Juno News - Erin O’Toole’s time as CPC leader is coming to an end

00:00:00.000 Is this the end of Aaron O'Toole's time as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada?

00:00:03.480 It's looking that way. I spoke to MPs who said that he needs to step down gracefully

00:00:07.220 to save the party. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:15.140 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. We have a lot to get to today.

00:00:20.020 You probably saw the story of 35 MPs who have signed a letter demanding a leadership review,

00:00:24.380 demanding a vote in the Conservative Caucus meeting on Wednesday to determine the fate

00:00:28.380 of leader Aaron O'Toole and whether or not he will remain as leader. We're going to get to it all

00:00:32.800 today, but I want to start by just asking a simple question. Where has Aaron O'Toole been? Where was

00:00:38.900 he all of last week and all weekend during this trucker convoy? We saw this beautiful, amazing

00:00:44.300 moment in our country where so many people united behind these truckers, where the simple message

00:00:49.620 of just saying we want our country back, we want our freedom back, resonated with so many people.

00:00:54.780 We saw people coming out in droves on the side of freeways to cheer on these truckers. We saw a huge

00:01:00.360 rally in Ottawa, completely peaceful, no injuries, no arrests, a huge, remarkable success, despite the

00:01:07.440 very best efforts of the media, of the Liberal Party, of all of those out there trying to smear

00:01:12.900 these working class truckers and say that there's something that they're not. That all failed. That all

00:01:17.640 fell flat. We have this beautiful moment of unity. It really feels like the country is starting to

00:01:22.120 change, that we've, we've come around a corner and that we can finally see light at the end of the

00:01:25.820 tunnel. This is all a great news story. And it was an opportunity for Aaron O'Toole. Remember that

00:01:31.220 when Aaron O'Toole became leader of the party, one of the messages that he had that I, that I liked

00:01:35.360 was that he didn't shy away from comparisons with Donald Trump. He, he, he said, obviously he's

00:01:40.680 different than Trump and he has different rhetoric and, and a different approach. However, the things that

00:01:45.800 Trump did to capture the imagination of the working class to woo voters who had previously voted for

00:01:51.300 the Democrats in the U S O'Toole wanted a similar strategy. He, he put out a plea to union workers,

00:01:57.660 to people who worked in steel mills, to people who worked in manufacturing, and he asked for their

00:02:02.340 support. He wanted to court blue collar workers into the party. Well, what better opportunity for

00:02:07.920 Aaron O'Toole when thousands of them, tens of thousands of them show up on his doorstep, show up on

00:02:13.500 the lawns of the house of commons of parliament, demanding their freedom. Freedom is supposed to

00:02:18.780 be a core message for the conservative party. That is core in their beliefs. So you have these

00:02:23.460 workers that Aaron O'Toole has said that he wants to court showing up on his lawn. We have their

00:02:27.860 message being completely in sync and in unison with the message of the conservative party, less

00:02:32.900 government, limited government, more individual responsibility, more freedom. That is what they

00:02:37.460 want. It was the perfect opportunity for Aaron O'Toole. And yet O'Toole completely passed it up. He

00:02:43.160 didn't know what position he wanted to take. He had that pathetic exchange last week where he

00:02:48.080 couldn't answer questions from the parliamentary press gallery about whether he was going to meet

00:02:51.660 with the organizers, whether he was going to be part of this rally. He just kind of stepped away

00:02:57.480 from it. He had a very meek response. It was hard to say whether he was in support of it or not.

00:03:02.700 And so, so you have O'Toole sort of publicly faltering over this. And meanwhile, we saw more and more

00:03:08.400 MPs stepping up and saying that, no, no, we support the truckers. These are our people

00:03:12.640 and we support their message. We support the work that they do. And we agree with freedom. We agree

00:03:17.500 with ending the mandates. So you have this awkward situation where O'Toole is not taking a very strong

00:03:22.380 position. His own deputy leader, Candace Bergen, was taking a strong position. You have Pierre Poliev,

00:03:27.320 who's emerged as the star of the party. And he is out there fearlessly and passionately defending

00:03:32.900 these truckers. He's at the rally. He's meeting with people. He's dispelling the awful rumors and

00:03:38.520 lies and slurs that the media was putting out there, showing how diverse and how united and how

