Juno News - Double Jeopardy (feat. Jim and Belinda Karahalios)

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:06.760 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:13.020 Coming up, social distancing hypocrisy from the people who tell us they know better than us.

00:00:18.060 And Jim and Belinda Carajalios join to talk about Jim's re-disqualification from the conservative leadership race.

00:00:26.260 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:30.000 Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of the Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:39.500 Good to have you tuned in on another Monday edition, surviving another weekend, another week of lockdown.

00:00:45.680 Here we are.

00:00:46.780 And here's an interesting thing.

00:00:48.220 If you're in Toronto, you may have been at Trinity Bellwoods Park on the weekend,

00:00:52.240 which became not the epicenter of the virus, but the epicenter of just completely throwing social distancing out the window.

00:01:00.460 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.

00:01:07.040 And most of them looked like they didn't have a care in the world.

00:01:09.720 They were having picnics, they were sunbathing, they were playing games.

00:01:13.060 And I wasn't there.

00:01:14.140 I tried to avoid leaving home on the best of times, so this is not something that I was even tempted to do.

00:01:19.720 I'm not from Toronto, so I didn't even know this was supposedly the place to be on the weekend.

00:01:24.140 But what happened was thousands of people go there.

00:01:26.460 Most people were doing their own thing.

00:01:28.640 They were minding their own business.

00:01:30.000 They were keeping distant.

00:01:31.360 They're outside.

00:01:32.560 And the whole point is that fresh air is not going to kill you.

00:01:35.040 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.

00:01:42.480 But at the same time, that sort of thing happens all the time.

00:01:45.240 So I look at this and I think, wow, this is kind of unsurprising when you've been locking people down for months

00:01:52.900 and they're starting to get a little bit of a sense of not just cabin fever, but also a sense of,

00:01:59.000 okay, we know that it's safer to be outside now.

00:02:01.420 So I was completely unsurprised by this.

00:02:03.880 Who wouldn't, when you start to have nice weather and you start to be told, yes, being outside is fine,

00:02:09.760 say, all right, I'm going to go to the park.

00:02:11.360 And once you get there, you say, oh, wow, there are a lot of people here.

00:02:13.700 Okay, I'll make sure to keep my distance.

00:02:15.780 So I don't get outraged here, but you've got people on Twitter that are like calling for the media

00:02:21.180 or not calling for the media.

00:02:23.060 The media is never the one you want to call in times of trouble.

00:02:25.500 Calling for the military, basically.

00:02:27.600 Like just everyone seems to be so amped up about this,

00:02:32.000 thinking that this is like the worst thing in the world to happen.

00:02:34.600 You've got politicians expressing their disappointment.

00:02:37.240 And then you look really, really, really closely at the photos.

00:02:40.840 And who do you see in them?

00:02:42.380 But Toronto Mayor John Tory.

00:02:44.600 Yes, why it's John Tory.

00:02:46.600 Well, everyone else is just there and apparently breaking the rules.

00:02:50.620 John Tory is there with them,

00:02:52.580 wearing his mask the way you're supposed to wear the mask,

00:02:55.860 like a chin strap, which does absolutely nothing for the virus, but is very fashionable.

00:03:01.460 So there's John Tory there hanging around, talking to people, doing photo ops.

00:03:06.140 And the guy that's been telling everyone else they need to keep themselves locked down

00:03:10.020 is now out there playing in the park.

00:03:12.220 So it certainly makes it difficult to buy into the idea that these people at the park were doing anything wrong

00:03:17.600 when their mayor was walking amongst them,

00:03:20.800 just, you know, shooting the you know what, chit-chatting and all that sort of stuff.

00:03:23.980 Now, John Tory has issued a statement on the 24th, on Sunday, saying,

00:03:29.940 I want to apologize for my personal behavior yesterday.

00:03:33.320 I visited Trinity Bellwoods Park to try to determine why things were the way they were.

00:03:38.480 I fully intended to properly physically distance, but it was very difficult to do.

00:03:43.160 I wore a mask into the park, but I failed to use it properly.

00:03:46.360 Another thing I'm disappointed about.

00:03:48.340 These were mistakes that I made.

00:03:49.880 And as a leader in this city, I know that I must set a better example going forward.

00:03:54.320 So I actually love that excuse.

