Juno News - Conservative Leadership Series： Leslyn Lewis

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:10.660 Coming up, the Conservative Leadership Series concludes with my sit-down interview with leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis about identity politics, net zero, and the road to a Conservative victory.

00:00:21.000 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:24.000 Hello and welcome. This is another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:32.460 As we've been doing the last six weeks now, we are doing in-depth conversations with Conservative leadership candidates that run the gamut.

00:00:40.200 We talk about their policies, the state of Canadian politics, a few curveballs here and there, and the goal is to really get a sense of who these candidates are.

00:00:48.220 Remember, they're not just seeking to lead the Conservatives, but they're also seeking to lead the country.

00:00:53.000 So we've been doing this series. We've gone through five of the six candidates so far, and today we have the final installment of this series, my sit-down with Leslyn Lewis.

00:01:01.840 Now, I've spoken to Leslyn Lewis in the past, so it's not my first time speaking to her, even in the campaign.

00:01:07.180 I did an interview not long after she launched. Also caught up with her in Ottawa for the Freedom Convoy, and again, very briefly, after the unofficial first Conservative leadership debate put on by the Canada Strong and Free Network.

00:01:19.940 But this is a lengthier discussion. As you'll see, we cover a number of different things that she's touched on in her campaigns and others that Conservative members and prospective Conservative voters have shared with us as being questions that they have.

00:01:31.340 And here is my interview with Conservative leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis.

00:01:35.320 Haldeman Norfolk Member of Parliament Leslyn Lewis. Dr. Lewis, good to speak to you. Thanks for doing this.

00:01:39.580 Nice to be back with you, Andrew, and in person this time.

00:01:41.980 Yes, yes. Always a pleasure to speak to you in person. When I last interviewed you in person, it was briefly after the debate, the Canada Strong and Free Network conference debate in Ottawa, which was the first debate of this race.

00:01:56.580 And now, obviously, we've had a few more months of campaigning and the membership cutoff is locked in.

00:02:01.920 What's your sense of this race overall, especially as for you, it's a second time running compared to last time around? How are you feeling?

00:02:08.780 So, well, last time around, you know that I won the popular vote on the second ballot.

00:02:14.640 I, my numbers are much stronger this time. I see that the support for me is much stronger this time.

00:02:22.000 It's a little bit bewildering because the media has not even recognized that.

00:02:26.560 I mean, you have, and to some respect, and so has Conservative media.

00:02:30.880 But the media in general has not really recognized the fact that I'm really the only candidate that has a proven track record in a federal Conservative leadership race.

00:02:41.700 And it was a very strong track record, but yet they really, really view me as an invisible person.

00:02:48.840 And I'm getting a lot of support from the membership base who are recognizing just how biased the legacy media in general, the pundits are.

00:02:58.080 Going into the 2020 leadership race, I think you were a relative political unknown.

00:03:04.340 I know you had run as a candidate in Scarborough, but now you've come at it as someone with national profile.

00:03:10.720 But after the last leadership race, I think a lot of people really thought you were going to have a very strong role in the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:03:17.880 Certainly Aaron O'Toole had indicated that.

00:03:19.840 But you were not even given a shadow cabinet role after the 2021 election.

00:03:25.400 Did you feel directly sidelined?

00:03:29.060 Well, I think, to be honest with you, Aaron wanted to give me a shadow cabinet position.

00:03:34.060 But he had a policy that everybody at that time had to divulge their vaccination status.

00:03:39.100 And I was very adamant that I believed that the vaccine mandates and COVID was being used to create division and to really create segregation within our society.

00:03:52.620 And I was very adamant that medical privacy is something that's very, very important because I was afraid of what was going to happen, how we were going to use it as a political wedge.

00:04:03.020 And I was right. It did happen. And so I stood up for that.

00:04:07.300 And Aaron was honest with me. He said, you'll have to divulge to get the shadow cabinet position.

00:04:13.420 And he really wanted to give it to me. But I said, no, this is a stance that I have to take. And he understood.

00:04:20.280 When you talk about this invisibility that you feel to the mainstream media in the current race, what do you think is the source of that?

00:04:27.420 Do you think it's that you are someone who's talking about vaccine mandates? Do you think it's because you're pro-life?

00:04:31.680 Why do you think you are taking on that status of being invisible, in your words?

00:04:38.540 Well, no, because someone like Roman Babar gave up his career.

00:04:43.600 He took a very, very, very harsh stance and paid a price for vaccine mandates.