00:03:43.920 positive and how happy these protesters were. And yet the leader of the party himself was just

00:03:49.880 nowhere to be found. My colleague Andrew Lawton reported that the organizer of the convoy and the

00:03:54.460 organizer of the GoFundMe account said that she hadn't heard anything from Aaron O'Toole, that his office

00:03:59.280 hadn't reached out to her at all. So there was no attempt from O'Toole to reach out to the truckers

00:04:04.980 to try to connect with them, to try to say, hey, I want blue collar people in my party. Let me try to

00:04:11.060 understand what your grievances are. Let's have a conversation. Let me try to represent you. Instead,

00:04:16.460 he was nowhere to be found, completely disappeared. And this continued on Monday. So Monday was another

00:04:21.880 opportunity. He missed the opportunity last week to get on board with the convoy as it was picking up

00:04:26.460 esteem, as it was coming across the country and more and more people, including really high,

00:04:30.840 most high profile people in the world, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, all through there as

00:04:35.520 support behind the trucker rally, even Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. both did as well.

00:04:40.420 O'Toole missed that opportunity. He missed the opportunity on the weekend to be seen at the

00:04:44.600 rally, to go and talk to people as more and more and more of his MPs were there. O'Toole was just simply

00:04:49.400 not there. And then on Monday, he had another opportunity, a third opportunity when it came to the

00:04:54.020 trucker convoy to, again, just defend the truckers, say that the things that the media are saying,

00:04:58.820 the things that the liberals are saying about the truckers are malicious lies, and that he will

00:05:03.500 always be there to defend blue collar workers and the working class. Instead, he didn't do that. He let

00:05:09.020 his colleagues, Pierre Polyev and Candace Bergen, they were the ones in the House of Commons

00:05:13.200 passionately defending these truckers. Here is Candace Bergen. Here's what that looked like.

00:05:17.500 We all condemn hateful and destructive acts by a few at any protest. Whether it's beheading the

00:05:24.600 statue of Queen Victoria in Manitoba, tearing down the statue of Sir Johnny in Montreal, or putting

00:05:30.640 flags on Terry Fox, whether it's burning churches, whether it's wearing blackface, whether it's Hezbollah

00:05:37.020 flags or Nazi flags, we all condemn it. But I'm not talking about that.

00:05:42.840 And here is Pierre Polyev, again, doing the things that the leader of the party should have been

00:05:50.500 doing. The problem is they've shown no respect for the people. This country right now is like

00:05:57.560 a raw nerve, and the prime minister is jumping up and down on it again and again with his inflammatory

00:06:05.240 rhetoric. We're talking about people who have 14-year-old kids that are suicidal after two years

00:06:11.780 of lockdowns. I just spoke to a waitress whose business was wiped out by lockdowns. I'm talking

00:06:17.580 to truckers who have been serving food on our plates throughout this, and these are the very

00:06:23.240 people—honest, hardworking, shirt-off-your-back type of people—that this prime minister keeps attacking.

00:06:28.620 Mr. Speaker, I was out on an overpass as the truckers went by, and what I saw were cheerful,

00:06:35.440 patriotic, optimistic Canadians who want their freedom back and want their livelihoods back.

00:06:43.080 And they're standing up for their fellow Canadians, the 60% of families who fear they

00:06:47.720 can't feed themselves. The 28-year-old kid living in mom's basement because he can't

00:06:53.240 afford a home. The small businessman wiped out by endless lockdowns by incompetent politicians.

00:06:59.820 These are the people that are standing up and fighting for their livelihoods and their freedom.

00:07:04.100 Why won't the government finally stand with them?

00:07:06.300 The worst thing that happened on Monday was not anything to do with Aaron O'Toole. It

00:07:09.980 was when our prime minister, Dustin Trudeau, came out and said that he was disgusted by the

00:07:15.700 truckers, repeated every single slur and lie that the media had been peddling about the

00:07:20.200 truckers, and basically just saying that he refused to talk to anybody that didn't have

00:07:24.780 the same opinion of him. So here is what our despicable, loathsome, angry, hateful, deranged

00:07:32.660 prime minister, had to say about the good truckers of this country.

