EZRA LEVANT ｜ The state of Canada's media landscape： an in-depth look with Andrew Lawton
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Summary
In this episode of the Ezra LeVant Show, host Ezra Levenkamp sits down with Andrew Lawton to talk about the state of the media in Canada, and why it s so hard to make it without government handouts.
Transcript
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Hello, my friends. A feature interview with one of our favorite guys, fan favorite, Andrew Lawton.
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But first, let me invite you to get a subscription to what we call Rebel News Plus. It's the video
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version of this podcast. I'm going to show a few clips to you that I really want you to see with
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your eyes, not just hear them. Go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe. It's eight bucks a
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month. And we really do need that dough because we do not take government money. We rely on you,
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my friends, rebelnewsplus.com. All right, here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, a feature interview with Andrew Lawton. It's June 22nd, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
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Well, as a rule, I don't like talking to general interest pundits. What do I mean by that? I like
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talking to experts. The other day, for example, we talked to Xi Van Fleet, who is an expert, yes,
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but she personally lived through Mao's cultural revolution. Boy, she has a lot to teach about that
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subject, including terrifying photos of herself being reeducated. When I think of general interest
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commentators, I say, well, that's sort of my job. Let me talk to a particular expert like Dr. James
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Lindsay, the master of cultural Marxism. But in my friend, Andrew Lawton, we have someone who is such
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a great thinker and a clear analyst of what goes on. I could talk to him all the time because on every
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subject, he's got a fresh perspective, a vibrant conservative idea. And so I would talk to him
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about anything. And today he joins us to talk about the state of the media in Canada, about which he is
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a subject matter expert. Andrew joins us now. Great to see you, my friend.
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Hey, thanks, Ezra. I was nervous with that, where you were going. I thought it was going to be like,
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yo, I love talking to experts, and none were available. So here's Andrew. But you brought it
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around to be very pleasant and complimentary, and I'm appreciative of it always.
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I mean, you are like me. You're a general interest commentator. But I think you've got a fresh
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take on things. And I'm saying why I love talking to you. And I think when it comes to independent
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media, you actually do know more than the average bear. I mean, just in your own life, you're the host
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of the Andrew Lawton Show, of course. You're on Substack, andrewlawton.substack.com. So you have
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found a way to make a go of it in independent media without any money from the government.
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That is a rare thing indeed. And I say that, Andrew, because just last week, CTV, which is
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owned by Bell Media, one of the largest companies in this country, laid off, I think it was 1,300
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staff, if I read that correctly, 6% of their workforce, including shutting down or selling
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nine radio stations, and letting go some big names in there. I mean, they're closing their offices in
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L.A. and Washington and London. I think they're going down to one person in Washington. They laid
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off Glenn McGregor and Joyce Napier, who were their on-camera talent in Ottawa. That's incredible that a
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multi-billion dollar company like that can't make a go of it, despite hundreds of millions of dollars
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of subsidies. Why are you able to make a go of it, but Mighty Bell Canada can't?
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I think there are a few reasons there. And one, and I don't want to understate it, is the technical
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aspect. Anyone that's ever walked into a traditional newsroom, especially in TV and radio, knows they're
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very large. They have a number of staff there on dealing with technical issues, on production, and on-air
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people. And, you know, for example, when I was in Calgary for the Alberta election, True North had a
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little station, Rebel had a station. I think we had, you know, four people running our show. And then you look
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over and Global has riser after riser after riser with, they all took a group photo after about 40 people
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that were there to do that. And I, and I think that in general, independent media has come about
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without money. We all started doing it because we love doing it. I mean, you started blogging. I don't
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think you made a dime off of it for years. I remember when you started Rebel in your living room, I started
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blogging and I think I actually lost money because I had to buy the domain name and the hosting. But I
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think in doing that, it's a passion project. And independent media exists not because they were started as
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businesses, but because the business came about as a way to facilitate what those of us in this space
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wanted to do. And that passion, I think, translates to a passion that exists in the audience as well.
