Juno News - Don't forget, O'Toole has to face a leadership review anyway

00:00:00.000 I've previously said I'm agnostic on the Aaron O'Toole leadership question, the question of

00:00:09.300 should he stay or should he go? But I gotta say, it's an increasingly odd look on Aaron O'Toole

00:00:15.800 that he and the people around him are so sensitive to the leadership review question and to those

00:00:21.520 who say we would like to have a leadership review sooner than later. So my original position, which

00:00:26.680 I pretty much still stand by, is that I could see Aaron O'Toole certainly losing the next election if

00:00:31.300 he is leader and up against Justin Trudeau. I could also certainly see him winning and becoming prime

00:00:36.220 minister for multiple terms and having an enduring legacy because we saw that happen with Stephen

00:00:41.020 Harper, for instance. He lost the first time out and then he became prime minister for 10 years. So I

00:00:45.360 think anything is possible and I think there's an inherent challenge in always saying we got to get

00:00:50.160 a new person. Quick, get this guy out, get a new guy in. This is going to be the magic bullet solution

00:00:55.100 and so forth because they already did that with Andrew Scheer and clearly Aaron O'Toole did not

00:00:59.440 win by some great majority there. But like I said, I'm kind of neutral in the question of should he

00:01:04.680 stay or should he go? But here's the thing that's been lost in a lot of this conversation. It is

00:01:09.700 mandated for the Conservative Party of Canada to have a leadership review whenever they lose an

00:01:15.760 election. And this is not unique to the Conservative Party. This is something that's increasingly

00:01:19.800 happening in political parties all across the Western world. Jagmeet Singh is actually going to have to

00:01:24.000 face a leadership review with the NDP pretty soon. So this is a normal thing and I think it's a healthy

00:01:29.120 thing for grassroots democracy. I think this is a thing that should happen regardless of how I feel

00:01:33.800 about an individual leader and whether they should stay or whether they should go. What the Conservatives

00:01:38.920 appear to have done is that they have a situation where that leadership review is going to be pushed

00:01:42.820 until 2023 during a policy convention that happens that year. And I get the sense that the Aaron O'Toole

00:01:49.800 position is maybe that they kind of hope to run out the clock on that time thinking that there might

00:01:55.880 just be an imminent election anyway. So Aaron O'Toole will just get to run again in the next election

00:02:01.620 without having to have faced a leadership review of the membership out there. I could be mistaken,

00:02:07.040 but I feel like if they're looking at that time horizon, okay, well, you know, let's just wait and see

00:02:11.200 and so forth. I think what kind of makes sense is to just get it over and done with because there's

00:02:17.000 still a lot of drama. I don't know if it will increase. I don't know if the pressure will go

00:02:21.280 up or the pressure will go down. So just get the thing over and done with and prevail against that

00:02:26.740 because obviously if you can't fully convince everybody in your own team to get behind you,

00:02:32.020 how can you convince the Canadian electorate? And to be sure, let's not forget that Aaron O'Toole

00:02:37.220 got more votes than Justin Trudeau did in terms of the popular vote for Conservatives. It just didn't

00:02:42.280 distribute the way that brought them a victory. The same thing happened to Andrew Scheer. He also

00:02:46.180 secured the popular vote victory for the Conservatives back in the 2019 election. But I think the better

00:02:53.460 thing instead of trying to find ways to sort of dodge a leadership review is just to rally people

00:02:59.020 behind you and say, okay, let's get her done. Let's do this. Aaron O'Toole can get a victory. I mean,

00:03:04.080 presumably one would think that he can secure that victory and there you go. And then the question

00:03:10.300 is behind you. So I think whatever you think about should Aaron O'Toole stay or should he go,

00:03:15.940 it's mandated that there has to be a leadership review. And it seems to me it's more sensible to

00:03:21.840 do it sooner than later. Now that would require moving around when there is this policy convention,

00:03:27.200 lots of details to deal with. But this idea that someone broaching the question for whatever reason,

00:03:33.040 and I think some people, most people who say they want to review actually just want to push him

00:03:36.980 out. But at the same time, because it's a mandated thing, and because I hope we can all agree it's

00:03:42.540 healthy for party politics, just do it. Just, I don't know, just get it done. And then it's behind

00:03:48.800 you if you prevail. And if you don't prevail, well, you know, that's obviously a problem and a sign

00:03:53.600 that you need to get a new leader. Anyway, no, I just think the opposition to this, the aggressive

00:03:59.640 opposition to anyone who brings up the leadership review, I don't think it's a good look anymore.

00:04:04.580 And I think they should sort of pivot their approach to that.

Juno News - November 20, 2021

Don't forget, O'Toole has to face a leadership review anyway

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