Juno News - Erin O'Toole's centrist pivot didn't work

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

00:00:06.660 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.740 Coming up, a look at the Conservative campaign that resulted in a re-elected Liberal minority

00:00:17.400 and the brewing fight over the Conservative Party leadership and Aaron O'Toole's future.

00:00:23.760 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:34.540 Thursday, September 23rd, 2021, just three days after the election of 2021.

00:00:42.740 And it is a lot like a few days prior to the election of 2021.

00:00:48.220 I'm just going to get this out of the way very briefly because a lot of people have characterized

00:00:51.940 this as the Seinfeld election, the election about nothing, the pointless election.

00:00:56.620 And I've been on the record since the get-go saying I don't actually think it was a bad

00:01:00.800 time for an election because it gives Canadians and it gave Canadians the opportunity to audit

00:01:06.860 the government's performance on COVID and any number of other things.

00:01:10.980 And just because the election had the same result as the last election virtually doesn't

00:01:16.280 mean it was pointless.

00:01:17.440 It just means that Canadians made the same choice they did previously, which was to say, 0.57

00:01:21.740 yeah, I guess we're better off with Justin Trudeau than other people, but we certainly

00:01:26.500 don't want to give him a blank check, which is what a majority would be.

00:01:30.300 Now, we can debate and discuss whether Canadians made the right call or the wrong call, but in

00:01:35.200 a democracy, that is their call to make.

00:01:38.440 Our call, your call, however you want to slice and dice this.

00:01:41.940 But with that being said, it wasn't 24 hours after the polls closed before the knives were

00:01:48.560 out for Aaron O'Toole from within the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:01:52.880 And I want to delve into that.

00:01:54.340 I'm going to talk about two main things here.

00:01:56.240 What went wrong in the election and what that means for Aaron O'Toole moving forward, because

00:02:00.920 there's some overlap on these.

00:02:02.340 The reasons why Aaron O'Toole has knives out for him are very similar to the reasons the

00:02:07.460 Conservatives might not have fared as well in this election.

00:02:10.120 But there are also some trends afoot that don't have to do with the election that are

00:02:14.940 working against Aaron O'Toole.

00:02:16.480 But I'm going to talk about this in a fair bit of depth here, because I was covering the

00:02:20.160 campaign.

00:02:21.040 I covered the Conservative campaign specifically.

00:02:24.220 I also covered the PPC and some of the general broader themes of the election campaign.

00:02:29.660 So I've got a bit of on-the-ground information that I can share about this, plus just the

00:02:35.340 30,000-foot view of things.

00:02:37.280 And I will say that Aaron O'Toole was running away from conservatism.

00:02:41.720 There's no way about it.

00:02:42.780 No one who is a Conservative would look at the O'Toole campaign and say that this was

00:02:47.280 a campaign that was going to the right.

00:02:50.140 Now, there are lots of debates that people can have about whether he made the right call

00:02:54.800 or the wrong call.

00:02:56.620 Victory makes people overlook a lot.

00:02:59.220 Victory makes people forgive a lot.

00:03:00.880 If the gamble that Aaron O'Toole made had worked, if Aaron O'Toole had won, a lot of

00:03:06.620 the people that think that he wasn't Conservative enough, that were upset about the flip-flop on

00:03:10.980 the carbon tax, on firearms, on CBC funding, and other things, a lot of people would say,

00:03:15.940 all right, well, okay, he won.

00:03:18.820 So I guess we'll just get over it and work from within.

00:03:21.940 But that didn't happen.

00:03:23.140 And if you're going to do that, if you're going to make a big, bold strategy that's

00:03:28.880 based off of the idea of not really caring about the base all that much and running to

00:03:33.220 the center, you better make sure it works, which it didn't.

00:03:37.960 And that's why a lot of the blue Tories are saying to Aaron O'Toole right now, okay, we

00:03:44.580 did it your way.

00:03:45.400 It didn't work.

00:03:46.280 Now it's time to go back to the party's roots, go back to a Conservative leader with a Conservative

00:03:51.500 campaign.

00:03:52.200 So here's what I want to do right now.

00:03:55.640 I want to explain the flip-flops, because this was where you took a party that was already

00:04:00.460 not entirely on the fence with Aaron O'Toole, and you just pushed it further and further

00:04:05.380 away from him.

00:04:06.060 It started back in April when the Conservatives announced their answer to Justin Trudeau's

00:04:10.800 carbon tax, which was the O'Toole bucks plan.

00:04:13.440 This was the Aaron O'Toole slash Conservative carbon tax that they weren't calling a carbon

00:04:18.380 tax that was going to take money that Canadians spend on things like gas or other so-called

00:04:24.880 carbon-intensive things.

00:04:26.640 And the money that you pay for these things, you'd have to pay a levy, which would go into

00:04:31.560 a savings account that you could then redeem to retrofit your house with energy-efficient

00:04:36.820 windows or to make government-approved green purchases.

00:04:40.680 And for starters, it was just a convoluted plan, not something that we'd ever seen anywhere

00:04:45.000 in the world before.

00:04:46.340 And also, it was one that the Liberals pointed out very quickly, rewarded making the purchases

00:04:52.520 that government was telling you not to make.

00:04:54.580 So because you got the money back to do green things, the more you spent on bad things,

00:05:01.440 or what the government thinks are bad things, the more you have to spend on green things.

00:05:06.040 So it was actually a reverse incentive sort of thing, but ended up being an incentive.

00:05:11.140 And this was where a lot of Conservatives didn't care about the nuance.

00:05:14.900 They were just saying, all right, you said no carbon tax, and this is a carbon tax.

00:05:19.260 If it's government making us pay more for something, it's a carbon tax.

00:05:23.480 And it didn't win any support from the left.

00:05:26.700 It didn't win.

00:05:27.480 What Aaron O'Toole was trying to do is say, we're not like the other Conservatives.

00:05:30.820 We are the new Conservative Party.

00:05:33.100 We've got a plan for climate.