00:07:37.700 Hate can never be the answer. Over the past few days, Canadians were shocked and frankly,

00:07:46.660 disgusted by the behavior displayed by some people protesting in our nation's capital.

00:07:52.540 And here is him saying that the people at the rally are wearing tinfoil hats.

00:07:56.660 The concerns expressed by a few people gathered in Ottawa right now are not new, not surprising,

00:08:06.180 are heard, but are a continuation of what we've unfortunately seen in disinformation and misinformation

00:08:15.700 online, conspiracy theorists about microchips, about God knows what else that go with the tinfoil hats.

00:08:24.080 Speaking of tinfoil hats, I showed this on the podcast yesterday. One of Justin Trudeau's

00:08:28.880 state broadcast journalists, someone over at the CBC actually asked a minister in Trudeau government

00:08:34.400 whether the Russians were the ones that were organizing this whole trucker rally. Talk about

00:08:38.160 tinfoil hats, Justin Trudeau. It's so absurd, the kinds of ad hominem attacks that he just throws out

00:08:44.720 at his enemies. And this is the one that really irked me. I think this really upset a lot of Canadians

00:08:49.280 because he was asked why he's not meeting with the trucker convoy after he met with other protests,

00:08:54.240 including protests that had very radical elements like Black Lives Matter. He was willing to go to

00:08:58.640 those rallies. He was willing to meet with the organizers of those rallies, even though they

00:09:01.920 were fringe in the demands, actually fringe. The trucker convoy was mainstream. It represents the

00:09:06.320 mainstream view of Canadians. That was established. 54% of Canadians said that they want the mandates

00:09:11.200 gone, that they want people to individually deal with COVID, that they want the COVID pandemic to be over.

00:09:16.320 So it's not fringe to be part of the trucker convoy. What is fringe is Black Lives Matter,

00:09:20.640 who wants to defund the police. Justin Trudeau met with them and he said that the reason that he

00:09:25.440 met with Black Lives Matter but won't meet with the truckers is because he agrees with Black Lives

00:09:29.280 Matter. Here's what that looked like. I have attended protests and rallies in the past

00:09:35.040 when I agreed with the goals, when I supported the people expressing their concerns and their issues.

00:09:41.040 Black Lives Matter is an excellent example of that. But I have also chosen to not go anywhere near

00:09:47.840 protests that have expressed hateful rhetoric, violence towards fellow citizens, and a disrespect,

00:09:56.400 not just of science, but of the frontline health workers and, quite frankly, the 90% of truckers who

00:10:02.800 have been doing the right thing to keep Canadians safe.

00:10:06.480 So Justin Trudeau says he only meets with groups that he agrees with. Well,

00:10:10.480 meanwhile, he only received 32% of the popular vote in the last election. That is the slimmest

00:10:15.600 share of the overall election support in Canadian history, 32.2%, which means that 67.8% of Canadians

00:10:24.240 who voted did not vote for him. So if you're part of the two-thirds of the country who vote that didn't

00:10:30.320 vote for Trudeau, he won't even bother meeting with you because you don't share his radical,

00:10:35.280 woke left-wing ideology. Again, all this does is set the stage for what Aaron O'Toole could have done.

00:10:42.320 Aaron O'Toole still had the opportunity to save everything, to step up and say,

00:10:46.960 Justin Trudeau, how dare you? How dare you malign these workers, these truckers, the backbone of our

00:10:52.320 economy, the ones who have sacrificed so much to make sure that Canadians continue to get the supply

00:10:57.040 chain, continue to get the food and the goods that they need. He could have come out so strong and

00:11:01.680 condemned Trudeau and stood up for the truckers and stood up for the working man and redeemed himself

00:11:07.680 in the eyes of so many conservatives. So what was O'Toole's response? Did he come out swinging?

