Juno News - O'Toole has uphill battle regaining trust of social conservatives

00:00:00.000 I want to bring into this discussion Jonathan Van Maren, who is the Communications Director

00:00:11.700 for the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, which is a very active and dedicated pro-life

00:00:17.740 group.

00:00:18.080 Jonathan, it's good to talk to you.

00:00:19.280 Thanks for coming on today.

00:00:20.920 Yeah, thanks for having me on, Andrew.

00:00:22.500 We spoke at length about this on the show a couple of months ago in a panel with you

00:00:26.760 and our colleagues Alyssa and Scott from Right Now about the state of the Conservative movement,

00:00:32.300 specifically as it pertains to social conservatism and a lot of the issues that come along with

00:00:37.720 that.

00:00:38.280 But let's start with a general question here.

00:00:40.780 Were you surprised by what happened on Monday?

00:00:43.340 No, actually, it's pretty much exactly the outcome that I predicted, although I will

00:00:48.280 say I thought the People's Party of Canada would do slightly better than it did based

00:00:52.300 on what people were saying door to door.

00:00:54.760 They did really well, Haldeman Norfolk is the riding just across the street here, and

00:01:00.460 they got 11% there, which is pretty high, especially because there's been vote splitting and ridings

00:01:06.100 like that before.

00:01:07.180 But Justin Trudeau getting more or less his minority back was kind of what I thought was

00:01:11.880 going to happen.

00:01:12.420 So now we've seen, I mean, the votes aren't even counted fully, and we've already seen

00:01:18.060 a lot of people come out and call for Aaron O'Toole's head on a platter.

00:01:22.340 This is, I think, a standard fare in Conservative politics in general.

00:01:25.980 A lot of people tend to adopt that one-and-done mentality.

00:01:29.040 But I do think it's a little bit different now, and I'm curious about your thoughts on

00:01:32.880 this, because to some extent I'm seeing from some of the more blue Tories a bit of payback.

00:01:38.040 Okay, well, you made Andrew Scheer eat his loss in 2019, so we're going to do the same

00:01:42.500 for your guy, Aaron O'Toole.

00:01:44.140 But I also think that people had such high expectations for him going into this election

00:01:48.540 that now that it has been lost, I think a lot of people are saying, okay, well, that

00:01:53.020 didn't work.

00:01:54.180 Well, there's a couple of things going on here.

00:01:55.960 The first thing is that everybody knew he was running to the left of his base, but what

00:02:00.780 most people didn't point out was that he was actually running against his base.

00:02:04.340 So, for example, three days before the vote, you have him coming out and saying, we are

00:02:08.180 a socially progressive party, you know, running down a long list of things that the Conservative

00:02:12.380 Party apparently is only if you ignore all of its members of Parliament, right?

00:02:17.060 80% of caucus had voted for a ban on gender selection abortion, as one example, a policy

00:02:22.960 that 84% of Canadians support and 93% of Canadians are in support of.

00:02:27.760 And so when he says things like that, he was basically saying to his MPs, you know, sit

00:02:31.580 down, shut up, I am the party now, and I'm going to tell the Canadians what we represent,

00:02:36.220 regardless of what your views are, what your voting record is, why you entered politics,

00:02:41.080 what your constituents want.

00:02:42.900 And the reason there's a lot of schadenfreude about the Scheer result versus him, because

00:02:46.960 Scheer reduced Trudeau to a minority, beat him in the popular vote.

00:02:50.460 Aaron O'Toole has less seats, less of a vote.

00:02:53.440 This is, of course, pending all the mail-in ballots getting counted, is that Andrew Scheer

00:02:58.620 was somebody who was socially conservative but didn't articulate it very well.

00:03:03.400 He had some terrible staffers.

00:03:04.620 He ran from the issues more than he articulated them.

00:03:08.040 But social conservatives still understood he was an actually conservative person.

00:03:11.960 And so even though there was plenty of us who were pretty irritated with him, we all

00:03:15.660 did vote for him at the end of the day.

00:03:17.480 Whereas O'Toole McKay, that wing of the party, said, look, all we need to do is run to the

00:03:22.480 center.