00:05:34.600 And he did this.

00:05:36.340 And I remember on the campaign, even the days that I was covering O'Toole's campaign,

00:05:40.500 questions from reporters almost every day about why are you not going further on climate?

00:05:45.820 Justin Trudeau has amended.

00:05:47.380 He's increased his target for Canada.

00:05:49.780 Why does your plan not do that?

00:05:51.340 It was not enough.

00:05:52.380 And that actually started pretty much the day after O'Toole announced the plan.

00:05:57.440 The questions from the media were, oh, why does it not go further?

00:06:00.840 So it never really worked.

00:06:02.440 And I had said at the time in April, O'Toole was trying to do one of two things.

00:06:06.000 Number one, he was trying to actually say, yes, we're different.

00:06:09.240 And this is our plan.

00:06:10.180 And it's a great plan.

00:06:11.460 Or he was trying to just take it off the table.

00:06:14.060 He was trying to neutralize the attack that he knew the Conservatives were going to get,

00:06:18.380 which was, oh, they don't have a plan for climate by saying, well, yes, we do.

00:06:21.340 And it's not entirely clear which he was trying to do, because he didn't actually talk about the

00:06:27.200 climate plan all that much during the election campaign.

00:06:30.420 He almost was hoping that I think a lot of people would forget about it.

00:06:33.900 But Conservative members didn't forget about it.

00:06:37.160 That was kind of the mother of the flip-flops.

00:06:39.380 When O'Toole went from signing this pledge with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that you see

00:06:43.500 on the screen there, no carbon tax, to, okay, well, here's the Conservative carbon tax that

00:06:48.580 we're going to have in our platform.

00:06:50.540 And then there were other things as well.

00:06:52.280 Like I reported on the first full day of the campaign in his leadership platform last year,

00:06:57.260 CBC was going to be defunded and privatized.

00:07:00.620 And then all of a sudden it was, well, we're just going to review the mandate and maybe just

00:07:04.580 see if there might be another business model for it.

00:07:08.220 And then there was firearms in the platform.

00:07:10.480 We're going to roll back the Liberal Order and Council from May 2020 to this.

00:07:16.080 So I want to make my position on firearms perfectly clear.

00:07:21.820 First, the ban on assault weapons will remain in place.

00:07:26.720 Second, the present ban on a number of other firearms that were reclassified in 2020 will

00:07:33.360 remain in place.

00:07:34.860 Third, we will conduct a transparent review of the firearms classification process to take

00:07:42.060 the politics out of this process and engage the public in decisions with respect to public safety.

00:07:49.540 And then there was his flip-flop on conscience rights for healthcare practitioners laid out

00:07:53.840 very clearly in the platform that he would protect conscience rights for healthcare practitioners

00:07:58.640 until he said this.

00:08:00.820 Well, as you know, I'm pro-choice and I want to make sure that access for women to those

00:08:06.700 services are available across the country.

00:08:09.140 It's an important right I will not only defend.

00:08:12.580 I think we can also defend conscience rights for our incredible men and women on the front

00:08:17.480 lines in our healthcare system.

00:08:19.280 That is something we're going to do.

00:08:21.420 Will they have to refer?

00:08:23.500 Comme j'ai dit, on doit avoir une réorientation pour les services.

00:08:28.260 Oui, yes, they will have to refer because the rights to access those services exist across

00:08:34.060 the country.

00:08:34.520 So there were a few of these, not just flip-flopping on things he had said earlier in his political

00:08:39.440 career, but things that were in the printed paper hard copy platform that the party had

00:08:46.540 released just a couple of weeks prior.

00:08:49.340 So this is again why conservatives are frustrated.

00:08:52.180 They thought even when they saw the platform, okay, I can live with these things.

00:08:55.660 And then one by one, a lot of these issues, which may not be relevant to most Canadians or

00:09:00.640 all Canadians, but are certainly relevant to large chunks of the conservative base.

00:09:06.560 And I would say beyond that, but in particular, the conservative base, especially single issue

00:09:11.040 voters who are highly motivated by the firearms issue or by conscience rights for healthcare

00:09:16.500 practitioners.

00:09:17.020 And we'll talk about that a little bit later in the show with Jonathan Van Maron.

00:09:20.740 So this is, I think, what's contributing to the knives coming out so quickly, even more

00:09:27.340 quickly than they did for Andrew Scheer, I think, although arguably some people were

00:09:30.740 calling for Andrew Scheer's demise before the election even happened.

00:09:34.300 Here's the thing though.

00:09:36.360 Aaron O'Toole is really part of this cultural battle within the conservative party right now

00:09:41.260 that's been as old as the merger, which is 2003, 2004, where you've got the red Tories

00:09:47.000 versus the blue Tories.

00:09:48.260 You've got on one hand, the people that say, okay, we are the hardcore, hard blue, right

00:09:54.860 blue, true blue, red meat conservatives, then the other people that say, no, no, no, we've

00:09:59.100 got to be compassionate conservatives.

00:10:00.920 Sometimes they're the Cape Breton conservatives, the people that say we have to be moderate,

00:10:05.040 eschew the social issues.

00:10:06.160 And there's always been, on one hand, this presentation of the conservative party as having

00:10:11.360 a big tent with room for all.

00:10:13.360 But internally, there's been this tug of war between these groups where each one wants

00:10:17.920 to be the champion in nominations, in leadership.

00:10:20.800 So O'Toole's in this weird spot here, because on one hand, he ran in the leadership as a true

00:10:25.740 blue conservative, which in that context really meant the anti-Peter McKay.

00:10:30.480 But that's not the background.

00:10:32.280 That's not where he comes from in the party.

00:10:34.060 That's not the tradition from which he comes.

00:10:36.140 I don't think he's ever been on the right side of the party.

00:10:40.480 And that's completely fine.

00:10:42.820 But he made a couple of concessions because he wanted the support from the base.

00:10:46.980 And that was the problem here, is that he was not prepared to live up to those few promises

00:10:53.360 that he made.

