Juno News - Jim and Belinda Karahalios on getting disqualified from the Conservative leadership race – again

00:00:00.980 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:09.060 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:11.660 Last week, it looked like there was going to be a big shake-up in the Conservative leadership race.

00:00:16.620 The Ontario Superior Court of Justice gave Jim Carahalios a victory against the Conservative Party of Canada,

00:00:24.580 nullifying the Conservative Party's disqualification of Jim Carahalios from the leadership race.

00:00:29.680 So that might have been good news on the surface, but then just one day later, the Conservative Party re-disqualified him.

00:00:36.620 They disqualified him for the second time, and this time in a way that would have been approved by the judge,

00:00:42.680 because it comes down to the various committees that are involved in this leadership race process,

00:00:47.740 and which ones have the authority to disqualify candidates, and which ones don't.

00:00:53.060 So the court victory may have been good on the surface, but it wasn't really a moral victory,

00:00:57.100 and it doesn't deal with the fundamental question of whether the party is in the right or in the wrong

00:01:02.960 to disqualify Jim Carahalios, fundamentally speaking, not legally speaking,

00:01:08.000 but whether it is just the morally right thing to do.

00:01:11.360 And joining me on the line now are Jim Carahalios and his wife, Ontario MPP Belinda Carahalios.

00:01:17.660 Jim, Belinda, thanks very much for coming on today. It's great to talk to you both.

00:01:21.140 Thanks for having us.

00:01:22.260 Thanks, Andrew.

00:01:22.940 I'll start with you, Jim. Last week, the judge's decision came down nullifying your disqualification.

00:01:30.260 I had been trying to cover the hearing itself as best as I could remotely,

00:01:34.240 and when I read the decision, I mean, obviously the very bottom line of it was positive,

00:01:39.560 but as I read it, I was not convinced it would be all that much of a victory in the long run.

00:01:45.420 It seems like the judge was fairly committed to this idea that, yes, you could have been disqualified,

00:01:50.800 but only through different means. So were you expecting that the party would do exactly what it did,

00:01:56.580 which is a day after the decision disqualifying you in the quote-unquote proper way?

00:02:01.660 I had mixed emotions when I got it, because on the one hand, it was an unprecedented decision.

00:02:06.660 It's the first time that someone has been successful in court getting a political party

00:02:11.960 to follow its own rules in any election, let alone a leadership, and we proved that they couldn't

00:02:18.240 follow their own rules. They had a small committee of four people, an appeals committee decide they

00:02:23.000 disqualified me after the leadership organizing committee had a vote, and they decided not to

00:02:28.560 disqualify me. But you're right. The judge didn't want to peel the onion all the way back. There wasn't

00:02:33.780 enough evidence on the record because the party withheld information.

00:02:36.800 And so it's very clear in these rules that the leadership committee drafted for themselves.

00:02:42.640 They can change the rules whenever they want. They can re-look at things. And the judge said,

00:02:48.280 you know, under these rules, they've got broad power, this leadership committee.

00:02:52.320 And I think he suggested something, you know, they could take a fresh set of eyes to something.

00:02:56.900 Well, the fresh set of eyes was the next day they did double jeopardy on me, which if you're not

00:03:02.320 familiar with the legal system, double jeopardy is when you're tried twice for the same

00:03:06.680 quote unquote crime, which I don't think I committed a crime. And they hurried up the

00:03:10.820 next day, less than 24 hours later to disqualify me. And it makes the whole thing look like a farce

00:03:17.340 because on the one hand, you've got a judge saying, give Jim 14 days to get back in the race.

00:03:23.080 And they didn't even wait 24 hours. They didn't consider an alternative remedy. They didn't call

00:03:29.480 me for a discussion. They just went and did the disqualification. So I wasn't surprised.

00:03:34.940 That's why my initial communication after we got the court ruling said, we're going to look into

00:03:40.820 if it's possible for us to get back in the race. And there's a couple of keys there, Andrew.

