Double Jeopardy (feat. Jim and Belinda Karahalios)
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Summary
Coming up, social distancing hypocrisy from the people who tell us they know better than us, and Jim and Belinda Carajalios join to talk about Jim Raldson's re-disqualification from the Conservative leadership race.
Transcript
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This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, social distancing hypocrisy from the people who tell us they know better than us.
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And Jim and Belinda Carajalios join to talk about Jim's re-disqualification from the conservative leadership race.
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Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of the Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.
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Good to have you tuned in on another Monday edition, surviving another weekend, another week of lockdown.
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If you're in Toronto, you may have been at Trinity Bellwoods Park on the weekend,
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which became not the epicenter of the virus, but the epicenter of just completely throwing social distancing out the window.
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I'm sure you've seen the photos and the videos, but it sounds from many accounts like thousands of people gathered at this park.
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And most of them looked like they didn't have a care in the world.
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They were having picnics, they were sunbathing, they were playing games.
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I tried to avoid leaving home on the best of times, so this is not something that I was even tempted to do.
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I'm not from Toronto, so I didn't even know this was supposedly the place to be on the weekend.
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But what happened was thousands of people go there.
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And the whole point is that fresh air is not going to kill you.
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And you had a couple of people there, it sounds like, that were probably not being as conscious as they were or as they should have been.
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But at the same time, that sort of thing happens all the time.
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So I look at this and I think, wow, this is kind of unsurprising when you've been locking people down for months
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and they're starting to get a little bit of a sense of not just cabin fever, but also a sense of,
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okay, we know that it's safer to be outside now.
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Who wouldn't, when you start to have nice weather and you start to be told, yes, being outside is fine,
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And once you get there, you say, oh, wow, there are a lot of people here.
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So I don't get outraged here, but you've got people on Twitter that are like calling for the media
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The media is never the one you want to call in times of trouble.
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Like just everyone seems to be so amped up about this,
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thinking that this is like the worst thing in the world to happen.
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You've got politicians expressing their disappointment.
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And then you look really, really, really closely at the photos.
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Well, everyone else is just there and apparently breaking the rules.
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wearing his mask the way you're supposed to wear the mask,
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like a chin strap, which does absolutely nothing for the virus, but is very fashionable.
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So there's John Tory there hanging around, talking to people, doing photo ops.
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And the guy that's been telling everyone else they need to keep themselves locked down
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So it certainly makes it difficult to buy into the idea that these people at the park were doing anything wrong
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just, you know, shooting the you know what, chit-chatting and all that sort of stuff.
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Now, John Tory has issued a statement on the 24th, on Sunday, saying,
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I want to apologize for my personal behavior yesterday.
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I visited Trinity Bellwoods Park to try to determine why things were the way they were.
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I fully intended to properly physically distance, but it was very difficult to do.
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I wore a mask into the park, but I failed to use it properly.
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And as a leader in this city, I know that I must set a better example going forward.
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I visited Trinity Bellwoods Park to try to determine why things were the way they were.
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Well, I was trying to figure out why things were the way they were.
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You get caught at a bar when you're not supposed to be there.
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And as well, I was trying to figure out why things were the way they were.
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When you issue an apology statement, you need to provide a reason.
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And in the absence of a real reason, you can just plug in a few random words.
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So all of those photos we see of John Tory talking to people, he was interviewing them.
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He was really trying to get to the bottom of why things were the way they were.
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And he doesn't even mean about Trinity Bellwoods Park.
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Just he needs to know why things are the way they are.
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And you can't blame a guy for pursuing that infinite quest for knowledge, right?
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In any case, this is just another example of this hypocrisy that we see from leaders,
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It's also a lack of cohesive and consistent and concise messaging.
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And being outside is one of these great examples of it.
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Because early on, we were told, stay indoors, keep your windows closed, keep your windows
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locked, your doors locked, and don't go anywhere.
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And then we started to get a bit more of a sense that, okay, there's probably not a reason
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Don't go outside if you're sick, if you're symptomatic.
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But if you want to just go for a walk, you can do that.
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You're never going to catch it outside because basically no one has caught it outside.
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There was one study that came out last week that said, you know, it doesn't actually live
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So it's not like you have to just completely disinfect anything and everything that you touch.
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I mean, it's good practice to do and to wash your hands and all of that.
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But it's not like this virus, as we heard earlier on in the pandemic, can just, you know,
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live on a surface and stay there for, you know, the next three years or whatever and
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camp out and squat and then eventually, oh, boom, you're infected.
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So it's as we learn more, we get fewer and fewer reasons to panic and be paranoid about it.
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And you compound that with fatigue that people have from having been in lockdown so much.
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And it doesn't surprise me that everyone decides, OK, it's a nice day, we're going to go outside.
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It was a gorgeous day in most parts of the country on the weekend.
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Certainly where I was, it was absolutely lovely.
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But at the same time, it's when the political leaders like John Tory, who are the ones telling
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people they've got to stay locked down, and his public health advisor was very disappointed
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When this is what happens, the political leaders are the ones that I think we need to expect more
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of here. And this comes at the same time that there were a couple of stories out of the UK
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where Dominic Cummings, who is a chief advisor to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson,
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has been breaking lockdown numerous times, despite being one of the chief architects
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At one point, he drove 260 miles across England to stay with his parents.