00:03:56.140 I visited Trinity Bellwoods Park to try to determine why things were the way they were.

00:04:01.160 Because you can use that excuse anywhere.

00:04:02.840 You get caught, you know, having an affair.

00:04:05.000 Well, I was trying to figure out why things were the way they were.

00:04:08.260 You get caught at a strip club.

00:04:10.000 You get caught at a bar when you're not supposed to be there.

00:04:12.180 You get caught speeding.

00:04:13.280 And as well, I was trying to figure out why things were the way they were.

00:04:16.420 Because the excuse actually means nothing.

00:04:18.400 They're just words.

00:04:19.920 But you need to sell people something.

00:04:21.700 When you issue an apology statement, you need to provide a reason.

00:04:25.740 And in the absence of a real reason, you can just plug in a few random words.

00:04:29.680 And he was there to inspect it.

00:04:32.300 He was there to figure out why.

00:04:33.840 So all of those photos we see of John Tory talking to people, he was interviewing them.

00:04:37.860 He was really trying to get to the bottom of why things were the way they were.

00:04:41.740 And he doesn't even mean about Trinity Bellwoods Park.

00:04:43.600 He just means about the universe.

00:04:44.620 Like he was asking about cosmology.

00:04:46.980 He was asking about the meaning of life.

00:04:48.640 He was all of these things.

00:04:49.580 Just he needs to know why things are the way they are.

00:04:51.940 And you can't blame a guy for pursuing that infinite quest for knowledge, right?

00:04:56.580 It's John Tory after all.

00:04:57.920 There's no quest for knowledge.

00:04:59.520 In any case, this is just another example of this hypocrisy that we see from leaders,

00:05:04.480 which comes down to two things. 0.82

00:05:06.100 It's not just brazen hypocrisy.

00:05:08.620 It's also a lack of cohesive and consistent and concise messaging.

00:05:15.000 And being outside is one of these great examples of it.

00:05:17.920 Because early on, we were told, stay indoors, keep your windows closed, keep your windows

00:05:22.000 locked, your doors locked, and don't go anywhere.

00:05:24.460 Don't do anything.

00:05:25.960 And then we started to get a bit more of a sense that, okay, there's probably not a reason

00:05:30.880 to stay indoors, indoors.

00:05:32.940 You can stay distant outside.

00:05:34.820 Don't go outside if you're sick, if you're symptomatic.

00:05:37.120 But if you want to just go for a walk, you can do that.

00:05:39.620 If you want to go to parks, you can.

00:05:41.640 You're never going to catch it outside because basically no one has caught it outside.

00:05:46.000 That was the messaging we started to get.

00:05:48.160 And even other forms of infectiousness.

00:05:50.380 There was one study that came out last week that said, you know, it doesn't actually live

00:05:53.800 on surfaces as long as people think.

00:05:55.740 So it's not like you have to just completely disinfect anything and everything that you touch.

00:05:59.960 I mean, it's good practice to do and to wash your hands and all of that.

00:06:02.860 But it's not like this virus, as we heard earlier on in the pandemic, can just, you know,

00:06:08.900 live on a surface and stay there for, you know, the next three years or whatever and

00:06:12.520 camp out and squat and then eventually, oh, boom, you're infected.

00:06:16.580 So it's as we learn more, we get fewer and fewer reasons to panic and be paranoid about it.

00:06:22.760 And you compound that with fatigue that people have from having been in lockdown so much.

00:06:27.880 And it doesn't surprise me that everyone decides, OK, it's a nice day, we're going to go outside.

00:06:32.380 It was a gorgeous day in most parts of the country on the weekend.

00:06:35.080 Certainly where I was, it was absolutely lovely.

00:06:37.480 So I don't blame people for doing that.

00:06:39.760 But at the same time, it's when the political leaders like John Tory, who are the ones telling

00:06:44.220 people they've got to stay locked down, and his public health advisor was very disappointed

00:06:49.140 in everyone as well.

00:06:50.480 When this is what happens, the political leaders are the ones that I think we need to expect more

00:06:56.720 of here. And this comes at the same time that there were a couple of stories out of the UK

00:07:00.580 where Dominic Cummings, who is a chief advisor to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson,

00:07:06.620 has been breaking lockdown numerous times, despite being one of the chief architects

00:07:12.180 of the British lockdown rules right now.