00:11:11.760 Well, my colleague Andrew Lawton had some advice for him. This is what he tweeted. Justin Trudeau has

00:11:16.160 given Aaron O'Toole a gift. The convoy has motivated and inspired people all over the country,

00:11:20.720 far beyond conservative political circles. Yet Trudeau wants to demonize them all. O'Toole needs to hold a

00:11:26.400 press conference on the flatbed in front of center block. That's right. That's correct. That's what

00:11:30.400 he should have done. He should have wrapped himself up in the Canadian flag, stood shoulder to shoulder

00:11:34.960 with these truckers and said to Justin Trudeau, we demand something different. But instead, I tweeted

00:11:41.280 back to Andrew just in jest, but he won't, right? He won't. He won't do that. O'Toole will not show

00:11:46.000 solidarity. He will not stand with the truckers. Instead, he, what did he do? He put out a seven minute

00:11:52.240 Facebook video where he just didn't really say anything in typical fashion. He just sort of

00:11:57.200 repeated his own lines that he's comfortable with. He didn't make a passionate defense. He

00:12:01.440 didn't call out Justin Trudeau for the despicableness of the statement that he put out. And again,

00:12:06.640 he just showed that he doesn't really have it in him to defend conservative principles and values.

00:12:11.440 He doesn't really have it in him to fight against Justin Trudeau. And so I think at this point to me

00:12:16.320 and to many people out there, the writing was sort of on the wall. Like this guy is just falling flat

00:12:21.120 in every single way possible. I wasn't surprised. I, I didn't know this was coming. I wasn't,

00:12:25.360 I wasn't surprised though, when I saw the news on Monday evening, this came out after dinner around

00:12:30.080 7 30 PM. This news dropped from the Globe and Mail. O'Toole faces a caucus revolt as 35 MPs sign a

00:12:37.280 letter calling for leadership review vote. The letter was sent to caucus chair, Scott Reed on Monday.

00:12:42.800 It's based on the reform act that the conservative MPs adopted a few months ago. And this means that it

00:12:48.880 requires a leadership review by conservative MPs as early as Wednesday's regular caucus meeting.

00:12:55.040 And at that meeting, if more than 50% of caucus votes against Erin O'Toole, he will have to step

00:13:00.640 down immediately. It is a secret ballot vote. So anything could happen. And there is a lot of

00:13:05.840 speculation already. I heard from a conservative source that there are 63 MPs who are planning to

00:13:11.280 vote against Erin O'Toole 63. There are only 119 caucus members. So that's more than half of caucus.

00:13:17.600 If that's the case, if that's accurate, then O'Toole is finished and he will be,

00:13:21.440 he will be removed as leader of the party on Wednesday. That's speculation at this point,

00:13:25.680 because of course we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what each individual MP

00:13:29.920 will choose to do on Wednesday. If that's when the vote happens, which I'm hearing from MPs,

00:13:33.920 it is, we won't know till Wednesday, but that is the direction that things are going. And so at the

00:13:39.280 same time as this Globe and Mail piece came out, Alberta conservative MP, Bob Benzin issued his own

00:13:44.720 statement openly calling for a caucus review of Erin O'Toole. And he admits that he was one of

00:13:49.680 the 35 MPs who signed a letter that the 35 MPs, by the way, is not public. We don't know who those

00:13:55.680 MPs are unless those MPs themselves choose to come forward. And for best I can tell, we have two MPs

00:14:01.440 who have publicly stepped forward saying that they are on that list. And those MPs are Bob Benzin

00:14:06.400 and Garnet Jenis, who's an MP up near Edmonton. Okay. So back to Benzin's letter, he writes this

00:14:12.480 as one of only seven sitting MPs to endorse Mr. O'Toole in both the 2017 and 2020 leadership

00:14:19.040 contest, this decision did not come lightly. Mr. O'Toole campaigned in the leadership as a

00:14:23.760 principled conservative voice that would unite the party. However, since Mr. O'Toole assumed the

00:14:28.240 position of leader, there have been numerous instances of flip-flops and questionable judgment

00:14:32.480 on Mr. O'Toole's part, including, and then he names a bunch of examples, including the de facto

00:14:37.680 carbon tax policy, pressuring MPs to support the entirety of the 2021 election platform, his failure

00:14:44.320 to stand up against Bill 96 in Quebec to protest the rights of English speaking minority in Quebec.

