Juno News - O’Toole’s Bait and Switch

00:00:00.160 Conservative party members got duped by a bait-and-switch conservative.

00:00:03.120 It's happened before, but it should never happen again.

00:00:05.360 I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:12.560 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope you're enjoying our daily

00:00:16.240 installation of The Candace Malcolm Show. We started to do it every day during the campaign

00:00:19.840 and we're continuing to go on that momentum, putting out a new show every single day.

00:00:23.760 So don't forget to like this page, like this episode, subscribe to this channel,

00:00:27.680 and if you're watching on YouTube, hit the little notification bell so that you never

00:00:31.280 miss an episode. Now, today I want to do a little bit of a deep dive into what happened in the

00:00:37.360 election, what went wrong, and how there were red flags along the way when it came to leader

00:00:42.560 Aaron O'Toole. Now, if you've been watching the show, you know that I am no fan of Aaron O'Toole.

00:00:47.440 I believe that he misrepresented who he was in the conservative leadership race. Remember,

00:00:52.320 he told us that he was a true blue conservative. He assured us that he would scrap the carbon tax.

00:00:57.280 He told us that he would end Trudeau's arbitrary gun ban. And he assured us that he would respect

00:01:02.400 moral conservatives and allow for free votes in the House of Commons. Presumably that would include

00:01:07.680 free votes on social and moral issues like abortion. Now, of course, we now know that none

00:01:13.200 of that was true. When the general election came around, Aaron O'Toole took the exact opposite position

00:01:19.680 on each of these issues when he was running against Justin Trudeau. He flip-flopped, he showed weakness,

00:01:25.600 and perhaps most damning of all, he was dishonest about who he was, what he believed in, and what

00:01:31.040 he wanted to do with the party. Now, this comes down to an issue of authenticity. We don't really

00:01:36.720 know who the real Aaron O'Toole is. Is he the man with the conservative vision who wanted to stand

00:01:42.160 up to the radical left, stand up to woke cancel culture like he told us he was in the leadership

00:01:46.640 race? Or is he the guy who embraced woke left wing culture on the campaign trail when running in the

00:01:53.040 federal election? Remember, back when Aaron O'Toole was running for leader of the conservative party,

00:01:58.320 back in early 2020, Aaron O'Toole warned us about another candidate, another candidate named Peter

00:02:04.080 McKay. O'Toole repeatedly warned conservatives that Peter McKay was nothing but a red Tory, he was a

00:02:11.760 centrist, he was a leftist, he was mushy, he was liberalite, and that if conservative party members

00:02:17.920 entrusted Peter McKay with the party leadership, that the party would go down the wrong path, we

00:02:23.040 would continue to go down the left wing path of Justin Trudeau. And that instead, by picking Aaron

00:02:28.560 O'Toole, picking the true blue conservative option, that Canada would have a real conservative party.

00:02:35.200 That is how he positioned himself in the leadership race. And I think it's interesting to revisit some

00:02:40.000 of the specific attacks that Aaron O'Toole had against Peter McKay. Recall that Peter McKay was the

00:02:45.440 front-runner. He was the high-profile leader, he was the one that the media loved, he's the one that

00:02:49.920 everybody knows, he was key in creating the conservative party of Canada. Back when the two

00:02:54.320 parties merged, back when the Canadian alliance merged with the progressive conservative party,

00:02:58.400 Peter McKay was seen as a central figure in the progressive conservative party. He negotiated that

00:03:03.200 deal with Stephen Harper, and he was really one of the fathers of the modern-day conservative party.