00:07:15.060 At one point, he drove 260 miles across England to stay with his parents.

00:07:19.840 Now, he said this was because his wife was symptomatic and he went where he could go.

00:07:24.260 But then there were other reports that he was like traveling into towns 30 minutes away.

00:07:28.780 And throughout the month of April, very rarely was he at home.

00:07:31.800 He was just going every which way and doing whatever he wanted.

00:07:34.720 This is the type of guy that was part of the government telling everyone else,

00:07:38.280 you can't leave.

00:07:39.000 And the government that in the UK, by the way, insane, police were rationing the number of times

00:07:45.220 you could exercise outside your home.

00:07:47.400 You could only exercise once a day.

00:07:49.400 There was a woman who was harassed on a park bench last week because they said by sitting

00:07:54.060 on a bench, she wasn't using her exercising.

00:07:56.700 And she was very shrewd.

00:07:58.420 She said, well, no, she's doing mental exercises.

00:08:00.780 The laws were not clear on whether it had to be physical or mental exercise.

00:08:04.380 So she's sitting on the bench doing her mental exercise.

00:08:07.760 The cops had no idea what to do.

00:08:09.880 So Britain is the place where worse than anywhere else in the world,

00:08:13.620 the police will go after you for doing absolutely anything or doing absolutely nothing at all.

00:08:18.580 And as Mark Stein said, and I think I quoted it on a previous show,

00:08:22.420 Britain is where everything is policed except crime.

00:08:24.940 So what happens here is in Britain, the leaders do whatever they want.

00:08:29.860 The leaders don't need to follow the rules that the rest of us plebs do. 1.00

00:08:33.580 And this is why there was that story a few weeks back of Neil Ferguson,

00:08:37.720 the scientist who, again, was one of the chief architects of locking people down,

00:08:42.680 had been breaking lockdown rules to have an affair with his ongoing lover.

00:08:48.240 Antonia Stats, which for a statistician is a really great name for a lover.

00:08:53.060 Not that you should have one.

00:08:54.940 But this is, again, the intelligentsia in Britain.

00:08:58.400 Those who are staffing the Politburo, they get to do what they want.

00:09:01.280 They can violate and cavort and gallivant and do all of these other things.

00:09:05.060 But anyone else is risking prosecution if they do it.

00:09:08.340 And this is the whole thing with John Tory.

00:09:10.140 So my view is that what happened at Trinity Bellwoods Park,

00:09:12.660 if people were uncomfortable there, they could have said,

00:09:16.580 you know what, we're going to walk back, we're going to go home, we're not safe here.

00:09:19.780 But it sounds from all accounts like most people were physically distancing,

00:09:24.180 most people were socially distancing.

00:09:26.160 Most people there, even though if you get a photo from the right angle,

00:09:29.200 it looks like there's a crowd, were actually fairly segmented.

00:09:32.940 And by the way, the photos can be very deceptive.

00:09:35.860 You look at photos of lineups, if you take the photo square on,

00:09:40.100 it looks like people are stacked, you know, shoulder to shoulder.

00:09:43.200 If you take it from the side, you can see that there's a gap of six feet, six feet, six feet.

00:09:47.480 So don't believe everything you see in photos and videos.

00:09:50.820 But yes, there were thousands of people at the park.

00:09:53.640 So my view on this is that we shouldn't overcorrect, which is what happened on Sunday.

00:09:59.680 So after this all happened on Saturday, police were enforcing, they were out in droves.

00:10:04.160 And then on Sunday, they're going back to prosecuting people for being there as individuals.

00:10:08.420 There was a guy yesterday, it sounds like, that just had four cops to send on him for cracking a beer can open.

00:10:14.340 Now, I don't know if they were going after him for the beer can or going after him for being in the park.

00:10:19.420 But the point is that police were there to prevent anyone from having a good time

00:10:24.140 and having a time at the park and all of that stuff on Sunday

00:10:28.160 because it was an overreaction of what happened on Saturday.

00:10:31.400 And, you know, I don't like the slippery slope argument because people were saying this to me

00:10:36.400 a couple of months ago or even a month ago when I was talking about leaving people be

00:10:40.560 if they were alone in a park, alone in a parking lot.

