Juno News - November 05, 2019The Candice Malcolm Show： The media fawns over a fringe conspiracy theorist
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Summary
Elizabeth May is stepping down as the leader of the Green Party of Canada after 13 years in office. She's been accused of being a fringe lunatic and a conspiracy theorist, and the mainstream media has been quick to praise her for it.
Transcript
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Canadian journalists embarrassingly fawn over a fringe conspiracy theorists.
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The media runs with its own made-up narrative about why the Conservatives lost the last
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And CTV finally, finally wants to show a different side of the Conservative Party.
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I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
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We're going to be coming to you twice a week now.
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We're going to do a mid-week episode as well as a typical Friday podcast.
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And we're going to expand a little bit more beyond just media criticism.
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We're going to look into some of the day-to-day issues in the country and examine some of the
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broader issues behind being a Conservative in Canada.
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So Green Party leader Elizabeth May is finally resigning.
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She's been party leader for 13 years, since 2006, and she really doesn't have a lot to
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Her party has sort of been stuck in the irrelevant fringe stage.
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And even with all the talk about climate change, climate emergency, we had Greta Thunberg making
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a cross-Canada tour, basically doing a pitch for fringe green parties like that that Elizabeth
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She was still unable to break through electorally, so she's rightfully stepping down.
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Now, the mainstream media are trying to paint her into some kind of a rock star, life-changing
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politician, someone who led a serious conversation in public life.
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Here we have the Huffington Post showing Elizabeth May's five most iconic moments as Green Party
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City News over there is saying that Elizabeth May has a lot to be proud of.
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Well, True North has a little bit of a different institutional memory when it comes to Elizabeth
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She's basically just a fringe conspiracy theorist.
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She's had a lot of very crazy views that she puts out there.
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She's pretty media savvy, pretty good at inserting herself into the story, and, you know, that's
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why so many media people love her, why journalists love her, because she made it easy for them,
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and of course also because she occupies a fringe far-left position, which is where a lot of journalists
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in this country also occupy in terms of their worldview and their thinking.
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So True North has compiled a different list, not the five most iconic memories of Elizabeth
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May, but more than five instances of her just being a pure fringe lunatic.
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Elizabeth May said she's waging a war on Wi-Fi.
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She said that wireless internet is related to the disappearance of pollinating insects.
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She compared Stephen Harper's climate change position to quote appeasement of the Nazis unquote.
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She once presented a 9-11 conspiracy theory petition in the House of Commons.
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She falsely claimed that Canadian grocery stores import eggs from China on a routine basis,
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Right now, do you know, we actually have grocery stores in Canada that are importing eggs from
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All of the garlic in major grocery store change in Canada comes from China.
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This one was particularly annoying to me or just kind of gross.
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She got into a spat with Jason Kenney, now premier of Alberta, back when Jason Kenney was a minister
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Kenney was working with some people on a monument that they unveiled for the victims of communism.
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As you know, communism is a deadliest ideology in world history.
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It led to the death of hundreds of millions of people.
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And so, you know, they were building up a monument and Elizabeth May decides to make light of it.
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So she tweets, no mention of a monument for the victims of capitalism.
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Well, Jason Kenney rightly responded, perhaps that's because no one was shot in the back
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while risking their lives to flee eastward over the Iron Curtain.
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Or perhaps it's because free societies don't murder tens of millions in gulags and planned
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So, you know, for Elizabeth May to make light about something as gruesome as the millions
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and millions of victims who were murdered by communist regimes is pretty gross.
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And to compare it to capitalism, which is essentially just free markets and human liberty, you know,
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Obviously there's people who have suffered in the world despite capitalism.
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Capitalism doesn't just, you know, create like a silver bullet to create a good life for
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There's been people who have suffered under capitalism too, but not anywhere to the same
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And essentially what capitalism is, is just freedom.
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And so to say that somehow to equate communist regimes with freedom and Canadian freedom is
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just really sickening, but that's the kind of person that Elizabeth May is.
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She once claimed that the United States recruited Osama Bin Laden in order to create Al-Qaeda.
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As you recall, she was very intoxicated at a parliamentary press gallery dinner.
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And while very drunk, this is what she had to say.
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So, you know, sure, she was sort of joking around, but then she kind of gets into it
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that she believes that Omer Khadr is this sort of upstanding young man, despite the fact
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that he was a terrorist as part of Al-Qaeda and admitted to killing an American soldier.
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So, you know, Elizabeth May, not exactly a person that you want to really be celebrating.
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And again, this just shows the severe left-wing bias of the mainstream media.
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There was a fringe right-wing candidate that had similar conspiracy views, that had a long
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history of just saying outright crazy things, you know, making light of the murder of millions
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of people, making light and making conspiracies about terrorists who kill Canadian and American
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I don't think that that person would be given such a rosy send-off if they were to retire.
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So again, the extreme bias, and not just the fact that Elizabeth May was a crazy person.
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She was objectively bad at her job, despite, you know, the huge momentum that the Green
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She wasn't able to actually, you know, gain some segment of support enough to elect some
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I always personally would have liked to see the Green Party take on more of a free market
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bend and sort of be another party, not necessarily just another left-wing fringe party, but a party
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that promoted free market ideas where conservatives could park their vote if they were just unhappy
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with the direction of the current Conservative Party.
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But instead, you know, the Greens toil off in obscurity because they stick with that hard
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Really, there's not a lot of difference between them, the NDP, and the Liberals.
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This is one of my pet peeves, and it happens after every election.