00:03:08.080 So again, he was sort of the apparent person who was going to lead the party, and if it wasn't for

00:03:12.960 an incredibly effective attack by Aaron O'Toole, Peter McKay probably would have been the leader of

00:03:19.200 the conservative party, and we might have had a different outcome in the last election. So let's

00:03:23.920 go all the way back to January 2020, when Aaron O'Toole made a campaign announcement. This is the

00:03:29.520 video he put out. I'm going to play you part of this video because it's really compelling. Again,

00:03:33.120 this is the conservative version of Aaron O'Toole. This is the iteration of himself that he sold to party

00:03:38.320 members. That was quite compelling, quite appealing, and part of the reason that he won. Again, he told

00:03:43.520 conservatives that he would respect social conservatives. He courted the social conservative

00:03:47.520 vote, and one of the key things he said in this video is that it's time we take the hyphen out of

00:03:53.520 being conservative. It's time we had someone that can unite the conservative party. Let's play this video

00:03:58.880 and we can break that down. Who's going to fight for auto workers who just saw the last car roll off the

00:04:04.320 line? Who's going to fight for forestry workers who just watched another mill close? Who's going to

00:04:09.120 stand up for those who wear a uniform of service to protect us at home and abroad? Who's going to

00:04:14.240 defend our history, our institutions against attacks from cancel culture and the radical left? The

00:04:20.000 stakes are high for Canada. The country needs a strong conservative party. We need strong leadership

00:04:25.840 to unite our party, take the hyphen out of being a conservative, and ensure we grow our movement to win.

00:04:32.080 We need to show more urban and suburban Canadians that their values of liberty, family, and equality

00:04:38.560 are at the core of our party. It's time Canadians had a government that fights for their needs,

00:04:44.720 instead of fighting for attention from global celebrities and corrupt corporate insiders.

00:04:49.040 I'm Aaron O'Toole, and I'm running to unite conservatives on the path to victory. I'm not a career

00:04:55.120 politician. I'm not a product of the Ottawa bubble. I spent 10 years in the private sector, and 12 years

00:05:02.080 in our military, where you're judged by who you are and the work you do, not where you came from,

00:05:08.400 or who you know. I'm asking for your support to take on and beat Justin Trudeau. I'm in politics

00:05:15.040 to fight for you, and I need you to fight alongside me for Canada.

00:05:20.400 Now when he says take the hyphen out of being conservative, presumably he's talking about

00:05:30.640 progressive conservatives. So if you take a step back and you look at the conservative party,

00:05:34.880 it's sort of a coalition of a bunch of different types of conservatives. So you kind of have the

00:05:39.680 moral or social conservatives, the Christian conservatives, who want to have moral issues

00:05:44.080 sort of front and center in politics, and they strongly believe in taking a position, for instance,

00:05:48.400 when it comes to abortion. You also have the libertarian part of the party, who just believe

00:05:53.040 in limited government, low taxes, they want free markets, individual responsibility. Unfortunately,

00:05:58.800 those are some of the people who ended up following Maxime Bernier to the People's Party.

00:06:02.880 And then you have the red Tories, the sort of centrists that believe in bigger government,

00:06:06.720 that don't want to take a stance on moral issues, or if they do, they're progressive or liberal.

00:06:11.760 The sort of people that come from Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, that believe in the sort of

00:06:15.520 Laurentian elite consensus about Canada, that we're sort of this left wing version of the United

00:06:20.240 States. And that, you know, they believe in big government and everything that goes along with it,

00:06:24.800 the distinction between them and the liberals is that perhaps they're not as woke left as the

00:06:28.880 liberals. And that's a part of the party that Peter McKay came from. So when Aaron O'Toole talks

00:06:33.120 about taking the hyphen out of being conservative, I think he's talking about taking the progressive

00:06:38.320 conservative, that title, which a lot of red Tories really cling to, they don't want to be seen as

00:06:42.080 conservative. They want to put the progressive in there because then everyone knows that they

00:06:46.080 are not social conservatives, that they have the liberal left wing approved social views and that

00:06:51.280 none of those sort of thorny issues that have sometimes the dogged conservatives will get in

00:06:55.360 the way. So, so Aaron O'Toole is saying no to that, no to being a red Tory, no to being a progressive

00:06:59.440 conservative. He's just going to be a conservative that unites the party. Okay, so he continues on this

00:07:04.800 line of thinking in February 2020. He sent out a email blast. So this fundraising email, O'Toole

00:07:11.280 takes a shot at his rival, Peter McKay. So he's saying that Peter McKay is insisting on a solid

00:07:17.120 caucus front on so-called conscience votes, accusing him of behaving, quote, just like Justin Trudeau does,

00:07:23.280 unquote. So O'Toole said in the email blast that he would allow both caucus members as well as

00:07:28.160 potential cabinet ministers in a government led by him to vote their own conscience on moral issues.

