Juno News - June 25, 2021


Is There Room for Social Conservatives in Canadian Politics？


Episode Stats

Length

45 minutes

Words per Minute

189.72815

Word Count

8,696

Sentence Count

391

Misogynist Sentences

12

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
00:00:12.780 Coming up, an in-depth look at social conservatism in Canadian politics. Does it have a place? And if so, what place is that?
00:00:22.680 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.
00:00:26.180 Welcome back to the Andrew Lawton Show. It is election fever if you talk to the people that are, quite frankly, the least interesting to talk to, which are those who have no other lives but politics.
00:00:39.760 And I count myself in that group. But there is going to be a lot more discussion about it.
00:00:44.600 All the rumours are in full force about whether we are going to the polls in July, in August, in September.
00:00:50.500 And elections are important. We'll certainly be covering it on this show and at True North.
00:00:54.560 But I want to take a look at one of the bigger picture issues in Canadian politics right now, that if you talk to some people, shouldn't even belong in Canadian politics, should not be spoken about in the same vein as those seeking elected office.
00:01:09.420 And that is social conservatism, widely heralded by the media as the reason Andrew Scheer lost the 2019 election for the Conservatives.
00:01:18.760 And we'll talk about that a little bit. And also a key part of the narrative that is dogging Aaron O'Toole even still, despite him being very vocally not a social conservative.
00:01:29.520 He is still getting all the questions from the mainstream media that he would have if he were one.
00:01:34.400 So I want to talk about this big question of what is the place, if any, that social conservatism has in Canadian politics.
00:01:41.200 And there is going to be a little bit of a prescriptive element of this too.
00:01:45.200 How should and how can politicians tackle this issue?
00:01:48.620 I have a great panel of people that have been involved in this issue from all sides joining me.
00:01:53.300 The co-founders of Right Now, which seeks to nominate and elect social or pro-life candidates specifically to Canadian politics, Alyssa Golob and Scott Hayward.
00:02:04.240 And also the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, Jonathan Van Maron.
00:02:10.940 Jonathan, Alyssa, Scott, thanks so much for being with me today.
00:02:14.060 Thank you for having us.
00:02:15.500 Thanks for having us.
00:02:16.840 I want to start with you on this, Jonathan, because you had a fantastic piece over at the Bridgehead,
00:02:22.200 where you host a show and write and have some great content there.
00:02:26.040 You spoke of the moral bankruptcy of Aaron O'Toole's Conservative Party.
00:02:31.040 And this seems to be, although it's still early days, he's only been the leader for just under a year.
00:02:37.160 You're making a point here that he's not the guy that's going to give social conservatives what they want at this point, it sounds like.
00:02:44.220 Well, Aaron O'Toole seems to be the answer to the question, who could be worse than Andrew Scheer?
00:02:48.300 Because he doesn't actually seem to have any convictions that he actually wants to operate under.
00:02:53.580 I have no idea what his moral vision would be.
00:02:57.100 And unless you think that politicians should have no moral vision or moral compass whatsoever, I would wager that that's a bad thing.
00:03:04.220 The point of my column mainly was that most of O'Toole's war room, a lot of people quoted in a fairly recent McLean's essay on the growing cleavage in the Conservative Party,
00:03:13.260 is that social conservatism, once again, is sort of the boogeyman and that any quarter given to social conservatives on any issue will turn into an automatic loss for Aaron O'Toole.
00:03:23.700 And this is a really frustrating narrative because it's not backed by polling.
00:03:26.960 It's not backed by data.
00:03:28.380 It's not backed by the facts on the ground.
00:03:30.320 It's not supported by the fact that 80% of the Conservative Caucus just voted for a piece of pro-life legislation.
00:03:37.280 It's just sort of one of these political truisms that's become dogma because it's been repeated so many times and because the media happens to prefer it.
00:03:44.960 So in my column, I just asked the question, what would be considered a reasonable social conservative policy?
00:03:51.160 Would it be something that a supermajority of Canadians support, like a ban on gender selection abortion?
00:03:57.460 Would this be something that the majority of Canadians are concerned about, even such as sex changes for children with the growing prominence of the transgender issue?
00:04:05.660 What would be the line in the sand that Aaron O'Toole and his Conservatives are not willing to cross?
00:04:10.580 Because from where I'm sitting, it just looks like if you can put the name social conservative on it, it's therefore scary and must be backed away from at all costs.
00:04:19.500 In short, Justin Trudeau and his Liberals and those on the left get to define all moral issues and Conservatives can only ever say anything about climate change and maybe having a better accountant than Trudeau does.
00:04:32.460 Yeah, I think you raise a lot of important points there that we'll delve into over the next little while.
00:04:37.920 And it actually lends to a question I had for you, Scott, because Jonathan lays out the point, I think, very clearly that there is this fear in Conservatives that you're just not allowed to touch these issues.
00:04:47.800 You're not allowed to tackle them. And you get some people that say Conservatives need to be bold, that winning if you don't do anything doesn't really matter.
00:04:55.760 But you actually have looked at the numbers and think that these are, in fact, winnable issues, contrary to the prevailing narrative you get among the political class and a lot of the media.
00:05:05.960 Yeah, absolutely. And I'll talk specifically about some of the pro-life issues, because that's what our organization is focused solely on.
00:05:13.360 And those are the numbers that I know. So, for example, like Jonathan mentioned the other week, as of recording the segment here, we have Bill C-233, a private member's bill from Kathy Wagenthal, who is a member of Parliament from rural Saskatchewan, seeking to more or less illegally restrict sex-selective abortion.
00:05:33.140 Of course, most of your viewers will know, Andrew, that in Canada, we're only one of two countries in the world where there is no law whatsoever regulating abortion, either federally or provincially.
00:05:42.100 So, you know, this would be a fairly good piece of legislation from our perspective to begin to bring Canada kind of into that average around the world.
00:05:51.620 It's a piece of legislation when you look at polling and supported by one of those supermajorities that Jonathan talks about.
00:05:58.000 You know, you're talking about 82% of Canadians across the country, 83% of Quebecers, you know, 80% plus of women specifically on this issue support legally restricting sex-selective abortion.
00:06:08.420 For the organization that Alyssa and I work with right now, back in September of 2020, we did a poll that not only asked, you know, if Canadians support something like this, but would it actually change their vote?
00:06:20.620 And there were some really cool things that we found in there.