00:03:45.760 You know, the CRO Derek Bantstone had this $100,000 penalty on me. We were really close to

00:03:52.160 getting that money. I think we're at $380,000 in total donations somewhere in there. And there's

00:03:58.660 about 20,000 of that sitting at a post office. The party hasn't picked up in two months.

00:04:02.940 And the difference this time than the last time, when Derek Bantstone issued the $100,000

00:04:08.640 penalty last time, I only had eight days before the March 25th cutoff. And this time, the judge

00:04:15.940 gave me 14 days. So it was like the judge was saying, Derek didn't give me enough time to raise

00:04:22.000 it. And the party knows I had it from the court documents. They know I was close to the $400,000.

00:04:28.000 And that's obviously why they decided to not give me the 14 days to raise it and just ask me 24 hours

00:04:35.600 later. So you're right in your initial analysis of the case. We were vindicated that they didn't

00:04:40.700 follow their own rules, but they have broad powers under the leadership rules to do whatever they

00:04:44.720 want. They're more powerful than Andrew Scheer and the leadership candidates in this election.

00:04:48.220 And that's a shame.

00:04:49.780 I should just disclose, lest anyone be unsure of this. I'm not a lawyer. You are a lawyer. So you

00:04:55.060 may have a vastly different take on this than I do. But in reading the decision, one thing that

00:05:00.320 became apparent was that the judge really didn't seem to be interested in wading into political

00:05:05.700 party affairs or wading into anything to do with an election. It seemed like the judge's take on this,

00:05:11.380 the court's take was that this was just a garden variety contractual dispute. The fact that you were

00:05:16.320 a political candidate was irrelevant. The fact that the Conservative Party of Canada is a political

00:05:20.760 party is irrelevant. And it was just on the technicality. Now, at the same time, there is a

00:05:26.320 democratic effect here. This is about democracy. It's about elections. But I don't think that was

00:05:31.760 really reflected in what the court was evaluating.

00:05:35.720 No. And so you're hitting something like the nail right on the head that if you go to court to

00:05:41.260 challenge a political party, you can't do it on a judicial review. That's been tried and the law has

00:05:47.520 been settled on that. So, for example, in this case, the judge couldn't analyze Derek Vanstone's

00:05:53.180 decisions for issuing a hundred thousand dollar penalty. And he couldn't analyze why he hasn't

00:05:58.220 sanctioned Peter McKay because he used the term bathroom bill or stinking albatross. He couldn't

00:06:03.600 analyze Aaron O'Toole saying Sharia law is a threat to Canadian values and Canadian democracy

00:06:09.780 and other comments that other candidates made. The judge couldn't do that in this case. He could

00:06:14.960 only look at the leadership rules as a contract and whether the party followed it. And that's

00:06:20.580 because in our legal system in Canada, there are no rules or laws that govern how political parties

00:06:26.420 work. Political parties make up their own rules. And the only way you can challenge it in court

00:06:31.380 is through a contractual analysis. Are they following their line by line rules? And when there's a broad

00:06:37.340 set of rules that give draconian powers to a committee of 18, it skews in their favor. So

00:06:43.940 on the one hand, it was unprecedented that we got a judge to rule against a party because that's never

00:06:50.380 happened in Canada before. And so I think it's a success in the sense that it sends a message to

00:06:56.240 all political parties, follow your rules. But on the other hand, you're limited. You can't do a lot

00:07:01.980 in court. You can't ask a judge to say, look at this absurd $100,000 penalty when the buy-in is $300,000.