00:04:50.620 So I don't think it's necessarily that. I think it's because I don't fit the narrative, the left-leaning narrative of what a black woman should be.

00:04:58.800 And they want me to be a victim.

00:05:03.520 They've created this entire critical race narrative where they define everybody in terms of their race.

00:05:10.600 And you have to fit within a certain box. I don't fit within that box.

00:05:14.720 I refuse to see a little white six-year-old child and label that child as an oppressor.

00:05:20.460 Nor do I want anybody labeling my children as victims.

00:05:24.160 And I'm not a victim. So when you can create a narrative that people of color are victims, then you can render them invisible.

00:05:33.760 And that's exactly what the media has done.

00:05:35.660 If you look at what happened recently when Patrick Brown got kicked out of the race, it was preposterous that people were saying,

00:05:42.320 Oh, who are visible minorities going to vote for? Because they had rendered me completely invisible. 1.00

00:05:48.840 And it's because of this vote-cancel culture narrative that we have bought into, whereby we, if everybody doesn't agree,

00:05:57.480 if everybody doesn't agree on abortion or pro-life, you label them, you demonize them, you create a political wedge,

00:06:04.360 you get them to fight against each other.

00:06:06.240 And that's how politicians keep us divided.

00:06:09.420 I've taken a different approach. I've said, I don't want to be a regular politician where I'm going to dodge from the question.

00:06:16.520 This is who I am. This is what I believe.

00:06:18.900 I don't necessarily believe that you have to have the same beliefs as me.

00:06:23.400 In fact, I welcome you to have a different perspective than I have.

00:06:27.520 If you take, for the example of abortion, I am working with pro-choice people right now on dealing with the issue of females being rendered less than boys in the womb.

00:06:41.700 I'm dealing with that because we've seen that China and India has put in laws to make sure that aborting female babies is not a practice anymore. 0.98

00:06:55.740 And those countries have dealt with that problem because there was a problem.

00:06:59.980 And now the only two countries that are left that allow you to have an abortion only because you're a girl are Canada and North Korea.

00:07:07.420 So we're seeing a tourist industry here in Canada.

00:07:10.500 And so pro-life people and pro-choice people have united and said, yes, we will unite together in fighting misogyny because we believe that baby girls are equal to baby boys.

00:07:21.560 That is something that we can do in forming common ground.

00:07:25.960 But we can never get there if we demonize each other and if we assume that just because we have different perspectives, we can't agree on anything.

00:07:34.280 And so that's what I'm trying to put forth is that type of leadership.

00:07:38.580 I want to go back to the identity politics comment you made at the beginning of that response.

00:07:42.620 Because you were, it sounded like, talking about the way the left assumes that all minorities think and act the same.

00:07:48.920 You've also taken aim very recently at that attitude within conservative circles.

00:07:53.340 I mean, Patrick Brown's campaign, for example, talked about really courting the so-called ethnic vote as though anyone who is under that banner of ethnic thinks the same way about politics and leadership candidates.

00:08:04.480 Do you feel that conservatives get too hung up in identity politics?

00:08:07.900 Because I've heard supporters of yours, for example, that say, well, you know, it would be great if conservatives fielded a minority because then it would deflect against the racism allegation or a woman because it would deflect against the misogyny.

00:08:18.780 Do you feel conservatives get too consumed by this as well?

00:08:21.600 No, it's a real issue.

00:08:23.820 Race is a real issue.

00:08:25.060 The problem that we have is when we attribute everything to it. 0.93

00:08:29.520 Now, if we know that the liberals are playing identity politics, yes, of course, my candidacy is going to deflect against that because the ridiculous things that they accuse conservatives of are false. 0.84

00:08:42.440 Many of them are false.

00:08:43.580 And so that's a part of the problem that the media has with me is that they can no longer perpetuate that false narrative.

00:08:51.720 So race is real, racism is real, but the problem is, is that we cannot reduce individuals just to a race.

00:09:00.360 And for a leadership candidate to say, I somehow have proprietary rights over this group of people and I'm going to pass them on to this group of people as if these individuals are not human beings with identities, with values.

00:09:15.540 I believe that I can reach different segments of people based on different values.

00:09:22.200 You reach farmers based on one set of values.

00:09:25.140 You may reach another group based on a different set of values, but you can't assume that every farmer thinks alike or every white person thinks alike or every person of color thinks alike.

00:09:36.180 You have, in the course of your campaign, called out a number of global institutions and treaties that you view as problematic.