00:10:55.260 And that's why, and when I talk about the knives being out, I want to speak about one

00:10:58.820 very specific example of this here.

00:11:00.960 Burt Chen, who's a member of the National Council for the Conservative Party, has actually

00:11:06.080 launched a petition on Change.org.

00:11:08.380 Now, a couple of things to keep in mind here.

00:11:10.360 Change.org, not an official organ of registering your discontent with the Conservative Party of

00:11:15.320 Canada.

00:11:16.020 But it is a good way of showing momentum for something.

00:11:19.120 He's got, at the time that I'm recording this, over 2,000 signatures.

00:11:22.780 More are likely to be alongside that because it has been picked up by media.

00:11:27.160 True North reported on it.

00:11:28.600 And then national media started to follow suit.

00:11:31.440 And Burt Chen is saying that Aaron O'Toole has betrayed the principles that the Conservative

00:11:36.220 Party has founded on.

00:11:37.620 He's broken the trust of the members of the Conservative Party.

00:11:40.980 And his campaign failed.

00:11:42.700 So he wants a referendum that is going to recall Aaron O'Toole as leader of the Conservative

00:11:49.200 Party.

00:11:50.240 He says the betrayal is that he put forward a plan that abandoned fiscal responsibility.

00:11:54.600 He is trampling freedoms by supporting vaccine passports. 0.98

00:11:58.500 He broke the trust of members by embracing a carbon tax.

00:12:01.400 Those are the three main things.

00:12:03.640 And Burt Chen also takes issue with, and this is a bit in the weeds here, so bear with me,

00:12:07.820 the fact that there is going to be a leadership review, but not for another two years.

00:12:12.560 So the Conservative Constitution requires the members to review their leader, review their

00:12:18.620 leadership, if they lose an election at the next time they have a convention.

00:12:23.920 Now, the challenge with that is that the convention is not scheduled for another two years.

00:12:29.340 So if there is, as Aaron O'Toole keeps talking about, an election in 18 months, as Trudeau has

00:12:36.620 mused as possible in a minority situation, then Aaron O'Toole could, by default, run in

00:12:42.020 another election without going through that review.

00:12:44.280 So what Burt Chen is trying to do with his petition here is expedite this process.

00:12:48.960 Now, it's not clear this is valid in the way he's trying to do it.

00:12:52.940 If 20% of Conservative members sign a petition, they can trigger a referendum, and that referendum

00:13:00.060 could be to recall Aaron O'Toole.

00:13:01.960 Now, that referendum would then need to be passed, and this could happen in a way that

00:13:06.820 is as distinct and would happen in a way that's distinct from the leadership review

00:13:11.820 at the 2023 Conservative Party Convention.

00:13:14.440 If you're, I'm sorry if you're like glazing over from this, because I know it's not like

00:13:18.120 internal party constitutional mechanics are not most people's idea of a good time, but

00:13:22.520 they are relevant here if the Conservative base is trying to get O'Toole out.

00:13:27.640 With Andrew Scheer, they didn't do any of this.

00:13:29.820 They were going to, but he just said, you know what, this isn't working, I'm stepping down.

00:13:33.480 He just knew that it was no longer viable for him to proceed, and that may happen with

00:13:38.000 Aaron O'Toole.

00:13:38.540 Well, Aaron O'Toole also has a lot more support behind him right now than Andrew Scheer did.

00:13:45.040 Andrew Scheer had alienated a lot of people in the party by the end of his leadership.

00:13:50.240 But at the same time, Aaron O'Toole does have support from a lot of people who are tending

00:13:55.900 to fall into two camps.

00:13:57.220 One of them is, he's our guy, we like him, we want to keep him around.

00:14:00.740 And also the other group that says, okay, we can't do this.

00:14:04.440 We can't just knife the leader every time, we've got to give him another shot.

00:14:08.960 And there was a counter petition after Bert Chen's petition, which doesn't have as much

00:14:12.860 support, but is still taking off, which is simply, I support Aaron O'Toole.

00:14:17.120 And this is done by a Conservative activist, Fraser MacDonald, who we'll actually have on

00:14:20.960 the show tomorrow to talk about this.

00:14:23.140 And he says, yeah, we're disappointed, but holding a leadership race while the Liberals

00:14:26.840 are on the ropes will achieve nothing but letting them off the hook.

00:14:30.000 Look, now is the time to unite all Conservatives and focus on being ready to win right now.

00:14:35.520 And he says, Aaron O'Toole is the guy, he can do it, we just have to give him another

00:14:39.340 shot to do it.

00:14:40.220 So these are the two narratives of, you know what, he failed, he betrayed us, let's get

00:14:44.600 rid of him, versus, okay, let's just buckle down and stay united.

00:14:48.700 Because fracturing within the Conservative movement has always been a threat.

00:14:53.020 We see this with the People's Party, where the Conservative movement does not keep itself

00:14:58.620 together.

00:14:59.660 And this is not a normative statement.

00:15:01.780 I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that.

00:15:03.280 I'm just pointing out that that's the pattern that the right in Canada tends to fall into

00:15:07.580 every time.

00:15:09.040 So the question will be, should Aaron get a pass on that?

00:15:12.180 Should Aaron O'Toole get a pass?

00:15:13.500 And I will say, I've extended an invitation to Aaron O'Toole's office to have him on the

00:15:18.960 show to speak to Conservatives about why he should stay.

00:15:22.380 Because his message has been, I'm not going anywhere.

00:15:25.120 This is a clip from his press conference the day after the election.

00:15:29.380 I'm the leader of the party that founded this great country, and I'm very proud of that.

00:15:33.840 I'm proud of the gains we made last night for the first time in a decade back in Newfoundland

00:15:38.780 and Labrador.

00:15:39.540 Some new members of our caucus from across the country, some new generation of talent.

00:15:44.860 And we're closer in dozens upon dozens of ridings, but not close enough.

