Juno News - August 15, 2022


Leslyn Lewis believes Tamara Lich is a political prisoner

Topics
Toxic environment in Ottawa
Mentioned
Tamara Leach Michelle Rempel-Garner Leslyn Lewis Poliev
Freeland laughs in the face of Canadian farmers What makes the Quebec Conservative Party different from other parties？

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

161.17

Word count

863

Sentence count

53

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The Conservative Party of Canada leadership race is now in its final month, and candidates are going back across the country to harvest the ballots of their supporters. I caught up with the only pro-life candidate, Leslyn Lewis, at an event she did with supporters in Gatineau, Quebec, and asked her a few questions regarding this long and dramatic leadership race, as well as the issues of the day.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The Conservative Party of Canada leadership race is now in its final month, and candidates are going back across the country to harvest the ballots of their supporters.
00:00:12.400 I had the opportunity to catch up with the only pro-life candidate, Leslyn Lewis, at an event she did with supporters at Allegiant in Gatineau, Quebec.
00:00:24.260 And I asked her a few questions regarding this long and, some would say, dramatic leadership race, as well as the issues of the day.
00:00:34.320 We're entering the last month of the Conservative Leadership Race. It's been a long race. Some say it's been a dramatic race. How do you feel going into this final month?
00:00:44.020 Very good. We've worked very, very hard. I think we did our 109th event today, and it's been phenomenal. The turnout has been great, as you can see.
00:00:54.580 We had an extremely good turnout here in Quebec, in Gatineau today, and we've been touring Quebec for the last two days, and we think that we're going to do very, very well, both here and across the country.
00:01:05.820 So there was the third official debate last week, which you did not attend. It was kind of more of a roundtable with the party president.
00:01:14.080 They touched on politically correct topics like climate change and transit. Do you still think you made the right decision not to go?
00:01:22.820 Absolutely. We weren't giving sufficient notice about when the debate was. We knew that we had a leadership race, and they could have really told us in time so that we could be respectful to the members.
00:01:35.280 And as you know, I have a very busy schedule, so does Mr. Poliev, and we had made commitments to the members, and we asked the party to give us sufficient time so that we could rearrange our commitments.
00:01:48.520 And I didn't feel that that was done in a respectful manner, and so I did what I thought was best, and that's to honour my commitments to the members.
00:01:57.780 Right. You sent an email to supporters where you said you hated politics, and you didn't like how politicians attacked each other.
00:02:05.960 There is a toxic environment in Ottawa. That's no secret. Others have brought it up, including Michelle Rempel-Garner.
00:02:12.320 If you were elected leader, or even if you're not elected leader, what do you think needs to be done to kind of change the culture and remove some of the toxicity that we see right now?
00:02:22.420 Well, I think it starts from the leader to ensure that, number one, that you're fostering an environment of respect within your caucus,
00:02:30.560 and also how you treat people on the other aisle, opposite aisle.
00:02:37.000 That's also very important in how you treat your colleagues, and respect for also your fellow citizens and members.
00:02:43.800 So it's just a matter of how you choose to do politics, and I choose to do it differently in focusing on the issues, focusing on values, and focusing on what's important to Canadians.
00:02:54.700 And they don't want to hear politicians fighting and bickering at each other.
00:02:58.640 They want to see us collaboratively be able to solve some really, really serious issues that we have in this country.
00:03:05.540 So you said you had 109 events. What's the issue that people are bringing up the most in the Q&As, and when they come to see you for a picture?
00:03:15.680 Sovereignty is a very big one.
00:03:17.060 They're concerned about global organizations, such as the WHO and the WEF, and our health care sovereignty, and our ability to exist as a sovereign nation and sovereign citizens of Canada.
00:03:30.000 Right. And you said today that Tamara Leach was a political prisoner and a victim of a weaponized court system. 1.00
00:03:37.260 Could you elaborate on that and why you think she was treated unfairly?
00:03:40.960 Well, two judges, those aren't really my words. The judges have come out and said clearly that the court system is not a system that should be judging people's political views.
00:03:58.100 And in the first case, the judge that detained Tamara was a former Liberal candidate, and many believe that she should have recused herself from that case.
00:04:09.520 And the other situation includes a Crown attorney who, over a long period of time, has given over approximately $17,000 to the Liberal Party.
00:04:22.420 And so there is a presence of bias, and I think that the criminal justice system has to be above reproach.
00:04:29.360 Justice does not only have to be done, it has to be seen to be done.
00:04:33.720 And when a judge has to step in for a second time and say that the court system is not a place to settle political vendettas,
00:04:43.200 then it's obvious that her detention went beyond just mere legal principles.
00:04:50.440 It went into her political beliefs, which the judge clearly said that she was not at a trial.
00:04:58.620 It was a bail hearing.
00:05:00.040 And the facts will come out at a trial.
00:05:03.540 And so the bail hearing wasn't the proper form for that.
00:05:06.640 To see more of our independent coverage of the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race, visit tnc.news and consider supporting us by making a donation.
00:05:19.020 For True North, I'm Elie Camden-Hotel.