00:07:08.060 They want me to pay $400,000 out of donations to get on the ballot. And other supporters have said

00:07:13.660 that's like extortion. My wife has a bill in the Ontario legislature, Bill 150 that you could tell

00:07:19.780 us about, that's trying to put some rules on political parties to prevent voter fraud. And Belinda 1.00

00:07:25.300 can tell you more about it because right now you can commit voter fraud in an internal party election

00:07:30.020 and there's nothing you could do about it. Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that there

00:07:33.680 are no rules. It's like the Wild West when it comes to party elections. And, you know,

00:07:39.660 I've introduced this bill to say, let's put some rules around this. Let's make it punishable by law

00:07:43.280 that you cannot, you know, tamper with the votes in an internal party election, whether it is for it to

00:07:50.300 be a nomination to be a candidate, a party president or a leader of a party. And, you know, I'm really happy

00:07:55.980 that we received unanimous, it was voted on unanimously in the House during second reading and it's now

00:08:02.000 waiting at committee for third, to get to third reading. But it's just, it really is incredible that a lot of

00:08:08.080 people didn't realize that, you know, something as important as choosing who will, could potentially

00:08:13.800 represent you at a provincial level was something that, you know, a small group of people could tamper with

00:08:18.720 and essentially rig the results to be so that the candidate of their choice and not the member's

00:08:23.520 choice is the one who's on the ballot for election time. Let me ask you about that, Belinda, because I

00:08:28.160 fear as someone who has been a candidate myself, I ran in the same election you ran in in 2018 in

00:08:34.040 Ontario, albeit with a different outcome. And the issues that people were asking about were pocketbook

00:08:38.840 issues, things like hydro rates, taxes, spending, debt, all of these other things. How much do ordinary

00:08:44.900 people care about these sorts of political fights, things that on the surface look like inside

00:08:51.280 baseball, that only people in this bubble that the three of us are in really care about and really

00:08:56.580 pay attention to? And I guess the reason I'm interested in your perspective on this is because

00:09:00.480 you've run in an election where you have to appeal to the general population. That's different than an

00:09:05.620 internal political fight like leadership races, policy votes, and so on.

00:09:09.660 So the card-carrying members, they care. And then the more news that we've had around the bill,

00:09:16.040 and you get people who didn't really understand it, who were then emailing the office or emailing

00:09:21.260 me personally or calling saying, oh my gosh, how are there no rules around this? And it's a little

00:09:26.040 scary because, you know, we claim to live in a democracy. And if you're going to interfere with

00:09:31.100 someone's right to a free fair election as a card-carrying member of any party, not just the

00:09:36.180 Conservative Party, you know, and again, that person is going to potentially win in a general

00:09:41.360 election and potentially have a position of power to represent people provincially or federally,

00:09:46.580 if it were to go federal, you should really be trusting those individuals who are taking part in

00:09:52.380 this process. You know, the corruption starts small. And then, you know, how much patience or how

00:09:58.360 much forgiveness are we going to have for it before it becomes a bigger issue and we start interfering

00:10:02.200 with general elections. So we need to take care of our democracy. And that starts with things like

00:10:07.700 internal party elections. Is that something you agree with, Jim, that if you don't deal with it

00:10:12.140 on the internal issues at the internal level, it will expand and start to impact or infect the broader,

00:10:18.960 bigger elections? I've always, you know, my history, Andrew, in the federal party, provincial party,

00:10:27.740 you know, Dan Nolan, the co-chair of the leadership committee, went on CBC a couple of days ago to try

00:10:32.180 to, you know, blame me and I know what I did wrong and kind of give the illusion that no one knows

00:10:37.900 who I am. And he said the phrase, we tried to welcome into the party. I've been in this party

00:10:42.740 for 15 years, federally and provincially, before I even met my wife. And I've advocated for adherence

00:10:51.180 to the rules and having a grassroots member-driven process on policy, on nominations, stamping out voter

00:10:57.360 fraud at federal conventions. And in each of those instances, the pushback from the cronies at the top

00:11:04.940 trying to control the process is it's inside baseball. No one cares. But what we've seen in the last four

00:11:11.100 or five years, the stories from the provincial party under Patrick Brown and now with his leadership,

00:11:17.960 is it's starting to present a culture of what conservative politics in Ontario and politics in Canada is

00:11:26.020 about. And remember the Jody Wilson-Raybould saga. It's starting to create a culture and people are