00:06:23.120 So, for example, 47% of females from the ages of 18 to 34 would be more likely to vote for a political party that promised to legally restrict sex-selective abortion, as opposed to 6% who would be less likely to do so.
00:06:39.820 When you go into Quebec, you know, 61% of those who voted for the Bloc Québécois in 2019 would be more likely to vote for a political party that promised to legally restrict sex-selective abortion.
00:06:50.680 So, these are all constituencies, voter blocks, that the Conservative Party of Canada desperately needs to actually win a majority government.
00:07:00.880 And that's just one example.
00:07:02.240 You know, you can look at late-term abortion.
00:07:03.900 You have some similar numbers there, pain-capability abortion.
00:07:06.740 So, these are reasonable pro-life policies that are in many other different countries, both in kind of the Western world and otherwise, and that are supported by a good swath of Canadians.
00:07:18.260 There are votes that, for whatever reason, are being left, and seats for that matter, that are being left on the table by the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:07:27.960 The woman factor, I think, is interesting there.
00:07:31.960 Now, Alyssa, I know you get this all the time, because I see you fielding all of these troll attacks on Twitter.
00:07:38.060 But that myth that's peddled that women don't care about these issues, that women are the ones that are the most put off by it, doesn't sound like that's actually the case.
00:07:47.380 Absolutely not.
00:07:48.400 And I mean, polling members show that, and politicians show that.
00:07:52.140 I mean, Leslyn Lewis in the last Conservative leadership race surprised everyone and won many more votes, many more provinces, even became first place in some ridings because of her common sense policies and her pro-life stance.
00:08:07.860 She said she had no hidden agenda, and she had multiple pro-life policies like sex-selective abortion and helping women in crisis pregnancies that resonated with people who are not only pro-life, but who identified as pro-choice as well.
00:08:20.620 So I think that these types of talking points resonate among all Canadians, most especially women.
00:08:26.560 Like Scott mentioned, the sex-selective abortion bill was supported by, you know, half of women in between the ages of 18 and 34, which is really important as well.
00:08:38.180 So this isn't just a women's issue.
00:08:40.360 It's a human rights issue, but women are definitely on board with these policies.
00:08:43.640 Let's take a step back even further if we can here and define social conservative, because this is something where to right now, and you mentioned this, Scott, there's a focus on abortion specifically and the pro-life issue and pro-life politicians.
00:08:58.840 But when a lot of people hear social conservative, I don't know if they think of it in narrow terms about specific issues or if they go even more broadly and think about, oh, you know, people that are trying to ban gay marriage or people that are trying to roll back the clock on gay rights.
00:09:14.900 And I think you mentioned in your opening remarks, Jonathan, there are a lot of issues that are social issues that are relevant in Canadian politics, whether it is on transgender issues, whether it is on sex-selective abortion.
00:09:27.140 But do we have a working definition of what a social conservative is in a contemporary Canadian political context?
00:09:35.680 No, right now, I think social conservative is understood generally as reporters use it as sort of the pelvic issues, right?
00:09:43.180 And the same-sex marriage debate is over and has been over in Canada for a very long time.
00:09:48.080 There's nobody that I know, even those who disagree with same-sex marriage, who think that, you know, that's going to be rolled back.
00:09:53.960 Although Trudeau and the liberals understandably like to use that as sort of a fear tactic, right?
00:09:58.900 The conservatives as people who want to take away your rights.
00:10:01.540 But again, if you look at social conservative just as conserving social norms that had some value, that's when we do get into things like the transgender issue.
00:10:10.820 And one of the reasons that's such a particularly interesting debate is just like with abortion, you have in almost every other Western democracy,
00:10:16.940 robust debates on these issues based on scientific facts, based on data, based on polling that just don't seem to happen here.
00:10:24.780 So in the United Kingdom, for example, which is probably the most similar to us in regards to their political system,
00:10:31.800 there's a robust debate going on around, for example, transgender treatments for minors, right?
00:10:37.060 You have left-wing newspapers like The Guardian that this month published an article that would never have made it into a Canadian newspaper
00:10:44.320 talking about biological males playing on female sports teams.
00:10:48.120 You have the National Health Service being excoriated by the public broadcaster over there, the BBC, for rushing people into transition.
00:10:55.340 And there's sort of this robust debate even that's not restricted ideologically.
00:10:59.760 You've got both left-wingers and right-wingers, conservatives and liberals kind of looking at the facts and debating the issue.
00:11:05.900 Whereas here, if you raise any question whatsoever about any of these issues, whether you point to baby girls being aborted just because they're baby girls,
00:11:13.640 when you talk about the fact that, you know, there's a huge spike in girls identifying as boys to the tune of thousands of percent of a spike,
00:11:22.380 those are things you're just not allowed to talk about or you're labeled a social conservative, a bigot, and all of these things.
00:11:27.700 And so the discussion just gets cut off.
00:11:29.880 Now, in terms of defining social conservative, there are many different ways of addressing social conservative issues.
00:11:36.700 And if somebody like Erin O'Toole came forward and said, look, I don't think this law or that law is politically viable right now,
00:11:43.360 but I understand that the pro-life movement wants there to be fewer abortions.
00:11:47.780 They want to save lives in the womb.
00:11:49.320 And so we're going to look at the policies that have been done in countries like Hungary, in countries like Israel,
00:11:54.400 even in countries like the Netherlands and Germany, which have resulted in a much lower abortion rate than we have here in Canada.
00:12:00.320 And I'm willing to work with social conservatives to reach a goal that we can all agree is good, which is fewer abortions.
00:12:06.700 That would make somebody like me really sit up and say, OK, so in good faith, he's going to reach out to a voter segment that he needs
00:12:12.860 and is going to put forward his own ideas on how to reach the goal that we want to reach.
00:12:17.400 But we don't hear any of that at all.
00:12:19.060 It's just you can't say the A word and anything to do with LGBT alphabet soup issues cannot be touched
00:12:25.120 because they're not viable, even though there's no polling and no data that indicates this is actually the case.
00:12:30.980 One thing that's very interesting about that is that I'm convinced that a lot of the opponents to these issues
00:12:38.880 don't want to have the discussion because they know that the facts won't be on their side.
00:12:43.360 This is something that we see, for starters, in the lack of any legal limit on abortion.
00:12:47.840 Most pro-choice advocates would be very appalled by an abortion in the third trimester,
00:12:52.720 but they don't want to have the discussion because they don't want to open the door to let pro-lifers get an inch.