00:03:22.860 We need to dump the SOCONs. 1.00

00:03:24.200 We need to onboard more centrists, and then we're going to win. 0.58

00:03:26.740 And this has been sort of, the media has said this, the red Tories have said this, even

00:03:31.400 the liberals have said this, right?

00:03:33.660 And this is the first time we've actually seen a conservative leader put that into play

00:03:37.200 on the ground and then get completely blown away when you have an incredibly crippled prime 0.98

00:03:42.680 minister during an election that nobody wanted, and he can't even outperform the guy who couldn't

00:03:48.980 articulate SOCON values well.

00:03:51.560 So for me, the gratifying part of the coverage, even on the CBC the morning after, was like,

00:03:57.480 oh, Aaron O'Toole ran to the center and it didn't work.

00:04:00.040 And that's a much different tune than the media usually sings on election post-op, as

00:04:05.900 you know.

00:04:06.980 Yeah, and there's a lot to unpack there.

00:04:09.360 I would say, looking back to 2019, there was nothing I found particularly objectionable

00:04:14.040 in the platform that Andrew Scheer put in.

00:04:16.480 Of course, I was looking and saying, yeah, it would have been great if there was a bit

00:04:19.260 more red meat.

00:04:20.240 But you had communications nightmare after communications nightmare.

00:04:24.740 You had bad messaging and then a couple of mini scandals that popped up that weren't

00:04:28.640 handled particularly well, like, you know, dual citizenship and stuff like that.

00:04:32.840 Yeah, dumb stuff.

00:04:33.420 But the thing with Aaron O'Toole is that he reversed his platform.

00:04:37.280 The platform that the party printed and distributed that he had announced on several occasions.

00:04:42.940 The first one was conscience rights for health care practitioners, which was a pretty big

00:04:48.100 thing for social conservatives because that was one of the two things that he gave them.

00:04:52.580 He was very transparent in the leadership.

00:04:54.520 He said, I'm not one of you, but I'll give you free votes and I'll give you conscience

00:04:58.380 rights for health care practitioners.

00:04:59.960 And he held the line on that for a couple of days and then eventually flipped and said,

00:05:03.880 okay, there's a duty to refer.

00:05:06.140 And then there were firearms and then other flip flops as well along the way.

00:05:10.700 And when you only give social conservatives two things, it's pretty significant when you

00:05:16.960 abandon both of those things in the course of 36 days.

00:05:20.040 Well, that's exactly it.

00:05:21.520 I said on our live stream on election night, by the time election day rolled around, it

00:05:26.160 was hard to figure out which faction of the conservative base he hadn't stabbed in the

00:05:30.460 back because the thing about when you pivot to the center or when you go after new constituencies

00:05:35.420 to expand your votes and get elected, which obviously is his job, you actually have to

00:05:39.560 ensure you hang on to the voters that you do have, especially when you have a challenge

00:05:42.900 from the right.

00:05:43.720 And he completely ignored the BBC until the final days.

00:05:47.060 But if you look at it, right, you mentioned firearms.

00:05:49.120 There was conscience rights.

00:05:50.060 The SOCONs couldn't stand him.

00:05:51.640 Then you had the carbon tax thing.

00:05:53.460 I put it to the listeners and the viewers.

00:05:56.380 What does he do that's conservative?

00:05:57.880 He gave a speech on election night, which was this sort of barn burning victory speech

00:06:04.080 about this is a conservatism that does X, Y, Z.

00:06:06.740 By the time he was done, I'm like, that does not resemble any version of conservatism that

00:06:10.740 I'm aware of.

00:06:11.900 And I work with a lot of European pro-life groups.

00:06:14.380 And so there are different kinds of conservatism, right?

00:06:16.800 There's especially a difference between a Canadian conservatism, a European conservatism, and

00:06:21.320 an American conservatism.

00:06:22.720 And then there's the O'Toole conservatism, which apparently involves screwing over all

00:06:27.720 the conservatives in his own base, promising the left that he's just like them, and then

00:06:33.320 realizing that why would they vote for him if he's just like them, but we'll give them

00:06:37.040 less stuff than the other guy?

00:06:38.800 There isn't really a compelling reason to vote for, you know, a less attractive version

00:06:42.580 of Justin Trudeau.