00:11:32.140 starting to wake up to the fact that it is the wild, wild west and people who are spending their money

00:11:38.420 inside of political parties can't be reassured that their right to vote and their right to make a decision

00:11:44.400 is going to be respected because a small handful of know-it-alls inside the party think that they should

00:11:51.640 have the right to remove you off the ballot whenever they want. And so it is damaging long-term

00:11:57.420 and it's easy to dismiss a one-off thing like inside baseball. But when you see a culture of

00:12:03.140 undemocratic behavior, a culture of making decisions that shows that they're enemies of democracy,

00:12:10.100 enemies of the rule of law, and they're against, they don't even trust their own voters,

00:12:13.940 that has lasting consequences. And that's why, you know, as a family, we continually stand on that

00:12:20.920 fight on the right side of the issue for members and voters.

00:12:23.980 The other thing is it's trust, right? People are losing trust in political institutions. And then

00:12:28.180 we always complain, oh, only X percent of the population got out to vote at the general election.

00:12:32.720 Well, can you blame them? Like when you start to hear about all these shenanigans that go on in

00:12:37.520 internal party elections, it's really disenchanting for a lot of people and people just don't want to be a

00:12:42.220 part of it. They feel like, well, what does it matter? Why would I bother to get involved?

00:12:45.720 Why would I donate or volunteer for a political party if at the end of the day, my voice doesn't

00:12:50.180 matter? So, you know, it really is part of a bigger problem, I think.

00:12:54.100 So this court decision could have given the party an out to say, listen, we made a mistake. He's back

00:13:00.340 in the race. All is forgiven. They didn't take that. As you've noted, Jim, they doubled down,

00:13:04.540 but they could have had an out if they wanted it there. And this does bring me around to this idea

00:13:10.240 that you've talked about previously, thinking the fix was in from the get-go, that they were never

00:13:14.420 going to let you get on the ballot. But my issue with there, my sticking point is, why would they

00:13:19.320 approve you as an applicant in the first place? The fact that they disqualified Richard Desqueries

00:13:24.020 suggests that, yes, they were open to disqualifying. Is it just that they didn't think you were going

00:13:29.180 to get the $300,000 and 3,000 signatures, and they figured your campaign would just naturally

00:13:34.960 dissipate? Or is it that they thought that you might do something that would give them an out

00:13:40.200 to disqualify you? In this case, they latched onto that email you sent that Aaron O'Toole complained

00:13:45.460 about. But if the fix was in, why not just disqualify you before you even got to the point

00:13:50.840 where you were on that approved list? Yeah, and everyone knows my campaign style,

00:13:56.000 Andrew. Everyone knows I'm an aggressive campaigner, and I try to win. So it's not like

00:14:00.600 they approved me to run, not knowing what they were going to get. And it's very clear,

00:14:06.180 if you look at the timeline of how this all unfolded, that they were never going to let me

00:14:12.160 on the ballot, Andrew. They let me run initially, maybe because they didn't want to create this issue

00:14:17.460 at the outset, and because I've got a good solid following in Ontario and across the country.

00:14:22.120 They didn't want to stop the Axe the Carbon Tax guy from being in a conservative leadership race.

00:14:26.960 Because when I started Axe the Carbon Tax, you know, the guys at the top of the conservative

00:14:31.140 party, including Andrew Scheer, thanked me. Jason Kenney thanked me. They were all thankful. So

00:14:35.840 maybe they didn't want to exclude me at the outset. But if you look at the timing of the steps

00:14:40.480 on how this all unfolded, that communication I had mailed out to supporters. Two weeks passed.

00:14:48.260 I've sent an email. I hit the $150,000 threshold, which would have entitled me to the party list.

00:14:53.980 And all of a sudden, Aaron O'Toole came out with this complaint. And they used that complaint as

00:14:59.100 a means of not providing me with a party list, which was instrumental to get to the $300,000

00:15:04.940 threshold. So obviously, they thought I wasn't going to reach $300,000 without the party list.