00:10:43.200 And the response was, oh, well, if you first it's one and then it's a thousand. 0.95

00:10:46.920 I'm like, no, that's ridiculous.

00:10:47.880 And then, of course, the Trinity Bellwoods thing happens.

00:10:50.740 But again, you can enforce these things with a level of a measured response.

00:10:55.260 And that's what's not happening right now.

00:10:57.640 It seems to be all or nothing.

00:10:59.720 And I don't buy into the fact that that's the way things should be.

00:11:03.100 You can ensure that people are being safe and you can certainly enforce and educate,

00:11:08.200 which is what's happening.

00:11:09.240 But that is never going to be bought into by people.

00:11:13.880 When you've got John Tory just going there, mask over his chin, just hanging out, doing what he wants,

00:11:19.120 that people are never going to buy into it.

00:11:20.680 And I'm sorry, but the politicians are either so weak-willed that they can't follow these rules

00:11:26.300 that are for the good of our health or they don't believe them themselves.

00:11:30.100 And I'm starting to think it's kind of the second category where politicians are feeling like they

00:11:35.160 have a role to play here, but they don't actually buy into it.

00:11:38.840 They don't buy into the hysteria and they don't buy into the panic, which is why the politicians

00:11:43.720 that have been telling us, you know, you're going to kill grandma if you so much as linger

00:11:47.020 in the vegetable aisle at the grocery store for a second too long, like John Tory.

00:11:51.340 I'm not saying he does that in the vegetable aisle.

00:11:53.320 I'm saying he's the one telling us that.

00:11:55.140 And then, you know, the first available opportunity, nice weather, John Tory's out there just doing

00:11:59.520 what he wants.

00:12:00.340 So I know I keep talking about John Tory here, but he's an example of the bigger problem,

00:12:05.560 which is that I don't think the politicians are buying into what they're telling everyone

00:12:09.340 else to do.

00:12:10.200 So why should we expect everyone else to go along with it?

00:12:13.160 Why should we?

00:12:13.900 Why should we expect everyone else in the country, the province, the city, whichever jurisdiction

00:12:18.860 you're talking about to follow these things when the people that are telling you how important

00:12:23.240 they are aren't actually doing it themselves?

00:12:27.240 And Ezra Levant from The Rebel, who's been a guest on this show and I've been a guest on

00:12:31.360 his show, Ezra goes nuclear on these sorts of things.

00:12:33.960 So he's put out a bounty on Twitter, which I think is hilarious for anyone who can prove that

00:12:38.940 more politicians and public health officials have been breaking the rules because he's convinced

00:12:43.420 that no one's following them now.

00:12:44.780 He's convinced that just absolutely no one is paying attention to these things.

00:12:48.640 And that all came about from the Toronto chief public health officer's response to the Trinity

00:12:54.540 Bellwoods Park stuff.

00:12:55.760 So, I mean, like whatever John Tory does or doesn't do, I don't care.

00:13:00.800 And I actually, believe it or not, go through life by ensuring John Tory occupies a pretty marginal,

00:13:06.820 if, you know, mostly non-existent place in my mind.

00:13:09.760 So I've talked about him more in the last 10 minutes, I think, than I have in the last

00:13:13.620 10 years.

00:13:14.140 And that's fine.

00:13:14.800 I'm OK moving on from it.

00:13:16.300 But he is an example of the problem here.

00:13:19.460 And he's part of the reason why no one else is going to buy into these things down the road.

00:13:24.960 I think next weekend, if the weather's nice, we're going to see the same thing here.

00:13:28.220 And the appropriate response to that is maybe to reevaluate the quality and caliber of the

00:13:34.320 guidance, not to start cracking skulls and arresting people and shutting down parks again.

00:13:39.120 You know, I know we've been seeing numbers that have been starting to increase again.

00:13:43.280 A lot of this, I think, comes down to testing capacity.

00:13:46.460 We're still ramping up testing.

00:13:48.040 In Ontario, for example, the government said on the weekend, you don't even need to have

00:13:52.460 symptoms if you want to get tested.

00:13:54.940 You can just show up at a testing center and on demand say, hello, I'd like a COVID-19 test,

00:14:00.260 please.

00:14:00.740 And the government is supposed to oblige.