00:15:49.260 I want to earn that trust of Canadians, and that's why we're going to work tirelessly

00:15:54.220 to examine what went right, what went wrong, to make sure that we form a government that

00:16:00.240 has all Canadians part of a Conservative government.

00:16:02.840 And we're going to need that because we could be back in an election in another 18 months.

00:16:07.300 So you can hear it there.

00:16:08.320 His pitch is, yeah, I'm the leader.

00:16:10.060 I'm not going anywhere.

00:16:10.980 I'm going to continue to fight.

00:16:12.500 And this is what we're doing.

00:16:13.700 And I said a moment ago, I invited him on the show to do an interview.

00:16:17.780 I haven't heard back yet.

00:16:19.140 I should say, well, I had no issue getting access to Aaron O'Toole on the campaign trail

00:16:24.100 when we actually paid to travel with the media on the campaign by plane and bus and all of

00:16:29.740 that.

00:16:30.240 I had been requesting for weeks, for actually for months.

00:16:33.620 I had been requesting since, I think, April, a sit-down interview with Aaron O'Toole.

00:16:38.520 And I said, I know this is going to be harder to schedule the closer we get to the election.

00:16:42.300 Let's do an interview.

00:16:43.440 Let's talk about the Aaron O'Toole approach to this.

00:16:46.940 Talk to the issues that matter to the conservatives in Canada, small C and big C.

00:16:51.940 And for the most part, I wasn't even getting a reply.

00:16:55.220 And through the election, I kept saying, listen, can we just do an interview?

00:16:57.780 Can we do an interview?

00:16:58.780 Do some interview?

00:16:59.820 And it was like three days before the election, they finally responded and said, sorry,

00:17:04.140 we can't fit this in after months of not really getting a reply at all.

00:17:07.800 But nonetheless, I'm a forgiving guy.

00:17:09.520 So I've reached out again and said, let me do an interview with Aaron O'Toole.

00:17:12.600 Well, he needs to justify to his base why he should stay on.

00:17:16.620 Let's talk about the issues that matter to conservatives, the issues that he thinks matters to the party and to the base.

00:17:22.820 And I haven't heard back.

00:17:24.360 But again, the invitation absolutely stands.

00:17:26.640 I want to bring into this discussion Jonathan Van Maren, who is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform,

00:17:34.600 which is a very active and dedicated pro-life group.

00:17:37.920 Jonathan, it's good to talk to you.

00:17:39.120 Thanks for coming on today.

00:17:40.760 Yeah, thanks for having me on, Andrew.

00:17:41.820 We spoke at length about this on the show a couple of months ago in a panel with you and our colleagues,

00:17:47.820 Alyssa and Scott from Right Now, about the state of the conservative movement,

00:17:52.120 specifically as it pertains to social conservatism and a lot of the issues that come along with that.

00:17:58.080 But let's start with a general question here.

00:18:00.600 Were you surprised by what happened on Monday?

00:18:02.600 No, actually, it's pretty much exactly the outcome that I predicted,

00:18:07.580 although I will say I thought the People's Party of Canada would do slightly better than it did,

00:18:11.900 based on what people were saying door to door.

00:18:15.340 They did really well, Haldeman Norfolk is the riding just across the street here,

00:18:20.220 and they got 11% there, which is pretty high,

00:18:23.820 especially because there's been vote splitting and ridings like that before.

00:18:26.720 But Justin Trudeau getting more or less his minority back was kind of what I thought was going to happen.

00:18:33.200 So now we've seen, I mean, the votes aren't even counted fully,

00:18:36.780 and we've already seen a lot of people come out and call for Aaron O'Toole's head on a platter.

00:18:42.180 This is, I think, a standard fare in conservative politics in general.

00:18:45.820 A lot of people tend to adopt that one-and-done mentality.

00:18:48.880 But I do think it's a little bit different now, and I'm curious about your thoughts on this,

00:18:52.860 because to some extent I'm seeing from some of the more blue Tories a bit of payback.

00:18:58.020 Okay, well, you made Andrew Scheer eat his loss in 2019,

00:19:01.180 so we're going to do the same for your guy, Aaron O'Toole.

00:19:03.980 But I also think that people had such high expectations for him going into this election

00:19:08.360 that now that it has been lost, I think a lot of people are saying,

00:19:12.120 okay, well, that didn't work.

00:19:13.780 Well, there's a couple of things going on here.

00:19:15.800 The first thing is that everybody knew he was running to the left of his base,

00:19:20.280 but what most people didn't point out was that he was actually running against his base.

00:19:24.180 So, for example, three days before the vote, you have him coming out and saying,

00:19:27.840 we are a socially progressive party, you know, running down a long list of things.

00:19:31.680 The Conservative Party apparently is only if you ignore all of its members of Parliament, right?

00:19:36.860 80% of caucus had voted for a ban on gender selection abortion, as one example,

00:19:42.300 a policy that 84% of Canadians support and 93% of Canadians are in support of.

00:19:47.060 And so when he says things like that, he was basically saying to his MPs, you know,

00:19:51.260 sit down, shut up, I am the party now, and I'm going to tell Canadians what we represent,

00:19:56.040 regardless of what your views are, what your voting record is, why you entered politics,

00:20:00.920 what your constituents want.

00:20:02.760 And the reason there's a lot of Shadden-Troyd about the sheer result versus him,

00:20:06.660 because Shia reduced Trudeau to a minority, beat him in the popular vote.

00:20:10.300 Aaron O'Toole has less seats, less of a vote.

00:20:13.660 This is, of course, pending all the mail-in ballots getting counted.

00:20:16.280 Andrew Scheer was somebody who was socially Conservative but didn't articulate it very well.

00:20:23.240 He had some terrible staffers.

00:20:24.460 He ran from the issues more than he articulated them.

00:20:27.880 But Social Conservatives still understood he was an actually Conservative person.

00:20:31.820 And so even though there was plenty of us who were pretty irritated with him,

00:20:35.220 we all did vote for him at the end of the day.