00:06:43.440 When we had the 2020 leadership race, I guess it was, it was very much Peter McKay versus

00:06:50.660 everyone.

00:06:51.320 You had at the time Derek Sloan appealing to social conservatives, Lesley Lewis appealing

00:06:55.640 to social conservatives, and Aaron O'Toole, who was, I think, the third choice for a lot

00:06:59.800 of social conservatives, but very much was the I'm not Peter McKay candidate to people

00:07:04.900 on the right flank of the party, despite the true blue messaging.

00:07:08.580 I don't think he was misrepresenting.

00:07:10.320 I think everyone knew where he was, but do you think the result of this now is going to

00:07:16.280 be a correction back to a Lesley Lewis type candidate, to a Pierre Polyev type candidate?

00:07:21.820 Do you think that people will look at this and say, okay, we tried playing by the rules

00:07:25.880 of what all those conservative consultants tell us to do, which is forget about the base

00:07:29.600 and go after the center.

00:07:30.560 It didn't work.

00:07:31.240 Or do you think that it's a double down moment for those people?

00:07:34.460 Well, so the red Tories are going to double down because they have to, right?

00:07:37.500 I think Aaron O'Toole realizes that even if he gets a second crack at leadership, he's

00:07:41.380 not going to get a second crack at getting most of that base back, because he realized

00:07:45.280 during this election he couldn't just rely on their loathing of Trudeau, which is what

00:07:49.760 he was counting on.

00:07:50.580 And that was a fair bet, that people hated Trudeau so much they were going to hold their

00:07:54.300 nose and vote for him anyways. 1.00

00:07:55.660 Well, that bet failed when people had the chance to get rid of Trudeau.

00:07:59.240 I have a very specific view on what we should do moving forward.

00:08:02.880 And we discussed this at length previously on one of your shows with some other guests

00:08:06.840 about what is social conservatism in Canada.

00:08:09.260 And I really believe there's an enormous opportunity for social conservatives to change

00:08:13.760 the way we talk about these things and to take the issue of choice off the table.

00:08:17.280 So I wrote a piece in Convivium in the early days of the election, noting that Justin Trudeau

00:08:22.640 promised over 300 grand to the University of New Brunswick to research where abortion access

00:08:29.620 could be improved, right?

00:08:30.520 How can we get more women, more abortions, basically? 1.00

00:08:33.040 And I said, look, the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, which is the most radical pro-abortion

00:08:36.680 group in the country, said in 2018 that a slim majority of women actually don't want abortions.

00:08:41.900 Like they're getting abortions because they, quote, feel like they have no other choice.

00:08:45.340 You know, a conservative candidate who understood that you could be socially conservative without

00:08:50.000 picking legislation that is going to kill you in the court of public opinion would say,

00:08:53.980 actually, we're going to be giving $400,000 to commission a study into why these women are 1.00

00:08:58.340 having abortions they don't want and how to figure out how to get the support that they

00:09:02.420 actually want.

00:09:03.360 And then start talking about unwanted abortions instead of unwanted babies, right? 0.92

00:09:07.000 Trudeau assumes that there's a lot of unwanted babies and no unwanted abortions. 0.75

00:09:10.380 What if we just came from a different assumption, took the issue of choice off the table and started

00:09:14.280 working towards policies that looked like that?

00:09:16.380 So I think O'Toole has to go and that won't surprise you.

00:09:20.160 There's lots of phone calls flurrying around at the moment.

00:09:22.620 There's plenty of MPs who feel the same way, especially MPs who feel like, you know, victory

00:09:27.500 solves a lot of stuff.

00:09:28.980 So if he had insulted them, screwed them over, treated them with contempt and then won, you

00:09:33.140 know, all would probably be forgiven today, albeit begrudgingly.

00:09:36.860 But because he did all that and lost, there's a lot of people who want his head on a platter,

00:09:41.860 right?

00:09:42.100 Burt Chen has already got a petition out for his removal.

00:09:45.700 So I think I want Leslie Lewis for later, which I've been saying for a couple of years,

00:09:50.720 because I think that for social conservatives, we need a paradigm shift politically.

00:09:54.900 We need to move away from trying the same pieces of legislation we've been putting forward

00:09:58.600 for 25 years.

