Rebel News Podcast - SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Analyzing whether the Conservative Party can mend fences and rebuild its base

00:00:00.000 Oh hey Rebels, it's me, Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're listening to a free audio-only recording

00:00:04.860 of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show. Now tonight my guest is Tom Harris from the

00:00:10.520 International Climate Science Coalition Canada, and we're discussing how Erin O'Toole's flip-flopping

00:00:18.120 on the carbon tax and the Paris Accord drove people into the loving arms of the People's

00:00:25.120 Party of Canada. Now if you like listening to the show, then I promise you're going to love

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00:01:08.340 PODCAST when you subscribe. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com to become a member. And now please enjoy this

00:01:15.780 free audio-only version of my show. What caused the vote split on the right side of the spectrum

00:01:36.200 that lost the conservatives the election? And how do we fix it? I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed,

00:01:42.920 and you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:02:02.400 Most credible analysis of the recent federal election demonstrated that the vote split on

00:02:07.640 the right accounted for a loss of about two dozen seats for the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:02:14.540 Amanda Connolly and David Akin wrote in the Canadian press that the PPC failed to win any

00:02:22.260 seats in the September 20th election, but gathered 5.1% of the popular vote, up from 1.6% in the 2019

00:02:31.300 federal election. In 21 ridings across the country, the size of the PPC vote was greater than the

00:02:39.780 number of votes by which the Conservative candidate lost that riding. 12 in Ontario, 5 in BC, 2 in

00:02:47.620 Alberta, 1 in Quebec, and 1 in Newfoundland. 14 of those losses were to Liberals, while 6 went to the

00:02:55.000 NDP, and 1 to the Bloc Québécois. Now, according to Jack Fonseca, writing in LifeSite,

00:03:01.900 O'Toole's Liberalite platform also resulted in a massive drop in the popular vote for the Conservative

00:03:06.900 Party. In 2019, under Andrew Scheer's leadership, Conservatives won 6,239,227 of the popular vote.

00:03:17.280 Although numbers are not yet finalized, as of this writing, the O'Toole Conservatives received only

00:03:24.400 5,529,272 of the popular vote. That means O'Toole presided over a collapse of almost 710,000 votes.

00:03:37.620 Now, the flip-flopping by O'Toole on key Conservative issues, I think, drove voters into the arms of the

00:03:44.720 PPC, or just demoralized them enough to stay home. And one of those key Conservative issues was the

00:03:52.040 carbon tax. After years of opposing one, the Conservatives suddenly wanted to embrace one of their own, but

00:03:59.160 also call it something else, a levy. Now, that name change didn't fool anyone except maybe Aaron O'Toole

00:04:06.100 himself. Joining me tonight to discuss how Conservatives can fix their climate policy and maybe mend some fences

00:04:13.740 with the disaffected Conservative base is Tom Harris of the International Climate Science Coalition Canada

00:04:20.060 in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.

00:04:23.240 Joining me now from his home in Ottawa is my friend Tom Harris from the International Climate Science

00:04:43.700 Coalition Canada. And I wanted to have Tom on the show today because he is such a careful watcher of

00:04:50.540 climate issues and how they, to use the language of the left, intersect with politics. And you and I

00:04:58.360 were sort of talking back and forth over the last week or so about how I think Aaron O'Toole's flip-flopping

00:05:07.680 on climate issues, and in particular, the carbon tax, really scuttled his chances at winning.

00:05:14.840 And it sort of drove a lot of people to the PPC. So I guess my first question is to you, why do you say,

00:05:24.080 first of all, do you agree with that? And if so, how can Aaron O'Toole sort of fix that?

00:05:31.260 Yeah, I agree with you completely. In fact, there were 25 ridings that if you add the PPC vote to the

00:05:36.820 Conservative vote, you end up with Conservative victories. And if you add them up and you're taking them away from the

00:05:42.400 Liberals, that would have given the Conservatives a minority government. And even if a couple of those

00:05:48.060 seats went NDP, which, you know, is actually possible, then indeed the Conservatives would

00:05:53.200 still have formed the minority government. They would have had the most seats. So you have to look

00:05:57.420 at, well, what's going on here that has driven, you know, so many Conservatives away from the

00:06:02.520 Conservative Party. And, you know, you also wonder how many of them just didn't bother to vote. I have a

00:06:08.440 family member who just said, forget it, I don't agree with any of the leading candidates. So she

00:06:13.220 didn't vote at all. So, you know, you have to wonder what would have happened if he hadn't had a hard turn

00:06:18.400 left on many issues and the carbon tax and the climate plan in particular. Now, it's interesting

00:06:24.840 because the PPC actually have a climate plan, which is what the Conservatives should adopt. But this time,

00:06:32.140 he has to do it quite differently. You know, one of the big problems is that even among Conservatives

00:06:37.220 within the party and MPs who actually agree with the climate plan of O'Toole, they're still angry

00:06:44.180 with him because he didn't actually go through his cabinet, through his caucus. He didn't go through

00:06:50.140 the environment critic. He announced this to the public without having actually cleared it with his

00:06:55.280 own party. So there are people in the party who are angry about two things. One is they're angry about

00:07:00.320 the sudden shift left, trying to out-liberal the Liberals on his climate plan with his own carbon

00:07:06.260 tax and everything else. They're mad at that. But they're also mad because he didn't actually clear

00:07:11.220 it with the caucus. He didn't clear it with his environment critic. So he's got a lot of enemies

00:07:16.000 in the party now, and among MPs, who are quite angry with him for the way he handled this. So what he

00:07:22.700 should do, the ideal thing, and I'll discuss the politically correct thing to do in a second,

00:07:28.140 but the ideal thing is to actually adopt the People's Party of Canada climate policy.

