Juno News - September 23, 2021


Now that Erin O’Toole has lost, the media suddenly love him


Episode Stats

Length

19 minutes

Words per Minute

188.66122

Word Count

3,686

Sentence Count

246

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The legacy media are coming out in support of Erin O'Toole.
00:00:03.920 That's how we know we have a problem.
00:00:05.320 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:00:12.340 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in.
00:00:14.960 So we just spent a five-week-long election campaign,
00:00:18.920 five weeks where we saw the legacy media in Canada
00:00:22.480 treat the Conservatives unfairly.
00:00:24.580 They always treat Conservatives unfairly,
00:00:26.420 but during the election, this was amplified
00:00:28.440 and they really, really ramped it up.
00:00:30.220 They were writing fake news stories, vilifying Conservatives.
00:00:33.400 They were misrepresenting Erin O'Toole's position at every opportunity.
00:00:37.120 They were repeating and pushing liberal talking points,
00:00:40.200 pushing liberal wedge issues in support of Justin Trudeau.
00:00:43.840 And generally speaking, they were vilifying Conservatives at every opportunity.
00:00:47.840 But now that the election is over,
00:00:50.360 we're starting to see journalists have a different tune.
00:00:53.340 They've basically done a complete 180.
00:00:56.240 So now that Erin O'Toole has lost the election,
00:00:59.300 we are starting to see many journalists in Canada come out in favour of him,
00:01:03.400 giving him words of support and urging Conservatives,
00:01:06.260 urging the Conservative base to leave him on as their leader.
00:01:10.320 Now that Erin O'Toole has no chance of becoming Prime Minister,
00:01:13.080 or at least not anytime soon,
00:01:15.100 the media are more than happy to pretend that they like Conservatives
00:01:18.860 or pretend that they may give Conservatives a shot in the future.
00:01:22.920 So long as these are Conservatives, of course, who act like Liberals,
00:01:26.540 the journalists are more than happy to support them.
00:01:29.300 So yesterday on the show,
00:01:30.680 I discussed the Conservative strategy in the last election.
00:01:34.520 Erin O'Toole, we all know this,
00:01:35.800 he ran as a moderate.
00:01:37.340 He scrapped any Conservative policies,
00:01:39.500 any Conservative ideas,
00:01:40.620 and he instead decided to shift to the centre
00:01:43.800 and more or less present himself to the Canadian public as a Liberal.
00:01:47.500 He more or less ran as a Liberal.
00:01:49.280 His proposition to voters was something like this.
00:01:52.200 I'm just like the Liberals in terms of my woke progressive values.
00:01:55.560 I'm just like the Liberals in terms of my big spending policies.
00:01:58.860 I'm just like the Liberals in terms of my commitment
00:02:01.560 to keeping Conservatives out of the halls of power.
00:02:05.720 But, this is what Erin O'Toole said,
00:02:07.220 but, unlike the Liberals, I'm a little bit more competent,
00:02:11.200 a little bit more trustworthy.
00:02:12.740 I will be a better manager of the government.
00:02:15.480 I'll be a better manager of the big government,
00:02:17.860 big government spending brought in by the Liberals.
00:02:20.480 So, that was the strategy, that was his proposition to voters,
00:02:23.420 and as we saw on Monday night, that strategy failed.
00:02:26.260 Despite Erin O'Toole's best efforts to distance himself from Conservative values
00:02:30.240 and to more or less replicate the Liberal policy platform,
00:02:34.580 Erin O'Toole failed to win over progressive and Liberal voters.
00:02:38.500 He didn't make inroads in the parts of the country where he was aiming to win over.
00:02:42.920 He didn't win more seats in the 905.
00:02:44.740 In fact, he lost seats in the 905.
00:02:46.440 He lost seats in the lower mainland of British Columbia and around Vancouver,
00:02:50.020 and he was basically at a stalemate in Quebec,
00:02:53.220 went in with 10 seats, came out with 10 seats.
00:02:55.080 So, he didn't add anything in Quebec.
00:02:57.320 So, not only did Erin O'Toole fail to win over the progressive Liberal voters,
00:03:02.800 he also insulted long-time Conservative voters and alienated his own base.