00:10:00.080 And I want a female candidate to talk about the abortion issue for a change. 1.00

00:10:03.500 Somebody that just eliminates the primary thing we always end up debating and gets into

00:10:07.760 the nitty gritty of Canada has 100,000 abortions a year. 0.85

00:10:11.140 That's the same number of people, abortions as they have in Germany. 0.59

00:10:14.420 And they've got, you know, 50 million more people.

00:10:16.880 So what can we do to change the status quo?

00:10:18.800 Seriously speaking, how do we cut that in half?

00:10:22.380 Yeah, you are right about this.

00:10:23.700 And I know that conservatives are naturally resistant to the idea of identity politics,

00:10:27.840 but you have to play the rules of the game as they are.

00:10:30.620 You don't get to write new rules.

00:10:31.840 This is how the media is.

00:10:33.060 This is how the liberals are.

00:10:34.460 And it would be fascinating to see Justin Trudeau try to out-feminist Leslie Lewis,

00:10:39.120 which would be his instinct.

00:10:40.580 He would try to say, no, no, no, I speak for women more than this female candidate. 0.52

00:10:44.420 And it doesn't have to be Leslie Lewis.

00:10:45.980 It could be anyone.

00:10:46.480 This thing just mixes it up too, right?

00:10:48.220 Like that's the thing is, you know, Canada is a very diverse country.

00:10:51.700 I do think there's something to be said that a lot of immigrant communities would want to vote for somebody who looked like them,

00:10:56.480 or at least see somebody sore to the top.

00:10:58.700 Leslie Lewis was the come from behind candidate in the last leadership race.

00:11:01.700 But I would pay a lot of money to watch.

00:11:04.000 I don't think he'd debate her.

00:11:05.740 I think if there was a leadership race and she did become leader, which is a whole lot of ifs,

00:11:10.200 I think he'd take his walk in the snow at that point because I don't think he wants to go up against the black female candidate on any of those issues. 0.97

00:11:20.180 But like Leslie Lewis also has a very powerful story, right?

00:11:22.300 When I interviewed her about abortion and just asked her where her convictions came from,

00:11:26.640 they said they tried to push her into having an abortion when she was young. 0.75

00:11:29.840 So she's experienced that as a woman from the other side of things.

00:11:32.780 Trudeau was like, more abortions for everyone, right?

00:11:35.280 And I'm going to defund crisis pregnancy centers just in case they help you out with an abortion that you don't want, right? 1.00

00:11:40.960 Abortion is an objective good for him. 0.99

00:11:42.980 And that's because, you know, his mom had one.

00:11:44.620 She's talked about that publicly.

00:11:46.000 His dad brought abortion to Canada.

00:11:47.840 Abortion is fundamentally part of the Trudeau family legacy.

00:11:50.660 But to see a female candidate who has a very different experience of this, 0.93

00:11:54.340 put it forward in a way that could clear the decks for a reasonable discussion.

00:11:58.560 And by a reasonable discussion, I mean, no, we're not going to ban abortion.

00:12:01.460 Canadians aren't going to be able to, like, they're not going to take that anytime soon.

00:12:04.920 But we can move the Overton window by talking about abortion as a tragedy that is frequently,

00:12:09.840 if not more than half of the time, unwanted by the person procuring the abortion.

00:12:14.040 And we as a society could do a lot about that.

00:12:16.000 And as a pro-life activist, you know, if we put in place policies that mean 20,000 less abortions every year,

00:12:21.400 like, man, I'll sleep well at night.

00:12:22.740 Yeah, and I want to bring it back to the O'Toole problem here,

00:12:26.000 because you touched on something very important there, which is the need to change the discussion.

00:12:30.340 And I was talking about this earlier in the show, not in the context of abortion,

00:12:33.640 but in general, the conservative default to taking a defensive position

00:12:37.880 instead of an offensive position on every issue.

00:12:40.720 And part of this is because, and I know this from covering the conservative campaign,

00:12:45.080 most of the questions that the media will ask him are from a liberal premise.

00:12:49.120 And that's just the reality of media.

00:12:51.480 What is government going to do about X?

00:12:53.100 What are you going to do about this?