00:07:34.000 And I'll just read some excerpts of it because it is really perfect, okay? It actually says all the

00:07:41.100 things that most of the grassroots in the Conservative Party actually think. It said under

00:07:46.040 the title issue, the Liberal government is spending billions of dollars at home and abroad to fight

00:07:51.580 global warming, or climate change as it is now called, to account for every natural weather disaster

00:07:56.860 and it's opposite. In order to lower greenhouse gas emissions, it has imposed taxes and countless

00:08:02.340 regulations. It subsidizes inefficient and costly green technology and is blocking the development of

00:08:08.580 the oil resources crucial to prosperity. You know, he goes on to talk about it. He's not a climate change

00:08:14.700 denier. This is Maxime Bernier in the People's Party. He talks about until 12,000 years ago, much of Canada

00:08:21.440 was under ice. And thanks to natural climate change, it's that, you know, it's gone away and we live here

00:08:27.680 today. So he goes through various facts like that, which are, you know, really very good climate

00:08:33.400 realism. They're practical statements. And so his plan is this, and this is exactly what the Conservative plan

00:08:39.440 should be. It says, given the uncertainties over the scientific basis of global warming, and the

00:08:45.700 uncertainties about the huge costs of measures designed to fight it, there's no reason, no compelling

00:08:51.160 reason, to jeopardize our prosperity with more government interventions. So they're saying, and

00:08:56.920 again, this is what the Canadian Conservative Party, the Conservative Party of Canada, what their policy

00:09:02.580 really should be. It says, a People's Party government will withdraw from the Paris Accord and abandon

00:09:08.660 unrealistic greenhouse gas reduction targets. And, you know, that is such an obvious thing because

00:09:14.160 two-thirds of all the greenhouse gases that humans emit now is actually coming from the developing

00:09:20.640 world. China, by far the biggest emitter. I mean, it's more than twice as much as the United States.

00:09:27.680 And as we've discussed before, they don't ever have to reduce emissions. So what Canada does with our

00:09:33.240 1.6% of world emissions will have no impact on the future trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions. So,

00:09:40.080 I mean, there really is no point in us working on greenhouse gas reduction targets. Of course,

00:09:45.200 we should reduce pollution, but CO2 is not pollution. You know, it's interesting, the People's Party even

00:09:50.760 have a section here where they talk about what CO2 really is. Thank you.

00:09:55.420 You know, that it's flat food. Yeah. So it's silly to be trying to reduce emissions. In fact, it's interesting.

00:10:01.740 And again, the PPC say this in their platform, we've seen a greening of the earth, an increase in

00:10:08.600 forest density, an increase in crop yield because of rising CO2. We could double or triple CO2 emissions,

00:10:15.660 and there would be nothing but good happening on the earth. The next statement from the People's

00:10:21.040 Party is to stop sending billions of dollars to developing countries to help them reduce their

00:10:26.900 emissions. I mean, that is a complete waste of Canadian money. To abolish the Liberals' carbon

00:10:31.960 tax. Well, that's a bit silly when you think about the Conservatives because they could easily have

00:10:36.240 said abolish the Liberal and Conservative carbon tax because, you know, Atul said, oh, well, it's not a

00:10:42.020 carbon tax. It's a levy. Sorry, Tom, the NDP tried to say that in Alberta here. Oh, it's not a tax.

00:10:48.860 It's a levy. And the Conservatives in Alberta said, no, no, no, that's a tax. But it's funny when their

00:10:53.800 guy says it. Oh, no, no, it is a levy and it's totally different. Like, yeah, various Conservative

00:10:59.340 MPs who were trying to defend it as not being a tax. But, you know, Ezra, I believe in one of the

00:11:04.080 interviews, he he said, um, the dictionary defines it as a synonym. Anyway, abolish subsidies for green

00:11:12.280 technology. That that's an important one, because right now we're dumping so much money into very

00:11:17.800 dangerous and dirty technologies. We can talk about that later because, you know, they're they're doing that

00:11:23.440 in spades here in Ottawa. Invest in adaptation strategies if problems arise as a result of any

00:11:30.840 natural climate change. Well, of course, that's what societies have done throughout history is invest

00:11:35.920 in adaptation. Right now, across Canada, at the federal level, only 13 percent of our funding is

00:11:42.860 going into adaptation to help real people adapt to climate change today. You know, and this is really

00:11:49.220 a tragedy because, you know, many people around the world and even in Canada, certain parts of Canada,

00:11:54.460 they need help adapting to natural climate change. And yet most of the money is going to this fictitious

00:12:01.100 idea that we can magically stop it. And then it ends off by saying, prioritize implementing practical

00:12:08.080 solutions to make Canada's air, water and soil cleaner. So in an ideal world, and, you know, after speaking

00:12:15.140 to several people inside the Conservative Party, they have some real, O'Toole's people have some real

00:12:21.440 fence mending to do, because they have really alienated so many people in the party. And by far,

00:12:27.420 the best thing to do is to adopt the PPC climate change plan. And it could actually pull back from the

00:12:33.800 PPC many of the votes that they lost. But, you know, even for red Tories who are afraid to contest the

00:12:40.320 science of climate change, they can simply use the argument, very politically correct argument,

00:12:45.900 that at 1.6% of world emissions, Canada's impact is negligible in comparison with China. And China,

00:12:53.720 of course, has this out clause, Article 4 of the underlying treaty under the Paris Agreement,

00:13:00.040 it's Article 4 in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It says that the first

00:13:04.660 and overriding priority of developing nations is poverty alleviation and development. So you can

00:13:10.700 see what's going to happen. China, who's building coal stations, not only across their country,

00:13:14.780 but around the world, I mean, they're funding climate or coal stations all across Africa, and,

00:13:21.180 you know, really everywhere in the world, they're going to say if anyone points out to them,

00:13:25.100 hey, you're not limiting your CO2 emissions in 2030, the way you promised, they'll say, yeah,

00:13:30.560 but we have an out clause. We don't have to do it, because our first and overriding priority

00:13:34.760 is poverty alleviation and development. That's what they'll say, and it's pretty obvious. When

00:13:39.320 they cornered the Chinese negotiator at the Peru climate conference, one of the cops down there,

00:13:44.400 conference of the parties, they asked him about whether they would change this underlying treaty

00:13:49.020 that's under Paris, that gives them an out clause. And, you know, it's funny, I remember his exact

00:13:54.740 words, the negotiator from China, he said, our purpose is to enforce the framework

00:14:00.380 convention, not to change it. So they've got a sweetheart deal, and they know it. So the

00:14:06.960 conservatives who don't want to contest the science, and I understand many of them are afraid

00:14:11.140 of that, even though I know from my knowledge of the inside of the party that many of them know the

00:14:16.520 science is baloney. Yeah, they know it's baloney. But regardless, even for those who don't want to

00:14:21.120 contest it, they can simply say, look, greenhouse gas emissions are going to continue to rise.

