media party. First of all, the overwhelming number of questions were en français, in French,
00:04:13.340by the Quebec-centric Ottawa Media Party. Now I've got nothing against answering questions from Quebec or
00:04:20.020in French. Quebec is a quarter of our population and there are some Quebec-centric issues. But the majority
00:04:27.620of questions, the dominant majority of questions, were from Quebec journalists and they were particular
00:04:33.620obsessions. Right away you saw some of the problem with the media party and Conservatives participating
00:04:40.880in it. Just take a quick look. Question. This morning, once again, you said that you are a pro-choice MP,
00:04:47.340but in 2016 you voted for Bill C-225 that wanted to give legal rights to the fetus. How can you reconcile
00:04:56.340that vote with the fact that you say that you are pro-choice? Answer. That is incorrect. It was a bill on
00:05:05.340public safety, in fact. And I voted in favour to have debate in committee on that bill, because it was
00:05:14.340on public safety for women. And that is my approach. It's possible to listen to people and to be a pro-choice MP.
00:05:28.340That is going to be my approach. Dominated not just by Quebec journalists, but by Quebec journalists
00:05:35.340from the political activists at the French wing of the CBC called Radio Canada. And let me bring
00:05:42.340your attention to this series of questions, again in French by a Quebec activist, asking Aaron O'Toole
00:05:49.340about his views on social issues. Now I should tell you that Aaron O'Toole is as left-wing as Jagmeet Singh
00:05:56.340when it comes to social issues. That's not my opinion, that's just who he is. He's all the way out there
00:06:03.340on gay rights, gay marriage, gay pride, and further than most conservatives on LGBTQ. He's got no problem
00:06:12.340with the bills that criminalize misgendering people, the kind of things that Jordan Peterson all warned us
00:06:19.340about. In fact, he is rather proud of how pro-LGBTQ he is. Now, you know, take it or leave it, that's
00:06:27.340who he is. But my point is, even that wouldn't save Aaron O'Toole from the media party. He is as pro-LGBTQ2
00:06:38.340as Jagmeet Singh. But take a look at this.
00:06:45.340Good morning, Mr. O'Toole. Your speech on the environment, pipelines, guns, and private members'
00:07:00.340bills on abortion, that's the same thing as what Andrew Scheer says. Are you ready to change,
00:07:10.340to sway the Quebec electorate? Answer. I received the support of thousands of Quebecers, and I am proud
00:07:19.340of my team in Quebec. I won the leadership race as a pro-choice member, as someone who has a very clear
00:07:30.340record on social issues. And that will be my approach as Leader of the Opposition and as Prime Minister.
00:07:36.340I will be absolutely clear. I will defend people's rights, all Canadians' rights.
00:07:43.340All right. Well, Aaron O'Toole answered, as he always has, that he ran as a fully pro-choice,
00:07:48.340fully pro-trans candidate, and he won. All right. Well, the CBC wasn't done with him yet.
00:07:54.340They came back a second time asking him about a particular vote he made four years ago. Here, take a listen to that.
00:08:01.340Question. But women's rights advocates will tell you that that's the kind of bill that tries to open up cracks to reopen the debate on abortion.
00:08:14.340How can you reassure people who may think that? Answer. That was a bill on criminal sentencing, actually.
00:08:21.340And I have a completely clear track record on social issues as an MP. That's not the case for Justin Trudeau, because in 2013, I was the first of only 18 Conservatives who voted for a bill for the LGBT community.
00:08:43.340Mr. Trudeau missed the vote for a fundraising activity for the Ontario Liberal Party.
00:08:55.340But I have a clear record that Mr. Trudeau does not.
00:09:00.340OK, so two questions in his debut press conference about his support for a particular law four years ago.
00:09:09.340The bill failed, by the way. It was an opposition bill. It did not pass.
00:09:13.340But take a look at how the Parliament of Canada itself, this is from Parliament's website, describes the law that Erin O'Toole voted for.