00:12:57.260 Another example of this is when the Unborn Victims of Crime Act was a discussion a couple of times
00:13:02.560 during the previous Conservative government, and people were resistant to it
00:13:07.040 because they didn't want to have the dialogue and risk losing any ground whatsoever.
00:13:11.920 So you are very right that there seems to be this decreasing and shrinking boundary of which discussions can occur.
00:13:20.220 And Stephen Woodworth, a long-time very pro-life Conservative Member of Parliament,
00:13:24.700 had wanted to just, let's have a debate. I'm not even advancing a policy.
00:13:28.800 I'm saying let's have a discussion about this, which Canada needs.
00:13:32.360 And there's no buy-in for it from a lot of the political elites and a lot of the parties,
00:13:37.400 including, in many cases, the Conservative Party.
00:13:40.580 So I don't know which of you, Scott or Alyssa, wants to take this one,
00:13:44.140 but when you are talking to voters and you're trying to get them to get behind a candidate that you're supporting,
00:13:49.700 how do you at all tell them that these issues can be advanced when there seems to be no platform for them,
00:13:56.680 even in the Conservative Party of Canada or any other party?
00:14:00.000 One of the things, one of the reasons why we are where we are today in Canada,
00:14:04.620 especially compared to other countries like the United Kingdom, parts of the United States,
00:14:09.400 Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Poland, things like this,
00:14:14.780 is because of what the pro-life movement has, quite frankly,
00:14:20.040 not been able to accomplish politically for the last, you know, 40-plus years.
00:14:24.420 One of the things that we tell pro-lifers all the time is that when we show up, we win.
00:14:28.260 And that is definitely the case when it comes to nominations,
00:14:31.960 when it comes to leadership races, when it comes to party policy conventions.
00:14:35.440 And for our organization right now, we've only just started this process five years ago.
00:14:40.060 So we're beginning to really come to kind of maturity.
00:14:44.060 We have, you know, 30,000-plus people in our database across the country.
00:14:48.380 We keep growing.
00:14:49.180 And as we keep growing and we find more volunteers and keep growing that database of pro-lifers
00:14:53.380 who do exist in these roddings to get involved in the process,
00:14:56.380 we'll begin to see more and more wins.
00:14:57.900 So in the last five years, for example, you know,
00:15:00.020 we've elected a net 150 new pro-life politicians to our federal and provincial legislatures.
00:15:06.780 Now, of course, in order to actually pass legislation, we need to have those majorities.
00:15:12.360 And so we're still like a few electoral cycles away from that.
00:15:15.820 It's going to take some time because we're essentially starting at ground zero.
00:15:19.960 But even you take something like Kathy's bill, right?
00:15:23.160 Kathy Wanktall's bill, C-233, on sex-selective abortion.
00:15:26.860 She got 82 votes on that bill.
00:15:29.780 I was counting like she'd maybe get 71 or 72.
00:15:32.940 There were a few different surprises.
00:15:34.500 There were a few different members of parliament who voted for that legislation that we were surprised at.
00:15:39.940 And I think part of the reason that they voted for that legislation is,
00:15:43.600 A, it's innately good legislation.
00:15:45.680 But B, they also know that, you know, coming into an election campaign,
00:15:49.800 probably sometime, you know, in September,
00:15:52.000 one of the best ways for a conservative member of parliament at least to help ensure that they get enough volunteers knocking on doors
00:16:00.220 is to actually give a good chunk of the base, which are pro-lifers, what they want.
00:16:05.980 And this is one of the easiest things they can get.
00:16:07.840 So I don't know if Alyssa wants to expound upon that,
00:16:12.480 but one of the things that we tell people is when you show up and you put the right people in place
00:16:17.140 and you establish a foundation from which to build,
00:16:20.420 we are going to get those not only electoral wins, but eventually legislative wins.
00:16:25.460 And for Jonathan, his organization does, those cultural wins as well further down the road.
00:16:30.560 It's just getting involved in the process right at the beginning.
00:16:32.620 I will let you expand on that, Alyssa, and I'll add to the question, if I may.
00:16:38.640 Do you find that it's hard to summon the optimism that you can break through all this
00:16:43.280 when you're talking to not just voters and supporters and volunteers, but even potential candidates?
00:16:50.240 Well, I think it's important to highlight the little wins as well as the big wins.
00:16:54.380 And like Scott mentioned, when we have pro-life policies or constitutional amendments
00:16:58.440 that are put forward and passed at conventions, that's a huge bonus.
00:17:02.480 When we win these nominations, when underdog candidates like Sam Osterhoff beat party presidents
00:17:07.860 like Rick Dykstra, we highlight those things.
00:17:10.420 And we also highlight the fact that, you know, these MPs that are putting forward legislation
00:17:14.580 are conservative MPs.
00:17:16.860 So if you do have a pro-life conservative running, it's important to support them
00:17:20.960 so that they can be an additional vote to those types of legislative initiatives.
00:17:25.800 So I think that just showing the power of the people is really important.
00:17:30.420 And also translating that to show the party the power of their base, because you have to
00:17:36.000 have a social conservatives in a winning coalition.
00:17:38.940 You cannot shut them out at every inch and think that you're going to win an election.
00:17:44.220 And, you know, in the 2011, in the 2011 federal election, Harper increased his vote in the GTA
00:17:52.320 because, mainly because he wanted to defend abortion overseas.
00:17:58.880 So I think that really intensified the voters.
00:18:02.840 And they came out and they showed up.
00:18:04.660 And I think that's what we need to do as a party and as social conservatives as well.
00:18:08.580 One point that I have always been insisted upon, and it's certainly not my thought, it's Andrew
00:18:14.100 Breitbart who made the phrasing in this manner famous of politics being downstream of culture.
00:18:19.460 But politicians are always going to be reacting and responding to the media, to stakeholders,
00:18:25.800 to voters.
00:18:26.540 And there needs to be a base of support for them.
00:18:28.960 And one thing that oftentimes the pro-life movement has neglected historically, not as much
00:18:33.180 in recent years, is those cultural fights.
00:18:36.180 And I know, Jonathan, this has been, I mean, you've literally written the book on this.
00:18:39.360 I think several books on it.
00:18:40.520 And it's something you do in your day-to-day life and your job.
00:18:43.900 You try to win over hearts and minds.
00:18:45.780 But that process is a difficult one.
00:18:48.940 And it takes a lot of time.
00:18:50.260 So where is your assessment of how that cultural battle is right now?
