Juno News - April 16, 2025


Liberal incumbent candidate's homophobic social media posts resurface

Topics
Ryan Turnbull homophobic comments NDP prospects in BC riding
Hosted by
Noah Jarvis
Mentioned
Aaron Gunn Ryan Turnbull Mark Carney Pierre Poilievre Paul Kangor Tennille Johnson Justin Trudeau Donald Trump Joe Rogan Jagmeet Singh Stephanie Abbott Slater Sharon Parrish Darren Blanton Rachel Blaney Rod Loyola Kearney
Liberals try to CHEAT, Carney FLIP FLOPS on pipelines, they’re FREEZING bank accounts again Mainstreet's latest polls show a possible shift as Conservatives edge ahead for the first time

Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

153.24

Word count

2,892

Sentence count

154


Summary

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

A new report has unearthed homophobic and shocking past comments made by Liberal incumbent candidate Ryan Turnbull. Conservative leader Pierre Poliev made his second podcast appearance during the campaign to discuss his policies, family life, and the future he envisions for Canada. A pro-NDP group bust out activists to stage a protest outside of North Island candidate Aaron Gunn s campaign office.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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 An exclusive report has unearthed homophobic and shocking past comments made by Liberal incumbent candidate Ryan Turnbull.
00:00:13.400 Conservative leader Pierre Polyev made his second podcast appearance during the campaign to discuss his policies, family life and the future he envisions for Canada.
00:00:21.300 A pro-NDP group bust out activists to stage a protest outside of North Island, Powell River, Conservative candidate Aaron Gunn's campaign office.
00:00:31.420 Hello Canada, it's Wednesday, April 16th, and this is the True North Daily Brief. I'm Cosmin Georgia.
00:00:37.740 And I'm Noah Jarvis.
00:00:39.080 We've got you covered with all the news you need to know. Let's discuss the top stories of the day and the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else.
00:00:47.180 A new report by Juneau News unearthed a conversation between Liberal incumbent candidate Ryan Turnbull and his friends in a social media post.
00:00:59.840 The Liberal MP used the F-slur in a bizarre public comment about homosexuality alongside sexually graphic language, including mention of, quote, orifices.
00:01:11.940 Turnbull has not responded to questions from Juneau News, nor has he disputed the authenticity of the thread the story relies on.
00:01:21.740 The post dated June 1st, 2008 shows Turnbull, now a sitting MP and a prominent ally in Mark Carney's push to take over the Liberal Party, posing with another man in front of an Eiffel Tower backdrop.
00:01:34.380 The caption is followed by a thread of comments that mock gay men while blending crude sexual innuendo with verbal abuse targeted at the gay community.
00:01:46.120 Turnbull wrote, quote,
00:01:47.820 The shocking receipts are available exclusively on Juneau News. Whether Turnbull remains a Liberal candidate in the upcoming election now becomes a test of how seriously Mark Carney takes his relationship with the LGBT community.
00:02:06.000 So, Noah, has Carney parted ways with any other candidates this election?
00:02:11.520 Yes, he has. And the candidate selection for the Liberals and the Conservatives to an extent, but for the Liberals, it has definitely been a problem that has led to the Liberal candidate Carney to have to face some serious questions.
00:02:24.340 For example, in Markham Unionville, it was revealed that Paul Chiang, a Liberal candidate and a former police officer, had suggested that his conservative opponent be, I guess, sent back to China and that people collect a bounty that the People's Republic of China had placed on his head,
00:02:46.360 basically because he had been a vocal proponent of freedom and democracy in China for the people of Hong Kong and against the many cruel and authoritarian acts that the People's Republic of China has committed in the past decades that they've been in power.
00:03:06.660 It seems as if it took a while for Mark Carney to come to terms with the fact that he had to drop Paul Chiang.
00:03:14.060 A lot of people were confused as to why it took so long for Carney to drop him, but he did drop him.
00:03:21.340 And the candidate that replaced Paul Chiang also has ties with people who are deeply tied with the People's Republic of China.
00:03:29.720 So they didn't really avoid that problem there, dropping that candidate.
00:03:35.700 But they also had to drop Rod Loyola, a former NDP MLA in Alberta, because of past comments he had made supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.
00:03:48.120 And he had refused to retract those comments, which I think is very worrying and concerning,
00:03:53.660 especially for many Jewish Canadians who see many of the frequent hate marches in Canadian cities as a threat to their safety and security and to the interests that they hold near and dear.
00:04:09.220 This example of Ryan Turnbull, it is an egregious example of just, you know, homophobic remarks.