00:09:22.340The law that French CBC is so obsessed with that they asked not one, but two questions about him on Erin O'Toole's first day on the job.
00:11:59.340Mr. O'Toole, I can't have you on the CBC without asking you about your policy for the CBC.
00:12:04.340You have some policy plans that includes defunding English Television and News Network,
00:12:10.340though you say you will not touch CBC Radio, which this show runs on.
00:12:13.340Why would you seek to reduce the number of journalism outlets in the country when the industry is widely seen as being in a bit of a crisis?
00:12:22.340And we do have the rise of very discredited news sources online.
00:12:27.340So why get rid of ones that Canadians have grown up knowing they can trust?
00:12:30.340Well, I won't get rid of, as you said, radio.
00:12:33.340And what we want to do with English television is privatize, David.
00:12:37.340So I think what we don't need is Canadians spending millions of dollars to create the Family Feud Canada edition.
00:12:45.340Is that where taxpayers' money really should be going?
00:12:48.340That's not the total of the CBC television output, though.
00:12:52.340I mean, that's a very selective example.
00:12:54.340Well, the ratings show that very few Canadians watch CBC.
00:12:57.340And so why should 100% of taxpayers subsidize it?
00:13:00.340So it should be more of a public broadcaster model, David, with less commercials, less competition.
00:22:01.340But in my view, with the passage of a few weeks time, I think that crystallized in the minds of thousands of people the true nature of McKay.
00:22:11.340I don't know what the total viewership of your debate was between our live stream and your live stream.
00:22:17.340And I think true north had it and like there was a lot of eyeballs on that.
00:22:21.340It wouldn't surprise me if a hundred thousand party members watched it or the clips from it.
00:22:26.340A hundred thousand people saw the true nature of McKay.
00:22:32.340Well, and it went even further than that as we're just on Twitter alone, which in Twitter, isn't a very good representation of the Canadian general public at large.
00:22:40.340But a lot of political activists on there are a lot of people who are members of the party.
00:22:44.340You know, the independent press gallery hashtag was trending.
00:22:47.340It had over five million impressions that night.
00:22:50.340So even if you weren't watching the actual footage, you know, people were talking about it.
00:23:19.340I know the CTV show The Social, which everyone was making fun of them after the Don Cherry thing, because a woman went on a rant about how white boys are very nice or whatever.
00:23:30.340So anyways, a bunch of liberal ladies that are kind of like the Canadian knockoff of The View.
00:23:35.340And they were all talking today about how disappointed they were that Peter McKay lost, because even though they're lifelong liberal voters, they might have voted conservative if Peter McKay had won.
00:23:44.340So that's kind of the audience that Peter McKay was going after.
00:23:47.340And I think it was a major strategic error because that's not what conservatives want.
00:23:51.340That's not what conservative members want.
00:23:53.340Sure, there are a couple of people, a handful of the of the party that says, you know, anyone who can win, let's just put forward anyone who can win, regardless of what they stand for, what they believe in.
00:24:02.340But I think there's a bigger population of conservatives out there who who really believe in conservative values.
00:24:08.340They want Canada to be a strong, stable country.
00:24:12.340They want all these things that conservatives believe in.
00:24:15.340They truly want these things for our country.
00:24:17.340And so it's not just about who can win an election.
00:24:19.340It's really about who's the best torchbearer for these ideas and who can defend them against the many people that come after conservatives, be it liberals, partisans, the media, all these kind of things.
00:24:30.340So I think that McKay made that strategic error.
00:24:33.340And where he made that error, Aaron Atul did the opposite.
00:24:37.340He engaged with us and he was much more open minded to real conservatives.
00:28:39.340I mean, just can you fight for conservative ideas at all?
00:28:42.340Can you show me some of that backbone and we're going to be true blue that you told me about in private with your dad?
00:28:51.340I think Andrew Scheer's failure in the last election was largely because he didn't have the courage of his convictions.
00:28:58.340He probably in his heart was conservative, but he lacked the courage to say so.
00:29:04.340And I say all that, sorry for this super long preamble, but look at this quick clip from Andrew Scheer's never ending speech on Sunday night.