00:09:43.840 Most notably, we have the World Health Organization, which I think has been rightfully under a microscope lately.

00:09:49.940 Talk to me about what you would do as Prime Minister when it comes to Canada's engagement with multilateral organizations, including, but not limited to, the WHO.

00:09:59.420 Well, sovereignty is very important.

00:10:01.180 My sovereignty as a individual is very important.

00:10:05.160 My government needs to respect that.

00:10:07.080 Same with our national sovereignty.

00:10:09.120 That is also very important.

00:10:10.920 I believe that global organizations are encroaching on our sovereignty.

00:10:16.360 And many of the treaties that are being imposed, we later ascend to those treaties.

00:10:21.460 And then we start to conform our laws to meet those treaty parameters.

00:10:28.180 And so that's the problem that I have when we have something like the World Pandemic Treaty that's going to be drafted.

00:10:36.180 The first draft will be presented in August next month.

00:10:40.100 And yet we have not looked at what we have done right and wrong in COVID.

00:10:44.780 We have not formulated our own pandemic response.

00:10:48.080 So how can we sit down at a table with global leaders and say, this is how our interests will best be served when we haven't assessed that on our own?

00:10:57.760 That's the problem that I have primarily with the World Pandemic Treaty.

00:11:02.140 And the fact that the international health regulations that's attached to the WHO, that those were going to be modified, those 13 modifications that seemed to be just being pushed under the carpet earlier,

00:11:17.280 I thought it was very important to raise a flag and let civil society know exactly what was going on.

00:11:23.880 But what was going on?

00:11:24.540 What were the issues with those amendments to the IHRs?

00:11:27.280 The issue was that many of those amendments, if they had taken place, it would have been a preemptive treaty.

00:11:35.280 It was almost like grooming us for a treaty.

00:11:38.060 And yet those would have taken place outside of the parameters of consultation that you would have when you have a signage to an international treaty.

00:11:50.360 So the civil society would have been robbed of the opportunity to engage in those amendments.

00:11:56.440 And then potentially when the treaty came about, they would say, well, you know what?

00:12:01.220 We already have these amendments in the regulation.

00:12:03.880 That's why I put my foot down.

00:12:05.720 That's why I sent out a petition.

00:12:08.260 And that's why in two days we had over 21,000 people signing on to that petition.

00:12:14.660 So do you think then that Canada should withdraw from the World Health Organization?

00:12:19.180 Because this is a discussion that's happened after the former White House, the Trump administration, wanted to withdraw the U.S.

00:12:25.620 Do you think that that's something Canada should do?

00:12:27.820 I think Canada should withdraw from any international treaty that affects our sovereignty.

00:12:32.420 But from the organization itself, from the WHO?

00:12:34.780 Well, from the WHO.

00:12:35.920 If it's affecting our sovereignty and if they're not going to respect our sovereign health care rights, then absolutely yes.

00:12:42.000 What is it that you would like to see as Canada's role on the world stage?

00:12:46.340 Because we all know when Justin Trudeau came in, he gave that famous line, Canada's back, as though Canada was a laughingstock under Harper and then it was back.

00:12:53.600 And, I mean, I think most people know that hasn't worked out exactly as he promised it.

00:12:57.720 But what do you want to see as Canada's role?

00:13:00.900 Canada was respected under Stephen Harper internationally.

00:13:04.580 Right now we are a laughingstock.

00:13:06.440 And you have seen that in the way that our Prime Minister has been treated.

00:13:10.980 And any leader that uses a tragedy to divide and for political gain, there is a reckoning and there will be a result.

00:13:21.860 And Canadians are waking up to exactly what has happened.

00:13:25.660 Canadians are going to make sure that they are holding their elected officials more accountable.

00:13:31.800 What tragedy are you referring to?

00:13:33.240 We had COVID. COVID created such trauma in people's lives.

00:13:39.300 We're still recovering from it.

00:13:41.020 There are many people, every day I meet people, who have a story, who cry in my presence.

00:13:47.640 Whether they're grown men or grown women crying because of some of the trauma that they've endured because of COVID.

00:13:55.740 And we had a Prime Minister that capitalized on that.

00:13:59.240 In fact, $650 million was spent on a pandemic election.

00:14:05.580 And we're no further along.

00:14:08.700 We've heard rumblings, which as you know now in Ottawa are very common about anything and everything, that there could be a fall election coming up.

00:14:15.460 And the Conservatives put out a tweet last week when this came up that said, you know, Canada doesn't need an election.