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Now, he said this was because his wife was symptomatic and he went where he could go.
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But then there were other reports that he was like traveling into towns 30 minutes away.
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And throughout the month of April, very rarely was he at home.
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He was just going every which way and doing whatever he wanted.
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This is the type of guy that was part of the government telling everyone else,
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And the government that in the UK, by the way, insane, police were rationing the number of times
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There was a woman who was harassed on a park bench last week because they said by sitting
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She said, well, no, she's doing mental exercises.
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The laws were not clear on whether it had to be physical or mental exercise.
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So she's sitting on the bench doing her mental exercise.
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So Britain is the place where worse than anywhere else in the world,
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the police will go after you for doing absolutely anything or doing absolutely nothing at all.
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And as Mark Stein said, and I think I quoted it on a previous show,
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Britain is where everything is policed except crime.
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So what happens here is in Britain, the leaders do whatever they want.
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The leaders don't need to follow the rules that the rest of us plebs do.
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And this is why there was that story a few weeks back of Neil Ferguson,
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the scientist who, again, was one of the chief architects of locking people down,
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had been breaking lockdown rules to have an affair with his ongoing lover.
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Antonia Stats, which for a statistician is a really great name for a lover.
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But this is, again, the intelligentsia in Britain.
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Those who are staffing the Politburo, they get to do what they want.
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They can violate and cavort and gallivant and do all of these other things.
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But anyone else is risking prosecution if they do it.
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So my view is that what happened at Trinity Bellwoods Park,
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if people were uncomfortable there, they could have said,
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you know what, we're going to walk back, we're going to go home, we're not safe here.
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But it sounds from all accounts like most people were physically distancing,
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Most people there, even though if you get a photo from the right angle,
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it looks like there's a crowd, were actually fairly segmented.
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And by the way, the photos can be very deceptive.
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You look at photos of lineups, if you take the photo square on,
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it looks like people are stacked, you know, shoulder to shoulder.
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If you take it from the side, you can see that there's a gap of six feet, six feet, six feet.
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So don't believe everything you see in photos and videos.
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But yes, there were thousands of people at the park.
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So my view on this is that we shouldn't overcorrect, which is what happened on Sunday.
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So after this all happened on Saturday, police were enforcing, they were out in droves.
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And then on Sunday, they're going back to prosecuting people for being there as individuals.
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There was a guy yesterday, it sounds like, that just had four cops to send on him for cracking a beer can open.
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Now, I don't know if they were going after him for the beer can or going after him for being in the park.
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But the point is that police were there to prevent anyone from having a good time
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and having a time at the park and all of that stuff on Sunday
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because it was an overreaction of what happened on Saturday.
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And, you know, I don't like the slippery slope argument because people were saying this to me
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a couple of months ago or even a month ago when I was talking about leaving people be
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if they were alone in a park, alone in a parking lot.
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And the response was, oh, well, if you first it's one and then it's a thousand.
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And then, of course, the Trinity Bellwoods thing happens.
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But again, you can enforce these things with a level of a measured response.
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And I don't buy into the fact that that's the way things should be.
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You can ensure that people are being safe and you can certainly enforce and educate,
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But that is never going to be bought into by people.
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When you've got John Tory just going there, mask over his chin, just hanging out, doing what he wants,
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And I'm sorry, but the politicians are either so weak-willed that they can't follow these rules
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that are for the good of our health or they don't believe them themselves.
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And I'm starting to think it's kind of the second category where politicians are feeling like they
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have a role to play here, but they don't actually buy into it.
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They don't buy into the hysteria and they don't buy into the panic, which is why the politicians
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that have been telling us, you know, you're going to kill grandma if you so much as linger
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in the vegetable aisle at the grocery store for a second too long, like John Tory.
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I'm not saying he does that in the vegetable aisle.
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And then, you know, the first available opportunity, nice weather, John Tory's out there just doing
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So I know I keep talking about John Tory here, but he's an example of the bigger problem,
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which is that I don't think the politicians are buying into what they're telling everyone
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So why should we expect everyone else to go along with it?
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Why should we expect everyone else in the country, the province, the city, whichever jurisdiction
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you're talking about to follow these things when the people that are telling you how important
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And Ezra Levant from The Rebel, who's been a guest on this show and I've been a guest on
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his show, Ezra goes nuclear on these sorts of things.
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So he's put out a bounty on Twitter, which I think is hilarious for anyone who can prove that
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more politicians and public health officials have been breaking the rules because he's convinced
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He's convinced that just absolutely no one is paying attention to these things.
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And that all came about from the Toronto chief public health officer's response to the Trinity
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So, I mean, like whatever John Tory does or doesn't do, I don't care.
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And I actually, believe it or not, go through life by ensuring John Tory occupies a pretty marginal,
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if, you know, mostly non-existent place in my mind.
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So I've talked about him more in the last 10 minutes, I think, than I have in the last
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And he's part of the reason why no one else is going to buy into these things down the road.
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I think next weekend, if the weather's nice, we're going to see the same thing here.
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And the appropriate response to that is maybe to reevaluate the quality and caliber of the
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guidance, not to start cracking skulls and arresting people and shutting down parks again.
