Juno News - September 10, 2023


Are the Conservatives more united than ever？


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

214.0605

Word Count

1,901

Sentence Count

111


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Elie Cartain-Nartel here for True North at the Conservative Party in Canada's National Convention in Quebec City,
00:00:05.940 which is wrapping up now. Behind me, you can see people wrap things up.
00:00:10.540 I'm here with our managing editor and host of the Andrew Lawton Show, the one and only Andrew Lawton.
00:00:17.460 Andrew, what did you make of this convention?
00:00:20.040 I'm just glad I don't have to interview anyone anymore, that I'm being interviewed,
00:00:23.260 because I've spent like the last three days asking everyone questions.
00:00:26.000 It was really interesting. Now, I should say for context,
00:00:27.860 I've never been to a Conservative convention before.
00:00:31.000 I've been to a provincial, actually a couple of provincial party conventions in the past.
00:00:34.780 So at the same time, I've been able to see a pretty good sense of what these things are about.
00:00:39.740 And, you know, the one thing is that there's been a lot of malaise in the Conservative Party over the last many years,
00:00:45.380 simply because the party has been just losing.
00:00:48.660 It lost in 2015 with Stephen Harper, it lost in 2019 with Andrew Scheer, it lost in 2021 with Aaron O'Toole.
00:00:54.680 And each of those changes in leader was fraught with a number of challenges as well,
00:00:58.980 and a lot of internal turmoil.
00:01:00.540 Whereas right now, there's a Conservative Party that is pretty united behind Pierre Polyev.
00:01:05.860 The People's Party of Canada has not really been succeeding all that much after its strong showing in 2021.
00:01:12.560 I've spoken to people here that were like PPC diehard supporters that are now supporting the Conservatives.
00:01:17.880 So there's a level of optimism in this convention that I think we have not seen in the Conservative Party for several years.
00:01:24.840 I would agree.
00:01:25.800 When I spoke to everybody, I did not meet one person who told me I was dissatisfied with Pierre Polyev.
00:01:30.540 And before I started doing journalism, I used to work in politics.
00:01:34.180 And I remember under the other leaders, you would often find people who would tell me,
00:01:38.180 I'm not the biggest fan, I'll vote for him because he's not Trudeau.
00:01:41.000 But that was usually the line to, versus here, people will actually vote for Polyev.
00:01:45.760 What do you think Polyev has been able to do that others have not been able to do?
00:01:49.140 Because like, as we saw last night with his speech, there was a lot of momentum,
00:01:52.160 there was a lot of people, there was a lot of energy, and we did not see that with the other two leaders.
00:01:55.820 Well, one thing that I will point out is that in the last, well, the leadership races that elected O'Toole and Scheer,
00:02:03.380 there was really a question of which group each was appealing to.
00:02:08.960 Like, Andrew Scheer won because of social conservatives,
00:02:12.280 and Aaron O'Toole won because of people that were kind of the more blue Tory types
00:02:17.560 with some support from social conservatives.
00:02:19.440 But it was very much an us versus them, you know, the red Tories versus the blue Tories in some way.
00:02:24.700 Whereas Pierre Polyev won on the first ballot, and he had a margin of victory
00:02:28.940 that even Stephen Harper didn't have when he ran for the leadership of the first conservative party.
00:02:33.920 So I think what he's done is, at least for now, united most of the party in a way his predecessors haven't.
00:02:39.620 And that means that even on the convention floor,
00:02:42.420 there wasn't a lot of bickering about the type of stuff you see parties internally bickering about.
00:02:47.520 Right, no, for sure. And I would say back to when the leadership race was happening,
00:02:52.080 the diverse support he was getting from social conservatives,
00:02:55.080 some red Tories from people in the establishment class,
00:02:57.480 it was a very diverse, and yeah, we had not seen that with these other candidates.
00:03:01.700 What we saw at this convention, though, is issues that Pierre Polyev has not really been keen to talk about himself.
00:03:07.220 And I'm referring to gender ideology.
00:03:09.760 There was a motion that passed 89 percent, sorry, not even 87 percent, I believe.
00:03:14.840 87 percent in favor of defining a woman as a female person and protecting single-sex spaces.
00:03:20.660 And there was another one in the high 60s to be opposed to the gender transitioning of children.
00:03:28.380 What did you make of these really strong numbers for these resolutions by the delegates?
00:03:33.180 Well, I think, look, it's always important, as you put in your stories, to lay out the caveat that party policy is just that.
00:03:39.280 It's where the party's members have said they stand.
00:03:41.200 It's not the leader's platform.
00:03:42.360 It's not what the conservative government would do in policy.
00:03:45.320 But at the same time, these things are incredibly useful because, like, I don't support booing people that are making a contribution.
00:03:50.860 But when people were speaking up against those motions, there was snickering.
00:03:54.600 There was jeering.
00:03:55.480 Like, these were not majority opinions in the conservative party, the opposed position to these motions.
00:04:01.700 They were very popular.
00:04:03.180 And I think that Polyev needs to look around and see where his base is on issues.
00:04:07.040 And, look, one example that I'll bring up, which is not the gender stuff, but the Freedom Convoy.
00:04:11.540 So this was something I've obviously covered that the Liberals and the media have tried to say is politically toxic.
00:04:16.900 But in this crowd, any time someone mentioned a trucker, they were getting a huge amount of applause.
00:04:21.940 And Pierre Polyev's wife, Anna, acknowledged truckers and got huge applause.
00:04:26.640 So I think they are listening, and they have to understand where their base is.