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And that brings us to the second part, which is the actual business model, is that our business model
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is based entirely off of support from people that value the work that we do. And in some cases,
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you know, advertising is like that, but not in the same direct way. If people think we've lost our
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way, they're going to cancel their subscriptions. If people like what we're doing, they're going to
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donate to us. And it's a way to make sure that we're always relevant, which goes to the content that
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I feel is missing from a lot of what the legacy media is putting out. Yeah. And you mentioned the
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40 people for global news, and I don't know if you're exaggerating. That's an enormous number.
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They did a group photo at the end, and there were 40 people, maybe 36, but in that range.
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I don't even know how you could do that. And I acknowledge that if we had 40 people working on
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this program right now, I mean, I wouldn't even be able to come up with jobs for 40 people to do.
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One person to check the thermostat, one person to give you a glass of water. Yeah. I don't know how
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many people I... I don't know if I could even accommodate 10 on this show that I do.
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I mean, I used to work for Sun News Network a decade ago when there were 200 people in the
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whole company. And it's true. They had a sound guy in the studio. They had a teleprompter roller. They
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had a makeup artist or two. Yeah, they had, though. But, you know, I mean, one of the reasons Sun News
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failed is it couldn't make a go of it economically. I think that instead of starting with, well, what do we
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really need to make a go of it? They said, well, how were we doing it before? Let's just trim it a
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little bit instead of sort of a zero-based approach. And they just thought, well, we'll just keep
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getting bailouts or we'll just keep getting bailout either from our corporate owner or from the
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government. I don't know. I just don't think that this show, which is being put on by really two or
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three people, would be 10 times better if 40 people were doing it. I acknowledge that Global News
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production value is better than ours. But is it 10 times better? I don't believe it is. And I don't
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think it is 10 times the audience either. No. And I mean, just to give a funny story about CTV
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specifically, years ago when I was doing my old radio show in London, my wife and I were going to
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dinner one night. And as we were driving to the restaurant, I saw there was this massive, massive fire
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that was on one of the streets of this complex. And, you know, being an intrepid journalist,
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I pulled over and said, OK, well, we've got some time. We can go to dinner later. Let me report on
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this. And I started filming it and sending footage back to my newsroom. And they were posting it up
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on Facebook and Twitter. And there was a CTV journalist there who was a renowned CTV journalist
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in London, Ontario, who was standing around doing nothing because his camera guy hadn't showed up yet.
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And I was thinking, well, you have an iPhone. Why do you need a camera guy? You are the camera guy.
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And it's those little things that I think speak to that dynamic you've just described, which is
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this idea of how do we make do with what we have versus if we were to start from bottom up,
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forget everything we know about media, what would we create? And a great example of this is COVID.
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When the lockdowns came in and you weren't even allowed to have people in a studio,
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what did the legacy media outlets do? They all started doing things that True North had been
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doing and Rebel had been doing for years by then and saying, oh, how do we get people with cameras
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in their home? And how do we get people connected remotely? And how do we use home internet? And no,
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the quality is not identical to that, that you're going to get in studio with tens of thousands of
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dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. But it's about that question that you
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asked there of how much more do you get out of spending a million dollars versus $100,000 to use
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your own studio renovation as an example. Yeah. I remember when I was at Sun News, we would spend
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four, even $500 for a 10 minute satellite hit with someone where Skype is pretty good. I mean,
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we're talking to you with Skype right now. You really can't tell the difference. So I would do two
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or three interviews a show, just that would be $1,500, $2,000 per show in satellite time. That's
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just an example of how they operated in the olden days. And when the government or some big corporation
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would give you that, oh, sure, why not? You know, I want to talk for a second about the nine radio
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stations that Bell is getting rid of. I mean, radio stations were once so coveted, you need the license
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from the CRTC. And there was only so much bandwidth, so you have to apply. Now, I understand they're
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literally just shutting down six of those, like just turning it off. But again, there's so many
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podcasters out there. Everyone's a podcaster these days. I mean, the talent, there's more talent than
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ever. I think it's that Bell doesn't know how to make a go of it, because they don't know how to compete
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with ordinary people who have interesting things to say. I mean, Joe Rogan is obviously huge right
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now. But that's an example of a podcaster who's just, I mean, what's his equipment? He sits down
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and he talks at great length with the guest. I think that maybe it's the end of the technological
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monopoly that has allowed every guy and their neighbor to be a podcaster. And they're beating
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the boring, bland commercial radio. I think that these six radio stations that they're shutting
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down could obviously be a hit. People still do listen to radio, but they're not allowed to be
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interesting, because by definition, if you work for the big corporation, you got to be sort of
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lukewarm on everything. You can't take strong positions on anything, because you'll get a call
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from CTV or Bell. I don't know. I just think it's incredible that what used to be such privileged
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real estate, a radio license, is now literally being thrown in the garbage.