00:14:49.600 And finally, a failure to clearly stand up for the chart of rights and freedoms for Canadians

00:14:54.480 during the pandemic. So pretty, pretty devastating stuff there from someone who publicly supported

00:15:00.000 Erin O'Toole twice. That's got to hurt. And so what we saw online very, very quickly after this

00:15:05.280 came out was spin. The spin, the pushing of information from Erin O'Toole's office, you can

00:15:11.440 tell that they are getting desperate at this point because the stuff that they're putting out is truly

00:15:15.840 damaging to the conservative party. They're basically taking a scorched earth approach. Like if you're going

00:15:21.120 to take Erin O'Toole down, we are going to destroy the party on the way out. This is what I'm talking about.

00:15:25.680 So Alex Boutelier over at Global News tweeted the following senior conservative source just now.

00:15:32.160 This is the conversion crew at work. They got all ignited after the vote in December on conversion

00:15:37.920 therapy. The far right of the party is not happy with the leader over it. So again, trying to very

00:15:43.360 simplify this and say that this all stems back to this idiotic vote on conversion therapy, that the

00:15:48.960 conversion therapy idea, the liberals being the liberals, they created this wedge issue. They named their

00:15:53.680 bill, the conversion therapy bill, the act to end conversion therapy. But this wasn't about

00:15:58.560 conversion therapy. This wasn't about the idea of sending gay people to therapy to try to convert

00:16:03.840 them to being straight. That doesn't really happen in Canada. And in the small cases where it does happen,

00:16:09.120 all the parties agree that that should be banned, that that shouldn't be something that we do in

00:16:12.720 Canada. I had Dr. Debra So on my podcast in December, and she talked about how the idea of conversion

00:16:18.240 therapy is cruel because being gay is something that you're born with. It's not something that you have any

00:16:22.960 choice on. However, the conversion therapy wasn't just about that, right? It was about

00:16:27.840 gender identity as well. So somebody who's struggling from gender dysphoria, someone who is not sure

00:16:32.800 whether they are a woman or a man, whether their gender is male or female. Dr. Debra So said it's

00:16:38.960 incredibly dangerous to ban therapy for those people because they need therapy. They're confused and they

00:16:44.160 need to have support before they make a life-altering decision like having surgery or trying to change their

00:16:50.480 gender. And so this bill basically just has like a chilling effect on free speech. This is all a

00:16:56.400 digression. The point is that the media and the liberals tried to lie about what the conversion

00:17:00.800 therapy bill did. The conservatives, some conservatives tried to stand up against it.

00:17:04.720 Ultimately, Aaron O'Toole just said, no, we want this issue to go away. So we're going to kill it.

00:17:08.560 Now, Aaron O'Toole and his office are trying to resurrect it to try to paint the 35 MPs who are opposing

00:17:14.400 him as supporting this movement. This is so bad for the party. This is so toxic because you're conceding

00:17:20.000 to a liberal lie about the conservative party, which is never a good idea. And you're using the

00:17:25.360 liberal lie to paint half of the conservative party as being extreme and fringe and anti-gay,

00:17:31.760 anti-rights and part of the far right. This is just not going to end well at all. And if this is the

00:17:37.040 approach that Aaron O'Toole wants to take, he does not deserve to be leader of this party. And if he

00:17:42.240 remains leader of the party, I think that he's going to have just a huge free fall in support

00:17:46.560 even more because so many people are going to be rightly angry about this. It wasn't just global

00:17:50.800 news that was receiving this spin. Travis Danraj of the CBC also tweeted the following. He said,

00:17:56.240 senior conservative party source close to Aaron O'Toole camp says move to oust leader stems from the

00:18:01.840 conversion therapy vote. And the far right of the party is angry with the leader because he stood up

00:18:07.440 for LGBTQ plus rights, Canadian politics. He goes on to say source claims MP Garnet Genis is spearheading

00:18:15.200 the coup because he was in Latvia when we gave unanimous consent to make conversion therapy illegal.

00:18:20.640 So this was all started by the group that are internally referred to as the conversion crew.

00:18:26.240 They're driving this again, no good can come from this kind of mudslinging within the party. And the fact

00:18:31.360 that it is being initiated by the so-called leader just shows a total lack of leadership. Garnet Genis

00:18:37.040 rightly pushes back. And I think Garnet is a very diplomatic person. He is very, very polite.