00:20:37.460 Whereas O'Toole McKay, that wing of the party, said,

00:20:40.540 look, all we need to do is run to the centre.

00:20:42.660 We need to dump the SOCONs. 1.00

00:20:43.960 We need to onboard more centrists, and then we're going to win. 0.58

00:20:46.580 And this has been sort of, the media has said this, the Red Tories have said this,

00:20:51.100 even the Liberals have said this, right?

00:20:53.380 And this is the first time we've actually seen a Conservative leader put that into play

00:20:57.040 on the ground and then get completely blown away when you have an incredibly crippled Prime Minister

00:21:02.880 during an election that nobody wanted.

00:21:05.560 And he can't even outperform the guy who couldn't articulate SOCON values well.

00:21:11.120 So for me, the gratifying part of the coverage, even on the CBC the morning after,

00:21:16.960 was like, oh, Aaron O'Toole ran to the centre and it didn't work.

00:21:19.740 And that's a much different tune than the media usually sings on election, like post-op, as you know.

00:21:26.040 Yeah, and there's a lot to unpack there.

00:21:29.320 I would say looking back to 2019, there was nothing I found particularly objectionable

00:21:33.880 in the platform that Andrew Scheer put in.

00:21:36.300 Of course, I was looking and saying, yeah, it would have been great if there was a bit more red meat. 0.97

00:21:40.080 But you had communications nightmare after communications nightmare.

00:21:44.580 You had bad messaging and then a couple of mini scandals that popped up

00:21:48.120 that weren't handled particularly well, like, you know, dual citizenship and stuff like that.

00:21:52.520 But the thing with Aaron O'Toole is that he reversed his platform,

00:21:57.280 the platform that the party printed and distributed that he had announced on several occasions.

00:22:02.780 The first one was conscience rights for healthcare practitioners,

00:22:06.400 which was a pretty big thing for social conservatives,

00:22:09.380 because that was one of the two things that he gave them.

00:22:12.420 He was very transparent in the leadership.

00:22:14.200 He said, I'm not one of you, but I'll give you free votes

00:22:17.020 and I'll give you conscience rights for healthcare practitioners.

00:22:20.000 And he held the line on that for a couple of days.

00:22:22.380 And then eventually flipped and said, okay, there's a duty to refer.

00:22:25.800 And then there were firearms and then other flip-flops as well along the way.

00:22:30.260 And when you only give social conservatives two things,

00:22:34.780 it's pretty significant when you abandon both of those things in the course of 36 days.

00:22:39.880 Well, that's exactly it.

00:22:41.320 I said on our live stream on election night, by the time election day rolled around,

00:22:45.940 it was hard to figure out which faction of the conservative base he hadn't stabbed in the back.

00:22:50.700 Because the thing about when you pivot to the center or when you go after new constituencies

00:22:55.260 to expand your votes and get elected, which obviously is his job,

00:22:58.420 you actually have to ensure you hang on to the voters that you do have,

00:23:01.680 especially when you have a challenge from the right.

00:23:03.540 And he completely ignored the BBC until the final days.

00:23:06.920 But if you look at it, right, you mentioned firearms.

00:23:08.960 There was conscience rights.

00:23:09.920 The SOCONs couldn't stand him.

00:23:11.460 Then you had the carbon tax thing.

00:23:12.820 I put it to the listeners and the viewers.

00:23:16.220 What does he do that's conservative?

00:23:18.180 He gave a speech on election night, which was this sort of barn-burning victory speech

00:23:23.920 about this is a conservatism that does X, Y, Z.

00:23:26.560 And by the time he was done, I'm like,

00:23:27.500 that does not resemble any version of conservatism that I'm aware of.

00:23:31.720 And I work with a lot of European pro-life groups.

00:23:34.220 And so there are different kinds of conservatism, right?

00:23:36.620 There's especially a difference between a Canadian conservatism,

00:23:38.820 a European conservatism, and an American conservatism.

00:23:42.660 And then there's the O'Toole conservatism,

00:23:45.100 which apparently involves screwing over all the conservatives in his own base,

00:23:49.420 promising the left that he's just like them,

00:23:52.360 and then realizing that why would they vote for him if he's just like them

00:23:56.380 but will give them less stuff than the other guy?

00:23:58.640 There isn't really a compelling reason to vote for, you know,

00:24:01.380 a less attractive version of Justin Trudeau.

00:24:04.380 When we had the 2020 leadership race, I guess it was,

00:24:08.720 it was very much Peter McKay versus everyone.

00:24:11.120 You had at the time Derek Sloan appealing to social conservatives,

00:24:14.520 Lesley Lewis appealing to social conservatives,

00:24:16.920 and Aaron O'Toole, who was, I think,

00:24:18.540 the third choice for a lot of social conservatives,

00:24:20.580 but very much was the I'm not Peter McKay candidate

00:24:24.240 to people on the right flank of the party,

00:24:26.520 despite the true blue messaging.

00:24:28.420 I don't think he was misrepresenting.

00:24:30.240 I think everyone knew where he was.

00:24:32.280 But do you think the result of this now

00:24:35.420 is going to be a correction back to a Lesley Lewis-type candidate

00:24:39.820 to a Pierre Polyev-type candidate?

00:24:41.660 Do you think that people will look at this and say,

00:24:43.580 OK, we tried playing by the rules

00:24:45.720 of what all those conservative consultants tell us to do,

00:24:48.040 which is forget about the base and go after the center.

00:24:50.380 It didn't work.

00:24:51.260 Or do you think that it's a double-down moment for those people?

00:24:53.780 Well, so the red Tories are going to double down

00:24:55.840 because they have to, right?

00:24:57.460 I think Aaron O'Toole realizes that even if he gets a second crack at leadership,

00:25:00.900 he's not going to get a second crack at getting most of that base back

00:25:03.880 because he realized during this election

00:25:05.840 he couldn't just rely on their loathing of Trudeau,

00:25:09.040 which is what he was counting on.