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Yeah. And again, I'm totally willing to be transparent about this. So this microphone that
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I'm speaking into now was about $450. And it's a broadcast quality microphone that would not be out
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of place in a traditional radio studio. The cable connecting it to my computer is maybe about $15.
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I have a little box that was $150 that connects that cable to my computer. And the whole thing is
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less than $1,000. And if you wanted to, you could even buy for $150 a microphone that might not be as
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good, but will still be perfectly reasonable for what a lot of people want. That is a low barrier to
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entry. And the way that you compete is not by how fancy your equipment is, by how good the content
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is. And that's where these companies in Canada, be it where I used to work, Chorus slash Global,
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Bell, Rogers, there are some regional chains out West. What they've lost sight of is the importance
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of radio content. The license doesn't matter. The studio doesn't matter if the content itself is crap.
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And talk radio, which used to be one of the most powerful medium media available, it used to be
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so tremendously subversive. It used to be irreverent. It used to be unwilling to go along
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with the government narrative. But these companies killed that. And then they wonder why the business
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model for radio, which has existed for 100 years, is no longer. Yeah. Well, I guess one of the reasons
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that Bell Canada is worth so many billions of dollars is that they're cold-blooded. And when it came down to
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it, they had no compunction firing some of their on-air stars. I was actually quite surprised they
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got rid of their bureau chief, Joyce Napier. I guess they just don't care. They care at the end of the
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day about dollars and cents. One of the things that Bell said when they shut down these radio stations
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and fired their staff is they complained about how the internet is sucking up all the money.
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And they sort of grumbled a bit about how they needed C-18 to give them money from Facebook and
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Google. I think that the Trudeau government is really trying to nationalize the media by saying, look,
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you don't have to go out of business. We will give you money directly in a subsidy through C-11
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and we'll commandeer Facebook and Google to give you money through C-18. And between government money
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and big tech money, we will basically replace your income. We'll give you more than half of your income.
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Just don't color outside the editorial lines that Justin Trudeau and his appointees dictate. What do you
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think of that thesis? No, I think you're right. And I think that the best thing for government is for
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all of these things to be dependent on government, because then government gets to decide which media
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outlets survive and which ones don't. And it's censorship by economics, because if government
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could turn a switch and shut off rebel news, they would love to do that. But they can't do that
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without being increasingly and explicitly totalitarian in nature in a way that would be
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subject to a little bit of backlash, we hope, maybe not as much as perhaps we might think there
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should be. But they can do it another way. They can force YouTube to manipulate the algorithms,
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force Facebook and Twitter to manipulate the algorithms, force these companies to subsidize
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the good kind of media. Not that Rebel or True North would want it, but we know that we wouldn't be on
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the list to receive it anyway. And when I say censorship by economics, what they're trying to do is
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basically kill the business models of anyone they don't want to exist and prop up the ones they do want
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to exist. Yeah. You know, I think that it's slowly subconsciously undermining the profession. I, there
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are some great journalists out there, and let's acknowledge Bob Fyfe and Steve Chase of Globe and Mail,
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who've done great work on Chinese influence. So there are some great journalists out there,
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even with media that take huge government checks. But I think they're the exception that sort of proves
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the rule. I think that for true criticism of Trudeau, other than Rebel News, True North,
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Western Standard, Counter Signal, a handful of independents, for true criticism of Trudeau,
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you've got to go to the foreign media, New York Post, Daily Mail. I think that most journalists
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in Canada just won't be rough with Trudeau. Let me give you a quick example. You tell me what you
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think of this. For more than a decade, there's been questions about why Justin Trudeau left the fancy
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Vancouver private school where he was teaching. He left mid-semester. That's very unusual for a teacher
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to leave mid-semester. But there may be a perfectly good explanation for it. Or, as the innuendo and
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gossip has said, maybe there's a terrible reason for it. Maybe he got a little bit handsy with a young
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student who experienced it differently. We simply don't know because he hasn't asked about it. But then,
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in Parliament, just a few weeks ago, Pierre Pauly threw that back at Trudeau in quite a jab. Here,
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let's play the clip just to remind our viewers. Take a look at this.