00:18:55.060 Yeah, so I want to make a couple of points.
00:18:57.480 One that goes to the earlier comment you made, because this sort of dovetails right into what
00:19:01.260 you just asked me on how there's a lot of ignorance surrounding these issues in general,
00:19:05.160 right?
00:19:05.880 Most Canadians get the idea that, you know, the Standard Line and the Toronto Star, the
00:19:10.000 National Post, the Winnipeg Free Press, like, this is Canada, right?
00:19:13.980 And because the editorial pages of these papers say social conservatives can't win, that means
00:19:18.580 it's in fact the case.
00:19:19.600 Well, the reality is, according to the National Post a couple of years ago, 80% of Canadians
00:19:24.360 aren't aware that abortion is legal throughout all nine months of pregnancy.
00:19:28.440 So when you have politicians saying Canadians are happy with the status quo, well, Canadians
00:19:32.740 aren't aware of the status quo.
00:19:34.100 And what we find going door to door and having discussions on the streets is most of them
00:19:38.360 are so shocked they don't actually believe us when we first tell them that Canada has
00:19:42.860 no restrictions on abortion whatsoever.
00:19:45.080 And the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, for example, is fully aware that when Canadians
00:19:50.100 find out what the status quo is, they disagree with it.
00:19:53.120 Which is why a couple of years ago, when our colleagues at We Need a Law put billboards
00:19:57.580 across the country that just had the simple statement, Canada has no abortion laws.
00:20:01.760 There was one of them actually like 10 minutes from my office in town.
00:20:05.660 They put these billboards across the country and immediately the Abortion Rights Coalition
00:20:09.400 of Canada wanted these billboards torn down, right?
00:20:11.920 It didn't have like a picture of an aborted baby.
00:20:14.200 It didn't say abortion kills children.
00:20:16.080 Like it didn't have abortion stops a beating heart, right?
00:20:18.960 It didn't have any of these things.
00:20:19.980 It just was a statement of legal and political fact, right?
00:20:23.200 Canada has no abortion laws.
00:20:24.680 And they complained to the Advertising Standards Canada to get it pulled out.
00:20:28.500 And these billboards were actually ruled against because they literally didn't want Canadians
00:20:32.740 to know what the facts on the ground were because they knew what would happen if they found out.
00:20:39.200 Now, it's interesting when you say, what are the toughest cultural challenges?
00:20:42.900 And I would say that they're twofold.
00:20:45.000 For, you know, sort of postmodern people of European descent, to be honest, those are the
00:20:48.920 hardest people to convince to become pro-life.
00:20:50.900 Because generally speaking, they've abandoned the pro-life position at some point.
00:20:54.280 But Canada is a profoundly multicultural nation.
00:20:57.140 And what we have found is that in almost all immigrant neighborhoods, neighborhoods
00:21:01.120 predominantly inhabited by new Canadians, that it's like shooting fish in a barrel in
00:21:05.880 terms of going door to door.
00:21:07.280 We don't even have to convince them to become pro-life and lay out the arguments.
00:21:10.600 We simply have to let them know what the status quo is.
00:21:13.500 When we were going door to door, for example, in an Indo-Canadian neighborhood in Brampton,
00:21:17.600 it was starting to get difficult to make it down the street because people kept on inviting
00:21:20.660 us in, you know, for a bottle of water.
00:21:22.580 We got invited in for supper at one point.
00:21:24.860 And they were just horrified by what they were actually seeing.
00:21:28.380 And this runs contrary to the media narrative.
00:21:30.360 And I'll give you one really funny example of this.
00:21:32.300 We were going door to door in one neighborhood.
00:21:34.640 Again, it was an Indo-Canadian neighborhood.
00:21:36.560 And I spoke with one woman who looked at a postcard we handed her and it showed a photo
00:21:40.600 of an abortion victim.
00:21:41.500 And she said, this goes way too far.
00:21:43.160 Like, it was just appalled that this was happening in Canada.
00:21:45.240 And that night on both CTV and Global, they talked about how CCBR had done an inflammatory
00:21:52.060 project, much opposed by those who had interacted with it.
00:21:55.180 And they showed footage of the woman looking at the postcard saying, this goes way too far.
00:21:59.240 And the story made it sound like this woman thought the pro-lifers had gone too far by
00:22:03.060 letting her know what the status quo was.
00:22:05.920 In reality, she was for the first time finding out what goes on in this country and saying,
00:22:10.620 that goes way too far.
00:22:11.660 So I would say like the biggest struggle we have in Canada on the cultural front is attempting
00:22:16.820 to address like the massive amount of ignorance.
00:22:20.240 Most polling on abortion in Canada is garbage because the people that get polled aren't actually
00:22:25.980 aware of what the status quo is.
00:22:28.020 Many of them we've found don't read English speaking newspapers.
00:22:31.060 There's these, there's many, many Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi newspapers with massive circulations
00:22:36.900 in Toronto where large communities only interact with those, which is, as you'll remember,
00:22:41.360 how Patrick Brown got caught trying to say one thing in one language and another thing
00:22:45.140 in another language on sex education.
00:22:47.640 He thought he could play that game because people kind of didn't read the opposing newspapers.
00:22:52.780 But on the ground, things are a lot more encouraging.
00:22:55.680 So people often ask me, how do you get, how do you not get depressed talking to people
00:22:59.260 all the time about abortion in this country?
00:23:01.300 It's because so many people, when they discover what's going on, are as outraged and upset about
00:23:06.660 it as we are.
00:23:07.680 And what we need to figure out how to do is to tell them what's going on, mobilize them,
00:23:12.700 and then connect them with groups like right now so we can create a political coalition
00:23:16.140 that cannot be ignored.
00:23:17.680 Well, Jonathan mentioned Patrick Brown.
00:23:19.720 So let's go there.
00:23:20.760 There is no shortage of politicians who, in nominations and in leaderships, actively and
00:23:27.440 aggressively court social conservatives because they know they're organized.
00:23:30.780 They know they have money.
00:23:32.000 They know they're dedicated volunteers.
00:23:34.420 But then once they get through that internal party hurdle, are not only nowhere to be found,
00:23:39.960 but in some cases, actively hostile to social conservatives.
00:23:44.600 Patrick Brown's a notable example of that.
00:23:46.900 The criticisms have also been leveled towards Doug Ford, who was all gung-ho about ending some
00:23:53.200 of the gender education and the sex ed curriculum and then really was nowhere to be found on these
00:23:57.980 issues.