00:25:10.400 And that was a fair bet that people hated Trudeau so much

00:25:13.120 they were going to hold their nose and vote for him anyways.

00:25:15.460 Well, that bet failed when people had the chance to get rid of Trudeau.

00:25:19.060 I have a very specific view on what we should do moving forward.

00:25:22.720 And we discussed this at length previously on one of your shows

00:25:25.840 with some other guests about what is social conservatism in Canada.

00:25:29.080 And I really believe there's an enormous opportunity

00:25:31.020 for social conservatives to change the way we talk about these things

00:25:34.960 and to take the issue of choice off the table.

00:25:37.120 So I wrote a piece in Convivium in the early days of the election

00:25:40.700 noting that Justin Trudeau promised over 300 grand

00:25:43.920 to the University of New Brunswick to research

00:25:46.940 where abortion access could be improved, right?

00:25:50.360 How can we get more women more abortions, basically? 1.00

00:25:52.720 And I said, look, the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada,

00:25:55.040 which is the most radical pro-abortion group in the country,

00:25:57.600 said in 2018 that a slim majority of women actually don't want abortions.

00:26:01.720 Like, they're getting abortions because they, quote,

00:26:03.360 feel like they have no other choice.

00:26:05.160 You know, a conservative candidate who understood

00:26:07.220 that you could be socially conservative

00:26:09.140 without picking legislation that is going to kill you

00:26:12.240 in the court of public opinion would say,

00:26:13.780 actually, we're going to be giving $400,000 to commission a study

00:26:16.920 into why these women are having abortions they don't want 0.99

00:26:19.440 and to figure out how to get the support that they actually want.

00:26:23.200 And then start talking about unwanted abortions 0.79

00:26:25.160 instead of unwanted babies, right?

00:26:26.820 Trudeau assumes that there's a lot of unwanted babies

00:26:28.700 and no unwanted abortions.

00:26:30.220 What if we just came from a different assumption,

00:26:31.940 took the issue of choice off the table,

00:26:33.500 and started working towards policies that looked like that?

00:26:36.200 So I think O'Toole has to go, and that won't surprise you.

00:26:40.000 There's lots of phone calls flurring around at the moment.

00:26:42.560 There's plenty of MPs who feel the same way,

00:26:44.980 especially MPs who feel like, you know,

00:26:47.060 victory solves a lot of stuff.

00:26:48.760 So if he had insulted them, screwed them over,

00:26:51.020 treated them with contempt, and then won,

00:26:52.860 you know, all would probably be forgiven today,

00:26:55.580 albeit begrudgingly.

00:26:56.680 But because he did all that and lost,

00:26:59.280 there's a lot of people who want his head on a platter, right?

00:27:01.920 Burt Chen has already got a petition out for his removal.

00:27:05.360 So I think I want Lesley Lewis for later,

00:27:08.780 which I've been saying for a couple of years,

00:27:10.640 because I think that for social conservatives,

00:27:12.600 we need a paradigm shift politically.

00:27:14.500 We need to move away from trying the same pieces of legislation

00:27:17.220 we've been putting forward for 25 years.

00:27:19.900 And I want a female candidate to talk about the abortion issue for a change. 1.00

00:27:23.340 Somebody that just eliminates the primary thing we always end up debating,

00:27:27.040 and gets into the nitty-gritty of,

00:27:28.780 Canada has 100,000 abortions a year.

00:27:30.940 That's the same number of abortions as they have in Germany, 0.99

00:27:34.220 and they've got, you know, 50 million more people.

00:27:36.820 So what can we do to change the status quo, seriously speaking?

00:27:39.700 How do we cut that in half?

00:27:40.960 Yeah, you are right about this.

00:27:43.560 And I know that conservatives are naturally resistant

00:27:45.780 to the idea of identity politics,

00:27:47.680 but you have to play the rules of the game as they are.

00:27:50.460 You don't get to write new rules.

00:27:51.680 This is how the media is.

00:27:52.900 This is how the liberals are.

00:27:54.300 And it would be fascinating to see Justin Trudeau

00:27:56.660 try to out-feminist Lesley Lewis, 1.00

00:27:58.960 which would be his instinct.

00:28:00.420 He would try to say,

00:28:01.080 no, no, no, I speak for women more than this female candidate. 1.00

00:28:04.240 And it doesn't have to be Lesley Lewis.

00:28:05.820 It could be anyone.

00:28:06.340 The black-faced thing just mixes it up too, right? 0.98

00:28:08.060 Like, that's the thing.

00:28:09.220 Is, you know, Canada is a very diverse country.

00:28:11.520 I do think there's something to be said

00:28:13.140 that a lot of immigrant communities

00:28:14.320 would want to vote for somebody who looked like them,

00:28:16.320 or at least see somebody sore to the top.

00:28:18.520 Lesley Lewis was the come-from-behind candidate

00:28:20.340 in the last leadership race.

00:28:21.780 But I would pay a lot of money to watch.

00:28:23.800 I don't think he'd debate her.

00:28:25.580 I think if there was a leadership race

00:28:27.080 and she did become leader,

00:28:28.800 which is a whole lot of ifs,

00:28:30.040 I think he'd take his walk in the snow at that point,

00:28:32.700 because I don't think he wants to go up

00:28:34.120 against the black female candidate

00:28:37.760 on any of those issues.

00:28:40.000 But, like, Lesley Lewis also has a very powerful story, right?

00:28:42.100 When I interviewed her about abortion

00:28:44.500 and just asked her where her convictions came from,

00:28:46.480 they said they tried to push her

00:28:47.920 into having an abortion when she was young.

00:28:49.960 So she's experienced that as a woman

00:28:51.400 from the other side of things.

00:28:52.580 Trudeau's like, more abortions for everyone, right?

00:28:55.060 And I'm going to defund crisis pregnancy centers

00:28:57.100 just in case they help you out

00:28:58.760 with an abortion that you don't want, right?