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Yes, Mr. Speaker. I was a high school teacher before getting into politics. And I'm having
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a little trouble remembering what exactly the job that the leader of the opposition had before getting
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into politics. Mr. Speaker, we have a plan to fight climate change. We have a plan to continue to move
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forward on supporting Canadians with a grocery rebate, with a growing economy, with great middle
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class jobs. We're delivering health care supports for Canadians from coast to coast to coast. Delivering
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dental care that has helped 300,000 kids access dental care over the past number of months,
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including 1,100 in his own writing. Mr. Speaker, we will continue to be there for Canadians.
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Honourable Leader of the Opposition. Yes, and he left right in the middle of the semester,
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Mr. Speaker. Buddy, he certainly wasn't a math teacher. He certainly was not a math teacher.
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Now, that's a dramatic thing Pierre Polyev said. He didn't provide the answer. He said,
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we don't know why Trudeau left midway. And there were gasps. And Andrew Coyne called Pierre Polyev a
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thug. But not a single journalist said, hmm, maybe that's innuendo. Maybe that's a kind of slur. Or
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maybe there's something there. Nobody knows. I'm just going to ask Trudeau that question.
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And here he is, eight years after becoming prime minister. And I don't think a single journalist
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has ever asked the prime minister, hey, by the way, why did you leave halfway through? And that's my
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point, Andrew. To vet the prime minister, to vet the candidate. Harper, Jason Kenney, Doug Ford,
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they've all been vetted, them, their family, their businesses, their history. But I don't think a
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single journalist in the parliamentary pest gallery even asked in a friendly, let's clear the air kind
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of way, hey, Trudeau, why did you leave that girl's school? Even if the answer is it's none of your
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bloody business. No one asked, did they? I'm not aware of anyone asking specifically. Now, I do know
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in 2019, Marika Walsh of the Globe and Mail asked Trudeau if he had ever signed an NDA for misconduct.
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And this was because at the time there was this trending, I'll say rumor, because there was never
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anything factual or evidentiary to support it, that there was an NDA or were NDAs between Justin
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Trudeau. And it was very nondescript. I know Warren Kinsella had stoked this in some way. And again,
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I'm no defender of Trudeau, but I have to be completely forthright in that I have never heard
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anything more concrete on this at all than simply the rumor. And all the rumors tend to trace back to
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sources that do not have any credibility. But again, I also think that the fact that he left midway
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through the semester is not a rumor. That's a matter of public record. And it wasn't until the
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2019 election that West Point Gray, the school, had come out and actually given a comment saying,
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no, no, no, there was nothing to see here. And again, I don't know what loyalty, if any,
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exists between that school and Justin Trudeau. But the fact that he left has been subject of multiple
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conflicting explanations from Justin Trudeau himself. So I do not like the idea of suggesting
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a reason that does not have any basis, but it is a legitimate question to ask.
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Yeah. And I don't know the answer to it, by the way. I'm just trying to point out that
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a more carnivorous press gallery might inquire.
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No. And if I can jump in there, Ezra, the media has started to turn on Justin Trudeau now,
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but only now, which meant that in 2015, when he was seeking election, there was no interest in
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vetting him. And even now, the media doesn't like Justin Trudeau, but I think they dislike
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Pierre Poliev more because they dislike conservatives more. And if I can give you my theory on this,
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I do not believe it's fair to say that the media will never attack liberals. What I believe is that
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when the media attacks liberals, it's because they haven't lived up to the media's ideal of what a
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liberal is supposed to be. They're impugned because of their behavior. When the media attacks
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conservatives, it's because of their beliefs. It's because of what they fundamentally believe.
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And that's an important distinction because the media wants a pure liberal. The media doesn't want
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any conservative. Let me say one more thing. You mentioned that the media was not vetting Trudeau in
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2015. We know that's true because remember when an American magazine published the photos of Trudeau
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in blackface. Immediately, the CBC and Global News, immediately, and I mean within an hour,
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released their own photos. And in the case of Global News, their own video of Trudeau in blackface,
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which means they had it. They were sitting on it. For whatever reason, they did not show the world.
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It was only once they were scooped that they said, oh, well, I guess it's out there. We may as well
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get in on the action. You're telling me if they had a blackface photo of Stephen Harper or Danielle
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Smith or any conservative that they would have sat on it saying, oh, that's not news, were they?
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He was only- Yeah, the guy was elected in 2008. It took 11 years to find the first one,
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and it took 11 minutes to find the next three. Yeah. And my point is that they're just more
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docile. And I don't know what the answer is, but, you know, I showed this the other day.
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The first aggressive scrum against the Trudeau cabinet was when Marco Mendocino came out and
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the hollering and the hooting. I haven't seen this since Stephen Harper was PM. Just a quick
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professor. Take a look at this. How is it credible that all of the most senior staff who are paid for
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by taxpayers in government and the PCO and the prime minister's office and your office knew,
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but somehow you and the prime minister were only told after the fact. How is that in any way
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credible to the average person who goes to their job and does their job every day?
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Okay. First of all, let's all take a breath. And I want to be responsive to your questions.
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What I said was, is that I would be coming down to take more questions in this afternoon.
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But what I would say- You said yesterday and then you didn't-
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You're off-state. We waited for five hours for you yesterday.
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What I- Well, I'm here right now and I will be here again.
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Absolutely. But I agree with you that there is a challenge there, which is why we have taken
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steps to address that through corrective actions internally, as well as by making sure that the
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CSC works very closely with victims' families going forward.
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Is it standard operating procedure at your office that you are kept in the dark?
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And will you let anyone go in response to the handling of this?
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Of course not. And my job as the minister of public safety is to make sure that we are identifying
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issues where there are challenges on information flow. And so what I have done in each and every one of
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these cases is to be responsive to those challenges by issuing ministerial directives to clarify so
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that we are strengthening our ability to get the information that we need. So that has been done
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certainly in the case of Bernardo through the issuing of a new ministerial directive. As far as internal
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And again, I think in this case, Andrew, they were more mad that Mendocino canceled on a scrum
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the night before. It wasn't the substance that made those reporters so angry. It said he broke a personal
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promise to them to answer questions the night before. I think, you know, Donald Trump jokingly said,
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I could shoot someone in Fifth Avenue and, you know, some people would defend me. Or he said
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something to that effect. And people hang that around his neck. That's actually how Trudeau lives.
00:25:27.020
I mean, the way he skated from the sexual assault of Rose Knight, the she-experienced-differently
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woman, the way he skated on blackface, those are scandals that have undone much better men than him.
00:25:42.300
Yeah. And I mean, one of the things with Donald Trump, whatever people think about him,
00:25:47.260
is that at a certain point, so much was being thrown at him, it all became noise. And that has
00:25:52.620
been the very thing that's happened to Justin Trudeau, where now he's been there long enough
00:25:55.980
when we've already decided that as a society that we're okay to move on anything. I mean,
00:26:00.220
how the Liberals managed to turn blackface into old news in nothing flat. I think it was Judy
00:26:06.460
Scrooge, the Liberal MP, that had given that great interview during the 2019 election,
00:26:10.940
in which he said black people should be flattered that he wanted to be like them.
00:26:14.700
I mean, that is some brazen spin that the media let the Liberals get away with on Justin Trudeau.
00:26:21.420
Hey, let me ask you one last question. I appreciate you giving us so much time.
00:26:25.180
I follow a number of different pollsters, but one of the ones I follow, because I used to know him,
00:26:30.380
is David Coletto, and he's with Abacus Research. Now, I know that Abacus is liberal-oriented.
00:26:37.260
Their founding chairman was Bruce Anderson, whose daughter was Trudeau's communications director.
00:26:43.420
Perry Tsurgis is still, so he's a very, very, very liberal shop.
00:26:47.820
And I follow him, Andrew, because when they criticize Trudeau, or when they're worried about Trudeau,
00:26:53.580
I take it at face value. It's sort of like a dog bites man, you don't pay attention, but man bites dog,
00:27:01.260
you do. When a liberal pollster rings the alarm about the Liberals, I'm going to take that at face
00:27:06.380
value, right, that I might not if it's a conservative pollster. They ran a poll about a week ago showing
00:27:11.580
not only that the conservatives under Pierre Polyev have a significant lead, like seven points if I
00:27:17.180
recall, but they also said that 81 percent of Canadians do not think that Trudeau deserves to be
00:27:25.100
re-elected. Now, a good chunk of those say they're not thrilled about their options, but 81 percent,
00:27:32.460
like that means you've got five people in a room. Do you want, do you think Trudeau's done a good job?
00:27:37.580
No. How about you? No. How about you? No. How about you? No. How about you? No. How about you?
00:27:41.660
Yeah, okay. Like imagine, and you break that down demographically, the number of young men
00:27:48.940
who think Trudeau deserves to be re-elected? I mean, there's certain demographics that is
00:27:54.380
approaching single digits, but do you think he's going to pull the rabbit out of the hat? Do you
00:28:00.540
think he's going to win despite 81 percent saying he doesn't deserve? Do you think he'll slouch to yet
00:28:07.820
another victory? If you had told me a month before the 2019 election that the scandal-ridden
00:28:15.420
Justin Trudeau would win when we get photos of him in blackface that dropped during the middle
00:28:21.580
of the campaign, I would have been like, okay, come on. You're being ridiculous. That's never
00:28:24.380
going to happen. I mean, obviously he couldn't win. Even he couldn't win in a situation like that.
00:28:28.540
And then he did. So I do not underestimate Justin Trudeau. And that's not an endorsement of his
00:28:34.380
character. That's just an acknowledgement of the media climate and political climate. And generally
00:28:39.260
speaking, the weakness of the conservative campaign machine in the last two elections. Remember,
00:28:44.140
it was the conservatives that failed to find that blackface photo anywhere between 2008
00:28:49.580
and 2019 in their opposition research, which I think is a blight on them. They were too busy making
00:28:55.100
the nice hair TV ads. So I think it is possible that Justin Trudeau could win. I have also entertained
00:29:03.580
the idea that when he is ousted, it will not be by Canadian voters, but rather by Liberal Party members.
00:29:09.820
Now, so far, I haven't seen the dissent within the Liberal ranks because he has kept just an
00:29:15.100
iron grip on his caucus and on his party. But I have to wonder if these poll numbers pick up,
00:29:21.740
if the Liberals are going to be looking and saying, okay, you're just not doing it for us. You're not
00:29:25.900
doing it for us. And in that case, I think he'll want an election because it's just the Hail Mary
00:29:30.140
pass, the only chance he really has of staying in power.
00:29:33.100
My worry is what happened in Alberta provincially could happen federally,
00:29:39.500
which is that all the anybody but Danielle Smith vote coalesced against around Rachel Notley.
00:29:46.780
There used to be smaller parties, the Green Party, the Alberta Party was a thing,
00:29:51.820
the Liberal Party, all those vaporized. Everyone who didn't like Danielle Smith
00:29:57.980
coalesced around Rachel Notley. Danielle Smith only lost a couple of points, but Rachel Notley gained.
00:30:06.700
I'm worried that the polls right now show Jack Mead Singh with, what, in the 20s.
00:30:14.860
I'm worried that if Pierre Polyev runs a strong campaign,
00:30:19.660
that leftists and anyone but Polyev, they'll all coalesce around Trudeau. And maybe he'll do a
00:30:26.380
lot better than he looks because people will just say Jack Mead Singh was a non-entity.
00:30:30.780
He was a placeholder. We need to back Trudeau. I'm worried that we're going to go to a two-party
00:30:37.260
system. And in that, Canada's liberal enough that it could save Trudeau one more time. Last word to you.
00:30:45.260
Yeah, I think it's a legitimate fear. And I think that the collapse of the NDP vote generally
00:30:50.940
has been good for Conservatives. But if the NDP have a resurgence and the Liberals hold their own,
00:30:57.020
it could work for the Conservatives. But if the NDP vote collapses even further, it absolutely will
00:31:02.380
not. And I think the one thing we've seen in the last few elections is how difficult it is for the
00:31:08.140
Conservatives to find a regional breakdown that triggers a victory. And the one thing I'll say is
00:31:13.740
that there is no such thing in my view anymore of a conservative, as a conservative minority
00:31:19.260
government. It's either a majority or a liberal NDP coalition. Right. I said that was the last
00:31:24.620
thought, but there is one more thing I want to show you. Here's Aaron O'Toole. I'm sorry,
00:31:29.500
I'm chuckling. Maybe you're more sympathetic to him than me, but here's Aaron O'Toole.
00:31:34.140
I know the clip you're going for, and I am not at all sympathetic.
00:31:36.700
Hey, if we just tried what he tried and then tried it again, that's the ticket. Here, take a look at
00:31:44.780
this. You know, the Conservatives won the popular vote in the last two elections. It just wasn't
00:31:49.180
efficient enough. And Mr. Trudeau, some of the polarization is actually focusing and over-delivering
00:31:55.660
your small cohort. So he's now one, two minority governments with a smaller popular vote,
00:32:01.740
and in some elections being virtually shut out in certain provinces of the country.
00:32:06.380
So I think, had the pandemic not been a part of the discussion, I had a lot of fiscal
00:32:11.980
Conservatives that wanted to see the Conservatives with a smart plan on the environment. A lot of
00:32:18.540
business leaders, for example, or small business owners that wanted to make sure they lowered emissions
00:32:24.380
for their kids, but were worried about our competitiveness, worried about trade relations,
00:32:29.180
thought Mr. Trudeau's ethics were questionable. So there's a bunch of voters that want to see
00:32:34.140
the Conservatives address all issues. I think Pierre will do that.
00:32:37.580
Yeah, how's that not just what he tried and failed? I don't get it. He's saying,
00:32:47.020
No, the thing is that he's literally describing the very experiment that we tried. I mean, I didn't love
00:32:54.140
the Erin O'Toole era of the Conservative Party of Canada, but as a historian and as a scholar of
00:33:00.380
political science, if you will, I loved it because it gave us the ideal test case, the natural world
00:33:06.780
experiment of what happens when the Red Tory Brigade, the so-called centerized Conservatives,
00:33:12.300
get to decide what happens. We take a moderate leader who spends more time denouncing certain
00:33:17.900
factions of the Conservative Party, who rolls on his leadership platform, and comes up with a moderate
00:33:22.940
conservative vision that doesn't really seem all that conservative, that gives up everything to
00:33:29.660
win in Quebec and in the GTA and does neither. It was the very perfect test case of why these people
00:33:37.820
are wrong, why diluting your message does not result in a victory. And it's a shame that Erin O'Toole
00:33:43.340
hasn't realized that two years on. Well, I'm glad that no one other than the media party will listen and
00:33:50.220
obey him. There you have it, Andrew Lawton, one of our favorite guys. He's at True North,
00:33:55.740
tnc.news, and you can follow him on his substack, andrewlawton.substack.com. Take care,
00:34:03.260
my friend. Thanks for taking the time with us. Thank you. All right. Well, that's our show for today.
00:34:08.940
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,