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You know, I know we've been seeing numbers that have been starting to increase again.
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A lot of this, I think, comes down to testing capacity.
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In Ontario, for example, the government said on the weekend, you don't even need to have
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You can just show up at a testing center and on demand say, hello, I'd like a COVID-19 test,
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So if this happens, yeah, we're testing more and more people, but we need to be focusing
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If you are sick or you believe you could be or should be, get tested.
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I don't think there's a benefit in just satisfying curiosity.
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For example, someone who has been socially distancing, who doesn't know or who doesn't
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think they have the virus, who doesn't know if there's a situation where they could have
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just showing up and getting a test for the sake of it, because frankly, you're probably
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more at risk of catching something at the testing center than you were if you just stayed
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But we also need to look less at the individual numbers now.
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And I talked about this a bit last week and more at the broader trends we're seeing of
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So I don't think adding new cases is necessarily the bombshell that a lot of people, certainly
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on the media side of things, are trying to make it out to be.
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So that would be where I'd caution everyone moving forward here.
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But the fact remains that when the powers that be are so focused on telling you how to live
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your lives and not on doing it themselves, it goes back to those two examples that I gave
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They either are so weak-willed, they can't do the most basic of things because they're
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They could just be really weak, ineffectual people that can't do what they're telling everyone
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But if that's the case, I don't think it makes it any better.
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Because they're proving by their own inability to follow these rules that it's not easy.
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So why on earth are you prosecuting people for doing what you have failed to do yourself?
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That's my question to these advisors, these politicians, these leaders.
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And it's not to say that every single one of them has been bad, but certainly enough of
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Enough of them have been bad that you can't just take for granted that these people are
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And you take from that the problems in the advice itself, the inconsistencies in the back
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and forths on masks and the inconsistencies in the back and forths on border closures and
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And ultimately what we get at the end of this is an understanding that, hey, maybe, just
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These are not, you know, stable forces driving this thing.
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But a lot of them are just treading water, trying to figure out day by day what's going
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And that's not to denigrate people that are very educated, accomplished, and people that
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But the idea of taking a prosecutorial force and injecting it into all of these areas of
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society that's not based on science, that's based on control, and not even control that's
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And the fact that this is now ramping up even further is indicative of why it's time, now
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that we know a bit more about the virus, and actually, now that I'd say we know a lot
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more about the virus, and we can see the lack of alignment of these two priorities, we
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need to put our feet in the ground and say, hold up here.
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And they're proving the point when John Tory shows up with his chin strap mask at Trinity
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More of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
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Last week, it looked like there was going to be a big shakeup in the Conservative leadership
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The Ontario Superior Court of Justice gave Jim Carajalios a victory against the Conservative
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Party of Canada, nullifying the Conservative Party's disqualification of Jim Carajalios from
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So that might have been good news on the surface.
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But then just one day later, the Conservative Party re-disqualified him.
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They disqualified him for the second time, and this time in a way that would have been
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approved by the judge, because it comes down to the various committees that are involved
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in this leadership race process, and which ones have the authority to disqualify candidates
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So the court victory may have been good on the surface, but it wasn't really a moral victory,
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and it doesn't deal with the fundamental question of whether the party is in the right or in
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the wrong to disqualify Jim Carajalios, fundamentally speaking, not legally speaking, but whether it
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And joining me on the line now are Jim Carajalios and his wife, Ontario MPP Belinda Carajalios.
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Jim, Belinda, thanks very much for coming on today.
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Last week, the judge's decision came down nullifying your disqualification.
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I had been trying to cover the hearing itself as best as I could remotely, and when I read
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the decision, I mean, obviously the very bottom line of it was positive, but as I read it,
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I was not convinced it would be all that much of a victory in the long run.
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It seems like the judge was fairly committed to this idea that, yes, you could have been
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disqualified, but only through different means.
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So were you expecting that the party would do exactly what it did, which is a day after
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the decision disqualifying you in the quote-unquote proper way?
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I had mixed emotions when I got it, because on the one hand, it was an unprecedented decision.
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It's the first time that someone has been successful in court getting a political party
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to follow its own rules in any election, let alone a leadership, and we proved that they
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They had a small committee of four people, an appeals committee decide they disqualified
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me after the leadership organizing committee had a vote, and they decided not to disqualify
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The judge didn't want to peel the onion all the way back.
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There wasn't enough evidence on the record because the party withheld information.
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And so it's very clear in these rules that the leadership committee drafted for themselves.
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And the judge said, you know, under these rules, they've got broad power, this leadership
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And I think he suggested something, you know, they could take a fresh set of eyes to something.
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Well, the fresh set of eyes was the next day they did double jeopardy on me, which if you're
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not familiar with the legal system, double jeopardy is when you're tried twice for the
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same quote-unquote crime, which I don't think I committed a crime.
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And they hurried up the next day, less than 24 hours later, to disqualify me.
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And it makes the whole thing look like a farce because on the one hand, you've got a judge
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saying, give Jim 14 days to get back in the race.
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They just went and did the disqualification.
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That's why my initial communication after we got the court ruling said, we're going to
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look into if it's possible for us to get back in the race.
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You know, the CRO, Derek Bantstone, had this $100,000 penalty on me.