00:14:26.560 And, you know, because we have no control over most of the greenhouse gases in the world. And

00:14:32.180 those countries who do put out the most China in particular, are going to continue to emit as much

00:14:37.540 as they want. So whatever climate change is going to happen, is going to happen. And Canada can't stop

00:14:43.340 it. So we should focus on adaptation, and reduce real pollution for oil, soil, water and land. So to me,

00:14:52.140 that's a pretty easy policy to promote. Okay, it just makes sense. And it's not left or right. It's

00:14:57.860 not, you know, specifically conservative or liberal. It's just common sense. I mean, you have

00:15:04.380 to adapt to it, because we can't stop it. And that's where the focus should be. So that would

00:15:09.280 actually help mend a lot of fences with the many other MPs, and also people in the grassroots. I mean,

00:15:15.700 the grassroots hate the current climate policy of O'Toole. And, you know, they're very upset about it.

00:15:21.200 And of course, this is part of the reason it's led to a petition to actually get him out as leader.

00:15:27.040 So if he wants to mend fences, and I think the only way he should stay in as leader,

00:15:32.100 is if he stops this attempt to out liberal the liberals on things like the carbon tax,

00:15:38.780 he's got to stop that. And historically, if you actually look at what happened when conservative

00:15:44.740 leaders were conservative, they actually have a very good track record. I mean, Harper won three

00:15:50.400 elections in a row. You know, Mike Harris here in Ontario, he won elections. And Margaret Thatcher,

00:15:57.360 Reagan, Ralph Klein, he could have been premier for life.

00:16:01.320 Yeah, exactly. And it's interesting, because Harper even won in the 416 area code around Toronto.

00:16:06.820 Yeah.

00:16:07.080 So the idea that you have to shift left to win elections for the conservatives, well, we've seen

00:16:14.020 two demonstrations that that's wrong. And that's, you know, if you're going to drive away your base,

00:16:21.100 I mean, of course, you're going to lose. And, you know, Sheila, you know, Aaron O'Toole tried to put

00:16:25.620 on this brave face in his concession speech, that they had done really well. And, you know,

00:16:30.660 they're going to really champion and go ahead. Well, they lost two seats in comparison with Andrew

00:16:35.760 Scheer. And the liberals gained two seats. So his experiment failed.

00:16:40.360 Yeah. And, and sacrificed Alberta MPs for the cause, because they're in Alberta's, particularly

00:16:49.080 in Edmonton, Kerry Diot lost his seat because of the vote split to the liberal. And I can guarantee

00:16:57.520 you that is standing on two things, the carbon tax issue, and the gun rights issue, both serious

00:17:03.940 flip-flops. And, and conservatives are really terrible at articulating their own past on this

00:17:11.580 issue. Again, if you want to appeal to red Tories who actually care about these things, I don't know

00:17:16.720 why you would, but even if you are a true believing red Tory, that climate change is the greatest threat

00:17:22.580 known to man, stand on the conservative track record. I pulled two weeks ago, I pulled the

00:17:29.860 Environment Canada data. So this is the data that the liberals keep using. Yeah. When Stephen Harper

00:17:36.880 came into power, greenhouse gas emissions were way higher than when he left. And when he left versus

00:17:44.760 Justin Trudeau in 2019, guess what? Justin Trudeau is higher with his carbon tax than when Stephen Harper

00:17:52.740 left in 2015. So there, the data does not support the liberals plan, or the current conservative plan,

00:18:04.680 whatever Stephen Harper was doing, let's do that. If you care about greenhouse gas emissions, I don't,

00:18:10.340 but these people keep telling me they do. Let's try that. It's the only thing that worked.

00:18:14.760 Yeah, that's right. And you know, mothers and ladies in the 416 area code, they voted for Harper.

00:18:20.500 You know, if you actually look at the statistics. So I mean, the bottom line is that their policy

00:18:25.440 doesn't make any sense. And you know, you have to ask, well, who would be driving this? Well,

00:18:29.620 I go back to the time when I worked for the Canadian Alliance, and they merged with the Conservative

00:18:33.660 Party, you know, the Progressive Conservatives. And you would think that the party would have been

00:18:39.820 genuinely Conservative, because, you know, they only had two MPs left in the Progressive Conservatives

00:18:46.680 after Kim Campbell's, you know, terrible election results. And all the rest were, you know, Canadian

00:18:52.940 Alliance MPs. So I thought that the party was going to become truly Conservative. And yet what

00:18:58.640 happened is because the backroom people, the head of communications, the head of strategy, because

00:19:03.880 these, you know, enablers in the back room, were red Tories, they pulled the party right back to the

00:19:10.800 red Tory position. I'm living through this, Tom, in Alberta right now. I am living through this because

00:19:16.460 we thought we're getting Jason Kenney. He's a deep blue Tory. The Wild Rose is strong. They're going

00:19:21.980 to drive the agenda. Nope. All the backroom cronies are the same red Tories that have been kicking

00:19:28.200 around for decades. And we're right back in Redford country where we started. Yeah, I have a theory

00:19:34.440 actually as to why that is. Why are these backroom people also red Tory? You know, they're in the wrong

00:19:40.500 party, really, they should be in the Liberal Party. But you know, you have to think, where do these people

00:19:45.600 end up? In many cases, they end up in communications firms here in Ottawa. And they're looking after their