00:15:10.220 I still reached the $300,000. And, you know, a couple days ago, Dan Nolan was on the CBC in this

00:15:16.060 disgraceful show to continue to malign me, suggesting that if I just paid the fine, I'd be a candidate.

00:15:21.660 But they only gave me eight days to pay the $100,000 fine, which is egregious.

00:15:26.480 And when the judge said I had 14 days to pay it, and they knew I could reach it,

00:15:30.740 they decided, well, now we're not going to give him the 14 days. We're going to disqualify him.

00:15:35.500 So it's clear if you follow the steps, that they were never going to let me on the ballot.

00:15:40.320 They were not interested in looking at a reasonable solution here. They just didn't want me there.

00:15:45.360 And I was a threat, Andrew. I was in third place when I was removed from the ballot,

00:15:48.620 third fastest to $300,000 to get on the ballot without the party list.

00:15:52.820 My polling numbers were climbing, and I was becoming a threat to Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay.

00:15:57.820 Yeah, I agree with that. I think there's a lot of fear because, you know, without the list,

00:16:02.340 you manage to hit those numbers. And I think that speaks volumes for the type of following that you

00:16:07.120 have. And, you know, you just get Jim into a debate, right? You're going to really see how

00:16:12.020 milquetoast these contenders are. Thanks.

00:16:16.320 Okay, that's fair. But how do you square that up with what the judge found,

00:16:20.360 which was that there was no procedural unfairness. There was no bad faith. The judge was unequivocal

00:16:25.660 about that. In looking at all of the facts, the judge was fairly confident that you were not treated

00:16:31.480 in bad faith and that you were not denied procedural fairness. It was simply about the

00:16:36.660 conservative party, not by a contractual technicality following the rules that it set

00:16:41.460 out for the race. So you have to look at what the judge was provided with. He was provided with a

00:16:46.840 broad set of rules. And the only evidence that we could provide was what I just told you. The party

00:16:52.260 didn't put forward their evidence in terms of what was discussed at the leadership committee meeting,

00:16:57.000 what the conversations were, what the notes were, what the emails were. They didn't even provide if

00:17:01.660 there was any communication outside of the leadership committee with others. They refused to

00:17:06.420 provide that evidence to the court. And why would they refuse to provide it? Obviously,

00:17:09.720 they're hiding something. So when the judge makes the statement, there was no bad faith,

00:17:13.860 there was no procedural unfairness. He's doing that on analysis of the steps that were taken

00:17:18.920 in terms of issuing the penalty against me, the steps that were taken originally when they decided

00:17:25.200 not to disqualify me. And he's doing that in the context of what's on record in court and how broad

00:17:31.840 the rules are and the power they have to basically do whatever they want. He's not making that

00:17:36.800 statement comparing it externally. For example, why was Jim fined $100,000 of the penalty and no one

00:17:44.320 else has been penalized or sanctioned? That's outside of the judge's scope. Another example is he's not

00:17:50.840 looking at the CRO Derek Vanstone said I violated. Derek Vanstone made an issue, a violation allegation

00:17:59.440 and error. But that's outside the judge's scope. He can't look at that. All he can look at is there's a

00:18:04.180 leadership committee, they have broad powers, the CRO can issue a penalty. And that's what he was looking at.

00:18:10.140 And without the party being honest with what they discussed in the back, you know, it's an evidentiary record.