00:03:08.180 That's why we have a problem.
00:03:09.520 But, of course, none of this matters to the legacy media.
00:03:12.480 In fact, all of these things make them like Erin O'Toole even more.
00:03:17.300 Just look at the reaction by members of the legacy media
00:03:20.600 to the reckoning that is happening right now among Conservatives.
00:03:24.200 This all started right after we found out that Erin O'Toole had lost the election.
00:03:28.500 Here we have an article, an op-ed in the Globe and Mail written by John Ibbotson.
00:03:32.940 It says,
00:03:33.640 Erin O'Toole tried to refashion the Conservative movement
00:03:36.180 and deserves another chance to lead.
00:03:39.220 So, of course, legacy media journalists who never vote Conservative,
00:03:42.600 never support Conservatives, always vote Liberal,
00:03:45.260 have Liberal values and Liberal ideas,
00:03:47.380 they want Erin O'Toole to stick around
00:03:49.400 because they want a Liberal version of the Conservative Party.
00:03:52.760 So here is what Ibbotson writes.
00:03:54.620 He says,
00:03:55.620 Some would argue the time has come to pivot the Conservative Party back to its roots,
00:03:59.160 to focus on law and order, tax cuts, limited regulation.
00:04:02.160 Some would also argue Mr. O'Toole having gambled and lost should be replaced.
00:04:06.020 Then he goes on to say that would be a mistake.
00:04:08.220 The pandemic has made progressives of all of us.
00:04:11.060 And in any case, a Conservative Party of Stephen Harper
00:04:13.380 is ill-suited to the third decade of the 21st century.
00:04:17.940 Every year there are hundreds of thousands of new immigrants.
00:04:20.400 Every year the suburbs expand.
00:04:22.540 Every year the small towns get smaller and family-owned farms fewer.
00:04:26.640 So the point that he's basically making is that Conservatives are old-fashioned.
00:04:30.600 We don't need them.
00:04:31.300 We don't have a place for them in the country.
00:04:33.100 We're slowly sort of urbanizing the whole country.
00:04:35.680 So who cares about rural values?
00:04:37.340 Who cares about smaller towns?
00:04:39.820 Let's all just jump into this idea that Canada is this left-wing cosmopolitan country.
00:04:45.600 I'm not surprised at all that this is what the Globe and Mail believe.
00:04:48.680 Of course, this is the downtown Toronto perspective of Canada,
00:04:51.720 that we should all just be a lot more like downtown Toronto.
00:04:55.140 If the entire country just reflected downtown Toronto, we would all be better.
00:04:58.660 And it's a little insulting to Conservatives.
00:05:00.200 Even the idea that just because there are hundreds of thousands of new immigrants
00:05:03.560 that come to Canada, what, that the Conservatives can't properly govern in that situation.
00:05:08.060 The reality is a lot of newcomers that come to Canada have traditional Conservative values.
00:05:13.180 They support families, they support small businesses, they want lower taxes, less regulation,
00:05:19.240 they want safe streets and sort of more of a law-and-order attitude.
00:05:22.520 They came to Canada because they like Canada.
00:05:25.000 So the whole left-wing progressive idea that Canada is this horrible racist country
00:05:29.220 doesn't even apply to them.
00:05:30.580 They don't even agree with that.
00:05:31.660 Otherwise, why would they have moved to Canada in the first place?
00:05:33.760 So I totally reject the premise and the underlying idea here that because we have immigrants,
00:05:38.700 we can't have a Conservative government as if those two things don't go hand in hand.
00:05:42.180 But the more broader point that Ibbotson is making is basically just that he likes it
00:05:47.160 when Conservatives act liberal and therefore he wants to keep Aaron O'Toole in power, even
00:05:53.120 though it's probably very unlikely that this person would vote Conservative either way.
00:05:58.140 Next, we have Steve Marr, who is a journalist and he is now the editor over at McLean's.
00:06:04.940 He writes this on Twitter.
00:06:06.320 He says,
00:06:06.820 Well, you know, when it comes to free advice for the Conservatives, you get what you pay for.
00:06:19.400 Steve Marr is a leftist.