00:04:15.540 These are remarks that, you know, if you were to make them, you definitely shouldn't make them in public.
00:04:21.260 And Ryan Turnbull, I guess, did not have that sense of mind to keep that such, you know, dirty talk off of the Internet that it could come back and bite him.
00:04:30.540 And I guess it is coming back to bite him, although the Liberals have not dropped him as a candidate yet.
00:04:35.460 And he has served two terms as a Liberal MP.
00:04:39.800 So he hasn't faced any repercussions for this yet.
00:04:43.180 And the Liberal Party has not responded to Juno News' request for comment.
00:04:47.000 So it remains to be seen what the Liberals will do with him.
00:04:50.300 But at the end of the day, this is a blatant contradiction in the values that the Liberal Party claims to champion.
00:04:55.980 The Liberal Party, especially under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has been a champion of the quote-unquote rights of LGBTQ people.
00:05:05.340 And Mark Carney has also tried to take on this mantle.
00:05:08.800 However, I think a lot of Liberal Party supporters might view this example as something that would dissuade them from voting for the Liberals.
00:05:19.220 And it's not as if Conservative leader Pierre Poliev has been actively shooing away homosexual people who might want to vote for the Conservatives.
00:05:29.000 A lot of people who are gay work for the party and vote for the party.
00:05:33.880 And it's no difference with other parties.
00:05:37.400 And I think that many Canadians who view, you know, politicians saying these sorts of comments as a non-starter,
00:05:46.680 they're going to view other parties as a more amenable choice for them in come Election Day.
00:05:53.320 So I think that Ryan Turnbull has to apologize for these comments, especially since he claims to be a champion of the LGBTQ community.
00:06:02.420 And it would really be shocking if Mark Carney also didn't try to distance himself from Ryan Turnbull.
00:06:09.360 But the Liberals have tried to do a lot to, you know, cover the backs of people who have rose up the ranks of the Liberal Party.
00:06:18.080 This can be viewed from the buttons scandal story where Liberal operatives had basically planted fake buttons trying to deny the possible results of the election and some other weird messages at the Canada Stronger Free Network conference.
00:06:35.960 And those people had not been fired.
00:06:37.720 They had only been reassigned to another portion of the campaign.
00:06:40.960 So it remains to be seen whether or not the Liberals will take accountability for this and specifically if Ryan Turnbull will decide to drop out of the race.
00:06:50.840 Conservative leader Pierre Poliev made his second long-form podcast appearance of the election campaign and discussed U.S. relations, the role of the media, and how the Liberals were copying his policies.
00:07:04.820 Poliev appeared on The Knowledge Project, a business-oriented show hosted by Shane Parrish, a former Canadian intelligence agent, entrepreneur, and best-selling author.
00:07:14.600 During the hour-and-a-half interview, which aired on Sunday on X, Poliev spoke about a range of topics.
00:07:20.180 Poliev started the podcast by dismissing comparisons of his style of politics to U.S. President Donald Trump's.
00:07:26.580 He defended his stance that Canada needs to retaliate against U.S. tariffs so the country, quote,
00:07:31.740 knows its producers will pay for the administration's tariffs against Canada.
00:07:36.120 Despite this, he would first attempt to renegotiate a free-trade deal with the U.S. that benefits both countries.
00:07:42.460 Poliev said he would argue to Trump that a free-trade deal between the U.S. and Canada would enable Canada to defend the Arctic,
00:07:49.020 a concern he believes lies at the heart of Trump's tariff threats.
00:07:53.280 To reduce Canada's dependence on the U.S., Poliev emphasized the need to grow the domestic economy,
00:07:58.940 build pipelines for international exports, and make Canada a more attractive place for investment,
00:08:04.320 something the Liberals have signaled they will not do.
00:08:06.840 He argued that while the Liberals have adopted some conservative-sounding policies, the key difference is sincerity.
00:08:12.320 He noted that the Liberals said they axed the carbon tax, but can easily reverse the regulatory change if they're re-elected,
00:08:19.640 as the law is still in place.
00:08:21.440 Poliev also pledged tax cuts for companies that produce goods while lowering emissions.
00:08:26.080 He argued that the Liberal carbon price scheme is counterproductive,
00:08:29.660 making it cheaper to import goods from countries with higher emissions than buying products made in Canada.
00:08:35.380 Poliev made the case that every Canadian citizen would benefit from successful energy projects.
00:08:40.420 Energy is Canada's number one export, and its success will mean the Canadian dollar will have more purchasing power.
00:08:47.500 The taxes paid by the industry will help pay off the debt and for government services,
00:08:51.640 meaning future generations will have less of a bill to pay.