00:18:16.920 So the judge is not just going to guess. After the disqualification, you said on Twitter,

00:18:21.800 I am yet to be defeated in a free, fair and democratic vote among members, how real party

00:18:26.860 elections should be decided. You also note that Maxime Bernier in 2017 had made allegations of

00:18:34.540 irregularities in the voting process here. But when you say this, I'm yet to be defeated in a free,

00:18:38.840 fair and democratic vote among members. Are you just saying whenever you've lost, it's been because

00:18:42.940 it's rigged? Is that not how that comes across? Well, I don't know when I've lost. If I were to be in

00:18:48.980 this race, Andrew, and members decided I wasn't the leader, then you can say I lost. But obviously, when

00:18:55.200 they're not letting members have a say, they find me to be a threat. I've been in conservative and

00:19:00.660 provincial politics federally and provincially, sorry, conservative politics for 15 years. I've run for

00:19:07.260 riding president positions. I've run nominations for other people. I've run to be a part of the

00:19:12.600 policy committee of the party. I've won in every free and fair election I've ran in. My wife had two

00:19:19.020 and a half weeks as a nomination contestant on the PC side. She was running against three individuals,

00:19:24.020 two of which were campaigning for a year and a half. She won as well. So our record on winning

00:19:29.220 elections when members get a right to vote is pretty clear. I'm undefeated. Whether people don't like

00:19:36.180 that or not, that's fine. But if you wanted to defeat me for once, let me get to the ballot here

00:19:41.060 in this leadership and have Peter or Aaron beat me. Obviously, they thought that was too risky and

00:19:45.200 they didn't want me on the ballot. One of the more insidious aspects of party politics, I find,

00:19:50.380 is trying to shrink the parameters of debate, shrink the parameters of what can even be discussed or

00:19:55.480 voted on. And I mean, in the particularly brazen cases, this is taking people like you and Richard

00:20:00.960 Dickery off the ballot. And it seemed like the party was trying to have it both ways. On one hand,

00:20:05.700 they were trying to say, oh, you know, these people don't represent the party and no one's

00:20:08.620 going to vote for them and all of that. But at the same time, if no one's going to vote for them,

00:20:12.240 just let that be revealed. Let that be realized by letting members cast ballots. And it's the same

00:20:17.420 as with party policy. I know that the convention for the Ontario PC party in which you ran as a

00:20:22.800 candidate a couple of years ago for president, it was the same sort of thing. The party had tried to

00:20:27.100 keep a lot of these socially conservative motions from getting to the voting floor. And they did get to

00:20:32.000 the voting floor and ended up getting past all of these things. So that is the party's response

00:20:36.700 seems to be, listen, we don't want these outcomes. These are unacceptable outcomes to us. So let's try

00:20:41.580 to ensure that they're not on the ballot and the members don't have a chance to vote for them.

00:20:45.400 And obviously, it's the grassroots members who then suffer.

00:20:48.780 We're seeing this happen at the provincial and federal levels, where a small group are deciding

00:20:54.260 what can and can't be talked about. And it's not just about social conservative stuff. It's about

00:20:59.340 you can't talk about voter fraud. You can't talk about the Paris Accord. You can't talk about the

00:21:04.660 carbon tax, Jim. That was the position three years ago until everyone changed their mind and supported

00:21:08.940 me. And I don't know how we can have a united conservative movement with a small cabal of Lisa

00:21:15.880 Rae, Dan Nolan and Derek Banson at the top, telling everyone what they can and cannot talk about and creating

00:21:22.020 a chill for the rest of the leadership that says to the candidates, we can kick you out of a race

00:21:28.560 if you say the wrong thing. And the imposition of control and power in our parties that I've been

00:21:34.700 fighting against for five, six, seven years now, internally, and now it's in a leadership contest,

00:21:41.400 it's getting worse because the members are getting stronger. The members want bold action.

00:21:46.620 Lisa Rae had her chance in 2017 when she ran for leader to mold the future of our party and the 0.64

00:21:54.920 discussion. She got 3%. And she constantly talks about a big tent, but it looks like a 3% tent to

00:22:01.500 me. It's going to be a huge tent and only 3% of conservatives are going to be there because the

00:22:07.020 way they're running the leadership, they're driving people out into the PPC, into the Wexit party.