00:23:58.280 Andrew Scheer, solidly pro-life social conservative, but could not articulate and would not articulate
00:24:04.120 that during an election.
00:24:05.740 So, I mean, Alyssa, how do you stop that part from happening of, on one hand, politicians
00:24:10.100 saying, yeah, we need your support.
00:24:12.280 We know it's a good way to get across the finish line internally, but then you guys are garbage
00:24:17.300 once they have to appeal to the general population.
00:24:20.700 Well, I think the main way is to no longer be the kingmakers and start naming the king.
00:24:25.240 Oftentimes, these leadership candidates are relying on social conservatives' second and
00:24:31.520 third votes, thinking that our first choice candidate won't win.
00:24:35.080 And we've shown in the last few leadership races that's becoming, that's not becoming
00:24:40.600 the case anymore.
00:24:41.500 And the most recent is with Leslyn Lewis and how well she did in the leadership race.
00:24:45.800 So we don't have to rely on the Doug Fords or the Aaron O'Toole's anymore to kind of tell
00:24:52.460 us one or two policies that they think we want to hear and then are never to be found after
00:24:57.040 the leadership race, but actually have our number one choice win in the leadership races.
00:25:02.320 And as Jonathan and Scott mentioned, the numbers are on our side.
00:25:05.640 We just need to educate people about the laws or the lack of laws in Canada on abortion to
00:25:12.020 intensify those votes and to get them involved in the political process.
00:25:15.520 And that's really why all of us are involved is in order to have those wins and win big.
00:25:20.720 One thing I learned as a candidate in 2018 is that your job is not to win over people.
00:25:27.380 You're not having arguments or, you know, Socratic dialogues at the door.
00:25:30.800 You're identifying your support and you're moving on.
00:25:33.120 There's a speed to it.
00:25:34.760 Whereas Jonathan, you were talking about your CCVR teams that can go and take the time and
00:25:39.680 have the discussions and get invited in for dinner.
00:25:42.740 Scott, I know you've been up against this because you have to tap into existing support.
00:25:47.600 I mean, when volunteers that are working with pro-life candidates are going out, they're
00:25:51.560 not advancing the pro-life message.
00:25:53.460 They're trying to get a candidate that's already on side elected by people in the
00:25:57.380 community, but there is a persuasion element that I wonder if it's missing.
00:26:02.320 And I am curious how you sort of wrap around that and what you do.
00:26:06.600 Well, I did kind of go back to your original question about, you know, the issue of certain
00:26:11.000 politicians saying that, like, Hey, I'm pro-life and here's a few different policies and I
00:26:14.480 need your votes.
00:26:16.460 And then, you know, I'll go implement this or I promise to do this.
00:26:19.640 The only time that we've really kind of come across a bit of an issue with that would
00:26:22.820 be with leadership candidates.
00:26:24.480 So, for example, we use the wonderful example of Patrick Brown.
00:26:29.580 That was before our organization existed.
00:26:31.860 And I think-
00:26:32.420 Your hands are clean on that one.
00:26:33.640 Don't worry.
00:26:34.020 Yeah, exactly.
00:26:34.740 Right.
00:26:34.860 That's right.
00:26:35.420 And I think a lot of candidates who want to engage, particularly with our organization,
00:26:40.820 see the example of Patrick and want to avoid that.
00:26:43.580 So, like Alyssa said, we're getting to the point that we're no longer becoming kingmakers,
00:26:50.800 that we're actually crowning our own king or maybe in the future a queen to lead these
00:26:57.700 political parties.
00:26:59.460 What I will say, though, however, is when you get to a level just a little bit below that,
00:27:03.640 when it comes to nominating people who are going to be running for federal provincial
00:27:08.840 office as an MLA, MHA, MNA, MPP, or federally as a member of parliament, we find that those
00:27:16.320 people definitely, for the most part, I should say, follow through.
00:27:20.480 They follow through on introducing legislation, voting for that legislation, and things like
00:27:23.820 that, and what I think a lot of people have to realize and remember is that we don't live in a
00:27:28.640 presidential republic like South of the Border.
00:27:30.740 We live in a Westminster parliamentary democracy.
00:27:34.040 So, you know, whether you're talking about Doug Ford, Andrew Scheer, Aaron O'Toole, they're
00:27:39.240 one of many votes within their legislature.
00:27:41.620 So that's not to say that leadership candidates don't matter and it makes a difference.
00:27:45.320 That's why we're involved in it.
00:27:47.060 But I would say, like, the kind of the problem that you identified is more kind of in the box
00:27:53.200 with leadership candidates, as opposed to, you know, your regular MPPs or MPs or MLAs.
00:28:00.840 In terms of door knocking and connecting people with pro-life candidates to get them elected,
00:28:08.140 the persuasion aspect of it is something that Jonathan's group does.
00:28:12.400 And it's something that prior to the 2019 election, our two organizations worked kind of
00:28:17.040 closely together on targeting different ridings and kind of making sure we hit the right
00:28:23.080 neighborhoods and whatnot.
00:28:24.100 And that's something that we will probably continue to do going forward.
00:28:27.700 Of course, the COVID-19 restrictions change a lot of that stuff.
00:28:30.880 And in terms of, you know, the culture informing law and the Breitbart quote of law being
00:28:38.500 downstream from culture, law also informs culture.
00:28:41.560 It's a one-two punch.
00:28:42.980 It works in tandem and you have to advance both at the same time.
00:28:46.360 So a really good example of that is in the United States, when President Barack Obama was
00:28:51.300 in power there from 2008 to 2016, there was something like over 400 different pieces of
00:28:58.540 pro-life legislation passed at state levels.
00:29:01.160 So things like defunding abortion with taxpayer money, particularly with Planned Parenthood,
00:29:06.420 things like requiring parental consent or notification for minors for seeking an abortion, which really,
00:29:11.980 really, really drove down the abortion rates or things like requiring to view an ultrasound or being
00:29:19.040 fully informed of some of the short and long-term psychological and physical side effects of abortion.
00:29:26.500 Like all those things not only reduced the abortion rate, but if you looked at particular Pew and Gallup
00:29:31.920 research polling from 2008 to 2016 in those states, not only did you see a decrease of the abortion rates
00:29:38.420 of these pieces of legislation, but you also saw in the polling, the number of people who identify
00:29:43.760 as pro-life increase in those states and the number of people identified as pro-trace, pro-gortion,
00:29:48.880 we're going to say decrease.