00:08:55.060 Poliev also clarified his opposition to Canadian politicians being members of the World Economic Forum.
00:09:00.220 One of the differences between you and your opponent, Mr. Kearney, is you've said no to the WEF,
00:09:07.820 whereas he's heavily integrated into that.
00:09:11.020 Why do you have such strong feelings on that, and how does that impact everyday Canadians?
00:09:16.380 I just think it's an organization that has a very top-down mentality.
00:09:22.220 I don't believe in top-down.
00:09:25.180 I don't believe that there's this sort of group of globetrotting experts that can tell us how to live our lives,
00:09:32.000 that can, you know, who can tell us which industry should go up and which should go down,
00:09:35.600 what cars we should drive and what words we should speak and how our money should be spent.
00:09:39.840 I really believe in distributed decision-making, personal freedom,
00:09:46.520 letting people live their own lives and chart their own course.
00:09:50.440 He also said regular blue-collar Canadians often have a better understanding of things
00:09:55.180 than globalist elites who occupy the WEF.
00:09:58.080 He called out Kearney for promoting money printing in 2021,
00:10:02.000 claiming it wouldn't drive up inflation, while average Canadians were saying it would.
00:10:06.640 Poliev vowed to repeal liberal censorship laws and media bailouts,
00:10:10.720 saying free speech is the best cure to hold governments accountable.
00:10:14.080 So, Cosmin, Poliev also appeared on another podcast just a few weeks ago.
00:10:19.880 It always seems as if he has been taking a different strategy in trying to articulate his message
00:10:24.880 and in dealing with the media.
00:10:27.800 Will appearing on podcasts like this pay off for Poliev?
00:10:30.820 And is he reaching a new audience by doing these?
00:10:33.580 So, yeah, Noah, you're right.
00:10:34.940 It's definitely a thought-out strategy.
00:10:37.120 We saw it actually play out in the U.S. presidential election,
00:10:41.280 where U.S. President Donald Trump also appeared on major podcasts,
00:10:46.000 including Joe Rogan and others in the United States in the lead-up to that election.
00:10:50.540 I think this is just the reality we live in with digital media now,
00:10:57.380 and politicians are adapting to this,
00:11:00.520 because a lot of people, especially young people,
00:11:03.480 get their information from long-form videos, interviews, podcasts, etc.
00:11:10.380 And especially video podcasting,
00:11:13.280 if you look at the breakdown of statistics,
00:11:15.600 it's usually younger people aged 18 to 34,
00:11:20.280 which Pierre Poliev is actually performing very well with
00:11:24.320 and bucking trends of past conservative candidates.
00:11:29.780 The 18 to 34 age group is generally swinging conservative this time around.
00:11:36.060 And while I don't think he's reaching a new audience,
00:11:40.000 he is reaching that audience directly by doing these podcasts.
00:11:45.380 Unfortunately, Canada doesn't have the same podcasting ecosystem as the United States,
00:11:51.340 and because of the current political climate,
00:11:54.540 it might not be that popular for Poliev to show up on a huge podcast
00:12:00.080 with millions of viewers like Joe Rogan because it is U.S. based.
00:12:04.900 So he has to do these Canadian podcasts,
00:12:08.340 which unfortunately do not have as big of an audience,
00:12:11.720 but they do have a more targeted audience here in Canada.
00:12:15.000 North Island, Powell River, Conservative candidate Aaron Gunn
00:12:21.700 has expressed alarm to learn that a pro-NDP group
00:12:24.900 bussed anti-forestry activists to protest his campaign over the weekend.
00:12:29.780 Gunn took to social media after media reports indicated
00:12:32.920 that protesters were being bussed to the area.
00:12:36.240 Gunn wrote, quote,
00:12:37.280 Very disturbed but not surprised to see reports of my NDP opponent
00:12:42.100 bussing in activists from Victoria to protest outside my office in Campbell River.
00:12:47.920 Even more outrageous, this protest was being advertised and supported by anti-forestry groups,
00:12:53.960 even though forestry is the bedrock of so many North Island communities, including Campbell River.
00:12:59.440 In Gunn's post to X, he shared an article from My Campbell River Now, a local news publication.
00:13:04.640 The publication said that the protest on April 12th was organized by Stop the Vote Split,
00:13:10.800 North Island, Powell River, the North Island Network, and the Cathet Anti-Racist Society.
00:13:16.960 However, the original version of the article claimed the event was organized by NDP candidate
00:13:22.180 Tennille Johnston, who allegedly brought in a busload of supporters from Victoria.
00:13:27.720 One attendee, Stephanie Abbott Slater, said that there was a bus for people,
00:13:32.040 but that it was organized by a grassroots organization, not a political party.
00:13:37.540 The article was hastily edited to remove the claim that Johnston organized a rally.
00:13:42.120 Johnston was in Port Hardy, hosting a meet and greet with her supporters at the time,
00:13:46.840 while Gunn was in Comox Valley for his own rally.