00:18:43.520 He's definitely not one to publicly air his grievances in a typical way, but I think he's

00:18:48.080 reached his limit and you can see that. So he posted the following in response to these media

00:18:53.520 allegations. He said, very sad to see Aaron O'Toole launching more false personal attacks against

00:18:58.880 members of his own team statement below. And then his statement says efforts by Aaron O'Toole's

00:19:03.760 communication team to personally smear me by misstating my position on conversion therapy

00:19:09.120 are beyond the pale. This is the kind of division that is tearing our party and it must come to an

00:19:13.520 end. We need leadership that unites instead of divides. I did sign the letter, but I was not the

00:19:18.080 organizer of the letter. Mr. O'Toole should recognize that his position is untenable rather

00:19:22.640 than using lies to publicly attack members of his own team. Those are fighting words. Those are fighting

00:19:27.440 words. Calling the leader of your party a liar and publicly accusing him of lying about you.

00:19:32.240 It's really, really hard to see how Aaron O'Toole could possibly come back from this. This is this

00:19:36.640 kind of infighting, this kind of open infighting in the conservative party. It's hard to come back

00:19:42.480 from as a leader. It's disappointing to see, but I think it is necessary for the conservative party to

00:19:48.000 work through the issues that they're having and hopefully resolve them. So Aaron O'Toole himself

00:19:52.800 releases a statement Monday night, letting us know that he is not going anywhere. So this is how

00:19:58.240 he tries to paint the situation. This is, this is pretty remarkable. So he says this,

00:20:02.880 there are two roads open to the conservative party of Canada. One is the road of Randy Hillier

00:20:08.320 and Derek Sloan. It is angry, negative and extreme. It's a dead end. One that would see the party of

00:20:14.400 confederation become the NDP of the right. I'm just going to pause right here because a couple of quick

00:20:19.120 points. First of all, Randy Hillier and Derek Sloan are not part of the conservative party of Canada.

00:20:24.000 Randy Hillier is a provincial politician who used to be part of the PCs and now he's out on his own.

00:20:29.360 Derek Sloan is not part of the conservative party. Aaron O'Toole kicked him out and he's off on his

00:20:34.480 own. He's no longer a member of parliament. So it's sort of weird to paint this dichotomy saying

00:20:39.520 that these two individuals who are not part of the party are one part of the party. That's just not

00:20:44.480 the case. Second here, here he says that that part of the party is angry, negative and extreme.

00:20:49.600 That is the exact stereotype that the legacy media and Justin Trudeau and the liberals want you to

00:20:53.920 believe about the conservatives. That's what they want you to believe about the working class people

00:20:57.600 of this country and about the conservative base. So why would Aaron O'Toole buy into that? Why would

00:21:01.760 he repeat that? Why would he give that credence? It's not true. And having the leader of the party

00:21:06.160 say it is true is really, really damaging. Okay, here I'll continue from a statement. He says,

00:21:11.360 the other road is to better reflect the Canada of 2022, to recognize that conservatism is organic,

00:21:17.280 not static, and that a winning message is one of inclusion, optimism, ideas, and hope. No,

00:21:22.640 no, no disagreement from me there. I would just argue that that is not what Aaron O'Toole is doing

00:21:27.120 here. I'll continue. There was a report tonight of members of the conservative caucus who are unsure

00:21:31.920 of what road to take. They are, it said, bringing a letter to caucus to trigger a vote on my leadership

00:21:36.880 of the party. Good. I'm not going anywhere and I'm not turning back. Canada needs us to be united and

00:21:42.000 serious. It's time for reckoning, time to settle this in caucus, right here, right now, once and

00:21:47.440 for all, anger versus optimism. That is a choice in simple terms. So he's really simplifying this and

00:21:52.960 saying, if you're with me, it's because you're optimistic. If you're with them, it's because

00:21:56.720 you're angry. That is so divisive. Again, this is so Justin Trudeau. It's really interesting,

00:22:01.200 this strategy that he's taking. Finally, he says, I will accept the results of the vote. The signers

00:22:06.800 of this letter must accept it too. They brought it. They'll have to live with it. Rebecca and I,

00:22:10.960 Rebecca is his wife. Rebecca and I are committed to our party and conservatism in Canada. We look

00:22:16.080 forward to continuing that journey. So that sounds like a pretty confident Aaron O'Toole to me. It