00:19:52.780 own, you know, future career, because they don't want to be labeled as, you know, true blue Conservatives,

00:19:58.700 because these PR firms that they're looking forward to getting into with good big salaries later on,

00:20:04.020 these PR firms are generally liberal. So I honestly think that one of the things driving

00:20:11.000 the backroom people to be red Tories and to not be real Conservatives is concern about their future

00:20:17.220 career. So they are, in fact, in many cases, I think sacrificing the victory of the party for the

00:20:24.760 sake of not appearing too Conservative. So they'll get hired later in their career to be communications

00:20:30.860 people at various firms here in Ottawa. And you know, if you start to reveal that, I think,

00:20:36.340 to more grassroots Conservatives, they have a reason to be very angry that these people would

00:20:41.360 rather see the Conservatives lose than be true blue Conservatives, you know, then the party to be

00:20:47.980 what the grassroots wants the party to be, they would rather see the party lose. And, you know,

00:20:52.920 that's my theory. And I've bounced it off a few people who are in the know, and they say,

00:20:57.320 yeah, that makes sense. That why would the backroom be red Tory? Well, it's because they're thinking of

00:21:02.500 their own careers, not the party. Yeah, and their own careers and not the careers of, you know,

00:21:08.640 tens of thousands of Canadians who stand to lose them because of a bad economy at the hands of Justin

00:21:14.720 Trudeau. And you do make some very good points here about, you know, how you can win actually being

00:21:20.100 a Conservative. Look at the last climate accord before Paris, Kyoto. The Conservatives won on

00:21:30.440 fighting Kyoto. You know, the Liberal leader at the time was so keen on Kyoto, Stéphane Dion,

00:21:37.920 that he named his dog Kyoto. Remember that? Yeah. Conservatives won a majority on saying,

00:21:45.900 this is a bad idea. It gives away too much to the UN, too much control over our economy. And it's

00:21:52.280 bad for Canadian jobs. And they won articulating that because those women in Toronto, those suburban

00:21:59.140 moms, they'll vote for the jobs of their husbands every day of the week. And as Conservatives, they've

00:22:04.680 done a terrible job articulating that these days. Yeah. Well, you know, before Harper was elected,

00:22:09.980 I mean, he called Kyoto a money-sucking socialist scheme. I mean, it can't be any more derogatory than

00:22:19.820 that. And yet he went ahead and actually won the election. You know, I mean, this idea that you have

00:22:26.000 to try to out-Liberal the Liberals, I mean, it's a stupid idea because Liberals are not going to vote

00:22:30.060 for pretend Liberals. They're going to vote for Liberals. And, you know, so many of the Conservatives

00:22:36.300 went over to the PPC. I mean, I have many people in my family, People's Party of Canada,

00:22:41.240 many people in my family who voted PPC, you know, because they looked at the platform and they said,

00:22:46.560 yeah, I agree with that. But they looked at the Conservative platform and they said,

00:22:50.800 no, that's ridiculous, you know, on all kinds of issues. I mean, you remember when the five primary

00:22:55.920 leaders all got up and did that, you know, clapping seals thing, get the jab, where they did it all

00:23:00.820 together. They do the same thing on climate change. It's just who's going to put my husband

00:23:06.560 out of work faster when I look at the five of them. And it's, I learned something over the last,

00:23:14.620 I think, five or six years with Justin Trudeau in charge. The Liberals will, Liberal voters will

00:23:20.280 excuse a lot of dishonesty. Conservative voters will not, you know, Conservative voters, you know,

00:23:27.920 like, Justin Trudeau still has people who will defend him as a feminist and defend him as a

00:23:36.100 racism fighter, despite, you know, groping women and wearing blackface. But I think for Conservative

00:23:41.120 voters, we don't like the flip flops. We don't like finding out that we've been misled. And,

00:23:47.080 you know, we, Conservatives have to earn our vote. And I think Aaron O'Toole's got a long way to go

00:23:52.580 before he can do that. And I'm not sure if he can stay on as leader. I think he thinks he might be

00:23:56.580 able to, but I don't know if he can. Well, I think the only way he can stay on is if he tries

00:24:01.980 to actually mend fences with the normal part of the Conservative Party, you know, the grassroots,

00:24:07.720 the MPs that know that the climate scare is bogus. And, you know, that brings us to the topic of this

00:24:12.780 petition that was just put out by Ben Bert Chen. You know, he's a person within the Conservative Party

00:24:20.160 of Canada. He's one of their National Council people, I believe. But anyway, here's what he says.

00:24:25.220 He says, we, the undersigned, request that the National Council of the Conservative Party of

00:24:29.220 Canada commence a referendum to recall Aaron O'Toole as the leader of the Conservative Party.

00:24:35.220 And he lists all sorts of reasons. But the one that I'm most interested in is this, and it's worth

00:24:39.820 discussing a bit. Aaron O'Toole has betrayed, we're talking about the Conservative Constitution,

00:24:46.420 on the following points. And they list several. And the last one is, he broke the trust of members

00:24:52.180 who elected him as a leader by embracing a carbon tax, despite his pledge to never implement one

00:24:59.120 during the leadership race. And it's interesting, because the Taxpayers Federation of Canada with our

00:25:03.880 friend Chris Sims, and, and the rest of them there in Vancouver, he actually signed a declaration

00:25:10.100 saying he would not have a carbon tax big, you know, had a big poster, and a great photo op and

00:25:16.420 everything else. And he just specifically broke it. And the Taxpayers Federation really attacked him for

00:25:22.800 that. So I mean, that's the first thing he needs to do is he has to recognize that if he's going to

00:25:27.720 break major agreements, major pledges, that of course, they're going to say, well, then go away,

00:25:34.200 we don't want you as leader. And, and that's my answer. The only way he really can rescue his

00:25:39.680 leadership, in my opinion, is if he stops his current carbon tax, in particular, but other

00:25:45.700 things that he's doing to try to out liberal the liberals. So I have a lot of sympathy. I mean,