00:29:50.220 So as much as the culture informs law, and I'm not discounting that, law also informs culture,
00:29:57.340 which is why our organizations work in tandem.
00:29:59.560 And one other quick point is, Jonathan makes an absolute great, fantastic point,
00:30:04.280 and Alyssa kind of alluded to as well, talking about the GTA, like really, if you look across
00:30:09.160 Canada, if the Liberals and Conservatives want to form a majority government in this country,
00:30:13.620 you're looking at two general swing areas.
00:30:15.440 Number one is the greater Toronto area, which there are 58 seats, of which probably about 35
00:30:20.020 are actually swing.
00:30:21.220 And then you look at Metro Vancouver when there is about 20 seats or so, and about perhaps 12 or 15
00:30:27.020 of them in our swing seats.
00:30:28.060 So those are your battlegrounds.
00:30:30.340 And in those battlegrounds, you have a lot of new Canadian groups.
00:30:36.400 So one example I'll give Andrew real quick is about a year ago, one of the Eastern Catholic
00:30:42.080 bishops in the GTA got a hold of me, we were at a meeting for a different issue.
00:30:47.060 And he said, Scott, when all these COVID-19 restrictions are done, can you please come into
00:30:50.840 my cathedral on a couple of Sundays and just talk about what you do?
00:30:54.640 Because he said, like, when I talked to my parishioners, like maybe 10% of my parishioners
00:31:01.460 actually went out and voted.
00:31:02.820 And when you look at the poll by poll data, because each riding has about 180, 200 different
00:31:07.800 polls.
00:31:08.440 When you look at the poll by poll data, the polls in the 2019 federal election in the
00:31:13.700 GTA that had a lower than average turnout are the neighborhoods that have a higher percentage
00:31:20.020 of immigrant communities, new Canadian communities.
00:31:23.580 So it's not like new Canadians who are, you know, Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Orthodox
00:31:28.580 Jew, different sects of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs.
00:31:32.500 It's not like they're necessarily voting liberal.
00:31:34.980 They're just not voting at all because the conservatives actually aren't talking about
00:31:39.620 their issues.
00:31:40.400 So all these things work together.
00:31:42.520 They work in tandem.
00:31:43.600 And it's something that is really exciting.
00:31:45.460 The pro-life movement talking about optimism again.
00:31:48.460 Like once these COVID-19 restrictions are gone, we're able to talk to these communities
00:31:51.660 and get them involved.
00:31:52.840 I think the next 2030 is going to look way different for the pro-life movement, both culturally
00:31:57.360 and politically in this country than, you know, 2010, 2015.
00:32:01.700 I'd like to, if we can expand on that and talk about the intersection of pro-life activism
00:32:07.480 and partisanship specifically tied to a political party, because it used to be in Canadian politics
00:32:14.000 that you could be pro-life and have a home in politics regardless of your party.
00:32:18.880 Now, I don't know if there were any or many pro-lifers in the NDP, but certainly in the
00:32:23.100 Liberals, there was a large constituency of pro-life MPs.
00:32:26.380 Going even further back, you had a significant number of Liberals that voted against legalizing
00:32:30.540 gay marriage even, including Ralph Goodale, the now High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
00:32:35.040 But now the only party that even allows pro-life voices is the Conservative Party, which is
00:32:41.760 not a pro-life party explicitly.
00:32:43.740 You have people of different views on this.
00:32:46.140 But there are a lot of people that are purists on this issue and they don't want to support
00:32:51.820 a party that's not going to go all the way.
00:32:54.100 There are also the issues of people that might not even be conservative, but if they are pro-life,
00:33:00.520 where are they supposed to vote?
00:33:01.880 And I know that you, Scott, and you, Alyssa, specifically have had a lot of criticism from
00:33:06.680 people that were seeing People's Party candidates that were far more pro-life than Conservative
00:33:11.320 Party of Canada candidates.
00:33:12.720 But as we know, the PPC didn't stand a shot at electing anyone in the last election.
00:33:18.400 And here we are again, a lot of the similar discussions.
00:33:20.520 So let's talk about this, because really, when you talk about electing a pro-life candidate,
00:33:26.480 you're only realistically talking about a Conservative Party of Canada candidate, are you not?
00:33:32.080 Well, before Justin Trudeau, we could have pro-life Liberals, and I'm hoping that post-Justin
00:33:38.260 Trudeau, we can also do the same.
00:33:40.000 And it's important for pro-lifers to get involved in leadership races for other parties,
00:33:45.260 like the Liberal Party, if there is a supportable candidate who will even, at minimum, allow pro-lifers
00:33:51.400 to run for that party.
00:33:52.360 So I think that's really important as well.
00:33:55.260 In Saskatchewan, for example, the NDP leader there got in kind of hot water a few elections
00:34:02.120 ago for talking more, for having some pro-life talking points.
00:34:05.480 So he is personally pro-life.
00:34:08.060 And so that's an interesting conversation to have in Saskatchewan, where there are a lot
00:34:13.100 of pro-lifers who do associate with the NDP, but not on social issues.
00:34:18.540 So no matter what party you belong to or what issues are important to you, we encourage
00:34:25.580 people, pro-lifers, to get involved in that political process, because it's only by nominating
00:34:31.100 and electing candidates that are supportable and even leadership candidates that will actually
00:34:35.860 see a change and will open up that spectrum, because it is a bipartisan issue.
00:34:41.020 There's been multiple polls that show that people within the Liberal and NDP parties would
00:34:46.200 be more likely to vote for a party or a candidate that's willing to restrict sex-selective abortion.
00:34:52.080 In Quebec, for example, like Scott mentioned, you know, the Conservative Party is always
00:34:55.880 going after Quebec seats, yet 61% of those who voted for the bloc in the last election would
00:35:01.020 be more likely to vote for a candidate willing to restrict sex-selective abortion.
00:35:06.640 These are the types of things and outreach that pro-lifers need to do and to encourage people
00:35:11.340 to get involved in whatever party they belong to.
00:35:14.420 I actually ended up being, I shouldn't say immersed, because I was only peripherally paying
00:35:19.440 attention to it, but in a Twitter fight that Jonathan was having with someone, because I
00:35:24.280 had retweeted his column about the Conservatives being morally bankrupt, and then I had immediately
00:35:29.200 on that people descending to say, well, you must want Justin Trudeau to win.