00:14:02.700 So if this happens, yeah, we're testing more and more people, but we need to be focusing

00:14:08.080 on the idea of if you are sick, get tested.

00:14:12.900 If you are sick or you believe you could be or should be, get tested.

00:14:16.760 I don't think there's a benefit in just satisfying curiosity.

00:14:20.380 For example, someone who has been socially distancing, who doesn't know or who doesn't

00:14:25.500 think they have the virus, who doesn't know if there's a situation where they could have

00:14:29.920 just showing up and getting a test for the sake of it, because frankly, you're probably

00:14:33.780 more at risk of catching something at the testing center than you were if you just stayed

00:14:37.400 home.

00:14:38.160 But we also need to look less at the individual numbers now.

00:14:41.880 And I talked about this a bit last week and more at the broader trends we're seeing of

00:14:46.280 deaths and hospitalizations.

00:14:47.960 So I don't think adding new cases is necessarily the bombshell that a lot of people, certainly

00:14:53.920 on the media side of things, are trying to make it out to be.

00:14:56.900 So that would be where I'd caution everyone moving forward here.

00:15:01.940 But the fact remains that when the powers that be are so focused on telling you how to live

00:15:09.920 your lives and not on doing it themselves, it goes back to those two examples that I gave

00:15:15.600 earlier, those two explanations.

00:15:16.880 They either are so weak-willed, they can't do the most basic of things because they're

00:15:21.300 telling us it's easy.

00:15:22.240 They're telling us, oh, it's no biggie.

00:15:23.940 You can do this.

00:15:24.680 Or they don't believe it.

00:15:26.040 And it could still be either.

00:15:28.180 They could just be really weak, ineffectual people that can't do what they're telling everyone

00:15:32.880 else to do.

00:15:33.800 But if that's the case, I don't think it makes it any better.

00:15:37.140 Because they're proving by their own inability to follow these rules that it's not easy.

00:15:42.120 So why on earth are you prosecuting people for doing what you have failed to do yourself?

00:15:47.180 That's my question to these advisors, these politicians, these leaders.

00:15:50.720 And it's not to say that every single one of them has been bad, but certainly enough of

00:15:54.660 them have been.

00:15:55.540 Enough of them have been bad that you can't just take for granted that these people are

00:16:00.920 all in the right here.

00:16:02.980 And you take from that the problems in the advice itself, the inconsistencies in the back

00:16:09.220 and forths on masks and the inconsistencies in the back and forths on border closures and

00:16:14.440 the capitulation to China, the WHO.

00:16:16.320 And ultimately what we get at the end of this is an understanding that, hey, maybe, just

00:16:21.760 maybe, these people are not in control.

00:16:25.780 These are not steady hands.

00:16:27.320 These are not, you know, stable forces driving this thing.

00:16:30.840 But a lot of them are just treading water, trying to figure out day by day what's going

00:16:34.960 on in the same way that the rest of us are.

00:16:36.900 And that's not to denigrate people that are very educated, accomplished, and people that

00:16:42.240 are trying to do the right thing here.

00:16:43.840 But the idea of taking a prosecutorial force and injecting it into all of these areas of

00:16:51.300 society that's not based on science, that's based on control, and not even control that's

00:16:56.680 based on evidence, has to stop.

00:16:58.680 And the fact that this is now ramping up even further is indicative of why it's time, now

00:17:04.760 that we know a bit more about the virus, and actually, now that I'd say we know a lot

00:17:08.220 more about the virus, and we can see the lack of alignment of these two priorities, we

00:17:12.400 need to put our feet in the ground and say, hold up here.

00:17:15.780 And they're proving the point when John Tory shows up with his chin strap mask at Trinity

00:17:20.280 Bellwoods Park.

00:17:21.240 We've got to take a break when we come back.

00:17:22.800 More of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:17:26.740 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:17:30.920 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:17:33.020 Last week, it looked like there was going to be a big shakeup in the Conservative leadership

00:17:37.520 race.

00:17:38.160 The Ontario Superior Court of Justice gave Jim Carajalios a victory against the Conservative

00:17:44.540 Party of Canada, nullifying the Conservative Party's disqualification of Jim Carajalios from

00:17:50.320 the leadership race.

00:17:51.540 So that might have been good news on the surface.