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I think we're at $380,000 in total donations, somewhere in there.
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And there's about 20,000 of that sitting at a post office the party hasn't picked up in
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And the difference this time than the last time, when Derek Bantstone issued the $100,000
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penalty last time, I only had eight days before the March 25th cutoff.
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So it was like the judge was saying, Derek didn't give me enough time to raise it.
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And the party knows I had it from the court documents.
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And that's obviously why they decided to not give me the 14 days to raise it and just ax
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So you're right in your initial analysis of the case.
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We were vindicated that they didn't follow their own rules, but they have broad powers
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under the leadership rules to do whatever they want.
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They're more powerful than Andrew Scheer and the leadership candidates in this election.
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I should just disclose, lest anyone be unsure of this, I'm not a lawyer.
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So you may have a vastly different take on this than I do.
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But in reading the decision, one thing that became apparent was that the judge really didn't
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seem to be interested in wading into political party affairs or wading into anything to do with
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It seemed like the judge's take on this, the court's take was that this was just a garden
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The fact that you were a political candidate was irrelevant.
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The fact that the Conservative Party of Canada is a political party is irrelevant.
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Now, at the same time, there is a democratic effect here.
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But I don't think that was really reflected in what the court was evaluating.
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And so you're hitting something like the nail right on the head, that if you go to court to
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challenge a political party, you can't do it on a judicial review.
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That's been tried and the law has been settled on that.
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So, for example, in this case, the judge couldn't analyze Derek Vanstone's decisions for issuing
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And he couldn't analyze why he hasn't sanctioned Peter McKay because he used the term bathroom
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He couldn't analyze Aaron O'Toole saying Sharia law is a threat to Canadian values and Canadian
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democracy and other comments that other candidates made.
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He could only look at the leadership rules as a contract and whether the party followed
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And that's because in our legal system in Canada, there are no rules or laws that govern how
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And the only way you can challenge it in court is through a contractual analysis.
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And when there's a broad set of rules that give draconian powers to a committee of 18,
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So on the one hand, it was unprecedented that we got a judge to rule against a party because
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And so I think it's a success in the sense that it sends a message to all political parties,
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You can't ask a judge to say, look at this absurd $100,000 penalty when the buy-in is
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They want me to pay $400,000 out of donations to get on the ballot.
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And it's kind of other supporters have said that's like extortion.
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My wife has a bill in the Ontario legislature, Bill 150 that you could tell us about, that's
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trying to put some rules on political parties to prevent voter fraud.
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And Belinda can tell you more about it because right now you can commit voter fraud in an internal
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party election and there's nothing you could do about it.
00:24:53.040
Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that there are no rules.
00:24:56.060
It's like the Wild West when it comes to internal party elections.
00:24:59.580
And, you know, I've introduced this bill to say, let's put some rules around this.
00:25:03.600
Let's make it punishable by law that you cannot, you know, tamper with the votes in an internal
00:25:09.460
party election, whether it is for it to be a nomination to be a candidate, a party president
00:25:15.400
And, you know, I'm really happy that we received unanimous.
00:25:19.880
It was voted on unanimously in the House for during second reading, and it's now waiting
00:25:23.760
at committee for third to get to third reading.
00:25:26.980
But it's just it really is incredible that a lot of people didn't realize that, you know,
00:25:32.320
something as important as choosing who will could potentially represent you at a provincial
00:25:36.460
level was something that, you know, a small group of people could tamper with and and
00:25:40.860
essentially rig the results to be so that the candidate of their choice and not the member's
00:25:45.040
choice is the one who's on the ballot for election time.
00:25:47.160
Let me ask you about that, Belinda, because I fear as someone who has been a candidate myself,
00:25:52.920
I ran in the same election you ran in in 2018 in Ontario, albeit with a different outcome.