00:29:00.880 Abortion's an objective good for him. 0.80

00:29:02.840 And that's because, you know, his mom had one.

00:29:04.460 She's talked about that publicly.

00:29:05.840 His dad brought abortion to Canada.

00:29:07.680 Abortion is fundamentally part of the Trudeau family legacy.

00:29:10.520 But to see a female candidate 1.00

00:29:11.880 who has a very different experience of this

00:29:13.860 put it forward in a way

00:29:15.480 that could clear the decks for a reasonable discussion.

00:29:18.760 And by a reasonable discussion,

00:29:19.880 I mean, no, we're not going to ban abortion.

00:29:21.300 Canadians aren't going to be able to,

00:29:22.680 they're not going to take that anytime soon.

00:29:24.600 But we can move the Overton window

00:29:26.200 by talking about abortion as a tragedy

00:29:28.220 that is frequently, if not more than half of the time,

00:29:30.960 unwanted by the person procuring the abortion.

00:29:33.880 And we as a society could do a lot about that.

00:29:35.840 And as a pro-life activist,

00:29:37.340 you know, if we put in place policies

00:29:38.840 that mean 20,000 less abortions every year,

00:29:41.220 like, man, I'll sleep well at night.

00:29:43.300 Yeah, and I want to bring it back

00:29:44.660 to the O'Toole problem here

00:29:45.780 because you touched on something very important there,

00:29:47.880 which is the need to change the discussion.

00:29:50.100 And I was talking about this earlier in the show,

00:29:51.900 not in the context of abortion,

00:29:53.360 but in general, the conservative default

00:29:55.960 to taking a defensive position

00:29:57.720 instead of an offensive position on every issue.

00:30:00.580 And part of this is because,

00:30:02.280 and I know this from covering the conservative campaign,

00:30:04.920 most of the questions that the media will ask him

00:30:07.780 are from a liberal premise.

00:30:09.400 And that's just the reality of media.

00:30:11.280 What is government going to do about X?

00:30:12.920 What are you going to do about this?

00:30:14.520 What are you going to do about this issue,

00:30:16.280 that issue?

00:30:16.700 It's always coming from a left-wing premise.

00:30:19.000 However, when the response,

00:30:22.360 the talking points tend to endorse that premise,

00:30:26.220 it doesn't advance the ground anymore.

00:30:28.340 So this is why you had in 2019,

00:30:30.580 Andrew Scheer basically like apologizing

00:30:32.460 for being pro-life with Aaron O'Toole.

00:30:34.780 Again, you don't have any pushing back.

00:30:36.240 I would say, well, hang on.

00:30:37.380 Yeah, why was Justin Trudeau

00:30:38.960 not against gender-based abortion?

00:30:42.540 Why is Justin Trudeau

00:30:43.660 not letting women make this choice? 0.99

00:30:45.200 He says it's their choice.

00:30:46.060 Why does that not include the right

00:30:47.500 to go to a crisis pregnancy center?

00:30:49.860 And when conservatives come across

00:30:53.200 as not particularly well-heeled in their convictions,

00:30:56.880 it only moves us backwards.

00:30:59.620 Yeah, so there's a few things to unpack there.

00:31:01.760 In the instance of Andrew Scheer, of course,

00:31:04.380 he just didn't take the help that was offered,

00:31:07.060 I think, too,

00:31:07.600 is that he could have re-articulated

00:31:09.620 the abortion discussion.

00:31:11.540 He didn't have to play defense on that issue.

00:31:13.700 And this is the thing that's driven me the craziest

00:31:15.320 over the last five to six years

00:31:16.520 is there's a lot of people playing defense

00:31:17.960 on issues they don't need to play defense on.

00:31:20.580 In terms of the way the discussion is locked in,

00:31:23.060 I interviewed Jonathan Kaye

00:31:25.080 on our election night livestream

00:31:26.260 because I wanted to talk to a reasonable social liberal

00:31:29.780 and say, why do you think the discussion

00:31:31.460 is the way it is?

00:31:32.360 Why are we the only Western nation

00:31:34.120 with no abortion law

00:31:35.120 and the only Western nation

00:31:36.220 that can't actually discuss this issue?

00:31:37.640 That's another point conservative politicians

00:31:39.300 could bring up.

00:31:40.100 And they never bring up,

00:31:40.840 and they're like, oh, look,

00:31:41.660 they want to drag us back to the Handmaid's Tale.

00:31:43.560 I'm like, no, no, no, I'm just talking about Sweden

00:31:45.120 or Germany.

00:31:47.340 Yeah, those Handmaid's Tale dystopias of Sweden.

00:31:50.540 Yeah, exactly.

00:31:51.000 The Scandinavian socialist countries

00:31:52.900 was my point of reference there, actually,

00:31:54.640 not Gilead.

00:31:55.580 But the thing is that I think this discussion

00:31:58.520 benefits three groups of people.

00:32:00.240 It's the CBC that loves to talk about abortion

00:32:02.360 but also loves to insinuate

00:32:03.760 that Canada's a more progressive country

00:32:05.460 than all other countries,

00:32:07.340 especially, and including the United States.

00:32:09.760 Then there's the Red Tories,

00:32:10.800 and you know this as well as I do.

00:32:13.320 There are some Red Tories

00:32:14.480 who are just, you know,

00:32:15.480 politicos who want to get elected.

00:32:16.680 There are plenty of Red Tories

00:32:17.760 that actually hold social conservatives in contempt

00:32:19.960 is they actually don't like us.

00:32:22.480 They think it's embarrassing

00:32:23.400 that we're in the same party as them,

00:32:25.040 and they were praying desperately

00:32:26.500 to whatever God they prayed to

00:32:28.000 that Erwin O'Toole was going to eke out a win

00:32:30.160 so that they could have proof of concept

00:32:31.580 that if we offload the crazies,

00:32:33.580 you know, we can onboard the reasonable people

00:32:35.320 and we can go to all the cool cocktail parties.