00:06:21.460 He's an Ottawa-based journalist.
00:06:23.400 I don't think he has ever voted Conservative in his life.
00:06:25.760 So if Conservatives were smart, they would not listen to left-wing members of the legacy media.
00:06:31.260 They would listen to their own base.
00:06:32.820 But here is another article in McLean's where Marr expanded on the same idea.
00:06:38.100 He writes that Canada has shifted to the left.
00:06:40.260 Elections allow us to get a better read on what the public wants and the results and where the parties move.
00:06:44.740 Point to a clear trend.
00:06:46.600 This piece is just completely wrong.
00:06:48.120 The whole idea that he says is that you can tell that Canada is more left-wing because even the Conservatives were making left-wing positions throughout the campaign.
00:06:56.000 The examples he used of left-wing positions aren't really even true left-wing positions.
00:06:59.920 The idea that everyone agrees that First Nations should have access to clean drinking water, that's not a left-wing idea.
00:07:06.300 That's a universal idea and Conservatives obviously believe in equal treatment and equal opportunity for all Canadians.
00:07:13.180 So it's disingenuous as well.
00:07:16.780 But his point is that because the Conservatives moved to the left, that must mean that the country is more left-wing.
00:07:22.900 But the reality is that the Conservatives moved to the left and it didn't work.
00:07:26.660 They didn't win because it alienated their own base who weren't as excited to go out and vote.
00:07:31.000 And it didn't win over any new voters because why would you vote for a Conservative Party pretending to be Liberals
00:07:36.680 when you can just vote for the real thing, when you can just vote for the real Liberals?
00:07:39.420 So again, a really bad take by McLean's and by Steve Marr, urging Conservatives to remain on the left and to keep being Liberals
00:07:48.280 because, you know, that's who he might vote for.
00:07:51.340 But that doesn't mean that that's actually what the country wants or needs.
00:07:54.500 So another take from McLean's, this one from the Ottawa Bureau Chief Shannon Proudfoot.
00:08:00.020 She similarly writes,
00:08:01.180 Not that anyone asked me, but I don't think the Tories should ditch O'Toole after this.
00:08:05.460 Of course not, because again, the media, the legacy media, they like left-wing politicians.
00:08:10.240 They want more choices of different left-wing politicians.
00:08:12.660 So that is why they would want Aaron O'Toole.
00:08:16.000 And we had a reply from a podcaster here.
00:08:18.860 This guy says,
00:08:19.820 Agreed. Harper grew on people. O'Toole could.
00:08:22.720 Gotta convince cities that the fringe of the party won't shape policies.
00:08:27.000 Do that and he's got a fighting chance.
00:08:28.460 So by fringe of the party, he means the base.
00:08:31.020 He means actual conservatives, people with conservative values who want a conservative party.
00:08:35.860 So this guy is clearly an outsider because he doesn't understand the political culture of the conservative party, of the conservative movement.
00:08:42.380 He says that the fringe of the party shouldn't shape policy.
00:08:45.320 Who exactly is the fringe?
00:08:46.840 Because most conservatives want a conservative party.
00:08:50.260 They want a leader that expresses their values.
00:08:52.900 They want a focus on the fiscal issues.
00:08:55.560 They don't want big government spending programs.
00:08:57.320 They want a government that balances the budget.
00:08:59.500 They want limited government.
00:09:01.240 They want all of these things that weren't evident at all in Aaron O'Toole's platform.
00:09:06.020 So the idea to this guy that it's the fringe that wants something, no, that's not true.
00:09:11.120 It's the base of the party who wants conservatism, which is why when Aaron O'Toole was running as leader of the party, he pretended to be true blue.
00:09:19.020 He presented himself, he misrepresented himself as a real conservative running against a red Tory.
00:09:25.000 And then as soon as he won and the election rolled around, he revealed that he was actually a red Tory as well, which is why so many people are so angry.