00:22:12.840 There's disgruntled conservatives that don't want to vote. So I'm not for the 3% tent, Andrew. I want a 0.77

00:22:18.420 big tent and members to feel like they can talk about what they think is important in conservative

00:22:23.420 solutions. But the cabal at the top, they think they know better. And the proof, they don't prove

00:22:28.020 it to us because they're not winning enough to show us that their way is the right way.

00:22:31.700 Now, obviously, the federal conservative party and the Ontario PC party are legally different entities.

00:22:37.500 And even more fundamentally, they don't share resources as openly as the liberals and NDP do in

00:22:42.780 various provinces, not just Ontario. But they are still controlled by a lot of the same people.

00:22:48.360 There's a lot of crossover there. And it's the same conservative Inc operators, if you will,

00:22:54.040 that seem to be at the helm of both. So I have to ask you, Belinda, as an Ontario PC MPP,

00:22:59.020 how do you function and exist in this party when the establishment seems to be so dead set against

00:23:06.380 Jim and against what Jim's been trying to do?

00:23:08.160 So I'm a conservative because I believe in fiscal responsibility and other issues that

00:23:13.400 conservatives believe in. And, you know, there are a lot of people in the party who are like-minded.

00:23:19.880 You know, there is obviously those in the party who are different than that. And there is a strong,

00:23:26.840 silent group who are very supportive of free speech and all these conservative values and

00:23:31.520 of Jim as well. It's amazing, actually, how many people told me that, you know,

00:23:38.300 not going to say anything publicly, but I'm so excited that Jim's on the ballot. We're so excited.

00:23:42.180 I'm going to put him number one. There's so much support. And there seems to be this hunger

00:23:46.660 for people to just be bold and take action and to be strong about the issues that we know that we

00:23:52.060 need to be strong on in order to win elections. So, you know, I think that we're really fortunate to

00:23:58.820 have, well, people like Jim, but Jim to put his name forward for things like this, because

00:24:02.980 there is a hunger out there for this kind of strength in our party.

00:24:06.420 And it's really hard to be heard on Belinda, Andrew, don't you say? Like, it's one thing to say,

00:24:10.320 Jim's a little too abrasive for us. But when you meet my wife, I think it's really hard to be

00:24:16.140 tough on a lovely and supportive wife as mine. Look, we're in it together, Andrew. And we have

00:24:22.860 a lot of support. And because of retribution, a lot of people stay quiet.

00:24:27.080 But at the same time, you're making allegations of corruption. And if the federal conservative

00:24:31.700 party is, in your view, corrupt, and the same people are really running the Ontario PC party,

00:24:37.000 it stands to reason that both of them would have this corruption issue. So how do you

00:24:41.640 have, or let me back up a second here. Do you have confidence in either of these parties to have a

00:24:47.940 positive path forward?

00:24:49.800 So, yeah.

00:24:51.020 Okay, I'll go. I'll do. I'll be really brief. So I have faith. I don't know if confidence is the

00:24:55.240 right word. For me, it's faith. I have faith that if we continue to fight from within, that we can make

00:25:00.100 positive changes. And that's kind of the lens that I've always looked at things. It's better to be

00:25:05.440 within something and try to steer the ship. And now the, you know, conservative parties are very

00:25:11.420 large ships, all political parties, and by their nature, hard to steer. But I mean, if you're quiet,

00:25:18.820 then you're part of the problem.

00:25:20.660 And look, Andrew, I don't think I'm saying that the entire party, federally or provincially, are

00:25:27.140 corrupt. Because what's a party? If you ask the establishment, they think the party is defined as

00:25:33.880 their friends from Bloor Street South off of Yonge Street. That's what they think the party is.

00:25:40.180 I think the party are the members. And so, no. Do I think that members across the country in the

00:25:46.780 Federal Conservative Party are corrupt? Members in the Provincial Conservative Party across Ontario

00:25:51.620 are corrupt? No, absolutely not. That's why we continue to fight. What I think is that the rules

00:25:56.160 are so vague and there's no laws to prevent broad rules being applied by a handful of people to get

00:26:03.820 the predetermined desired result, like this is WrestleMania, to get what they want out of the

00:26:10.200 process. That's what we're challenging. We're not saying the Conservative Party is corrupt because the

00:26:16.080 Conservative Party is its membership and its voters. It's the small handful of people that continually like

00:26:22.940 to predetermine the outcome and fly in the face of the will of the grassroots members.

