Juno News - June 10, 2022


Independent candidate denied by PC party wins landmark victory


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

186.83127

Word count

2,497

Sentence count

3

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, host Andrew Lawton sits down with former Progressive Conservative MPP candidate Bobbi Ann Brady to discuss why she decided to run as an independent in the 2019 Ontario election.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show
00:00:05.920 welcome back to the andrew lawton show well even though the provincial election is behind us one
00:00:13.960 thing we know is that there was a significant lack of enthusiasm in voter turnout we saw this
00:00:19.860 across the board depressed voter turnout a lot of people in the media have been wringing their
00:00:24.160 hands wondering what that means is it just general political complacency or is it dissatisfaction
00:00:29.700 with the options that were on offer for the most part we saw a lot of pcs get re-elected we saw a
00:00:35.920 little bit of a change in some liberal and ndpc it's not a huge overwhelming change in the numbers
00:00:42.100 doug ford went into the election with the majority came out of it with a majority but one of the
00:00:46.980 interesting stories to emerge was in a riding not far from where i live haldeman norfolk in southwestern
00:00:52.800 ontario where an independent mpp bobby ann brady won very handily above the pcs she is the executive
00:01:01.320 assistant or was the executive assistant to toby barrett a longtime progressive conservative mpp
00:01:06.900 but ultimately ran as an independent and got elected as an independent which as we'll talk
00:01:12.300 about it is not an easy thing to do in canadian politics she joins me now bobby ann good to talk
00:01:17.740 to you uh congratulations and thanks for coming on today oh thanks for having me andrew so let's
00:01:23.620 just set the stage here for people in ontario and even outside of ontario who are tuning in
00:01:28.560 you worked with a longtime progressive conservative mpp how on earth did you end up running against the
00:01:35.320 pcs and running as an independent well i've i've been the riding association president locally for over
00:01:42.780 20 years and um i knew that toby was not going to seek re-election um in 2022 in fact he sat down with
00:01:51.540 the premier's office after the 2018 election and told them that this would be his last run so come
00:01:59.020 january i started going to the party and asking you know when can we have a nomination night keep in mind
00:02:04.500 uh nomination nights can no longer be had unless you have uh the blessing from the party and i was told i
00:02:10.500 had to wait that made sense you know covet had reared its ugly head again and um you know i
00:02:16.260 understood so february i go back and they tell me the same story march i go back same story again and
00:02:22.260 that's when i went to toby and said toby you need to make a phone call because something's very wrong
00:02:27.000 here so toby picked up the phone and he called the premier and keep in mind that all outgoing mpp's
00:02:33.660 were afforded uh one of two things they could either appoint their successor or they could host a
00:02:38.880 nomination night so the premier did say to toby um you know who would you appoint and toby said well
00:02:44.120 i would appoint bobby and brady my ea of 23 years the premier said okay well i'll get back to you and
00:02:49.940 he did get back a while later and he said we won't be appointing bobby and brady and uh we will
00:02:56.000 appoint uh the mayor of haldeman county and toby said i i cannot condone that i'm sorry mr premier but
00:03:02.940 i cannot condone that and largely that's because the mayor of haldeman county has worked against us
00:03:09.380 for several years as conservatives um he's never held a pc membership he's never come to an event
00:03:15.100 he's never donated and he ran federally for the liberal party so we don't recognize him as a
00:03:21.140 conservative um so we went back to the party and we said you know the premier has said he's going to
00:03:26.180 appoint to the mayor of haldeman county and we can't condone this please afford us a nomination
00:03:31.140 if the premier wanted me to you know run off against his candidate in a nomination i would
00:03:38.120 have had no problem doing so and the proof is in the fact that i put my name on the ballot for the
00:03:42.480 general election and we were told we could not hold a nomination and that's when i decided you know
00:03:49.080 what democracy is being sidelined here as the writing association president how do i attract and
00:03:54.320 retain volunteers to sit around the pc board table when the single most important decision that they 0.98
00:04:01.260 can make every four years is taken out of their hands so i said we have to challenge this and we
00:04:05.820 have to do it um so that democracy is upheld and that's how i became an independent candidate