00:12:54.580 What are you going to do about this issue, that issue?

00:12:56.920 It's always coming from a left-wing premise.

00:12:59.660 However, when the response, the talking points tend to endorse that premise,

00:13:06.380 it doesn't advance the ground anymore.

00:13:08.500 So this is why you had in 2019, Andrew Scheer basically like apologizing for being pro-life

00:13:13.620 with Aaron O'Toole.

00:13:14.940 Again, you don't have any pushing back.

00:13:16.400 I would say, well, hang on.

00:13:17.260 Yeah, why was Justin Trudeau not against gender-based abortion?

00:13:22.700 Why is Justin Trudeau not letting women make this choice?

00:13:25.360 He says it's their choice.

00:13:26.460 Why does that not include the right to go to a crisis pregnancy center?

00:13:29.460 And when conservatives come across as not particularly well-heeled in their convictions,

00:13:37.320 it only moves us backwards.

00:13:39.780 Yeah, so there's a few things to unpack there.

00:13:41.720 In the instance of Andrew Scheer, of course, he just didn't take the help that was offered,

00:13:47.240 I think, too.

00:13:47.800 He could have re-articulated the abortion discussion.

00:13:51.720 He didn't have to play defense on that issue.

00:13:53.940 And this is the thing that's driven me the craziest over the last five to six years,

00:13:56.740 is there's a lot of people playing defense on issues they don't need to play defense on.

00:14:00.400 In terms of the way the discussion is locked in, I interviewed Jonathan Kaye on our election night

00:14:06.080 live stream because I wanted to talk to a reasonable social liberal and say,

00:14:10.640 why do you think the discussion is the way it is?

00:14:12.520 Why are we the only Western nation with no abortion law and the only Western nation that

00:14:16.540 can't actually discuss this issue?

00:14:17.800 That's another point conservative politicians could bring up. 0.89

00:14:20.280 And they never bring up, but they're like, oh, look, they want to drag us back to The Handmaid's

00:14:23.560 Tale.

00:14:23.800 I'm like, no, no, no.

00:14:24.340 I'm just talking about Sweden or Germany.

00:14:26.020 You know, like it's like, yeah, those Handmaid's Tale dystopias of Sweden.

00:14:30.720 Yeah, exactly.

00:14:31.160 The Scandinavian socialist countries was my point of reference there, actually, not Gilead.

00:14:35.700 But the thing is, is that I think this discussion benefits three groups of people.

00:14:40.400 It's the CBC that loves to talk about abortion, but also loves to insinuate that Canada is a

00:14:44.580 more progressive country than all other countries, especially and including the United States.

00:14:49.760 Then there's the red Tories who, and you know this as well as I do, there are some red Tories

00:14:54.660 who are just, you know, politicos who want to get elected.

00:14:56.860 There are plenty of red Tories that actually hold social conservatives in contempt, is they

00:15:00.840 actually don't like us.

00:15:02.640 They think it's embarrassing that we're in the same party as them.

00:15:05.240 And they were praying desperately to whatever God they pray to, that Erwin O'Toole was going

00:15:09.660 to eke out a win so that they could have proof of concept that if we offload the crazies,

00:15:13.740 you know, we can onboard the reasonable people and we can go to all the cool cocktail parties.

00:15:17.560 And then there's the liberals who only drag out abortion around election time.

00:15:21.180 And so the whole idea that the conservatives are scary and aren't going to ban abortion

00:15:25.160 benefits the red Tories because they can say, look, we need to get rid of all these social

00:15:28.840 conservatives because these attacks are killing us.

00:15:31.800 And the liberals can drag it out every time and insist that the conservatives are going

00:15:36.440 to do something that Harper showed no interest in doing over 10 years.

00:15:39.920 And then the pro-life groups aren't pitching if you look at what we're actually asking for.

00:15:44.100 And so then we get stuck.

00:15:45.660 And when I come forward and others have come forward and we're looking like, look, there are

00:15:49.380 so many things that we can accomplish that allow us to have a debate completely outside

00:15:54.100 the issue of legality.

00:15:56.400 And nobody's interested because it's serving a whole bunch of people so well.

00:15:59.740 Right.