00:14:22.040 Canadians don't want an election.

00:14:23.820 The counterpoint to that is that for Conservatives who see what Justin Trudeau is doing, who oppose that, you'd think they'd want to replace him at the first available opportunity.

00:14:32.520 The very first available opportunity.

00:14:33.720 So you would be, you would welcome if you're the leader of September or fall election.

00:14:36.680 Absolutely. The very first available opportunity to replace him because Canadians are tired. 1.00

00:14:43.180 Canadians recognize that the only way forward is a Conservative majority so that we can undo some of the damage that has been done by this current leadership.

00:14:54.500 We need an election and if one, the opportunity comes up in the fall, I think that we should jump at it.

00:15:01.340 It would be the best opportunity for our country.

00:15:03.960 You've taken aim at the idea of net zero, which as we know is really the backbone of, I think, Canada's environmental policy right now.

00:15:11.580 This idea that we have to get to net zero emissions by 2030, 2035, whenever each target is it.

00:15:18.240 You wrote your doctoral dissertation on attracting green energy investment.

00:15:22.960 You were specifically looking at sub-Saharan Africa.

00:15:25.440 But a lot of people would look at that and say, well, she's a booster of a lot of the very same things that net zero is really based on.

00:15:32.380 So what is your view on this?

00:15:33.820 That means that they didn't understand my PhD thesis because my PhD thesis was actually about representing Canadian corporations

00:15:43.100 and working with other countries that were transitioning and wanted.

00:15:49.220 They didn't have the grid capacity.

00:15:50.860 They don't have oil and gas like we have.

00:15:53.820 They don't have the third largest accessible oil reserves on the planet.

00:15:58.580 So any source, and they don't have electricity.

00:16:01.360 So any source of electrification is a bonus for them.

00:16:05.820 And when you're close to the equator and your biggest resource is the sun, solar panels are very viable.

00:16:13.220 And so Canadian companies that I represented were actually selling that to have countries in sub-Saharan Africa

00:16:21.100 optimize their biggest resource, which is the sun, one of their biggest resources.

00:16:26.780 And just like here, one of our biggest energy resources is oil and gas.

00:16:31.240 And I would do the same for Canada.

00:16:33.500 When you say that you're an environmentalist, but you're against the carbon tax and you're against net zero,

00:16:39.080 what does your view look like?

00:16:41.420 If you were to run in a general election campaign trying to court a country's worth of votes,

00:16:46.020 what does your environmental platform look like?

00:16:48.140 Because generally speaking, I think the liberals and I'd say the media have made it so that the only way you can be an environmentalist

00:16:54.420 is by supporting a carbon tax.

00:16:56.040 What's your response to that when you're going to get that question inevitably?

00:16:59.620 Well, I have a master's of environmental studies.

00:17:01.980 And when I was studying the environment, the term climate change wasn't even in political spheres at that time.

00:17:09.900 It wasn't even popular when I did my master's of the environment.

00:17:14.320 And I did it because I knew that we have to be good stewards of our environment.

00:17:20.980 And I believe that we can develop our natural resources while being good stewards.

00:17:25.900 And net zero is something that I believe is capitalizing on fear.

00:17:34.620 And the governmental officials that are using it, they're not even operationalizing it.

00:17:39.980 They're not telling you what it means.

00:17:41.560 It's almost like a boogeyman.

00:17:42.680 And so they can create any policy around it.

00:17:46.180 They will tell you that electric cars are great for the environment and has a low carbon footprint.

00:17:53.340 But when you look at the entire life cycle of an electric car and you start off in, say, an African country 0.98

00:18:01.460 with five-year-old children working in cobalt or lithium mines,

00:18:06.820 and then you look at the disposal of the battery at the end life,

00:18:12.580 and you calculate all that in the carbon footprint,

00:18:15.280 you would have a very different picture.

00:18:17.340 But they don't do that.

00:18:18.200 But they do do it for, say, something like cattle farming.

00:18:22.420 They would calculate the entire life cycle of that cow and that piece of steak on that table.

00:18:30.400 And they would tell you that that is not environmentally efficient for you to eat beef.

00:18:35.940 But they don't do it for other things.

00:18:37.880 And when farmers protest and say,

00:18:40.120 well, why don't I get credit for the sequestration that I'm doing?

00:18:43.720 Why don't I get credit for the fact that I'm doing crop rotation?

00:18:47.180 Why don't I get that credit to reduce my carbon tax that I have to pay to dry my crops?