00:09:34.760 And it's not just these hot takes on Twitter.
00:09:36.560 There were several articles that were written that similarly make the case for keeping Aaron O'Toole.
00:09:41.440 This one appeared over in Global News.
00:09:43.340 This was up on Election Day.
00:09:44.620 And it says, O'Toole's election gamble, swinging Tories to the center.
00:09:49.560 So this reporter goes out and interviews a couple of red Tories, people who didn't like the conservatives, wouldn't have voted for the conservatives.
00:09:57.180 But just like the media believed, just like Aaron O'Toole's own strategy believed, they were people who identify as red Tories or more centrist, more liberals.
00:10:04.520 And they were won over and decided to go vote for Aaron O'Toole.
00:10:08.940 So we heard from an individual in Nova Scotia that fits that description.
00:10:12.300 And another one in St. Catharines, Ontario, basically saying the same thing.
00:10:15.960 They like the idea of Aaron O'Toole sort of as a moderate, as a left winger, someone with a big government plan.
00:10:22.920 And this is just so unbelievable, so typical of the legacy media.
00:10:26.780 So this is a line in the article.
00:10:29.180 It's not a quote.
00:10:30.020 It's not attributed to anyone.
00:10:31.060 This is just the reporter, who is not an opinion journalist, but a reporter, basically just stating his opinion as fact in the piece.
00:10:38.400 So it says, O'Toole calls himself a true blue conservative.
00:10:42.260 But in his leadership victory speech, he made a direct appeal to indigenous, LGBTQ2, and racialized Canadians to see themselves reflected in his party.
00:10:53.340 So the insinuation here is that if you are a true blue conservative, you can't also want to appeal to indigenous, gay, and racialized, which is just the left-wing buzzword for saying someone who is a minority, someone who is not white.
00:11:09.540 So he says he's a true blue conservative, but then he also made an appeal to indigenous, gay, and minority non-white Canadians.
00:11:17.040 And somehow that's like a contradiction.
00:11:19.020 So the underlying message here that this reporter is sneaking into his piece as a fact is that if you are a true blue conservative, it means that you are racist, homophobic, and hateful.
00:11:31.000 And so Aaron O'Toole is not those things.
00:11:32.900 So he's like kind of what, pointing out a contradiction.
00:11:35.580 It's just so unbelievable the way that legacy media journalists write about conservatives.
00:11:40.620 It's so offensive, so wrong.
00:11:42.240 And next he picks up on this thing that Aaron O'Toole started doing last week of the campaign.
00:11:46.680 He writes, O'Toole has been saying this isn't your grandfather's conservative party while getting endorsement from the grandfather of Canadian conservatism, former progressive conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney.
00:11:58.280 So the reporter loves to just throw that in to try to say like, gotcha, Aaron O'Toole, you're a contradiction here.
00:12:03.900 You're saying this isn't your grandfather's conservative party while getting this endorsement from Brian Mulroney.
00:12:09.200 I'll admit it is kind of silly that Aaron O'Toole was saying this line, this isn't your grandfather's conservative party.
00:12:15.420 We're not your dad's conservative party anymore.
00:12:18.140 It reminds me of Alison Redford, the progressive conservative premier in Alberta, probably the most left wing of all the progressive conservative leaders in Canada.
00:12:28.780 Alison Redford is a leftist.
00:12:29.880 She's straight up leftist.
00:12:30.660 She won the leadership of that party by courting all the teachers unions and pulling the teachers unions from the left, from the NDP, getting them to sign up as progressive conservative members and turning the party into a big left wing party.
00:12:44.600 And she literally ran full page newspaper ads saying this exact line, this isn't your grandfather's conservative party.
00:12:51.320 Back then with Alison Redford in, I think it was 2012, the idea was the conservatives are now a big left wing party.
00:12:58.700 And so I don't know exactly if that's what Aaron O'Toole was going for, but he used Alison Redford's slogan and platform.