00:04:11.320 i know oftentimes when people have been in your situation and then run as an independent or
00:04:17.740 with a less major party they're doing it really because they want to make a point
00:04:21.940 or maybe they just want to spite the party that scorned them and actually try to be a spoiler
00:04:26.960 on the ballot did you go into this thinking that you had a shot at winning or were you just trying
00:04:31.900 to make that point and make things a little difficult for the pcs nope i went in it believing
00:04:37.740 that i could win and the reason that i believed i could win is because of my 23 years of experience
00:04:45.760 working for for toby all of the people that i had helped thousands and thousands of people that i
00:04:51.280 had helped i have a good reputation in the community and then of course my 20 years as the pc writing
00:04:56.820 association president local conservatives um knew the work i had been doing and and knew or felt that
00:05:04.300 i should have been the candidate so i remember um you know somebody saying to me in the first week you
00:05:10.340 know what do you think you're doing and i said i'm going to win and um i believed that i wholeheartedly
00:05:16.020 believed that the team that i had around me surrounding me that we could we could pull it
00:05:21.200 off and we certainly did you know if there were a candidate that were more conservative because i
00:05:28.740 mean going off of the issues that you flagged with the candidate the pcs fielded would you have still
00:05:34.200 done this or was your fight you're seeking the uh candidacy or being the candidate as an independent
00:05:40.240 was that really more about that fundamental idea that it's the members and the voters that should
00:05:44.500 have a say not the party absolutely um i go back to the the idea that how do we attract volunteers
00:05:52.500 to the pc party when the grassroots voice no longer matters and it's something that i've been
00:05:58.520 seen that i've seen over the past uh you know few years where the grassroots opinion doesn't really
00:06:04.440 matter anymore um the decisions are being made by one two three people and that is wrong uh you can't
00:06:12.680 take the electorate you can't take your grassroots their vote their money their time you can't take
00:06:18.720 that for granted you can't take advantage of people and expect to be continually rewarded
00:06:23.900 looking forward now i mean obviously you've been working for a pc mpp for as you've said 23 years
00:06:33.140 is your intention to continue serving out your term for the next four years as an independent or
00:06:39.080 would you join the pc caucus so that's a very uh that's an interesting question one that i was asked
00:06:45.060 quite a bit on the campaign trail i would say two things um first and foremost i will not rejoin the
00:06:51.360 pc party until they get um their house in order um you got to do some cleanup and you've got to make sure
00:06:58.720 that the respect is restored uh we need to be a respectful party and secondly i won't i won't walk
00:07:06.640 through the front door of the pc family home once it is clean until the people of haldeman norfolk tell
00:07:12.440 me that it's time to do so so that's not a decision i'd make on my own it's a decision that the people
00:07:18.720 of haldeman norfolk would have to make with me do you see yourself in a way as part of the opposition
00:07:25.760 and i don't mean that in the sense of you being a demagogue but you actually using your place as an
00:07:30.640 independent not under the power of any party whip to hold the pcs to account in the legislature
00:07:35.840 absolutely and i believe that there is no monopoly on a good idea so if the pcs have a good idea then
00:07:43.900 i will support it of course i will if the liberals have a good idea or the ndp have a good idea i can
00:07:49.180 support them as well and it gives me an opportunity to represent haldeman norfolk in a way that it's never
00:07:55.500 being represented before you know let's be honest we see a lot of good ideas pass through um you know
00:08:02.140 the chambers and and they're passed up because of party politics and we have to stop that um all
00:08:08.540 parties have to stop that because it's not good for you and i as the taxpayer um you know i think
00:08:14.140 there's just a lot of uh a lack of decorum in the house these days there's there's a lot of anger and we
00:08:20.540 would just get to such a better deal as that for you know for the taxpayer if we could you know work
00:08:26.940 together instead of just continually worrying about party lines just looking at that party dimension i
00:08:34.300 i mentioned in the intro here that independents have a very very difficult time getting elected
00:08:40.220 in provincial politics in ontario in federal politics maybe you'll have an exceptional case