00:07:34.080 So presumably that means that if there were votes on abortion, he wouldn't whip caucus. He would

00:07:38.800 allow everyone to vote how they feel, based on their conscience, based on their morals,

00:07:43.200 and that he would allow social conservatives to have their say, to make their peace, to champion

00:07:48.800 the issues that they feel are incredibly important in our society. So O'Toole was already carving himself

00:07:53.600 out as being different than Peter McKay, saying Peter McKay would punish social conservatives and not

00:07:59.040 allow them to speak their peace, whereas he would enable social conservatives and give them

00:08:03.520 a platform. Of course, we know that once the federal election rolled around, O'Toole took the

00:08:07.600 exact opposite position halfway through the campaign. He said that MPs who don't fully support

00:08:12.400 his platform and every aspect of it would not be able to sit in his caucus. So if you were pro-life

00:08:17.760 and you wanted to talk about it, you didn't want to just parrot O'Toole's pro-choice liberal

00:08:22.720 talking points, you couldn't even sit with a conservative caucus. You couldn't even be a conservative.

00:08:27.760 So back to 2020 when O'Toole was running for leader. So Aaron O'Toole continued on this path

00:08:32.560 of attacking Peter McKay, saying that Peter McKay wasn't conservative enough. On March 24th, 2020,

00:08:38.080 Aaron O'Toole said this, quote, this is really a struggle for the identity of the conservative

00:08:42.960 party in 2020. Do we go back to be the mushy middle party or do we have conservative principled

00:08:48.720 ideas for the issues of the day? So again, saying that he doesn't want to be part of the mushy

00:08:53.760 middle. He wants to have principled conservative ideas. So presumably, again, this means the liberal

00:08:59.360 party is on the left. He doesn't want to be part of the mushy middle. He wants to be on the right.

00:09:03.600 He wants to have principled conservative issues. And then here he is on June 18th, 2020, again,

00:09:09.840 really just laying it all out against Peter McKay. He says, Peter McKay has begun this campaign by

00:09:14.800 dividing our party, by attacking social conservatives. That's exactly what the liberals want. They want us

00:09:20.880 divided. We don't need liberal light. We need a real conservative with the uniting vision to win.

00:09:27.600 So here you have it. This is why Aaron O'Toole won. He successfully courted social conservatives.

00:09:32.560 Remember, he won because of the second and third ranked ballots from the actual social

00:09:36.560 conservatives who ran Lesley Lewis and Derek Sloan. Those votes went over to Aaron O'Toole,

00:09:41.520 giving him enough to surpass Peter McKay, even though Peter McKay had the most votes

00:09:46.000 in the first round of voting. And so Aaron O'Toole won by courting the social conservatives,

00:09:50.240 assuring them that they would have a space in his party, that he would have room for them,

00:09:53.600 that he would respect them. And also attacking Peter McKay, attacking the front runner, saying,

00:09:58.080 this guy's a red Tory. This guy's a centrist. This guy's liberal light. This guy's part of the

00:10:01.840 mushy middle. Forget him. I'm going to be the principled conservative. I'm going to go after the

00:10:06.000 radical left. I'm true blue. Get on board. Here I am. I'm the real deal. I'm the conservative.

00:10:12.240 And so again, we know how this played out. We know we got duped. We know that this wasn't

00:10:16.880 who Aaron O'Toole really was, or maybe it is who he really is. But then he presented a new version

00:10:21.360 of Aaron O'Toole when it came to running in the federal election. This is the bait and switch.

