Juno News - Does O'Toole have what it takes to beat Trudeau？

00:00:00.000 Now that there's a lot of election chatter going on in Canada, it is a good time to ask,

00:00:10.460 does Aaron O'Toole have what it takes right now to become the next prime minister? Can the

00:00:15.800 conservative leader unseat Justin Trudeau? Can he pull it off? And you know, if you speak to a lot

00:00:21.400 of grassroots members, if you want my opinion on it as well, it's not looking very good. Not all

00:00:26.520 that optimistic for Aaron O'Toole. Although a note of caution, very similar things were said about

00:00:31.260 Stephen Harper a number of years ago. No way will he win. He can't possibly beat Paul Martin's

00:00:35.980 juggernaut. Not going to happen. And of course he was prime minister for a decade. What are some of

00:00:41.480 the criticisms of Aaron O'Toole right now though? Well, we are currently in a major situation in

00:00:47.980 Canada, if you haven't noticed, dealing with the pandemic, both the health crisis in the hospitals,

00:00:52.660 the previous crisis most acutely felt at long-term care facilities, and of course these lockdowns

00:00:57.860 that are destroying so many people's livelihoods. And what does Aaron O'Toole have to say about all

00:01:02.220 this? Well, not much really. I mean, this is a time where you want leaders to lead. There's a lot

00:01:09.560 of folks out there looking for leadership, looking for a better way, a better path forward. And Aaron

00:01:13.820 O'Toole, I don't know, seems like he's trying to be very cagey about talking about lockdowns.

00:01:18.200 He likes to talk about process questions, hammering Justin Trudeau over availability of vaccines and

00:01:23.720 so forth. Fair enough, but he doesn't seem like he's really willing to grab the bull by the horns

00:01:27.600 and really surge ahead in this conversation. So you go, well, what are you waiting for? And a lot

00:01:33.140 of people concerned with the idea that he's basically doing that rather classic conservative

00:01:38.400 strategy that never really seems to work when they try it, which is trying to appease those CBC

00:01:44.220 Toronto star voices, sort of people who are probably never really going to vote for them

00:01:48.220 anyway, but really sort of wants to covet the endorsement from those voices. That's why a lot

00:01:53.400 of people feel like he's been so aggressive on talking about the climate change issue in a way

00:01:57.680 that, well, is it actually winning you any favor? Is it just frustrates some people in your base and it

00:02:03.720 doesn't really bring new people over to your camp? So a lot of questions about how he's approaching

00:02:08.060 that as well. Aaron O'Toole, he actually ran during the leadership as more of the true blue

00:02:14.220 candidate and Peter, Peter McKay was supposed to be a bit more of the centrist candidate, but Aaron

00:02:19.120 O'Toole, no, he was the, he was the true conservative one was how he liked to position himself. But now,

00:02:24.600 I mean, he's just not. Back during the campaign, he was talking about stopping cancel culture and so 0.98

00:02:30.480 forth. A lot of things that excited a whole lot of people and we're not really seeing much of that

00:02:35.080 energy right now. So Justin Trudeau, I mean, like him, dislike him. He's someone who pretty clearly

00:02:41.440 says, this is who I am. And he just surges ahead with it all come hell or high water. And it,

00:02:46.220 it looks like that's actually served him well. Aaron O'Toole seeming like, well, what's the real

00:02:51.180 deal? The person who ran for leader or how you're conducting yourself right now as leader, maybe we're

00:02:55.800 going to see new person during the general election campaign. And maybe that new person will be the one

00:03:00.740 who prevails in the elections and attracts a whole lot of new voters to the camp and makes

00:03:05.860 them win. The whole idea, I do think that, oh, you know, the conservatives are not doing well and so

00:03:11.540 forth. Well, not accurate because last election, they actually won the popular vote. More people

00:03:15.980 voted for the conservatives under Andrew Scheer than voted for the liberals under Justin Trudeau. It's

00:03:21.720 just the way that the votes broke down and so forth. The popular vote was not to Andrew Scheer's

00:03:26.680 disadvantage. Justin Trudeau still won more riding. So, hey, anything's possible with Aaron O'Toole,

00:03:31.660 but folks in the grassroots in particular definitely have some concerns.

Juno News - April 10, 2021