00:29:14.340He makes specific reference to you, Candace, or at least to True North. Take a look at this.
00:29:19.340In times like these, it is even more important for every single conservative to stay united and do everything you can to work together to spread our message of hope.
00:29:31.340So it doesn't matter what kind of conservative you are.
00:30:45.340So I agree with a lot of the things that you just said.
00:30:47.340I think that Andrew Scheer sort of struggled to come out of his shell.
00:30:50.340He had never really before becoming leader.
00:30:53.340He had never been in a position where he had to be combative.
00:30:56.340You know, he was the Speaker of the House, which is a more neutral role during the Harper years.
00:31:00.340You know, you have some ministers that really play the attack and they're good at sort of being partisan and doing the political stuff.
00:31:07.340You know, think of Pierre Polyev or in the Harper government, it was John Baird and Jason Kenney.
00:31:12.340And those are the kind of people who are just really naturally aggressive and they've had a lot of experience doing that.
00:31:17.340Andrew Scheer didn't really have that experience during that time because he was put in this sort of neutral position.
00:31:22.340It was actually really unprecedented that someone who had been a speaker would go on to become the leader.
00:31:27.340So I'm a little bit more forgiving than you are, Ezra, about Andrew Scheer because I think that, you know, deep down he had the conviction.
00:31:35.340He had the values and he really was a good person to lead the party, but he just didn't have the experience.
00:31:40.340He kind of had his work cut out for him. And maybe, you know, if he was five, ten years older or if he was able to stay in the role in the position for longer, he would have come out of his shell.
00:31:50.340We started seeing that more and more. There's been a couple of instances like five or six instances where I've seen his performance in the House or I've seen him come out and actually be combative against the media.
00:32:00.340That's obviously very unfair and biased and trying to put words into his mouth and kind of punch back.
00:32:06.340And, you know, every time it happens, it's like, where was this guy during the 2019 election?
00:32:10.340That's what conservatives want to see. That's what Canadians want to see is someone who defends themselves and pushes back.
00:32:16.340Whereas, you know, Andrew Scheer was a little bit more shy, more reluctant.
00:32:20.340He would kind of, you know, try to change the channel by making a joke or be funny or be charming and smile and that kind of stuff.
00:32:27.340And that didn't really cut it. And so you kind of did see him learning on the job as it's sort of unfortunate as he was going out.
00:32:33.340You know, he put forward a pretty strong speech. He talked about how, you know, the ideology on the left is not actually compassionate.
00:32:40.340How the conservative ideology is the one that we should be promoting and projecting and talk about all the success stories.
00:32:47.340And you kind of just feel like it's a shame for him personally that he didn't really come to that place where he was really confident and doing the things that he needed to do until after it was too late.
00:32:58.340Because I do agree that he didn't really do that in 2019.
00:33:02.340And how he done it even just a little bit more. I mean, keep in mind, he won the popular vote.
00:33:07.340He increased the number of MPs that conservatives had. He he knocked Justin Trudeau down to a minority government.
00:33:14.340So in many ways, he was really successful. But at the end of the day, I think he just sort of locked that confidence needed to really push him over the edge.
00:33:22.340And at this point, you know, just wish him well. And I thought it was really nice that he gave that little shout out to True North.
00:33:29.340I mean, you know, you're in the same situation as someone who's built a business from scratch in an incredibly competitive and difficult industry.
00:33:36.340The media is really hard. You see newspapers failing, media companies laying off journalists, all of them going hat in hand to the government.
00:33:44.340You know, it feels kind of good to build a successful model that doesn't need the government to survive.
00:33:50.340And then to get a shout out on the biggest sort of political stage of the country was definitely a proud moment.
00:33:56.340Proud of what my team has been able to accomplish in short order.
00:34:00.340Yeah, well, you were great. And the Independent Press Gallery is also an important project of yours.
00:34:05.340It's, I guess, parallel to True North. I really do believe that your debate crystallized a lot of people's impressions about McKay.