00:35:33.060 And there is a lot of that, I've noticed, Jonathan, where people who, you know, perhaps hate the
00:35:38.360 Conservative approach to this issue, are just so focused on defeating the Liberals or defeating
00:35:43.620 the other that they go along with it and don't actually advance any of these issues internally.
00:35:49.600 So how do you deal with that?
00:35:51.440 Well, like part of the problem is difficult to deal with, because when you have semi-literacy
00:35:55.200 and social media, the results are often the sort of tragic things you saw on that Twitter
00:36:00.780 stream.
00:36:01.620 Because if you'd read the article closely or anything that any of us say, nobody's actually
00:36:06.660 saying, well, vote for Trudeau then, which is a really sort of ignorant and boring thing
00:36:11.000 to say in response, I'm going to vote Conservative in the next election because my MP is Leslyn
00:36:15.580 Lewis.
00:36:15.960 If I was in Aaron O'Toole's riding, I wouldn't vote for him.
00:36:18.520 This isn't really difficult.
00:36:20.180 You vote for the most electable pro-life MP in the riding that you're in.
00:36:25.540 And so a lot of these people spin it around, right?
00:36:28.380 You're responsible for voting for the most garbage candidate that Conservatives can scrape
00:36:33.040 up, right?
00:36:33.480 Like you have to vote for Michelle Rempel because that's who the Conservatives are offering
00:36:37.580 you in this riding.
00:36:38.940 Well, reverse, I'm the voter.
00:36:40.600 You're supposed to appeal to me.
00:36:41.920 So maybe give me somebody I actually want to vote for or get a bad candidate to pitch
00:36:46.040 me good policy so I still want to vote for that person rather than the other way around.
00:36:50.340 So for me, I am an issues voter and I'm primarily a single issue voter, although I have half
00:36:55.780 a dozen of them that are really important to me.
00:36:57.440 I thus far have consistently voted Conservative because in every instance in three provinces
00:37:03.040 where I voted, I've ended up with a solid pro-life MP.
00:37:06.120 But if I was one riding over, for example, I'd probably either spoil my ballot or I'd vote
00:37:10.980 for the most winnable other candidate, even if that candidate was, you know, the CHP with
00:37:16.320 350 votes, just because I'm not going to give my vote, which people fought and died to give
00:37:22.340 me the right to cast, to somebody who thinks the babies can get killed in the womb.
00:37:26.000 And I'm as pragmatic as they come, as are everybody else on this call, but my pragmatism
00:37:31.540 does have limits and where those limits crop up are when I'm expected to vote for somebody
00:37:35.880 like, you know, Michelle Rempel or David McKenzie.
00:37:38.780 How do you deal with that, Scott?
00:37:40.700 Because I know you were fielding a lot of criticism from people in the 2019 election for not endorsing
00:37:46.780 pro-life PPC candidates.
00:37:49.080 Do you take a similar view to Jonathan under that or do you go even more in the electability
00:37:53.920 realm?
00:37:54.300 Well, again, like I think a lot of people in Canada, unfortunately, and perhaps this
00:37:59.440 is to the literacy that Jonathan was talking about, I think is to poor public education
00:38:04.540 on civics.
00:38:05.860 We don't live in a presidential republic.
00:38:08.120 We don't cast ballots for who's going to be the prime minister of Canada.
00:38:11.560 We cast a ballot for who is going to be our member of parliament federally or MPP provincially,
00:38:16.780 what have you.
00:38:17.260 So in the last election to say that we supported just pro-life conservative candidates, that's
00:38:22.400 not entirely true.
00:38:23.600 We also supported pro-life PPC candidates, granted in not many ridings.
00:38:27.500 Now, we did tell our supporters in those ridings, like, hey, this is your most winnable pro-life
00:38:32.580 candidate, even though they're polling at, you know, two or three percent, you know, you're
00:38:36.940 asking us how we recommend you vote.
00:38:39.020 That is how we recommend you to vote.
00:38:40.900 That's not necessarily how we recommend you to spend your time as a volunteer, because, you
00:38:45.720 know, a 20 minute drive away in another riding, there is a pro-life candidate, likely a
00:38:49.820 conservative, who's actually polling really well.
00:38:52.040 That's in a tight riding that needs like a couple more volunteers to take it over the
00:38:55.380 top.
00:38:56.040 And so that's kind of our approach to it is, you know, for your vote, vote for the most
00:38:59.960 winnable pro-life candidate in your riding, regardless of political party affiliation.
00:39:05.260 And then if you're in a reasonable drive within your area of where you live, volunteer for the
00:39:12.400 pro-life candidate that has the best chance of winning, that needs your help.
00:39:16.460 And if you live in, you know, rural interior BC and, you know, Mel Arnold is your member of
00:39:21.580 parliament and he's likely going to win with a large percentage of the vote, well, you
00:39:25.800 know, go and or knock maybe once a week or once every two weeks for Mel and pick up the
00:39:30.080 phone and start making phone calls for a pro-life candidate who's going to be in a tough riding,
00:39:35.020 which, you know, for a lot of conservative candidates at this rate, it's going to be
00:39:38.720 likely a lot of them this coming election and put your help that way.
00:39:43.220 So that's kind of how we as an organization approach the issue on various candidates.
00:39:48.080 That's something that we were very crystal clear about in the last federal election campaign.
00:39:52.420 We never, ever have ever recommended that people vote for a pro-abortion conservative
00:39:58.180 candidate, and we never will.
00:40:00.240 We're not interested in electing a conservative majority.
00:40:03.520 We're interested in electing a pro-life majority.
00:40:05.800 Probably a lot of them will be conservative MPs.
00:40:07.860 At some point, we have to realize that not all of them are going to be conservative MPs,
00:40:11.260 which gets to the back, back to the point that you're talking about, Andrew, of getting
00:40:14.420 involved in other political parties.
00:40:15.740 One last point about that, I will say, getting involved in other political parties, which
00:40:19.840 is something that our organization is looking to do going forward into, you know, the rest
00:40:25.060 of this decade, is that the longer that the Conservative Party of Canada in particular
00:40:30.780 doesn't actually realize, or finally, I think they do, I think a lot of people at HQ and
00:40:37.160 around the leader do realize it, it's just they won't admit it, don't finally admit that,
00:40:41.300 like, hey, we need some reasonable pro-life policies to actually win a majority government.
00:40:44.280 The longer they don't embrace that, you know, Prime Minister Trudeau is not going to be
00:40:48.480 leader of the Liberal Party forever.