00:13:05.540 And yeah, it was obviously a contradiction to get Brian Mulroney out campaigning.
00:13:09.920 And to this reporter, no, Brian Mulroney is not the grandfather of Canadian conservatism.
00:13:14.780 That would be Sir John A. Macdonald, the founder of the country and the first conservative prime minister.
00:13:20.820 So silly fact there.
00:13:22.340 But anyway, this piece kind of goes on to quote at length a conservative lobbyist from downtown Toronto that basically just says the same thing, that the conservatives need to continue on this leftward path, that we need to keep Aaron O'Toole, and that the party should remain a big government left wing party.
00:13:38.320 No surprise there.
00:13:39.680 A final story that I want to point your attention to, and this one was getting a lot of attention on social media the day of the election.
00:13:46.160 So I'm going to go through it in a bit of detail.
00:13:48.460 This was in the Toronto Star.
00:13:50.940 And so the headline here says, O'Toole's campaign chair says holding Trudeau to a minority would be a win for the conservatives.
00:13:58.820 So here we have it, right?
00:14:00.680 We're in the final hours of Canada's 44th election.
00:14:04.000 This is Monday afternoon.
00:14:05.080 The story goes online.
00:14:06.100 Everyone's online.
00:14:06.900 Everyone's kind of like waiting to see when the results are going in, seeing if there's any big news in the final hours before the polls close.
00:14:13.700 And this story all of a sudden makes a huge splash all over social media.
00:14:17.320 And this idea that Aaron O'Toole's campaign chairman, an individual named Waleed Solomon, is telling the Toronto Star that even if the conservatives lose, they'll consider it a win.
00:14:28.380 This was just so embarrassing for the conservatives, such a bad strategy, so disheartening.
00:14:33.520 You know, the idea that in the final hours you should be trying to drum up your base, trying to get everyone excited, trying to push conservative enthusiasm, trying to remind conservative voters to go to the polls, give it everything you have, throw everything out to try to win this election.
00:14:48.580 And here you have the guy who's running the campaign saying, yeah, we're probably going to lose, but it's okay because we'll see that as a win.
00:14:56.020 So they're obviously pre-positioning and trying to set the stage that Aaron O'Toole actually won this election and that we should keep him on as leader because, again, we're heading in this left-wing direction as a party.
00:15:06.300 The media likes it.
00:15:07.380 Let's just keep going.
00:15:08.280 That's basically what this story says.
00:15:10.200 It was so bad, so embarrassing for the conservatives that the individual in question, Waleed Solomon, had to actually walk it back.
00:15:17.920 So he jumps on Twitter to do damage control.
00:15:20.380 He writes, my comments in the star are being misrepresented, unfortunately.
00:15:24.760 Let me be clear.
00:15:25.780 This election is too close to call.
00:15:27.760 We may not know the results for days.
00:15:30.220 Every vote will count.
00:15:31.560 And this tweet has since been deleted.
00:15:33.380 I'm not exactly sure why he deleted it, but the whole idea that he was doing damage control about his own tweet.
00:15:38.840 Look, here is some advice to conservatives.
00:15:41.680 The Toronto Star is not your friend.
00:15:43.700 The Toronto Star is not the newspaper that conservatives read.
00:15:46.800 It is the most left-wing newspaper in the country.
00:15:50.140 Conservatives don't like the Toronto Star.
00:15:51.740 The Toronto Star is never fair to conservatives.
00:15:54.160 It is a far-left paper, so much so that it is written into their editorial position.
00:15:58.920 Everything that is written in the Toronto Star is done with an eye on social justice and pushing the country further to the left.
00:16:06.280 They openly state this.
00:16:08.140 It's called the Atkinson's principle, and it is the guiding principle of that newspaper.
00:16:12.040 So perhaps maybe conservative strategists, conservative insiders, people running the campaign, running the war room,
00:16:19.380 shouldn't be running to the Toronto Star with their leaks.
00:16:22.920 Why not go to a newspaper where conservatives actually get their news?