00:25:57.820
And the issues that people were asking about were pocketbook issues, things like hydro rates,
00:26:02.180
taxes, spending debt, all of these other things. How much do ordinary people care about these sorts
00:26:09.440
of political fights, things that on the surface look like inside baseball, that only people in
00:26:14.720
this bubble that the three of us are in really care about and really pay attention to? And I guess
00:26:19.620
the reason I'm interested in your perspective on this is because you've run in an election where
00:26:23.500
you have to appeal to the general population. That's different than an internal political fight
00:26:28.600
like leadership races, policy votes and so on. So the card carrying members, they care. And then
00:26:34.720
the more news that we've had around the bill and you get people who didn't really understand it,
00:26:40.960
who were then emailing the office or emailing me personally or calling saying, oh, my gosh,
00:26:45.080
how are there no rules around this? And it's a little scary because, you know, we claim to live
00:26:49.320
in a democracy. And if you're going to interfere with someone's right to a free fair election as
00:26:55.140
a card carrying member of any party, not just the Conservative Party, you know, and again, those
00:27:00.660
that person is going to potentially win in a general election and potentially have a position
00:27:04.580
of power to represent people provincially or federally, if it were to go federal, you should
00:27:10.460
really be trusting those individuals who are who are taking part in this process. You know, the
00:27:16.080
corruption starts small. And then, you know, how much patience or how much forgiveness are we
00:27:20.620
going to have for it before it becomes a bigger issue and we start interfering with general
00:27:24.200
elections. So we need to take care of our democracy. And that starts with things like
00:27:29.240
internal party elections. Is that something you agree with, Jim, that if you don't deal
00:27:33.360
with it on the internal issues at the internal level, it will expand and start to impact or
00:27:42.920
I've always, you know, my history, Andrew, in the federal party, provincial party, you know,
00:27:49.480
Dan Nolan, the co-chair of the leadership committee, went on CBC a couple of days ago to try
00:27:53.740
to, you know, blame me and I know what I did wrong and kind of give the illusion that no one knows
00:27:59.420
who I am. And he said the phrase we tried to welcome into the party. I've been in this party for
00:28:04.460
15 years, federally and provincially, before I even met my wife. And I've advocated for adherence
00:28:12.700
to the rules and having a grassroots member-driven process on policy, on nominations, stamping out voter
00:28:18.860
fraud at federal conventions. And in each of those instances, the pushback from the cronies at the
00:28:26.140
top trying to control the process is it's inside baseball. No one cares. But what we've seen in the
00:28:32.060
last four or five years, the stories from the provincial party under Patrick Brown and now with
00:28:38.140
this leadership, is it's starting to present a culture of what conservative politics in Ontario and
00:28:46.300
politics in Canada is about, and remember the Jody Wilson-Raybould saga, it's starting to create
00:28:52.300
a culture and people are starting to wake up to the fact that it is the wild, wild west and people
00:28:58.700
who are spending their money inside of political parties can't be reassured that their right to
00:29:03.740
vote and their right to make a decision is going to be respected because a small handful of know-it-alls
00:29:10.300
inside the party think that they should have the right to remove you off the ballot whenever they
00:29:16.220
want. And so it is damaging long-term and it's easy to dismiss a one-off thing like inside baseball,
00:29:22.300
but when you see a culture of undemocratic behavior, a culture of making decisions that
00:29:29.580
shows that they're enemies of democracy, enemies of the rule of law, and they're against, they don't
00:29:34.220
even trust their own voters, that has lasting consequences. And that's why, you know, as a
00:29:39.900
family, we continually stand on that fight on the right side of the issue for members and voters.
00:29:45.420
The other thing is it's trust, right? People are losing trust in political institutions and then we
00:29:49.740
always complain, oh, only X percent of the population got out to vote at the general election. Well, can you
00:29:54.620
blame them? Like when you start to hear about all these shenanigans that go on in internal party
00:29:59.580
elections, it's really disenchanting for a lot of people and people just don't want to be a part of it.
00:30:04.060
They feel like, well, what does it matter? Why would I bother to get involved? Why would I donate
00:30:07.820
or volunteer for a political party if at the end of the day, my voice doesn't matter? So, you know,
00:30:12.860
it really is part of a bigger problem, I think. So this court decision could have given the party
00:30:18.620
an out to say, listen, we made a mistake. He's back in the race. All is forgiven. They didn't take
00:30:24.140
that. As you've noted, Jim, they doubled down, but they could have had an out if they wanted it there.
00:30:28.860
And this does bring me around to this idea that you've talked about previously,
00:30:33.180
thinking the fix was in from the get go, that they were never going to let you get on the ballot.
00:30:37.420
But my issue with there, my sticking point is, why would they approve you as an applicant in the
00:30:42.300
first place? The fact that they disqualified Richard Desqueries suggests that yes, they were
00:30:47.180
open to disqualifying. Is it just that they didn't think you were going to get the $300,000 and 3,000
00:30:53.020
signatures and they figured your campaign would just naturally dissipate? Or is it that they thought
00:30:58.780
that you might do something that would give them an out to disqualify you? In this case,
00:31:03.260
they latched onto that email you sent that Aaron O'Toole complained about. But if the fix was in,
00:31:08.620
why not just disqualify you before you even got to the point where you were on that approved list?
00:31:14.540
Yeah. And everyone knows my campaign style, Andrew. Everyone knows I'm an aggressive campaigner and I
00:31:20.220
try to win. So it's not like they approved me to run, not knowing what they were going to get.
00:31:25.340
And it's very clear, if you look at the timeline of how this all unfolded,
00:31:32.380
that they were never going to let me on the ballot, Andrew. They let me run initially,
00:31:36.860
maybe because they didn't want to create this issue at the outset and because I've got a good,
00:31:41.340
solid following in Ontario and across the country. They didn't want to stop the Axe the Carbon Tax
00:31:46.300
guy from being in a conservative leadership race. Because when I started Axe the Carbon Tax,
00:31:50.940
you know, the guys at the top of the Conservative Party, including Andrew Scheer, thanked me.