00:22:20.960 sounds like he believes that he has support of his caucus, that he has the numbers, that this is just

00:22:25.360 a bump along the road and that he is going to continue down the path that he is going to continue

00:22:29.840 down. It's interesting because the most passionate that Aaron O'Toole ever becomes is about the direction

00:22:35.280 that he wants to take the conservative party. He doesn't really get passionate about individual

00:22:38.480 issues. He doesn't really get passionate about defending conservative principles and values or

00:22:42.720 about the future of Canada. The thing that he gets the most passionate about is his own leadership,

00:22:47.600 is his own willingness to fight to defend his job, basically to remain leader of the party. That's the

00:22:54.240 thing that you see him really get passionate and worked up about. Now, I want to talk about an exclusive

00:22:59.120 report I have over at TNC. I basically spent the entire morning on Tuesday talking to as many

00:23:04.480 conservatives who would talk to me, talking to conservative MPs, insiders, people who work for

00:23:08.560 MPs, people who used to work in the Harper government, trying to really get my finger on

00:23:12.560 the pulse of what is happening with the party, why this letter came out. And I was successfully able

00:23:17.600 to talk to nine high-level sources, including three current members of parliament. And I put together this

00:23:23.040 exclusive report over at TNC. I want you to go check that out. It says, we need to remove him to save our

00:23:27.840 party. That's a quote from a conservative MP. They say he needs to step down gracefully. So I have a lot of really

00:23:33.200 interesting quotes in here, really passionate stuff about why this came to fruition, why the letter came out now,

00:23:38.880 what led to it, what the complaints are, who's behind it and who isn't debunking some of the myths that are

00:23:43.680 already being put out by the media. So I encourage you to head on over to TNC.News and check that out.

00:23:50.560 I'm not going to go through and read my entire report on the show because I think it's better if you go and check it out

00:23:55.280 and read it yourself. I will say that this initiative, the 35 MPs that came together to sign the letter,

00:24:00.080 I spoke to the person who spearheaded it, the organizer of this letter. Well, he says that he was one of several,

00:24:05.040 but he's sort of the main person who was driving this. And he said that this came together really quickly,

00:24:09.840 that there was some kind of a rumor that Aaron O'Toole was going to demand that MPs stand publicly and show their

00:24:16.080 loyalty to him. And they were concerned about that. And so they worked over the weekend, like within within one weekend,

00:24:21.440 they found 30% of caucus, 35 MPs who were willing to sign this letter. And people are just saying enough is enough.

00:24:27.360 This isn't necessarily about the direction that O'Toole is taking the party in. It's about trust.

00:24:31.680 It's about integrity. It's about the fact that he flip-flops, that he's not consistent, that we don't

00:24:35.760 really know where he stands. And from what I'm told, the 35 MPs come from a broad range of the party.

00:24:41.680 It's not just the so-cons. It's not just the hardcore conservative guys, that it's people who used to

00:24:46.400 support Aaron O'Toole, people who supported him, like Bob Benzin, who were behind him in both 2017

00:24:52.320 and 2020. People who just don't like his leadership style, don't like the way, for instance, he treated

00:24:56.720 Shannon Stubbs or Senator Denise Batters. People who are just opposed to his style and his lack of

00:25:03.600 conviction. And so again, worthwhile. Go check that out over at tnc.news. Look, it's clear at this point

00:25:09.360 that the Conservative Party of Canada needs to be led by somebody who has the courage and the conviction

00:25:14.800 to articulate and defend conservative values and conservative principles. We saw that so much this

00:25:20.400 weekend, how much leadership is missing in Canada and how much we need a voice to defend common sense

00:25:26.640 and basic principles and values like freedom in this country. Aaron O'Toole is clearly not up to the task.

00:25:32.560 And it appears that he wants to burn his party to the ground rather than facing the facts and facing

00:25:37.920 the consequences of the way that he has run the party over the past two years. This is going to be an

00:25:42.960 ugly week for Conservatives, but hopefully by the end of the week, they will emerge stronger and more

00:25:48.480 united and hopefully soon with a leader who actually likes the party, likes the base and believes in

00:25:54.720 conservative principles and values. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - February 02, 2022

Erin O’Toole’s time as CPC leader is coming to an end

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