00:10:25.920 We were sold one thing and then we got another. And this is why we're at such a crossroads in

00:10:31.040 the conservative movement. This is why the party sees itself as such a crossroads, because you do

00:10:35.680 have the voices saying, look, just keep Aaron O'Toole on as leader. He'll learn his lesson

00:10:39.920 and he'll go on and perhaps do better in the next election. And then you have the other side of the

00:10:45.040 party who feel deeply betrayed, who feel completely excluded from the party. And not just that,

00:10:49.920 but they feel like we have a charlatan running things. They feel like Aaron O'Toole. They see

00:10:54.640 Aaron O'Toole and they don't know what he stands for. He is totally inauthentic. He presented two

00:11:00.640 completely different visions of who he was, what he believes in and what he wanted for the country.

00:11:05.600 And it's hard to get past that duplicity, that fundamental lack of authenticity that we see with

00:11:12.960 Aaron O'Toole. But I want to remind viewers that this is not the first time that this has happened

00:11:17.600 to the conservative party. This is not the first time that a conservative leadership nominee has

00:11:22.640 presented themselves as part of the right wing of the party, as a social conservative, as a true

00:11:27.280 blue Tory, only to gain power and become leader of the party and completely change course, completely

00:11:33.040 rebrand as a liberal. And I'm talking about the former MP and the former leader of the Ontario

00:11:37.840 Progressive Conservative Party, Patrick Brown. Now, I want to talk a little bit about Patrick

00:11:42.000 Brown. Patrick Brown became leader of the Ontario PCs in 2015. And then he stepped down and resigned

00:11:48.400 in disgrace in January 2018. So he never ran in an election as a conservative leader. And it's a

00:11:54.320 good thing that he didn't because this guy was a total disaster as leader of the party. So before

00:11:58.960 Patrick Brown got into provincial politics, he was a long serving member of parliament up in Barrie.

00:12:03.920 He was a really popular MP, he was seen as young, ambitious, super hard working, and really in touch

00:12:08.880 with the base, really socially conservative, and just, you know, someone who had a lot of potential in

00:12:14.080 conservative politics. So I want to go back and talk a little bit about his record. So back in 2012,

00:12:19.440 as a conservative MP under the Harper government, he voted in favour of a bill to study when life begins.

00:12:26.400 And this was seen, especially by the media, as a sort of reopening of the abortion debate,

00:12:31.600 something that a lot of, again, the red Tories and centrists in the party really didn't want,

00:12:35.920 a lot of libertarians too, a lot of people who just don't really want to talk about this issue

00:12:39.360 anymore. And even Stephen Harper voted against this bill, voted against studying when life begins,

00:12:43.680 because he just didn't really want to get into the thorny abortion debate. So back then,

00:12:48.000 he was, he was so committed to being a pro-life MP that he was even willing to break ranks with the

00:12:52.880 prime minister and the leader of the country because he was so committed to his morals and

00:12:57.280 to this idea of creating some kind of a law, some kind of regulation around abortion. And so fast

00:13:03.200 forward to when he was running for leader of the PC party, it's sort of well known that Patrick

00:13:09.440 Brown just sort of outworked the competition. He was running against Christine Elliott,

00:13:13.040 the widow of the former finance minister, Jim Flaherty. And she was sort of seen as more of an

00:13:17.760 establishment, red Tory conservative, and he was seen as the grassroots social conservative

00:13:22.160 alternative. And everyone knew that he won this leadership race because he just outworked and

00:13:26.080 out hustled Christine Elliott. He was out there signing up new members, doing outreach, encouraging

00:13:30.480 people to join the party, to vote for him as leader, growing the party base. And a lot of the places,

00:13:35.440 let's be honest, a lot of the ways that he was able to do this was by going to houses of worship,

00:13:40.000 going to churches, painting himself as a true social conservative and encouraging people to sign up