00:25:49.620 I'm not a member of the party, so I can't actually vote. But last time I checked, they have almost

00:25:54.260 4000 of the needed 5000 votes to actually make the, the referendum perhaps take take hold. Now,

00:26:02.880 it doesn't necessarily have to take hold, but it still would be, you know, if he gets 5000 votes,

00:26:07.140 has got a good chance of it. So the trouble is, of course, there's nobody kind of waiting in the

00:26:12.420 wings, an obvious leader. I mean, I think of Pierre Polyev, he's a possibility. But, you know,

00:26:19.120 Pierre, I like Pierre, but I understand quite a few people don't. Pierre has some baggage of his own

00:26:24.500 from the past. But yeah, that's the trouble for the conservatives right now. They don't actually have

00:26:29.140 since they drove Max away. You know, they don't actually have anybody waiting in the wings. And you

00:26:34.740 know, it's funny, because O'Toole attacked Peter McKay, for various things, and in particular,

00:26:40.340 the climate stuff, which now O'Toole is doing himself, you know, so I suppose, I mean, if they

00:26:46.520 want to switch from one red Tory to another, they could switch to Peter McKay. But what's the point?

00:26:51.340 Right.

00:26:51.420 I mean, you might as well bring in somebody who's a really a conservative, and who's not going to

00:26:55.580 change their position as soon as they become leader.

00:26:57.760 I'd love to see maybe a woman from the prairies, like Candace Bergen. She's strong on all the issues

00:27:06.920 that I seem to care about. And she is pro jobs and pro West. And, you know, it takes that argument

00:27:13.580 away from the liberals that, oh, you know, you're just electing another privileged white man,

00:27:18.480 like Trudeau, you know, to have a lady in power.

00:27:22.720 Yeah, well, that would be great. And, and, you know, it's, there are strong conservatives in there.

00:27:29.280 And I think most of them are just being quiet now, because they want to protect their jobs. They're

00:27:32.660 looking at what happened to Derek Sloan. Yeah, and Derek, Derek Sloan would have been a real

00:27:36.640 candidate to for leadership. Sure. But I don't know how he can do that if he's not part of the party.

00:27:43.360 By the way, Derek Sloan put out some very nice videos, some very nice videos, he stood on Parliament

00:27:49.100 Hill, and he talked all about the carbon tax, he talked all about climate change, it was a series

00:27:53.600 of seven videos during the election, which were extremely good. You know, so people should do a

00:27:58.700 YouTube search on Derek Sloan and climate change. And he's saying essentially what the PPC, I mean,

00:28:05.080 have you heard is Derek Sloan a potential PPCer?

00:28:08.900 I have heard that there are reasons that not everybody gets along over there. And that's too bad,

00:28:15.800 because I think people should, again, put aside their egos for the betterment of the country.

00:28:21.260 You know, not saying how Jason Kenney has worked out these days. But in the past, when he came and he

00:28:29.440 said, wild rosers, PCers, we have to put aside all the old hurt, all the old grudges, because let me

00:28:38.580 tell you, the PCs who were in power sure treated the wild rosers like dirt. And I see a lot of that

00:28:45.460 happening when I see Conservative Party partisans talk about PPC voters as though they weren't just

00:28:51.780 the Conservative base two short years ago. And you need I think the next leader of the Conservative

00:28:59.340 Party or whoever is the leader to mend those fences, it has to be someone to who is going to acknowledge

00:29:06.000 how poorly the PPC were treated by the Conservative Party of Canada, if they ever want to get them back,

00:29:13.700 they have to acknowledge that. And Jason Kenney did. That was my point is he did how things are working

00:29:19.480 out these days. But back then, that was the only way to bring those two sides together to get rid of

00:29:25.180 Rachel Notley. And that has to happen federally, if you ever want to get rid of Justin Trudeau.

00:29:30.200 Yeah, exactly. And you know, it's interesting, because a lot of media portray the PPC as this

00:29:35.220 extreme party. But if you actually look at their platforms, really, they're actually quite sensible.

00:29:40.080 I mean, I have family members who are very keen on the PPC. Yeah, you know, and I support that idea,

00:29:45.680 because the point is, they are doing the things that the Conservatives should be doing used to do

00:29:51.680 used to do. Well, and I sorry to interrupt you, but I think a lot of that extremist rhetoric actually

00:29:58.740 came from the Conservative Party itself. You know, when they hired a liberal mercenary named Warren

00:30:04.420 Kinsella to smear them in the media and do opposition research on them, instead of just saying, you know

00:30:11.220 what, how did we lose you? Let's do what we can to get you back. They actually funded a liberal to attack

00:30:15.840 them. And then now that's part of the ether when you talk about them. Well, that's right. And they should be

00:30:21.100 working hard to get their base out as the primary level of support. They're not they're actually, you know,

00:30:27.360 it's funny, they talk about, oh, we're expanding the tent. No, you're not expanding the tent. You're

00:30:31.740 moving left. You're moving all those other people out. That's right. So you're not expanding because

00:30:37.480 you're not including the traditional Conservatives in the party. They're just saying, heck with you,

00:30:41.420 we're going to vote PPC. And as I say, I repeat this, because it's really interesting to look at the

00:30:46.140 math. 25 ridings, the Conservatives could have won, certainly the Liberals would have lost,

00:30:51.940 if the PPC vote went to the Conservatives. And even if you take away a couple of those seats and

00:30:59.020 make them NDP seats, instead of Liberal seats, you still get a Conservative minority government.

00:31:04.360 And that doesn't even count all the P, the Conservative people who just said to heck with it.

00:31:09.720 We don't agree with anybody, we're staying home. So you know, if they do the math, they can realize

00:31:14.600 what the impact of not expanding the tent, but shifting the tent left, it failed. And you know,

00:31:21.660 I think the definition of insanity, of course, is to say, oh, that failed. So I'm going to do it more.

00:31:27.480 And that's essentially what O'Toole is saying. He said, give me a chance, give me a chance to do it

00:31:31.700 again. You say, well, why would you want to do it again? It was a gross failure. You had less seats

00:31:37.020 than Andrew Scheer. And you've driven away to another party, most of your grassroots. I mean,

00:31:43.740 it's just so stupid. So O'Toole's got to do this. He's got to not shift the whole party left. He's got

00:31:49.760 to pull it back to his base. And then he has a chance, I think, and a reasonable explanation for

00:31:55.940 why he should stay leader. Otherwise, no, you know, get somebody who's going to appeal to the base and

00:32:01.200 get them out. I mean, that's the way it should be going. For me, I think the party needs a complete

00:32:05.740 and total reset. And I think that means a new leader. You know, like with regard to just the

00:32:11.520 PPC numbers, I think Alberta has, I think it's 12 rural ridings, we call them,

00:32:16.820 outside of the major centers, five of those PPC finished second. And, and some of those deep,

00:32:24.140 deep blue conservative ridings where the vote percentage is down for the conservative in the

00:32:30.320 riding, like 20%. And so that is the base, the actual base of the conservative party,

00:32:38.280 sending them a message. Are they willing to listen? I'm not so sure. I guess the next 90 days,

00:32:43.660 we'll find out. Yeah. Well, you know, it's also interesting that the PPC went from 1.9% in the

00:32:50.020 2019 election to over 5% this time. So if I were an internal person in the conservative party, I'd say,

00:32:57.520 whoa, this party is growing quickly, more than doubled their support in just two years. I mean,

00:33:03.520 they're going to suck away more and more and more conservative votes from the conservative party

00:33:07.760 of Canada. So that should be a real concern, not trying to out liberal the liberals. I mean,

00:33:12.400 the conservative party should look at this and say, my God, if we don't move our tent back,

00:33:18.600 we're just going to see next, next election, they will elect MPs from the PPC, and they will get 10,

00:33:24.880 15% of the vote, because it becomes more and more politically correct, of course, more and more

00:33:29.700 acceptable for people to vote PPC as it grows, as it grows. You know, I went to one of their rallies to

00:33:35.260 see what was going on. There were a lot of people there, you know, and these were people who,

00:33:40.420 from my conversations, would normally have voted conservative, but they just weren't doing it.

00:33:45.980 Yeah, and a lot of young people too. And, you know, I often I think about what their issues are

00:33:53.140 as PPC voters. And I talked to a lot of them. And for them, they're really two issues. It's

00:33:59.080 the climate flip-flop, sort of the gun stuff. If you are in Western Canada, that's a big issue.

00:34:04.500 But it's climate change, the flip-flop, and they're anti-lockdown. And those are their two

00:34:10.620 issues. And for them, the PPC was the only one saying, no, the lockdown is a terrible idea.

00:34:16.440 Let's get back to normal. And Ralph Klein, he was once asked what the secret to his political

00:34:23.280 success was. And he said, I can identify a parade that's already marching, and then just jump in front

00:34:30.420 of it and lead it. And, you know, there's a lot of room for that to happen in Canada. And if the

00:34:37.760 Conservative Party were smart, they would say, what's the parade that these PPC voters are

00:34:43.480 marching in? Let us jump in front of it. But they just aren't.

00:34:48.040 Yeah, exactly. And there's some very good studies that the Conservative Party could bring up

00:34:52.600 to oppose the extreme lockdown. Professor Joffe at the University of Alberta, for example,

00:34:57.380 he did a cost-benefit analysis. And I sent the cost-benefit analysis to the Ontario government.

00:35:03.380 And this is on the lockdowns, you know, looking at what's the actual cost of the lockdowns in human

00:35:08.280 health, versus what's the potential cost if there was no lockdown in human health. And what he

00:35:14.460 calculated was that for the world at large, and this was a study done in late 2019, for the world at

00:35:20.120 large, the ratio was 17 to 1. For Canada, it was 10 to 1. In other words, the negative impacts of the

00:35:26.780 lockdown were 10 times worse from a health perspective and other perspectives than the

00:35:32.620 COVID even could be. Okay. So I took that study, I sent it to the Ontario government. Of course,

00:35:38.580 I got a silly answer that didn't address the question. And I asked them, did you do a cost-benefit

00:35:43.240 analysis on the lockdown to show that it's worth doing? I don't think they have, because they never

00:35:50.900 answered. You know, another professor at Simon Fraser University, an economist, did a study as well.

00:35:56.780 And he found the same thing. And you know, Sheila, his conclusion was pretty dramatic. He said,

00:36:02.100 I don't recall his name off the top of my head, but people can look it up. He said that the lockdowns

00:36:07.960 will go down as the greatest policy failure in Canadian history outside of war. Yeah. Okay. And

00:36:15.040 you know, I have a friend who works in death and dying. And that's kind of a sad field to work in. But

00:36:20.140 you know, people have to do it because families need support and everything else. And, you know,

00:36:25.360 she's saying that many of the statistics are hugely inflated when it comes to COVID deaths. And you know,

00:36:33.400 we can go on and on about that. I mean, that's a totally different topic. But, but yeah, I think

00:36:38.140 that those are the two issues. It's the climate issue and the lockdown issue that are driving many

00:36:43.320 people to the PPC party. And on both issues, there's good evidence to support the rational

00:36:51.360 point of view. You know, I mean, I'm not saying COVID is not real. But the idea that you can close

00:36:56.500 the whole society, schools and everything else, and not have really, really significant negative

00:37:01.660 implications. I mean, that's just stupid. You know, and as I say, these experts are saying that

00:37:06.600 the impact of the lockdown is much worse than the COVID even could be. So I mean, I'm not an expert in

00:37:12.460 that area. But it's, it's something you really have to look at when you're designing the conservative

00:37:16.720 platform. Yeah, I think it goes back to one of the drums that you like to beat. And that's

00:37:21.900 adaptation. There was a way that we could have adapted to this instead of just freaking out

00:37:26.940 with COVID. I wanted to ask you actually one of about some of the other work that the International

00:37:33.520 Climate Science Coalition Canada is working on. And that's your report on the city of Ottawa climate

00:37:39.880 plan. Every time you talk about this, I'm just so flabbergasted at the sheer volume and amount of

00:37:46.360 money that this one city is willing to waste on this one issue. When you think about all the other

00:37:52.540 pressing issues that a municipality should worry about, they think that they are going to, I guess,

00:37:58.760 save the earth from climate change, just the little city of Ottawa, and they are going to just

00:38:02.720 wring every cent out of their taxpayers to do it.