00:31:54.540
Jason Kenney thanked me. They were all thankful. So maybe they didn't want to exclude me at the
00:31:59.260
outset. But if you look at the timing of the steps on how this all unfolded, that communication I had
00:32:06.460
mailed out to supporters. Two weeks passed. I've sent an email. I hit the $150,000 threshold,
00:32:13.660
which would have entitled me to the party list. And all of a sudden, Aaron O'Toole came out with this
00:32:18.140
complaint. And they used that complaint as a means of not providing me with a party list,
00:32:23.340
which was instrumental to get to the $300,000 threshold. So obviously, they thought I wasn't
00:32:28.860
going to reach $300,000 without the party list. I still reached the $300,000. And, you know,
00:32:35.180
a couple of days ago, Dan Nolan was on the CBC in this disgraceful show to continue to malign me,
00:32:40.380
suggesting that if I just paid the fine, I'd be a candidate. But they only gave me eight days to pay the
00:32:45.420
$100,000 fine, which is egregious. And when the judge said I had 14 days to pay it, and they knew
00:32:51.100
I could reach it, they decided, well, now we're not going to give him the 14 days, we're going to
00:32:55.900
disqualify him. So it's clear if you follow the steps, that they were never going to let me on the
00:33:00.940
ballot. They were not interested in looking at a reasonable solution here. They just didn't want me
00:33:06.540
there. And I was a threat, Andrew, I was in third place when I was removed from the ballot,
00:33:10.460
third fastest to $300,000 to get on the ballot without the party list.
00:33:14.300
My polling numbers were climbing. And I was becoming a threat to Erin O'Toole and Peter McKay.
00:33:19.260
Yeah, I agree with that. I think there's a lot of fear because, you know, without the list,
00:33:23.740
you managed to hit those numbers. And I think that speaks volumes for the type of
00:33:27.900
following that you have. And, you know, you just get Jim into a debate, right? You're going to really
00:33:33.100
see how milk toast these contenders are. Thanks. Okay, that's fair. But how do you square that up with
00:33:40.540
what the judge found, which was that there was no procedural unfairness? There was no bad faith.
00:33:45.980
The judge was unequivocal about that. In looking at all of the facts, the judge was fairly confident
00:33:51.420
that you were not treated in bad faith and that you were not denied procedural fairness. It was simply
00:33:57.660
about the Conservative Party, not by a contractual technicality following the rules that it set out for
00:34:03.180
the race. So you have to look at what the judge was provided with. He was provided with a broad
00:34:08.540
set of rules. And the only evidence that we could provide was what I just told you. The party didn't
00:34:14.060
put forward their evidence in terms of what was discussed at the leadership committee meeting,
00:34:18.780
what the conversations were, what the notes were, what the emails were. They didn't even provide if
00:34:23.100
there was any communication outside of the leadership committee with others. They refused to provide
00:34:28.140
that evidence to the court. And why would they refuse to provide it? Obviously, they're hiding something.
00:34:32.140
So when the judge makes the statement, there was no bad faith, there was no procedural unfairness,
00:34:37.420
he's doing that on analysis of the steps that were taken in terms of issuing the penalty against me,
00:34:43.260
the steps that were taken originally when they decided not to disqualify me. And he's doing that in
00:34:49.740
the context of what's on record in court and how broad the rules are and the power they have
00:34:55.740
to basically do whatever they want. He's not making that statement comparing it externally. For example,
00:35:01.740
why was Jim fined $100,000 of the penalty and no one else has been penalized or sanctioned? That's outside
00:35:09.020
of the judge's scope. Another example is, he's not looking at the CRO Derek Vanstone said I violated.
00:35:16.940
Derek Vanstone made an issue, a violation, an allegation, an error, but that's outside the judge's scope. He can't
00:35:23.900
look at that. All he can look at is there's a leadership committee, they have broad powers, the CRO can issue a
00:35:29.260
penalty. And that's what he was looking at. And without the party being honest with what
00:35:33.820
they discussed in the back, you know, it's an evidentiary record. So the judge is not just going
00:35:39.340
to guess. After the disqualification, you said on Twitter, I am yet to be defeated in a free,
00:35:45.340
fair and democratic vote among members, how real party elections should be decided. You also note that
00:35:51.420
Maxime Bernier in 2017 had made allegations of irregularities in the voting process here. But when
00:35:58.300
you say this, I'm yet to be defeated in a free, fair and democratic vote among members,
00:36:02.060
are you just saying whenever you've lost, it's been because it's rigged? Is that not how that comes
00:36:06.060
across? Well, I don't know when I've lost. If I were to be in this race, Andrew, and members
00:36:12.940
decided I wasn't the leader, then you can say I lost. But obviously, when they're not letting members
00:36:17.580
have a say, they find me to be a threat. I've been in conservative and provincial politics,
00:36:23.420
federally and provincially, sorry, conservative politics for 15 years. I've run for riding
00:36:29.020
president positions. I've run nominations for other people. I've run to be a part of the policy
00:36:34.460
committee of the party. I've won in every free and fair election I've ran in. My wife had two and a
00:36:40.620
half weeks as a nomination contestant on the PC side. She was running against three individuals,
00:36:45.340
two of which were campaigning for a year and a half. She won as well. So our record on winning
00:36:50.700
elections when members get a right to vote is pretty clear. I'm undefeated. Whether people
00:36:57.260
don't like that or not, that's fine. But if you wanted to defeat me for once, let me get to the
00:37:01.980
ballot here in this leadership and have Peter or Aaron beat me. Obviously, they thought that was
00:37:05.980
too risky and they didn't want me on the ballot. One of the more insidious aspects of party politics,
00:37:11.260
I find, is trying to shrink the parameters of debate, shrink the parameters of what can even be
00:37:16.220
discussed or voted on. And I mean, in the particularly brazen cases, this is taking
00:37:21.100
people like you and Richard Dickery off the ballot. And it seemed like the party was trying to have it
00:37:25.820
both ways. On one hand, they were trying to say, oh, you know, these people don't represent the party
00:37:29.500
and no one's going to vote for them and all of that. But at the same time, if no one's going to
00:37:33.180
vote for them, just let that be revealed. Let that be realized by letting members cast ballots.
00:37:38.220
And it's the same as with party policy. I know that the convention for the Ontario PC party,
00:37:43.260
in which you ran as a candidate a couple of years ago for president, it was the same sort of thing.
00:37:47.580
The party had tried to keep a lot of these socially conservative motions from getting
00:37:51.260
to the voting floor. And they did get to the voting floor and ended up getting past all of these things.
00:37:56.140
So that is the the party's response seems to be, listen, we don't want these outcomes. These are
00:38:00.780
unacceptable outcomes to us. So let's try to ensure that they're not on the ballot and the members
00:38:05.340
don't have a chance to vote for them. And obviously, it's the grassroots members who then suffer.
00:38:10.380
We're seeing this happen at the provincial and federal levels where a small group are deciding
00:38:16.700
what can and can't be talked about. And it's not just about social conservative stuff. It's about
00:38:21.100
you can't talk about voter fraud. You can't talk about the Paris Accord. You can't talk about the
00:38:26.060
carbon tax, Jim. That was the position three years ago until everyone changed their mind and supported me.
00:38:31.260
And I don't know how we can have a united conservative movement with a small cabal of Lisa Raitt,
0.96
00:38:37.580
Dan Nolan and Derek Banson at the top, telling everyone what they can and cannot talk about
00:38:42.860
and creating a chill for the rest of the leadership that says to the candidates,
00:38:48.300
we can kick you out of a race if you say the wrong thing. And the imposition of control and power
00:38:54.860
in our parties that I've been fighting against for five, six, seven years now,
00:38:59.660
internally, and now it's it's in a leadership contest. It's getting worse because the members
00:39:04.860
are getting stronger. The members want bold action. Lisa Raitt had her chance in 2017 when she ran for
00:39:12.140
leader to mold the the the future of our party and the discussion. She got three percent and she
00:39:18.780
constantly talks about a big tent, but it looks like a three percent tent to me. It's going to be a
00:39:23.980
huge tent and only three percent of conservatives are going to be there because the way they're running
0.99
00:39:29.100
the leadership, they're driving people out into the PPC, into the Wexit party. There's disgruntled
00:39:35.260
conservatives that don't want to vote. So I'm not for the three percent tent, Andrew. I want a big tent
00:39:40.380
and members to feel like they can talk about what they think is important in conservative solutions.
00:39:45.740
But the cabal at the top, they think they know better. And the proof, they don't prove it to us
00:39:49.820
because they're not winning enough to show us that their way is the right way.
00:39:53.100
Now, obviously, the federal conservative party and the Ontario PC party are legally different
00:39:58.380
entities and and even more fundamentally, they don't share resources as openly as the liberals
00:40:03.180
and NDP do in various provinces, not just Ontario, but they are still controlled by a lot of the same
00:40:09.500
people. There is a lot of crossover there and it's the same conservative inc operators, if you will,
00:40:15.580
that seem to be at the helm of both. So I have to ask you, Belinda, as an Ontario PC MPP,
00:40:20.620
how do you function and exist in this party when the establishment seems to be so dead set against
00:40:27.900
Jim and against what Jim's been trying to do? So I'm a conservative because I believe in fiscal
00:40:32.780
responsibility and other issues that conservatives believe in. And, you know, there are a lot of people
00:40:39.180
in the party who are like minded. You know, there is obviously those in the party who are different
00:40:45.260
than that. And there is a strong, silent group who are very supportive of free speech and all these
00:40:51.900
conservative values and and of Jim as well. It's amazing, actually, how many people told me that,
00:40:59.340
you know, I'm not going to say anything publicly, but I'm so excited that Jim's on the ballot. We're so
00:41:03.260
excited. I'm going to put him number one. There's so much support. And there seems to be this hunger
00:41:08.540
for people to just be bold and take action and to be strong about the issues that we know that we need to
00:41:13.660
be strong on in order to win elections. So, you know, I think that we're really fortunate to have
00:41:21.180
well, people like Jim, but Jim to put his name forward for things like this, because
00:41:24.700
there is a hunger out there for this kind of strength in our party.
00:41:27.740
And it's really hard to be heard on Belinda, Andrew, don't you say like it's one thing to say
00:41:32.300
Jim's a little too abrasive for us. But when you meet my wife, I think it's really hard to be
00:41:37.420
tough on a lovely and supportive wife as mine. Look, we're in it together, Andrew, and we have a
00:41:44.060
lot of support. And because of retribution, a lot of people stay quiet.