00:40:50.000 Like Alyssa said, there's going to be a leadership race, which hopefully we can get involved in,
00:40:54.160 and hopefully pro-lifers can make an inroad.
00:40:56.200 And if the Liberal Party of Canada in the next relatively, you know, short future, I'm
00:41:01.820 talking the next five, seven, maybe 10 years, if they actually adopt a reasonable pro-life
00:41:06.100 policy like banning sex-selective abortion or late-term abortions or pain capability
00:41:10.440 abortions, and the Conservatives are behind on that, the Conservatives will be shut out of
00:41:14.340 government for decades, maybe even opposition, as official opposition.
00:41:18.020 So they got to really, like, get their, you know, get their butts in gear and get their
00:41:22.520 heads screwed on, right, because they're missing a huge opportunity here going forward.
00:41:26.580 And I should just say to people, I'm not telling you how to vote, and True North is not telling
00:41:30.340 you how to vote.
00:41:30.960 We're presenting this for information, because these are, I think, important issues.
00:41:34.460 And it's valuable to see how social Conservatives are approaching them and navigating them.
00:41:39.660 And I think certainly political parties should pay attention to this.
00:41:43.080 As we wind down, I'm going to ask you all the same question here.
00:41:46.020 Try to keep your answer brief.
00:41:47.460 And I'm going to start with you, Alyssa, so you get the least amount of time to think
00:41:51.260 about an answer.
00:41:51.920 But are you optimistic?
00:41:55.000 I absolutely am optimistic.
00:41:56.900 I mean, am I optimistic that the Conservatives will win the next election and that all our pro-life
00:42:03.020 MPs will keep their seats?
00:42:04.120 No.
00:42:04.920 And a big reason is because Erin O'Toole has voted against that select of abortion bills
00:42:10.860 and done other things to social Conservatives that have turned them off.
00:42:13.560 And like I said, you can't have a winning coalition if you don't have SOCONs in your
00:42:16.780 vote.
00:42:17.660 But I am optimistic for the pro-life movement.
00:42:20.120 As Scott mentioned, we've drastically increased the number of pro-life politicians.
00:42:24.160 We have very strong leadership candidates that have come forward and will come forward
00:42:29.600 in future.
00:42:30.100 And we're getting more votes on pro-life pieces of legislation than we have in the past.
00:42:35.380 So I think these are all very positive steps forward.
00:42:38.360 And it's only a matter of time before we finally pass much needed legislation that will help
00:42:43.660 women, that will support women, and that will save children.
00:42:47.380 Jonathan, optimistic?
00:42:48.420 I would say that depends on a number of different factors.
00:42:54.400 So I agree with what Alyssa said.
00:42:57.280 Absolutely.
00:42:58.180 And on the ground, like, again, the coalition exists.
00:43:01.340 It just hasn't been cobbled together yet, right?
00:43:03.760 There are many communities of people who think what we think that we have not yet managed
00:43:08.600 to inform and to bring into the coalition.
00:43:10.960 What I honestly think this depends on is actually having a transformative paradigm smashing
00:43:15.000 leader.
00:43:15.660 And I said this very bluntly when Leslyn Lewis ran last time.
00:43:18.840 I think that what the pro-life movement needs is somebody who is consistently pro-choice,
00:43:23.560 has the guts to actually speak on it clearly and articulately, has the guts to defend the pro-life
00:43:28.760 position on TV, as Leslyn Lewis did, and quite frankly, is a female addressing this issue.
00:43:34.340 I would pay a lot of money to watch her clean the floor with Justin Trudeau on the issue
00:43:38.980 of abortion.
00:43:39.680 So really, I do think that to a degree, we'll see a paradigm shift on this issue when we see
00:43:47.080 a change in leadership.
00:43:48.200 And I'm a big fan of Leslyn Lewis or somebody like her as being the person who can really
00:43:53.140 take this ball and carry it forward.
00:43:55.240 And I'm going to assume it wasn't a Freudian slip.
00:43:56.900 Or you wanted a consistently pro-life leader, right?
00:43:59.800 Yes, that's right.
00:44:00.800 Okay, good.
00:44:01.680 And last but not least, Scott, what do you think?
00:44:04.440 Yeah, I'm incredibly optimistic because I, like, listen, my background, I'm a charter
00:44:08.780 professional accountant.
00:44:09.740 I'm a numbers guy, right?
00:44:10.800 I'm the boring numbers guy.
00:44:12.040 These two can attest to it.
00:44:13.140 And you can as well, Andrea.
00:44:14.280 I usually bother you with different texts throughout the week.
00:44:16.880 Like, did you check out these numbers, those polls and stuff like that?
00:44:19.840 So I guess in a way, I'm a bit of an empiricist that way.
00:44:24.200 And so when I just look at the facts, when I just look at the numbers, I see the opportunity
00:44:28.340 and I see the return on investment that we can make as a pro-life movement.
00:44:31.880 Like Jonathan said, those constituencies, they're there.
00:44:35.680 They exist.
00:44:36.400 We know they exist.
00:44:37.640 Once these COVID-19 restrictions are finally gone, our organization is going to hit the
00:44:41.780 ground running.
00:44:42.420 Finally, with three people working at one time, which will be incredibly helpful.
00:44:45.980 And I think that is really going to fuel a lot of wins going forward over the next, into
00:44:53.540 2030 for the rest of the decade.
00:44:55.300 I think 2030, the way that we're going, is going to look a lot different than 2020 or
00:45:00.980 2015 in a good way.
00:45:03.680 Jonathan Van Maren from the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform.
00:45:08.260 Scott Hayward and Alyssa Golob from Right Now.
00:45:11.340 Always great to talk to you both, especially, or all three of you, especially all at one time.
00:45:15.340 Thank you so much for coming on today.
00:45:17.200 Thanks, Andrew.
00:45:17.860 Thanks, Andrew.
00:45:19.020 Well, that was a fantastic discussion.
00:45:21.640 Great folks.
00:45:22.240 I've had a number of interactions with them personally and professionally.
00:45:25.600 I count them all as good friends.
00:45:27.120 And it was great to chat with them all in this context as well.
00:45:30.740 With that being said, we have to bid adieu for now, but we'll be back in a few days' time
00:45:35.620 with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show, The Andrew Lawton Show here on True
00:45:39.880 North.
00:45:40.340 Thank you.
00:45:40.860 God bless and good day.
00:45:42.560 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:45:44.560 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.