00:17:53.440 But then just one day later, the Conservative Party re-disqualified him.

00:17:58.060 They disqualified him for the second time, and this time in a way that would have been

00:18:02.440 approved by the judge, because it comes down to the various committees that are involved

00:18:07.240 in this leadership race process, and which ones have the authority to disqualify candidates

00:18:12.560 and which ones don't.

00:18:14.600 So the court victory may have been good on the surface, but it wasn't really a moral victory,

00:18:18.840 and it doesn't deal with the fundamental question of whether the party is in the right or in

00:18:24.000 the wrong to disqualify Jim Carajalios, fundamentally speaking, not legally speaking, but whether it

00:18:30.180 is just the morally right thing to do.

00:18:32.860 And joining me on the line now are Jim Carajalios and his wife, Ontario MPP Belinda Carajalios.

00:18:39.240 Jim, Belinda, thanks very much for coming on today.

00:18:41.340 It's great to talk to you both.

00:18:42.680 Thanks for having us.

00:18:43.780 Thanks, Andrew.

00:18:44.680 I'll start with you, Jim.

00:18:46.180 Last week, the judge's decision came down nullifying your disqualification.

00:18:51.000 I had been trying to cover the hearing itself as best as I could remotely, and when I read

00:18:56.780 the decision, I mean, obviously the very bottom line of it was positive, but as I read it,

00:19:02.480 I was not convinced it would be all that much of a victory in the long run.

00:19:06.940 It seems like the judge was fairly committed to this idea that, yes, you could have been

00:19:11.580 disqualified, but only through different means.

00:19:14.900 So were you expecting that the party would do exactly what it did, which is a day after

00:19:18.920 the decision disqualifying you in the quote-unquote proper way?

00:19:23.360 I had mixed emotions when I got it, because on the one hand, it was an unprecedented decision.

00:19:28.200 It's the first time that someone has been successful in court getting a political party

00:19:33.500 to follow its own rules in any election, let alone a leadership, and we proved that they

00:19:39.560 couldn't follow their own rules.

00:19:40.740 They had a small committee of four people, an appeals committee decide they disqualified

00:19:45.140 me after the leadership organizing committee had a vote, and they decided not to disqualify

00:19:50.660 me.

00:19:51.480 But you're right.

00:19:52.340 The judge didn't want to peel the onion all the way back.

00:19:54.920 There wasn't enough evidence on the record because the party withheld information.

00:19:59.060 And so it's very clear in these rules that the leadership committee drafted for themselves.

00:20:03.980 They can change the rules whenever they want.

00:20:06.640 They can re-look at things.

00:20:08.600 And the judge said, you know, under these rules, they've got broad power, this leadership

00:20:12.860 committee.

00:20:13.840 And I think he suggested something, you know, they could take a fresh set of eyes to something.

00:20:18.360 Well, the fresh set of eyes was the next day they did double jeopardy on me, which if you're

00:20:23.640 not familiar with the legal system, double jeopardy is when you're tried twice for the

00:20:27.960 same quote-unquote crime, which I don't think I committed a crime.

00:20:30.960 And they hurried up the next day, less than 24 hours later, to disqualify me.

00:20:36.040 And it makes the whole thing look like a farce because on the one hand, you've got a judge

00:20:41.420 saying, give Jim 14 days to get back in the race.

00:20:44.620 And they didn't even wait 24 hours.

00:20:47.260 They didn't consider an alternative remedy.

00:20:50.480 They didn't call me for a discussion.

00:20:52.140 They just went and did the disqualification. 0.98

00:20:55.220 So I wasn't surprised.

00:20:56.280 That's why my initial communication after we got the court ruling said, we're going to

00:21:01.720 look into if it's possible for us to get back in the race.

00:21:04.920 And there's a couple of keys there, Andrew.

00:21:07.280 You know, the CRO, Derek Bantstone, had this $100,000 penalty on me.

00:21:11.980 We were really close to getting that money.

00:21:14.440 I think we're at $380,000 in total donations, somewhere in there.

00:21:19.560 And there's about 20,000 of that sitting at a post office the party hasn't picked up in

00:21:23.980 two months.

00:21:24.460 And the difference this time than the last time, when Derek Bantstone issued the $100,000

00:21:30.160 penalty last time, I only had eight days before the March 25th cutoff.