00:26:29.360 That's the problem here, Andrew. That's what's going on.

00:26:32.240 Someone else who initially tried to affect change from within the system and then ended up hitting a

00:26:36.420 wall was Maxime Bernier, now the leader of the People's Party. You had said in an interview a couple

00:26:41.740 of months back with Ezra Levant that you would make Maxime your Quebec lieutenant if you were successful at

00:26:47.120 winning the Conservative leadership. And in response, Maxime had said,

00:26:50.720 thanks for the offer to become your Quebec lieutenant, but I already have a party.

00:26:54.700 When you found out about the depth of corruption in the CPC establishment, the People's Party will

00:26:59.720 be happy to welcome you with open arms. Here you are a couple of months later and two

00:27:04.100 disqualifications later. Are you going to take him up on that offer?

00:27:07.800 Look, at this time, we're just going to, you know, we have to get the campaign donations from party

00:27:14.040 headquarters that they refused and forced me to go to court to access, to pay off our campaign

00:27:18.760 expenses. We've got to wind down the campaign. And what's next for me? I don't know, Andrew.

00:27:24.240 Maybe political retirement. I was in this leadership race because I wanted to quell this

00:27:31.060 fragmentation of the Conservative movement. I had supporters saying it's Jim or Wexit for me.

00:27:36.220 I had supporters saying I voted PPC, but I'll come back to the Conservative Party if Jim's leader

00:27:41.300 and he can unite the fragmented aspects of the movement. That's why I was in this leadership race.

00:27:46.640 And that's why Belinda's an Ontario PC MPP, because when people were saying under Patrick

00:27:53.020 Brown's leadership, we need a new party, we stuck it out. Waleed Solomon, who's Aaron O'Toole's chair,

00:27:58.280 was running the PC party with Patrick Brown. They sued me on December of 2017, right before Christmas,

00:28:03.920 and it took a toll on us. And we stuck it out because we want to see a united Conservative Party.

00:28:09.680 But I don't know what's left to do, because if these guys can meddle with the process in a

00:28:16.060 leadership, how do we have faith? How do I tell people to pay money to go to a convention to vote

00:28:23.020 an executive if we don't have guarantees that the vote is going to be fair and it's not going to be

00:28:28.580 rigged? If we don't have guarantees that people can run into leadership, let alone how are they going

00:28:33.140 to run into nomination, Andrew, and not get kicked out? So I have a lot of concerns, and it's been a long,

00:28:40.180 hard five years for our family, trying to push the movement and uniting it. And the people at the top,

00:28:48.080 like Lisa Rae, Dan Nolan, Derek Benson, they don't care if the Conservative movement is fragmented.

00:28:52.240 They don't care if there's Wexit. They don't care if Max is picking up support. I want to see all those

00:28:57.480 disgruntled voices united under the Conservative Party banner, not fragmented.

00:29:01.780 Yeah, I don't think they realize how damaging this is to the Conservative movement overall,

00:29:06.200 because people are paying attention and people are getting frustrated. And if

00:29:09.560 these guys at the top can't trust their members to use their vote wisely, then people are just

00:29:16.840 going to leave. They're going to leave the party. They're going to stay home. Conservatives have

00:29:19.820 very long memories.

00:29:22.180 Belinda Carajalios, PC MPP for Cambridge and Ontario, and Jim Carajalios, former Conservative

00:29:27.480 leadership candidate. Jim, Belinda, thank you both so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.

00:29:31.520 Thanks, Andrew.

00:29:32.200 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True

00:29:36.620 North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 26, 2020

Jim and Belinda Karahalios on getting disqualified from the Conservative leadership race – again

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript