In this episode, Andrew Lawton sits down with Jim Carajalios, the new leader of the New Democratic Party of Ontario, a new political party in Ontario headed into the June election. They discuss the truckers' protest in Ottawa this weekend, and why a new party should be formed in Ontario.
00:00:28.900Doug Ford and the Ontario PC Party, for two years, they paved the way.
00:00:33.820They said, Justin, we'll do it first in Ontario, and then you can do it federally.
00:00:38.200These mandates and these lockdown-related policies.
00:00:43.120And Doug Ford now is just staying quiet, and we're here to tell the people we've got a solution in Ontario for the June 2nd provincial election.
00:00:51.120Because a lot of these mandates, like you know, are provincial laws and not federal.
00:00:55.780We've seen no matter which government, which party, Liberal, Conservative, NDP, provincial governments have all basically gone the same way.
00:01:05.140They've all been very heavy-handed with restrictions.
00:01:07.320What's the message to Ontarians who have seen that there basically is, in legislatures, no real opposition to these things?
00:01:15.020Well, when Doug Ford became the leader of the PC Party, and then he became Premier, everyone thought we had a leader on the right side of the spectrum to defend the little guy, defend the taxpayer, stand up to Justin Trudeau's left-wing politics.
00:01:28.720But instead, he betrayed Ford Nation and all of Ontario, and he gave Justin a pass.
00:01:35.960So instead of having some strong leadership out of Ontario to stand up to Trudeau, he's given him carte blanche.
00:01:42.660So Trudeau can do anything, and there's no opposition.
00:01:45.540And Belinda and I, the MPP in Cambridge, we live in Ontario.
00:01:49.660She's the MPP in the riding of Cambridge.
00:01:51.320We decided the solution starts in Ontario, providing leadership to stand up against Justin Trudeau, and we need that institutional, political party on the right side of the spectrum standing up for the little guy.
00:02:05.480You've obviously seen a huge groundswell of support behind the convoy.
00:02:09.620I know you've been involved before running for politics in grassroots efforts, notably Axe the Carbon Tax.
00:02:14.520Have you ever seen something quite like what's been happening this week and what's happening today in Ottawa?
00:02:18.300Well, the silent majority has always been strong, and they've always been supportive of us in Ontario.
00:02:22.560Axe the Carbon Tax, take back our PC party, when Belinda ran, the leadership campaign I was on, and when we started the new blue party.
00:02:29.340But this time, the guys in charge went too far.
00:02:33.060They went too far, and it's been two years of this.
00:02:35.840And it started way before COVID, the way that we saw the PC party being run and the inside political parties, how they were being run.
00:02:43.420And now they've taken that spirit of treating people like the truckers with disdain, and they've implemented that type of attitude in government.
00:02:52.080And they've gone too far, and the truckers have done an incredible job putting it on the map, and we're here to support that.
00:02:57.780How do you, as a provincial leader heading into an election in just a few months, keep up this momentum and not let it be just some flash in the pan that dissipates come Monday?
00:03:06.520Well, Belinda and I have been at this for a while, Andrew, and this is a long-term project, the new blue party.
00:03:10.940We've got riding associations set up in almost every riding.
00:03:15.400We've got hundreds of people who have applied to be candidates.
00:03:17.680We've got to get through an election campaign and keep building long-term to create a political party where people on the ground in Ontario can sign up, get interested, get active,
00:03:27.600because the other establishment parties have just shut it down.
00:03:30.120You don't have a say anymore in Canadian politics because the lobbyists and the left-wing ideologues are running the other three parties.
00:03:36.120So this is a long-term project for us.
00:03:37.660We know people want quick solutions, but it's not going to happen overnight, and the truckers are doing an incredible job in the political solution in Ontario's new blue party.