Juno News - Candice Malcolm reacts to ＂uncomfortable＂ Conservative leadership debate

00:00:00.000 The whole thing was just uncomfortable to watch and many, many people that I saw commenting on

00:00:05.060 social media said that they just couldn't watch it. They just, it was just so, so bad. They

00:00:08.860 couldn't watch it. So first, the first thing that happened was Tom Clark set out these ground rules

00:00:13.320 that basically said that no one in the audience could say anything. You're not allowed to react,

00:00:18.080 you're not allowed to clap, you're not allowed to boo, you're not allowed to show any emotion.

00:00:21.280 We had our own Andrew Lawton on the ground in Edmonton. He reported that there was somewhere

00:00:24.860 between 800 and 1,000 people in the room in Edmonton. So picture this. They have a debate

00:00:30.400 in Edmonton, Alberta. They fly all the candidates out there. They fly the moderator out there.

00:00:34.080 All of the campaign teams, all the insiders go to Edmonton. They sell tickets to this thing.

00:00:39.720 They fill up a room. It's filled with conservative volunteers, activists, insiders, people who love

00:00:45.360 politics, political junkies. They all travel to Edmonton. You know, people drive from the suburbs,

00:00:49.840 people drive from rural Alberta to be there to see this thing. They fill up a room with nearly

00:00:54.720 1,000 people. And then they order everybody to be completely silent. They weren't allowed to talk.

00:01:01.800 They weren't allowed to react. What is the point of having all those people in a room? The purpose of

00:01:06.580 filming these things in front of a live audience is to capitalize on the energy, having people react,

00:01:13.380 knowing where the base stands, you know, who has the loudest applause lines. These are politicians.

00:01:18.680 They react to applause, right? You're giving a speech, a public speech in front of 1,000 people.

00:01:23.960 And you don't know what's resonating because you can't, people aren't cheering. People aren't

00:01:28.240 allowed to cheer. So this whole idea that Clark set up here, that there was no, that there was

00:01:34.300 silence, mandated silence of the audience was just terrible to me. Like there's no point in doing

00:01:40.340 a live debate if you are not going to allow the audience to be part of the debate and feed off of

00:01:47.260 their energy. So that was very brutal. And then worse off than that, when the crowd sort of ignored Tom

00:01:53.420 Clark and continued to do what they're going to do, which is, Hey, this is politics. We want to cheer.

00:01:58.000 We want to let the candidates know who, what, what ideas we like and what ideas we don't. Well,

00:02:02.860 Tom Clark, the moderator jumped in and penalized Pierre Polyev because someone booed Jean Trace.

Juno News - May 13, 2022