00:38:05.320 Yeah, and they're going to drive people out of the city eventually. As we were talking about last

00:38:10.360 time, and by the way, the report is just about ready. No problem. The interesting thing is it's

00:38:14.780 such a huge document. You know, there are three documents in the city of Ottawa's approach to

00:38:20.180 climate change. There's the declaration of climate emergency. Then there's energy evolution. And then

00:38:26.100 there's the climate change master plan. Well, you know, I'm taking excerpts from it from all three,

00:38:30.880 and we're analyzing them. And it's taken longer than anticipated, because it's such a big document.

00:38:35.400 But you know, one of the things that people don't realize, they call this, they want to have a clean,

00:38:40.880 resilient city. I mean, the idea that this is clean. I mean, one of the things that, you know,

00:38:46.260 we had on our America Out Loud radio show, the authors of a book called Clean Energy Exploitation,

00:38:52.400 helping citizens understand the environmental and humanity abuses that support clean energy.

00:38:57.600 And these two people, you know, a engineer and a policy expert, they actually went around,

00:39:03.120 they looked at all the, you know, where the raw materials coming from, you know, cobalt,

00:39:07.680 for example, that is used in many of the batteries, it's used in, you know, much of the renewable energy

00:39:14.460 sector. And it's interesting, because they found that is up to 40,000 children, some as young as four

00:39:22.200 years old, are working in mines in the Congo, mining cobalt. Okay. And so here's a quote from

00:39:29.720 the book by Stein and Royal, the two that wrote this book on energy exploitations, talking about

00:39:34.640 the exposure that these children are experiencing, to give us our so called clean energy. They wrote

00:39:41.200 this, they wrote cave ins constant exposure to toxic radioactive water dust and dangerous air loaded

00:39:46.940 with cobalt, lead and uranium with other heavy metals breathed into lungs day after day. So Western

00:39:53.160 citizens can feel good about their Tesla or wind turbine. Cobalt ore is then sent to China, since one

00:39:59.900 of the larger mines in the Congo is the Chinese, Chinese mine. And of course, once they get to China,

00:40:05.040 they manufacture the wind and solar power, they're the biggest manufacturer by far, in an extremely

00:40:10.980 environmentally unfriendly way, you know, dumping the effluence into the air and into the water.

00:40:16.580 And that's not counting the slave labor, by the way.

00:40:19.760 Yes, exactly. So what you have is Westerners are supporting what is probably the most environmentally

00:40:26.300 damaging energy sources on the planet. And you know, you think, well, oh, once we have them,

00:40:31.880 they're clean, eh? Well, no, not really. Because the turbines and the solar panels that you get 20 years

00:40:38.720 out of them, you're doing really well. And they have to dump, you know, what are they going to do with

00:40:42.460 them? There are no recycle facilities in Canada for solar cells. So they have to ship them abroad.

00:40:47.740 And they often end up in poor countries, just dumped in landfills, where with, you know, rainwater

00:40:53.400 and great ground movement and stuff, they break up and the toxic chemicals all go into the watershed,

00:40:59.180 you know. And of course, what about the birds and bats? I mean, millions of birds and bats are being

00:41:04.760 killed by wind turbines. Ottawa wants to put up 710 of these things bigger than the Peace Tower.

00:41:10.440 Where? Yeah, exactly. Where are they going to fit them in? I guess, I mean, they'll have to put them

00:41:15.680 throughout the green belt. So we'll have to cut down a lot of trees. So, you know, the whole idea, if you

00:41:20.880 want a clean, resilient city, you don't go to wind and solar, because, you know, they're the opposite.

00:41:27.340 They're totally unresilient. It's a function of the breezes and the sunshine. I mean, how can that be

00:41:33.460 resilient? And they're moved to buses. I mean, did you realize that in Germany, they've now passed a new

00:41:39.200 regulation saying that you can't park battery-powered vehicles in underground parking lots

00:41:45.100 because they're getting so many battery fires, okay? And when you get a battery fire, it doesn't,

00:41:51.360 you can't put it out easily. Yeah. Because, of course, you're burning things like lithium.

00:41:56.400 So you can cool it and you let it sort of burn out on its own. And of course, that's one of the

00:42:00.780 reasons that these wind turbine fires are so horrific. They've estimated that when you talk about

00:42:06.580 these huge 60-story wind turbines, about one in every 2,000 burn down every year, okay? Now,

00:42:16.020 when I say burn down, I mean the whole turbine is destroyed. There's two reasons for that. One is

00:42:20.540 because it's difficult to get to a turbine fire because it's 60 stories up, but also because they're

00:42:26.880 in remote locations. And by the time the firefighters get there, you know, the fire is well underway. So

00:42:31.960 they really have to just let it burn out. So what you would calculate then is if one in every 2,000

00:42:37.640 turbines burns to the ground every year around the world, if Ottawa is bringing in 710 of them,

00:42:44.060 that means that even a little more frequently than one every three years is going to burn to the ground.