00:04:30.820 And, you know, Pierre Polyev, at first, when he was asked about parental rights, said, oh, it's a provincial issue.
00:04:35.320 A couple weeks later, he gave a bit more of an answer.
00:04:38.080 And I think any time he's been asked that, he's started to become a little bit more aware of where his base is.
00:04:44.420 And I think that's an important check and balance on leaders, is what are the members saying.
00:04:49.040 And, you know, the members haven't had a policy convention in five years.
00:04:52.160 So this is a really important opportunity for them to tell the leader, this is who we are.
00:04:56.420 Right, for sure.
00:04:57.060 I guess as a follow-up to that, we saw with the Freedom Convoy, the Conservatives going from, you know,
00:05:02.280 being a little meh on mandates, being like, oh, we support rapid tests, to being unsure about the convoy,
00:05:08.220 to going unapologetically in favor of the convoy and against the mandates.
00:05:12.340 Do you think over time we're going to see the same thing with some of these radical gender ideology issues,
00:05:18.620 where they'll slowly, because in the UK now, the Labour Party is opposed to gender ideology.
00:05:23.560 So do you think we're heading there in Canada, too?
00:05:25.180 Yeah, I think so.
00:05:26.620 I mean, Doug Ford, who is not at all a hardline Conservative by any stretch,
00:05:30.920 has even come out and said, you know, parents need to be the ones educating their kids
00:05:34.360 and we need to stand against indoctrination.
00:05:36.600 And that, for a leader like Doug Ford in a province like Ontario, is a very important development.
00:05:41.240 So I think the tide is turning here.
00:05:43.040 I think you've got what's happening in New Brunswick and Alberta and Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario.
00:05:47.780 This is a wave that will be very difficult for any politician, Conservative or otherwise, to try to avoid.
00:05:53.400 So we saw something interesting, too, at this convention, where we had Liberal ministers crashing the convention.
00:05:58.760 Stephen Gilboa came yesterday, on a Friday in the morning, and Abel Rodriguez came twice.
00:06:05.020 What signal do you think this sends from the Liberal camp?
00:06:08.720 I mean, to be honest, I'm okay with it, because the more the Liberals are spending of their time doing stuff like this,
00:06:14.760 the less they're ruining the country.
00:06:16.420 So in that sense, it's like, I'd prefer they just spend all their day just going and gate-crashing Conservative events.
00:06:21.020 Well, we should have a convention all the time.
00:06:22.220 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're right.
00:06:23.380 Let's just, you know, keep all the stuff set up back here and let Pablo Rodriguez just, you know, spin his wheels outside.
00:06:28.540 I think it's a little bit of desperation, and I will say the shine has come off even to the media.
00:06:33.340 Like, the questions that the mainstream media journalists were asking them were like,
00:06:37.500 like, listen, are you in any position to judge when you look at your poll numbers right now?
00:06:41.180 And they don't really have an answer to it.
00:06:42.320 It's, oh, well, yeah, you know, we just need to work harder.
00:06:44.940 It's like, great, then stop, like, heckling Conservatives and go and win back this trust from Canadians.
00:06:49.560 We saw some very high poll numbers recently for the Conservatives, and that's probably one of the things that's making the Liberals nervous.
00:06:57.480 After this convention, after the media coverage that this gets, do you think the Conservatives are stronger coming out of this convention than they were coming into it?
00:07:04.100 I think they are, because I think there's a little bit more of a solidified message for what they stand for.
00:07:10.320 I mean, Pierre Paliyev spoke for just over an hour last night, and a lot of what he said was repetitive.
00:07:15.480 I mean, I'd even heard some of the jokes and, you know, asides before about, you know, a family moving into the old CBC headquarters and stuff like that.
00:07:21.280 I do like that. I do like that joke.
00:07:22.820 It's a great joke, but I'm saying I've heard it, like, you know, nine times now.
00:07:25.040 Yeah, no, he says it all the time.
00:07:25.980 Yeah, and stuff like that.
00:07:27.360 But I think at the same time, we get a bit more of a vision, because, you know, the Conservatives are not running in an election.
00:07:32.840 They don't have a platform out yet, because it's early.
00:07:35.600 So when Pierre Paliyev speaks, any time, it's kind of a little bit more of the picture of what message they're going to bring in.
00:07:42.340 And I'm sorry, this is uncontroversial stuff.
00:07:44.560 They're talking about common sense, housing, affordability.
00:07:47.400 These are pretty universal messages.
00:07:48.940 So I think that it shows where the Conservatives are really trying to focus their efforts, while not being afraid to still talk a little bit about the other stuff.
00:07:57.660 And I think your point about gender is valid.
00:07:59.780 They could do a bit more of it, but that's where their focus is.
00:08:03.220 Right, for sure.
00:08:04.020 There was an analogy that someone in the States made about a cake, and you have the cake, and you've got the icing.
00:08:08.360 And you love the icing.
00:08:09.380 The culture war stuff is the icing.
00:08:10.700 But, you know, a cake isn't good when it's this much icing and this much cake.
00:08:13.620 I disagree with that, but anyway.
00:08:15.060 On the cake thing, not on the politics thing.
00:08:18.340 You know, to be fair, there are some good icings out there.
00:08:20.520 Just give me the icing with the bowl.
00:08:21.620 That's why I look this way.
00:08:23.280 Well, this was a great way to catch up with you, Andrew.
00:08:28.080 If you support our coverage and our work here at True North, and you support Andrew's podcast, my journalism, and any other thing that we do,
00:08:36.340 then please visit donate.tnc.news to make a donation.
00:08:41.420 In Quebec City, for True North, I'm Élie Quentin-Antenne.
00:08:45.060 Thank you.
00:08:51.760 Thank you.