00:13:50.040 The protests included guest speakers such as Darren Blaney,
00:13:53.280 the elected chief of the Homolko First Nations,
00:13:56.440 and husband of outgoing NDP MP Rachel Blaney.
00:13:59.940 So Noah, obviously this group, it's called Stop the Vote Split.
00:14:04.800 They're concerned about vote splitting on the left.
00:14:07.940 And while this is evident in this particular riding,
00:14:12.180 I don't think the NDP is really splitting the vote federally,
00:14:16.900 because when you see the NDP vote, it's completely collapsed.
00:14:21.040 And that's why the Liberals are riding so high.
00:14:24.400 But Noah, what are the NDP's prospects in this riding?
00:14:28.020 And what does the national poll look like as well?
00:14:30.900 Well, the NDP are polling second in this riding,
00:14:33.860 which on the surface might seem like a good thing.
00:14:36.740 But if you dive deeper into the numbers,
00:14:38.620 you would see that the NDP's prospects have gone down significantly in recent months.
00:14:44.880 In 2019 and 2021, the NDP was able to win this riding pretty handedly.
00:14:51.520 They beat the Conservatives by a four-point margin in 2019 and a three-point margin in 2021.
00:14:57.980 The Liberals not really competitive in this riding.
00:15:01.440 However, the NDP has seen a significant drop in their support nationally
00:15:06.920 and in every region of Canada, quite frankly.
00:15:09.680 If you look at the numbers nationally, the NDP, they're polling at about 9%,
00:15:16.320 if you aggregate all the different polls that have been coming out,
00:15:20.540 which is really awful for the NDP.
00:15:22.920 I think that is one of their worst showings since the party was first formed
00:15:28.460 from their old days as a social democratic party or a democratic socialist party.
00:15:34.480 And specifically in BC, their numbers have tanked.
00:15:37.840 The NDP has always found a healthy amount of support in BC.
00:15:42.560 For example, NDP leader Jangmeet Singh is an MP in BC.
00:15:48.280 However, the NDP, while they were polling at around 26% to 28%
00:15:52.860 before Trudeau resigned in British Columbia,
00:15:56.520 they are now polling at roughly 14% to 15%,
00:16:00.000 which is a halving of their support in British Columbia.
00:16:04.680 This would translate to the Conservatives picking up this riding
00:16:08.860 and picking up the riding in strong fashion.
00:16:12.360 I think that Aaron Gunn, his candidacy as the Liberal Conservative candidate there,
00:16:17.600 really helps the Conservatives.
00:16:19.480 He is a star candidate.
00:16:21.140 He helped produce several documentaries that were very popular.
00:16:26.120 Vancouver is broken.
00:16:27.600 Canada is broken.
00:16:28.540 That highlighted many of the issues that his riding, his province, his country has been dealing with.
00:16:35.760 And he has gained quite a bit of popularity and support from that.
00:16:39.260 And while the NDP, they gained 39.5% of the vote in this riding in 2021,
00:16:45.320 they are projected to only get 26% of the vote.
00:16:48.760 The Conservatives projected 46%, according to 338 Canada.
00:16:52.680 And the NDP, they're actually closer to getting third place.
00:16:57.240 As the Liberals are creeping up in support,
00:16:59.660 they're being estimated as being able to capture 21% of the votes in the riding.
00:17:06.360 So the NDP, they're definitely desperate to try and capture and retain as many seats as possible,
00:17:12.960 since nationally, their support has about halved.
00:17:17.480 And this would translate into one of the most significant losses of seats in the NDP's history.
00:17:24.460 The NDP, they're projected to win in the single digits in seats,
00:17:28.780 potentially even a complete wipeout if some of the polls are overestimating their support.
00:17:34.440 And this would also mean that Jagmeet Singh would lose his seat.
00:17:38.760 And, you know, federal leaders losing their seat in the parliamentary system
00:17:43.020 is quite difficult because they often choose safe riding.
00:17:47.160 So the NDP, they're definitely trying to save furniture.
00:17:50.260 They're trying to drum up controversy in Aaron Gunn's riding
00:17:53.300 because he is one of the Conservative Party's star candidates,
00:17:56.860 trying to take him down a peg.
00:17:58.420 But is this strategy going to work?
00:18:00.380 It remains to be seen.
00:18:02.240 Although Aaron Gunn is a strong candidate, he is fighting back against this.
00:18:06.820 And, you know, the fact that the NDP are bussing in supporters to protest him
00:18:13.040 really kind of shows that these protests are a bit artificial.
00:18:17.820 They're artificial and people aren't really going out with their own concerted energy
00:18:23.200 to go out and protest Aaron Gunn.
00:18:25.300 They're actually being directed by the party.
00:18:27.980 And I think a lot of voters might see this story
00:18:31.020 and think it is a bit repulsive and actually turn against the NDP because of it.
00:18:36.340 That's it for today, folks.
00:18:41.040 Thanks for tuning in.
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