00:42:50.040 And I don't know if you heard recently, but there was one of these massive 60-story turbines

00:42:54.640 that basically fell apart while it was operating in Thunder Bay. Yeah, this was the beginning of

00:43:02.320 September. And, you know, if you look at the YouTube video of it, I mean, there's pieces thrown

00:43:07.260 all over the place, you know, so you don't want to have anybody nearby. You know, the current sort of

00:43:13.740 setback for industrial wind turbines in Ontario is only 550 meters. And yet around the world, they're

00:43:20.200 saying two kilometers is necessary for the protection of people, not just because of the destruction of

00:43:26.040 the turbine, you know, falls apart and throws massive, you know, 747 size blades all over the

00:43:31.340 place, but also because of this infrasound, this low frequency sound that penetrates the wall and

00:43:37.700 pummels you day and night, day and night, which drives people away from the turbines. I mean, it gives

00:43:42.760 them migraines and, you know, constant flickering and everything else. So, you know, it's going to be a

00:43:48.540 nightmare for Ottawa if we really do adopt this plan. Not only the 37% increase in property tax,

00:43:55.280 like we were talking about last time to pay for this, but of course, increase in massive increase

00:44:00.740 in electricity costs, you know, ugly wind turbines, like all over the place, 36 square kilometers of

00:44:08.140 solar panels, if you can believe that, that's an energy evolution. Yeah, so Ottawa is not going to be

00:44:13.900 a good place to live, especially when it's minus 30 out and your battery powered bus breaks down

00:44:18.800 halfway around as they do in Germany. So yeah, it's sad because they're going to reduce greenhouse

00:44:24.360 gases in Ottawa for sure, because a lot of people will leave. Yeah. You know, it's funny because you

00:44:31.560 hear the left all the time saying that climate change is a human rights issue. It is. It's just not

00:44:37.960 a human rights issue in the way that they think it is. I mean, I don't want any Congolese children

00:44:43.720 enslaved for some rich guy's novelty car, nor do I want all the rural people of Ontario stuck with

00:44:51.040 solar panels so that the people in Ottawa can feel better every time they flick on a light switch.

00:44:56.220 You shouldn't be offloading your feel-goodery onto other people, making them suffer so that you have,

00:45:03.820 you can placate your climate hypochondria. Oh, well, exactly. And you know, one of the points

00:45:09.320 is that we hear from the left, they're social justice warriors. Well, what about the doubling

00:45:13.880 and tripling of electric costs that we've seen in Ontario? Because we got rid of our least expensive

00:45:19.240 form of power. We got rid of coal, whereas what we should have done is brought in the latest

00:45:23.660 pollution control devices and kept our coal, which used to represent a quarter of our electricity,

00:45:28.760 now it's zero. So by getting rid of it, by forcing us to use natural gas, which of course we should

00:45:34.320 be saving for home heating and things, and also building thousands of wind turbines, we've seen

00:45:40.680 a 200% increase in Ontario electricity costs. You know, that's fairly typical. And the real people

00:45:47.600 that are hurt are the poor. So talk about social justice. Yeah. Like, look at the rates. This is the

00:45:53.780 impact of green energy. It's not green. It's not cheap. It's not environmentally friendly.

00:45:58.120 It is among the dirtiest energy sources on the planet, and certainly the worst when it comes to

00:46:03.700 human rights. Tom, I could probably talk to you all day about how awful and how hypocritical

00:46:09.760 green energy is. But I know that you and I are both very busy. Tom, how do people find the work

00:46:15.340 that you do? And how do they support International Climate Science Coalition Canada? Because you guys are

00:46:21.020 doing some very important work to hold governments to account on behalf of the people for their bad

00:46:26.220 decisions. Yeah, sure. Our webpage is icsc-canada.com. And in the upper right hand side, you just have a

00:46:34.640 little window there where you put in your email address. And after our last interview, actually,

00:46:38.600 I got 250 people doing that. So great. I really appreciate that. So those 250 people will get a

00:46:45.100 copy of our Ottawa report, which will be out, you know, probably in a week at the most. And anybody else

00:46:51.560 who'd like to see that report, because it's very applicable to cities all over the world. Because

00:46:55.960 this is not just happening in Ottawa. Ottawa is an extreme case. But it is happening all over the

00:47:01.340 world where people are trying to move to this unreliable energy source. So yeah, put your email

00:47:07.020 address in there. And we'll keep you up to date. And hopefully, you know, you'll like it enough to

00:47:12.540 give us a donation. I hope so, too. And you always forget to plug your podcast, which I think is

00:47:19.400 really good. So tell people how they can find your podcast.

00:47:22.920 That's right. If you go to the ICSC webpage, icsc-canada.com, click on resources, go down to

00:47:30.060 exploratory journeys. And that is my podcast. And you can listen to our latest versions.

00:47:35.720 Our latest one was actually with Howard Hayden. Oh, cool.

00:47:39.180 About the environmental and energy. Yeah, it's about he's a professor of physics,

00:47:43.240 University of Connecticut. And he talks about the problems with wind and solar power. So,

00:47:47.620 you know, people would enjoy that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, your podcast is easy to find. It's if you

00:47:52.820 just go into Google podcast, exploratory journeys, it's right there. And it's conversations you won't

00:47:58.940 hear anywhere else, which I think is great. You're telling the other side of the story.

00:48:02.720 Tom, thanks. Thanks so much for coming on the show. We'll have you back on again very, very soon.

00:48:07.200 I'm excited to read and I know this sounds like I'm a total nerd, but I'm really excited to read

00:48:11.420 your report on the Ottawa climate plan because it's coming to a city near you. Everybody, it is.

00:48:19.220 You got to stop it now. It's spreading. Thank you.

00:48:23.320 Thanks, Tom.

00:48:23.760 Well, my beloved viewers, what do you think? I think my friend Tom Harris has some great advice

00:48:40.020 for the Conservative Party of Canada and Erin O'Toole about how to mend some fences. I'm just

00:48:46.060 not confident that they are going to take it. I feel as though they have a lot of snatching

00:48:52.960 defeat from the jaws of victory in their future to come. Well, everybody, that's the show for

00:48:59.440 tonight. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see everybody back here in the same time,

00:49:03.200 in the same place next week. And remember, don't let the government or, you know, YouTube

00:49:08.180 tell you that you've had too much to think.

Rebel News Podcast - September 30, 2021

SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Analyzing whether the Conservative Party can mend fences and rebuild its base

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