00:21:35.260 And this time, the judge gave me 14 days.

00:21:38.800 So it was like the judge was saying, Derek didn't give me enough time to raise it.

00:21:43.800 And the party knows I had it from the court documents.

00:21:46.840 They know I was close to the $400,000.

00:21:49.520 And that's obviously why they decided to not give me the 14 days to raise it and just ax

00:21:56.320 me 24 hours later.

00:21:57.580 So you're right in your initial analysis of the case.

00:22:00.320 We were vindicated that they didn't follow their own rules, but they have broad powers

00:22:04.600 under the leadership rules to do whatever they want.

00:22:06.560 They're more powerful than Andrew Scheer and the leadership candidates in this election.

00:22:09.760 And that's a shame.

00:22:11.300 I should just disclose, lest anyone be unsure of this, I'm not a lawyer.

00:22:15.600 You are a lawyer.

00:22:16.360 So you may have a vastly different take on this than I do.

00:22:19.220 But in reading the decision, one thing that became apparent was that the judge really didn't

00:22:24.240 seem to be interested in wading into political party affairs or wading into anything to do with

00:22:30.060 an election.

00:22:30.680 It seemed like the judge's take on this, the court's take was that this was just a garden

00:22:35.140 variety, contractual dispute.

00:22:37.100 The fact that you were a political candidate was irrelevant.

00:22:39.500 The fact that the Conservative Party of Canada is a political party is irrelevant.

00:22:43.840 And it was just on the technicality.

00:22:45.660 Now, at the same time, there is a democratic effect here.

00:22:49.600 This is about democracy.

00:22:50.980 It's about elections.

00:22:51.720 But I don't think that was really reflected in what the court was evaluating.

00:22:57.260 No.

00:22:57.700 And so you're hitting something like the nail right on the head, that if you go to court to

00:23:02.780 challenge a political party, you can't do it on a judicial review.

00:23:06.900 That's been tried and the law has been settled on that.

00:23:09.920 So, for example, in this case, the judge couldn't analyze Derek Vanstone's decisions for issuing

00:23:15.840 a $100,000 penalty.

00:23:17.820 And he couldn't analyze why he hasn't sanctioned Peter McKay because he used the term bathroom

00:23:22.900 bill or stinking albatross.

00:23:24.380 He couldn't analyze Aaron O'Toole saying Sharia law is a threat to Canadian values and Canadian

00:23:30.640 democracy and other comments that other candidates made.

00:23:34.040 The judge couldn't do that in this case.

00:23:36.220 He could only look at the leadership rules as a contract and whether the party followed

00:23:40.920 it.

00:23:41.780 And that's because in our legal system in Canada, there are no rules or laws that govern how

00:23:47.140 political parties work.

00:23:48.820 Political parties make up their own rules.

00:23:50.480 And the only way you can challenge it in court is through a contractual analysis.

00:23:55.260 Are they following their line by line rules?

00:23:57.600 And when there's a broad set of rules that give draconian powers to a committee of 18,

00:24:03.900 it skews in their favor.

00:24:05.300 So on the one hand, it was unprecedented that we got a judge to rule against a party because

00:24:11.260 that's never happened in Canada before.

00:24:13.940 And so I think it's a success in the sense that it sends a message to all political parties,

00:24:19.120 follow your rules.

00:24:20.440 But on the other hand, you're limited.

00:24:22.500 You can't do a lot in court.

00:24:23.920 You can't ask a judge to say, look at this absurd $100,000 penalty when the buy-in is

00:24:28.500 $300,000.

00:24:29.620 They want me to pay $400,000 out of donations to get on the ballot.

00:24:33.420 And it's kind of other supporters have said that's like extortion.

00:24:36.640 My wife has a bill in the Ontario legislature, Bill 150 that you could tell us about, that's

00:24:42.260 trying to put some rules on political parties to prevent voter fraud.

00:24:46.360 And Belinda can tell you more about it because right now you can commit voter fraud in an internal 0.85

00:24:50.860 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

00:25:14.460 or a leader of a party.

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

00:27:38.760 infect the broader, bigger elections?

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

00:47:11.900 donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 25, 2020

Double Jeopardy (feat. Jim and Belinda Karahalios)

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