00:41:47.900
But at the same time, you're making allegations of corruption. And if the federal conservative
00:41:53.260
party is, in your view, corrupt, and the same people are really running the Ontario PC party,
00:41:58.700
it stands to reason that both of them would have this corruption issue. So how do you have, or let
00:42:03.820
me back up a second here. Do you have confidence in either of these parties to have a positive path
00:42:10.220
forward? So, yeah. Okay, I'll go. I'll do. I'll be really brief. So I have faith. I don't know if
00:42:16.060
confidence is the right word. For me, it's faith. I have faith that if we continue to fight from within,
00:42:20.860
that we can make positive changes. And that's kind of the lens that I've always looked at things,
00:42:25.820
that it's better to be within something and try to steer the ship. And now the, you know,
00:42:31.340
conservative parties are very large ships, all political parties, and by their nature, hard to
00:42:36.060
steer. But I mean, if you're quiet, then you're part of the problem. And look, Andrew, I don't think
00:42:44.860
I'm saying that the entire party, federally or provincially are corrupt, because what's a party?
00:42:50.620
If you ask the establishment, they think they're the party is defined as their friends from Bloor
00:42:57.180
Street South off of Yonge Street. That's what they think the party is. I think the party are the
00:43:03.580
members. And so no, do I think that members across the country in the federal conservative party are
00:43:09.500
corrupt? Members in the provincial conservative party across Ontario are corrupt? No, absolutely not.
00:43:14.540
That's why we continue to fight. What I think is that the rules are so vague and there's no
00:43:19.500
laws to prevent broad rules being applied by a handful of people to get the predetermined desired
00:43:26.860
result, like this is WrestleMania, to get what they want out of the process. That's what we're
00:43:33.660
challenging. We're not saying the conservative party is corrupt because the conservative party
00:43:38.620
is its membership and its voters. It's the small handful of people that continually like to
00:43:44.620
predetermine the outcome and fly in the face of the will of the grassroots members. That's the
00:43:51.340
problem here, Andrew. That's what's going on. Someone else who initially tried to affect change
00:43:56.140
from within the system and then ended up hitting a wall was Maxime Bernier, now the leader of the
00:44:00.380
People's Party. You had said in an interview a couple of months back with Ezra Levant that you would make
00:44:05.820
Maxime your Quebec lieutenant if you were successful at winning the conservative leadership. And in
00:44:10.860
response, Maxime had said, thanks for the offer to become your Quebec lieutenant, but I already have
00:44:15.420
a party. When you found out about the depth of corruption in the CPC establishment, the People's Party will
00:44:21.500
be happy to welcome you with open arms. Here you are a couple of months later and two
00:44:25.500
disqualifications later. Are you going to take him up on that offer? Look, at this time, we're just
00:44:31.180
going to, you know, we have to get the campaign donations from party headquarters that they refused
00:44:36.860
and forced me to go to court to access to pay off our campaign expenses. We've got to wind down the
00:44:41.740
campaign. And what's next for me? I don't know, Andrew, maybe political retirement. I was in this
00:44:48.140
leadership race because I wanted to quell this fragmentation of the conservative movement. I had
00:44:55.420
supporters saying it's Jim or Wexit for me. I had supporters saying I voted PPC, but I'll come back to
00:45:01.100
the conservative party of Jim's leader and he can unite the fragmented aspects of the movement.
00:45:06.220
That's why I was in this leadership race. And that's why Belinda's an Ontario PC MPP, because
00:45:12.940
when people were saying under Patrick Brown's leadership, we need a new party, we stuck it out.
00:45:17.420
Waleed Solomon, who's Erin O'Toole's chair, was running the PC party with Patrick Brown.
00:45:21.900
They sued me on December of 2017, right before Christmas, and it took a toll on us. And we stuck
00:45:27.820
it out because we want to see a united conservative party. But I don't know what's left to do,
00:45:33.980
because if these guys can meddle with the process in a leadership, how do we have faith? How do I
00:45:41.020
tell people to pay money to go to a convention to vote an executive if we don't have guarantees that
00:45:47.980
the vote is going to be fair and it's not going to be rigged? If we don't have guarantees that people
00:45:52.300
can run in a leadership, let alone how they're going to run in a nomination, Andrew, and not get
00:45:57.420
kicked out. So I have a lot of concerns and it's been a long, hard five years for our family trying
00:46:05.580
to push the movement and uniting it. And the people at the top like Lisa Rae, Dan Nolan, Derek Banson,
00:46:11.260
they don't care if the conservative movement is fragmented. They don't care if there's Wexit.
00:46:15.340
They don't care if Max is picking up support. I want to see all those disgruntled voices united under
00:46:21.340
the conservative party banner, not fragmented. Yeah, I don't think they realize how damaging
00:46:25.340
this is to the conservative movement overall, because people are paying attention and people
00:46:29.660
are getting frustrated. And if these guys at the top can't trust their members to use their vote
00:46:36.700
wisely, then people are just going to leave. They're going to leave the party. They're going
00:46:40.220
to stay home. Conservatives have very long memories. Belinda Carajalios, PCMP for Cambridge
00:46:46.220
and Ontario, and Jim Carajalios, former conservative leadership candidate. Jim, Belinda,
00:46:50.860
thank you both so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.
00:46:53.020
Thanks, Andrew. Jim and Belinda Carajalios joining me from their home. We've got to wrap
00:46:58.380
things up for today. We'll be back in just a couple of days, though, with more of The Andrew
00:47:02.460
Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North. Thank you, God bless,
00:47:07.340
and good day, Canada. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by