00:08:45.420 where someone will do fairly well but they still fall short of victory you did it you crossed the
00:08:50.300 finish line and obviously nothing is a given you had to work for every vote you had a team around you
00:08:55.740 but you did something that's very difficult to do in canada and i'm wondering if you think that things
00:09:00.220 are changing and there is more of a regard for independence or do you think your case was really
00:09:05.500 just the perfect circumstances the perfect storm at this time that you were able to win with i hope it's
00:09:13.420 changing um you know as much as it's great the hulgman norfolk made history and and we did it the
00:09:19.980 old-fashioned way people going out into their community and talking to their friends neighbors
00:09:24.300 relatives because running as an independent uh the odds are really stock you know stacked against you
00:09:29.740 um you can't spend money you can't raise money until the writ is dropped you can't do anything
00:09:34.860 and in other campaigns had weeks weeks on top of me right they were out there already knocking on doors
00:09:40.380 putting up signs uh as soon as the writ dropped i had to wait two and a half weeks for my signs
00:09:45.500 so i really do hope that this is is changed because one of the things that i said on the
00:09:50.460 campaign trail over and over again is you know what i haven't seen anyone be brave um you know be
00:09:56.140 brave stand up do the right thing and you know the people of halloween norfolk uh behind me did the
00:10:02.940 brave thing and i kept saying to them you know what courage can be contagious and i really think
00:10:08.860 that if haldeman norfolk little old halloween norfolk can send you know bobby and brady to the ontario
00:10:14.540 legislature as an independent we can serve as hope that look you know what you don't have to be taken
00:10:19.340 for granted you don't have to go to the ballot box and tick off the box that all you know the major
00:10:25.500 parties expect you're going to tick off you can make your own decision you can vote for that guy or gal
00:10:32.140 who represents you um you know at the community level and i really do hope that um this campaign
00:10:40.540 will serve as hope for folks right across our nation because one of the things that folks have
00:10:45.580 been saying to me over the past three years when they call into the office is bobby and we're worried
00:10:51.900 they're not quite sure what they're worried about but then they follow that statement up with
00:10:56.140 we've lost hope they've grown cynical of leaders they've grown cynical of governance and rightfully
00:11:01.820 so much of what we've seen you know uh shows that the government no longer respects us and we we are
00:11:10.380 the taxpayer their money it's not their money it's our money and i think governments and political
00:11:16.460 parties often lose sight of that one thing i saw in looking at your campaign from afar was how many
00:11:24.140 long-time party stalwarts you had backing you up so it wasn't just you and toby like you had a lot
00:11:30.140 of people that had worked for years and years in some cases in some pretty key positions within
00:11:34.860 the progressive conservative party that said nope we're we're going with the independent this time
00:11:39.180 around yeah i had lots of pcs behind me especially the ones that i had worked with you know between
00:11:45.900 toby and i that's 50 years of service and so a lot of folks who respected toby and said you know
00:11:51.660 toby was disrespected in this process and so they surrounded us but the other um interesting
00:11:57.660 aspect of the campaign was that we had liberals and ndps who came to our campaign and worked on
00:12:04.380 it as well because they they realized they're good community-minded people sure they may have worked
00:12:09.740 against us on past campaigns but they're good community-minded people who said no this isn't right
00:12:16.060 this is not the way democracy should be done and they joined my campaign and you know there was an
00:12:22.220 instance last week where one of the biggest liberals in in haldeman norfolk was standing in my campaign
00:12:28.300 office alongside one of the biggest ndp members and it was a rainy bliss blustery day and and toby was
00:12:35.100 in there as well and and i looked at toby and i said you feel like you're in the twilight zone and everybody
00:12:39.820 had a good laugh but um you know i i truly believe that um you know it was it was really a a an effort
00:12:49.260 of all of us uh in haldeman norfolk who were just not okay with democracy being sidelined and they had
00:12:56.140 just had enough and they said we got to stand up to this bobby ann brady the independent mpp elect
00:13:03.340 for haldeman norfolk in ontario uh congratulations again and thanks so much for coming on today thank you
00:13:08.940 so much thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north
00:13:14.380 at www.tnc.news