00:16:00.200 Andrew Scheer could have run with this.

00:16:01.740 I do think the next if there is a leadership race, I think the next conservative leader

00:16:06.880 is going to be much more open to how do I get social conservatives on board without getting 0.83

00:16:11.780 murdered in the press.

00:16:13.220 And we saw Pierre Lemieux do it with his social conservative values or Canadian values speeches

00:16:17.560 during the leadership race.

00:16:18.800 We saw Leslyn Lewis do it. 0.95

00:16:20.500 She went on CTV and Global, debated her no hidden agenda platform.

00:16:24.200 And they just didn't know what to do with her because they're like, oh, yeah, no, most

00:16:27.020 Canadians support that.

00:16:28.000 That's super reasonable.

00:16:28.800 And you're a woman.

00:16:29.600 So I can't.

00:16:30.140 And because to go back to the previous point, they're used to conservatives apologizing for

00:16:34.140 their views.

00:16:34.480 Yeah.

00:16:35.180 Yeah.

00:16:35.420 They're not used to them defending it.

00:16:36.840 Right.

00:16:36.980 Like it's it's the same thing with making it like a key plank of your platform, too.

00:16:41.880 Yeah.

00:16:42.280 Yeah.

00:16:42.520 It's the same thing with Pudemy blockers for kids.

00:16:44.280 It's like there's a long list of issues where a plurality of Canadians is solidly in the

00:16:48.120 social conservative cap.

00:16:49.380 And most of those issues, especially the more recent issues in the last five, six years,

00:16:53.760 the Conservative Party has literally given up without a fight like never like, oh, that

00:16:58.340 seems like an issue that the liberals are going to say mean things about us for.

00:17:01.800 So we're not even going to talk about it like the discourse in this country on anything

00:17:06.540 cultural is so incredibly impoverished.

00:17:09.220 Look, I know, like, for example, firearms is an issue near and dear to your heart.

00:17:12.640 It's going to drive you nuts to watch the way the discussion unfolds.

00:17:16.720 And it's just a stack of garbage premises.

00:17:19.020 And that's the whole discussion.

00:17:20.500 And you're sitting there on the sidelines like none of that stuff is true.

00:17:23.520 And even the stuff that is true is presented in such a way that it isn't true anymore.

00:17:27.580 And we don't have to just sit there and watch that debate take place.

00:17:30.660 And there's no leader who can speak articulately to any of our issues.

00:17:33.980 Yeah.

00:17:34.280 Welcome to my world.

00:17:35.160 Week three of the campaign.

00:17:36.780 Jonathan Van Maron, Communications Director for the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform.

00:17:41.260 Always a pleasure, Jonathan.

00:17:42.700 Thanks for coming on.

00:17:43.720 You bet.

00:17:44.060 Thanks a million, Andrew.

00:17:45.360 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:17:47.740 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:17:52.260 Noonies.

00:17:52.820 Take care.

00:17:53.440 Bye-bye.

00:17:54.300 Bye-bye.

00:17:54.660 Bye-bye.

00:17:55.160 Bye-bye.

00:17:55.300 Bye-bye.

00:17:55.600 Bye-bye.

00:17:56.140 Bye-bye.

00:17:56.340 Bye-bye.

00:17:57.020 Bye-bye.

00:17:57.520 Bye-bye.

00:17:58.820 Bye-bye.

00:17:58.980 Bye-bye.

00:17:59.520 Bye.

00:18:00.140 Bye-bye.

00:18:00.480 Bye-bye.

00:18:00.700 Bye-bye.

00:18:01.080 Bye-bye.

00:18:01.380 Bye-bye.

00:18:02.060 Bye-bye.

00:18:02.160 Bye-bye.

00:18:02.640 Bye-bye.

00:18:03.120 Bye-bye.

00:18:03.800 Bye-bye.

00:18:04.360 .

00:18:04.580 Bye-bye.

00:18:05.120 Bye-bye.

00:18:06.120 Bye-bye.

00:18:06.180 Bye-bye.

00:18:08.120 Bye-bye.

00:18:08.260 Bye-bye.

00:18:10.000 Bye-bye.

Juno News - September 25, 2021

O'Toole has uphill battle regaining trust of social conservatives

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