00:32:37.080 And then there's the liberals

00:32:38.860 who only drag out abortion around election time.

00:32:41.440 And so the whole idea

00:32:42.720 that the conservatives are scary

00:32:43.980 and are going to ban abortion

00:32:45.000 benefits the Red Tories

00:32:46.160 because they can say,

00:32:46.800 look, we need to get rid

00:32:48.060 of all these social conservatives

00:32:49.120 because these attacks are killing us.

00:32:51.640 And the liberals can drag it out every time 0.60

00:32:53.980 and insist that the conservatives

00:32:56.020 are going to do something

00:32:56.720 that Harper showed no interest

00:32:57.980 in doing over 10 years.

00:32:59.760 And then the pro-life groups aren't pitching

00:33:01.640 if you look at what we're actually asking for.

00:33:03.920 And so then we get stuck.

00:33:05.400 And when I come forward

00:33:06.820 and others have come forward

00:33:08.040 and we're looking like,

00:33:08.700 look, there are so many things

00:33:09.960 that we can accomplish

00:33:10.820 that allow us to have a debate

00:33:12.800 completely outside the issue of legality.

00:33:16.240 And nobody's interested

00:33:17.060 because it's serving

00:33:18.100 a whole bunch of people so well, right?

00:33:20.040 Andrew Scheer could have run with this.

00:33:21.580 I do think the next,

00:33:22.800 if there is a leadership race,

00:33:25.080 I think the next conservative leader

00:33:26.720 is going to be much more open

00:33:28.280 to how do I get social conservatives

00:33:30.500 on board without getting murdered

00:33:31.880 in the press?

00:33:32.480 And we saw Pierre Lemieux do it

00:33:34.440 with his social conservative values

00:33:36.240 or Canadian values speeches

00:33:37.400 during the leadership race.

00:33:38.620 We saw Leslyn Lewis do it. 0.95

00:33:40.320 She went on CTV and Global,

00:33:41.900 debated her no hidden agenda platform.

00:33:43.880 And they just didn't know

00:33:44.700 what to do with her

00:33:45.420 because they're like,

00:33:46.100 oh yeah, no,

00:33:46.660 most Canadians support that.

00:33:47.840 That's super reasonable

00:33:48.640 and you're a woman,

00:33:49.380 so I can't.

00:33:49.960 And because to go back

00:33:50.900 to the previous point,

00:33:51.680 they're used to conservatives

00:33:52.820 apologizing for their views.

00:33:54.320 Yeah.

00:33:55.020 Yeah.

00:33:55.280 They're not used to them

00:33:56.060 defending it, right?

00:33:56.840 Like it's the same thing

00:33:58.120 with issues.

00:33:58.760 And making it like a key plank

00:34:00.160 of your platform too.

00:34:01.320 Yeah, yeah.

00:34:02.380 And it's the same thing

00:34:02.860 with Q&A blockers for kids.

00:34:04.240 Like there's a long list

00:34:05.180 of issues where a plurality

00:34:06.480 of Canadians is solidly

00:34:07.740 in the social conservative cap.

00:34:09.380 And most of those issues,

00:34:11.020 especially the more recent issues

00:34:12.240 in the last five, six years,

00:34:13.520 the conservative party

00:34:14.440 has literally given up

00:34:15.640 without a fight.

00:34:17.160 Like, oh, that seems like

00:34:18.720 an issue that the liberals

00:34:19.720 are going to say mean things

00:34:21.060 about us for,

00:34:21.640 so we're not even going

00:34:22.500 to talk about it.

00:34:23.620 Like the discourse in this country

00:34:25.260 on anything cultural

00:34:26.920 is so incredibly impoverished.

00:34:28.760 Look, I know like, for example,

00:34:30.260 firearms is an issue

00:34:31.560 near and dear to your heart.

00:34:32.640 It's going to drive you nuts

00:34:33.760 to watch the way

00:34:34.940 the discussion unfolds.

00:34:36.480 And it's just a stack

00:34:37.420 of garbage premises.

00:34:38.760 And that's the whole discussion.

00:34:40.320 And you're sitting there

00:34:40.900 on the sidelines

00:34:41.460 like none of that stuff is true.

00:34:43.280 And even the stuff that is true

00:34:44.740 is presented in such a way

00:34:46.100 that it isn't true anymore.

00:34:47.380 And we don't have to just sit there

00:34:48.640 and watch that debate take place.

00:34:50.320 And there's no leader

00:34:51.380 who can speak articulately

00:34:52.460 to any of our issues.

00:34:53.640 Yeah.

00:34:54.100 Welcome to my world,

00:34:55.000 week three of the campaign.

00:34:56.620 Jonathan Van Maren,

00:34:57.480 Communications Director

00:34:58.460 for the Canadian Centre

00:35:00.060 for Bioethical Reform.

00:35:01.400 Always a pleasure, Jonathan.

00:35:02.500 Thanks for coming on.

00:35:03.560 You bet.

00:35:03.900 Thanks a million, Andrew.

00:35:05.140 That was Jonathan Van Maren

00:35:07.060 of the CCBR.

00:35:08.300 We're going to have lots more

00:35:09.420 on this tomorrow,

00:35:10.760 talking about both sides

00:35:12.160 of this discussion

00:35:13.000 and also delving into

00:35:14.560 the rise of the PPC,

00:35:16.780 taking a bit more

00:35:17.400 of a critical look

00:35:18.160 at what happened there

00:35:19.380 and what its effect was

00:35:20.960 on the Conservative fortune

00:35:22.520 and on the election in general.

00:35:24.220 That's all going to be tomorrow

00:35:25.120 here on The Andrew Lawton Show,

00:35:26.600 Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:35:28.680 Thank you, God bless,

00:35:29.620 and good day.

00:35:30.420 Thanks for listening

00:35:31.060 to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:35:32.600 Support the program

00:35:33.320 by donating to True North

00:35:34.560 at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - September 23, 2021

Erin O'Toole's centrist pivot didn't work

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