00:16:26.220 Why not go to a journalist that's actually friendly to conservatives that might actually vote conservative that likes conservatives?
00:16:31.680 Instead, they went to the Toronto Star.
00:16:33.500 Perhaps it seems like they say that they got burnt a little bit, that the story was taken out of context,
00:16:37.660 but just the very idea that they were going to the Star with this information on election day.
00:16:42.020 Don't talk to the Toronto Star, especially not on election day.
00:16:44.580 Focus on getting out the votes.
00:16:46.580 So that was a huge mistake.
00:16:47.700 And if you look at the piece itself, I'll give you some quotes.
00:16:50.220 It's just so cringeworthy.
00:16:51.420 He says the victory comes in advancing the dialogue with Canadians.
00:16:56.540 At the start of this race, nobody would have expected that we'd be in a knife fight in strongly held liberal ridings.
00:17:03.740 And today we are.
00:17:04.840 And we are very proud of Erin O'Toole and the incredible campaign that has been run.
00:17:09.260 As far as we're concerned, we've won by simply advancing the dialogue.
00:17:14.060 And I think caucus members and candidates recognize that.
00:17:17.440 Such a bad take.
00:17:19.300 No, no, it's not a victory to advance a dialogue with Canadians.
00:17:22.780 You're pushing, the dialogue that you're having with Canadians is pushing the Conservative Party further left,
00:17:27.000 apologizing for Conservatives, distancing yourself from Conservatives,
00:17:30.340 and pledging to voters that you will not be Conservative.
00:17:33.140 So that is not a productive dialogue in and of itself.
00:17:36.360 And this whole idea that they were in a knife fight and strongly held liberal ridings,
00:17:40.400 I don't think so.
00:17:41.780 You lost all of the 905.
00:17:43.420 You lost all of the lower mainland.
00:17:45.320 You lost all of Quebec.
00:17:46.320 He didn't come close, so you don't get to come out and say all this.
00:17:50.440 So much so, the Conservatives weren't in damage control,
00:17:52.680 so this was sent out by someone from the Conservative War Room,
00:17:55.720 sent out to people that sometimes speak to the media on behalf of Conservatives.
00:17:59.240 It says,
00:17:59.640 Good afternoon.
00:18:00.360 Please be advised.
00:18:01.180 You may be asked to comment on a story by Alex Boudelier in the Toronto Star.
00:18:05.560 Please refer to the following key messages.
00:18:07.780 After an incredible campaign from Erin O'Toole,
00:18:10.540 we're in an election too close to call.
00:18:12.680 Every vote matters today.
00:18:13.860 Whatever the outcome tonight, Canadians are clearly saying no to Trudeau's power grab
00:18:17.940 and yes to change.
00:18:20.080 So just the mere fact that they're out doing damage control rather than focusing on winning
00:18:24.800 the election just shows you what a total mess it was over at Conservative HQ.
00:18:29.900 So this whole exchange in the final hours of the campaign was a microcosm of the entire
00:18:35.240 Conservative campaign, the entire strategy that went so wrong.
00:18:39.220 Instead of trying to fire up the base, instead of trying to get Conservatives excited,
00:18:44.000 instead of trying to win over Canadians, the Conservative campaign and Erin O'Toole's campaign
00:18:48.700 was instead focused on trying to win over the legacy media.
00:18:53.340 And now that the legacy media can safely say that Erin O'Toole has lost the election,
00:18:57.220 they can pretend that they like him too.
00:18:59.840 After all, to the legacy media, Erin O'Toole is the perfect Conservative leader.
00:19:04.800 He's non-threatening.
00:19:06.040 He's proven that he cannot beat Justin Trudeau.
00:19:08.940 And when it comes to his values, when it comes to his policy, he is a progressive.
00:19:14.240 He says to himself, he's a liberal.
00:19:15.820 He is on the left.
00:19:17.460 That's exactly what the legacy media look for in a Conservative leader.
00:19:21.500 But if you're like me, and you want a Conservative leader who unapologetically champions Conservative
00:19:27.180 ideas, then don't listen to the legacy media.
00:19:30.500 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.