00:18:53.480 There's no answers.

00:18:54.640 So it's a dictatorial approach.

00:18:57.160 And that approach comes because they conjure up fear about what the environment is.

00:19:03.140 They conjure up fear about climate change being only man-made,

00:19:08.200 when we know it's both natural and man-made.

00:19:10.680 And then they use it to create a revenue stream, a taxation stream.

00:19:18.360 And the bad thing about that is, is that that taxation stream has done nothing to reduce emissions.

00:19:24.940 I care about the environment.

00:19:26.700 I don't want to pay virtue signals with the environment.

00:19:29.540 I want to see real substantive changes that's going to reduce emissions.

00:19:35.800 And I know that farmers have the capacity to do that because their livelihoods depend on it.

00:19:41.400 But the government is just not communicating.

00:19:45.300 They are just expecting people to toe the line and not ask questions.

00:19:50.180 And I don't think that that's a productive way to move forward.

00:19:52.920 But emission reduction is the backbone of net zero.

00:19:56.300 Now, obviously, net zero is wanting to reduce emissions to zero, at least ostensibly.

00:20:00.620 And I know that there's a lot of debate about whether the idea of offsetting really exists.

00:20:04.460 But it's formulated on the idea of reducing emissions.

00:20:07.300 So how does your plan, which you're saying involves wanting to reduce emissions, differ from the Liberal government's plan,

00:20:14.040 with the exception of the carbon tax?

00:20:15.360 What are you going to do?

00:20:16.100 Unless your answer could just be, we'll let farmers and let the market do it, which is perfectly fine.

00:20:20.400 But do you want government to have a role in this emission reduction?

00:20:23.740 I do believe that there are market incentives that can be provided.

00:20:27.800 And that is for things such as innovative technologies.

00:20:31.300 Innovative technologies that will actually enhance conservation, reduce emissions.

00:20:38.580 And many farmers implemented those technologies in order to save their farms.

00:20:44.500 And then the government came back and said, no, that's not enough.

00:20:47.340 You need to reduce nitrogen by X amount.

00:20:51.140 And that's the problem that we're seeing now in the Netherlands, that the target keeps shifting.

00:20:56.720 The goal keeps shifting.

00:20:58.220 What we need is some continuity.

00:21:00.040 We need to have metrics that we can measure, that people can question.

00:21:05.840 And it doesn't have to be a one-sided, dictatorial approach.

00:21:10.200 What is it that your campaign is about?

00:21:12.940 If you can distill it down into a theme, what is it that your message fundamentally is to Conservative members and to Canadians?

00:21:20.120 I think essentially it's about freedom.

00:21:22.300 It's about freedom to be able to be a sovereign nation that we love and that we've built.

00:21:27.960 The freedom to work together and unite together.

00:21:32.580 The freedom of individuals to be able to determine their own destiny.

00:21:37.220 And these are things that Canadians feel are being eroded.

00:21:41.540 And so there's an element of hope that people are hoping that leaders will come forward that will be able to stand up to some of the misinformation and the lies that have been used to just divide us, to turn us against each other, to create hatred, and really for politicians to capitalize off of.

00:22:04.760 So I think that if we look at the issue of freedom, we'll see so many aspects of what we need to do to move forward.

00:22:16.220 Freedom to prosper and to develop our natural resources.

00:22:20.420 Dr. Lewis, thank you.

00:22:21.660 Thank you.

00:22:22.100 That was my interview with Leslyn Lewis, concluding our Conservative Leadership Series, which uncreatively is our series of Conservative Leadership Candidates.

00:22:31.580 So I hope you've enjoyed.

00:22:32.780 And if you've missed any of them, we have them all up at tnc.news.

00:22:35.800 You can see my chats with Roman Babber, Scott Aitchison, with Pierre Paulyeve, with Jean Charest, and just for posterity and for the heck of it with Patrick Brown, although he is not in the race at this point.

00:22:47.300 But the reason I share that with you is so that you can also, if you've enjoyed it and you think there's some value to this, so that you can head on over to donate.tnc.news and support this.

00:22:57.600 We've had to go around and meet the leadership candidates where they are.

00:23:00.640 So if you can show your support for this project and for the other work that True North is doing, we would mightily appreciate it.

00:23:07.600 In the meantime, that does it for me.

00:23:09.080 We'll be back soon with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:23:13.240 This is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:23:14.740 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:23:16.720 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:23:19.080 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - April 11, 2020

Conservative Leadership Series： Leslyn Lewis

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