00:34:13.340I also saw, by the way, that clip of you're much more forgiving of Scheer than I am.
00:34:19.340He lived cancel culture. He literally had our reporter, David Menzies, handcuffed by police for trying to attend a public event.
00:34:28.340So I'm I'm less, you know, amiable towards Andrew Scheer.
00:34:35.340And I'm delighted that he's finally gone.
00:34:37.340But I saw in that in reaction to that video we just played of Andrew Scheer praising postmillennial True North.
00:34:45.340We clipped that from your Twitter feed, as people can see.
00:34:49.340I saw in reaction to that a lot of media party journalists huffing and puffing.
00:34:56.340Oh, imagine being praised like Jason Marcusoff.
00:35:00.340Here's David Akin, my former colleague, who says Andrew Scheer just told conservatives to ignore the MSM and get their info from the Postmillennial and True North Center.
00:35:11.340He's not really mad about it, but Jason Marcusoff was furious about it.
00:35:18.340And he said that you should be embarrassed that he gave you a shout out, not proud of it.
00:35:27.340It's a bit of chutzka because David Akin is a member of Unifor and Jason Marcusoff is a member of Unifor.
00:35:36.340Those are journalist unions that donate their own money to a third party campaign against Andrew Scheer.
00:35:48.340And of course, all newspapers and most other media take bailouts from Trudeau.
00:35:53.340I've never seen Akin or Marcusoff show any reluctance to take actual cash from Trudeau or give their own cash as a kickback to Trudeau through that third party campaign.
00:36:08.340But boy, were they mad that you got some praise in the dying moments of a conservative leader.
00:36:14.340Well, that was just the sort of tip of the iceberg as well.
00:36:17.340There were dozens of the sort of blue check liberal journos that were sort of losing their mind over it.
00:36:24.340You know, the typical kind of whiny liberal brigade people like Justin Ling, Dale Smith, people like that.
00:36:31.340There were reporters from CBC, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, all posting about it, sort of, you know, their shock or just trying to put out their, you know, kind of trying to smear Andrew Scheer and by association, Trudeau.
00:36:45.340I take that as a compliment, the fact that there were so many journalists tweeting about it, talking about it, outraged about it.
00:36:51.340I think that probably means that we're doing something right.
00:36:55.340They don't like the fact that we try to tell the other side of the story, the fact that we legitimize conservative views and opinions and we tell the other side of the news.
00:37:04.340It's sort of natural that they're going to be, you know, envious or wary of the kind of online competition that we're providing and the fact that we're on a national stage.
00:37:14.340Look, I have no qualms about being proud of it.
00:37:17.340I'm proud of the fact that I built an organization from nothing.
00:37:20.340You know, I was doing it on my own for a long time and finally was able to bring on new reporters, hire people, pay people salaries.
00:37:27.340It's an incredible feeling to build a business and all those snarky journalists sitting on their phone on Twitter.
00:37:33.340Look, I'd like to see them build a business from scratch and employ people and get a national national recognition on the main stage.
00:37:41.340I don't think I should be embarrassed about it at all.
00:37:43.340It doesn't matter which politician it was, even if it was a politician that I hated.
00:37:47.340I would still say, hey, look, at least they're acknowledging us and paying attention to us.
00:37:51.340That's a good thing. So I don't really take too much weight to all those snarky comments other than just to sort of take it as a compliment.
00:37:57.340Yeah. Well, listen, we're super fans of yours and your team.
00:38:03.340I've kept you a fair bit of time right now.
00:38:06.340Let me close by asking you, are there any new projects you're doing?
00:38:09.340Is there anything you'd like our viewers to check out?
00:38:12.340We know that Andrew Lawton has a show.
00:38:15.340Is there something you'd like to direct our viewers to?
00:38:18.340Because I've said this half a dozen times before.
00:38:22.340I believe it's incumbent upon Rebel News viewers to also support other independent voices, yours.
00:38:29.340Spencer Fernando is one of my favorite guys.