00:13:45.040 for votes that way. Likewise, he was also able to get the endorsement from the Campaign Life

00:13:50.560 Coalition, which is an influential pro-life group. So speaking to pro-life advocates from the Campaign

00:13:56.400 Life Coalition, he said, look at my voting record, that's who I am. And then he says he has a 100%

00:14:03.120 pro-life voting record in the House of Commons, which led to the endorsement from the Campaign

00:14:09.120 Life Coalition. Well, fast forward, and just like Aaron O'Toole, once he was leader of the party,

00:14:13.840 he told the Globe and Mail, I will not change the status quo and I will oppose any effort to do so,

00:14:19.440 later adding, we're not going to change the status quo we have in Ontario today in any fashion. And

00:14:25.520 then when he was specifically asked about how he voted for a pro-life bill, get this, he actually

00:14:30.560 pretended that he didn't know what they were talking about. He said this, he said, we probably have

00:14:34.960 four or 500 votes a year in the House of Commons. I think it would be difficult to analyze every vote.

00:14:40.880 So he just pretended that he doesn't even remember voting for pro-life bills and that he just couldn't

00:14:46.800 even be asked to try to defend it because he votes on so many things. Then in 2017, he told the National

00:14:52.720 Post that any policy put forth during the PC party convention regarding social conservative issues

00:14:58.160 would be off limits. Any policy that attempts to limit a woman's right to choose, so he's already

00:15:03.120 using the left-wing terminology when it comes to abortion, limit a woman's right to choose, 0.99

00:15:08.960 or the ability of same-sex couples to marry are off limits, period. Brown endorsed same-sex marriage

00:15:15.120 and also endorsed the liberal's changes of the sex ed curriculum once he won the PC leadership race.

00:15:20.960 Also on the issue of carbon taxes, much like Erin O'Toole, Patrick Brown didn't mention anything

00:15:26.320 about a carbon tax when running for PC leader. He basically implied that he was against it and that

00:15:31.440 he wouldn't bring in any kind of carbon tax. But then again, much like Erin O'Toole, he shocked the

00:15:36.160 Tories when he announced that he would support a carbon tax at the PC convention in Ottawa in March 2016.

00:15:43.040 Patrick Brown misrepresented himself when he was running for leader. He ran as a social conservative.

00:15:47.760 Once he was leader, he basically turned into a liberal and started pushing liberal talking points,

00:15:52.080 pushing liberal ideas and abandoning any sense of principle. And that's why in early 2018,

00:15:57.440 when he was faced with really a ratchet job of a MeToo accusation that totally fell apart under

00:16:02.560 scrutiny, it didn't matter. The entire base had already abandoned him. His core inner circle also

00:16:08.320 kind of stabbed him in the back, threw him under the bus. And just like that, Patrick Brown resigned.

00:16:13.600 This should have been a cautionary tale to conservatives. This should have been a tale not to do what Patrick

00:16:18.640 Brown had done to the PC voters in Ontario. But here we are a few years later, and it seems like

00:16:24.960 Erin O'Toole has taken Patrick Brown's exact playbook. And much like Patrick Brown's own fate,

00:16:30.960 Erin O'Toole has not been successful. It is not a good strategy. It is not a winning playbook.

00:16:36.880 Look, in today's era of social media and direct mass communication, what Canadians want is authenticity.

00:16:43.360 They want a politician and a candidate who they can trust, who they feel like is being real and

00:16:48.800 being authentic. The terrible, terrible strategy as running as one thing. And then as soon as you

00:16:54.320 become leader turning and doing something different, it doesn't even matter what side you're going for,

00:16:58.880 which way you're going. It is a failed tactic. It's bait and switch. We've seen it too many times,

00:17:04.320 and we've had enough of it. Conservatives should make sure that the Erin O'Toole's and the Patrick 0.71

00:17:08.880 Brown's of this world are never entrusted to lead a conservative party again. 1.00

00:17:13.360 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - September 29, 2021

O’Toole’s Bait and Switch

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