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I remember vividly it happening after the 2015 election.
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The mainstream media decided that the reason that Stephen Harper lost was because the Conservatives
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They decided that you could boil the entire campaign down to a few moments, the awkward
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press conference where they announced the barbaric cultural practices hotline, and a couple
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This is why the Conservatives lost, because of this one policy.
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And then they kind of like declare it as fact, and then move forward as if that, you know,
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the Conservatives now have to go back and do soul searching about why they hate Muslims
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Well, they're doing it again with this election.
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So throughout the entire campaign, the media fixated and were obsessed with the idea that
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And that 13 years ago, he made comments that opposed same-sex marriage.
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So they jumped on these two facts, and they repeated them throughout the campaign over
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They did everything they could to keep those two stories top of mind.
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Now, anyone who watches the campaign, and as most Conservatives know, Andrew Scheer didn't
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He wasn't the one that was leading with this stuff.
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That wasn't part of his campaign, wasn't part of his platform, it wasn't part of what
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the Conservative Party of Canada were presenting to Canadians, presenting to the electorate.
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It was just the mainstream media's own fixation.
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And so, because the media fixated on it so much, they determined that that was the reason
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That Andrew Scheer actually lost the election, not because they ran a bad campaign in Quebec,
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not because they failed to do the right kind of outreach in the GTA, or they failed to come
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up with a meaningful platform and policies that they could really capture the imagination
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So, the mainstream media decided that it was because of the stories that the mainstream
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media themselves invented and pushed on Canadians throughout the entire campaign.
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Scheer's position on same-sex marriage could be fatal, Conservative insiders say.
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This is a favorite trick of the mainstream media, is that they always find an expert or
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an insider to just say what that journalist believes.
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This isn't the opinion of the journalist that's writing the story.
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It is news, because instead of them having their own quote that Scheer's position on same-sex
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marriage could be fatal, they just find some insider, usually anonymous, some anonymous insider,
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to say exactly what they think, and that's the headline.
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So, Scheer's position could be fatal, says CTV.
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Scheer's messaging on abortion costs him votes on both sides of the debate, says Observers.
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So, you know, add Observers to the list of experts and insiders.
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Global News says Scheer's TVR French debate performance was a death blow for Tories in
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Find a guy that lost his seat and then get him to agree with the mainstream media and the
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So this article goes on to say that it was Scheer's inability to defend himself on these social
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issues that became obvious to Quebec voters during the debate and that's why he lost.
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And similarly, here is the Hill Times, which is kind of the insider newspaper in Ottawa for
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sort of people working in Ottawa in the government, knives out to dump conservative leader.
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But Scheer's team should reach out to supporters urgently to survive April leadership review,
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So the similar kind of theme that they're all getting at, which is basically that the
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reason that Scheer lost is because of this whole commotion made by the mainstream media
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That's not what he wanted to run the election on.
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Those are not the issues that he wanted to be talking about.
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In fact, these are issues that are well in the past, in the background.
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You know, these issues were debated in Canada decades ago and now, for whatever reason, the
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No one else really does, including a lot of conservatives that you'll find now talking
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to the media saying, yeah, the conservatives must have screwed up because we shouldn't have
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been running the election on these controversial issues.
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Well, I don't think anyone wanted to other than the media.
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So the media, again, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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They talk about an issue and then that issue they blame for the fall of the conservatives
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So that's how mainstream media narratives work in a nutshell.
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And, you know, it's kind of disappointing because I think that if Canadians just stopped
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tuning into the media in the same way that I think many do in the United States and
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just completely ignore it, these issues wouldn't be the ones dictating the election as they
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A lot of times it's because conservatives kind of agree reluctantly at the end.
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And so you see a whole bunch of conservatives now on TV just saying, yeah, we really shouldn't
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have been talking about those issues and we need a more modern conservative to take us
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And I said this in an interview with my colleague Andrew Lawton.
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And I think that Andrew Scheer really needs to fight back.
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If he wants to maintain his leadership of the conservative party, if he wants to do another
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shot in an election, he has to learn how to fight back against the mainstream media.
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If they're doing an interview and they're being unfair, he needs to look that journalist
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into the eye and call them out and tell them what they're doing is unfair and point to
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the fact that they would never do this to the liberal leader.
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They'd never do this to the NDP leader, that they only do it to conservatives.
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Justin Trudeau lost a huge segment of the vote.
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He lost over a million votes from the last election.
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They're down to just, you know, less than two dozen seats in the House of Commons.
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So, again, this is just a total double standard.
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The conservatives gained representation in every region.
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And yet it's Andrew Scheer that's being called to resign.
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That now that the election is over, CTV finds a very sympathetic conservative candidate
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and talks about a whole bunch of things that they never bothered to report during the election.
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As a member of the LGBTQ2 community, you defended conservative leader Andrew Scheer
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for not being direct or forthcoming early in the campaign on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.
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Some people in your party are blaming Mr. Scheer that they did not win this election.
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And I think we form a national opposition in the sense that we have representation from coast to coast.
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I've always been a supporter, obviously, of LGBTQ rights.
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And I think the more parties that have more diversity that can advocate for that,
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And I think when I talk to party members and I talk to new caucus colleagues,
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I think we need to work on how we make ourselves a modern conservative party.
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So it's funny that during the election, all we heard was that the conservatives are bigots,
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Andrew Scheer obviously has a problem with same-sex marriage and with gay people.
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And then suddenly, as soon as the election is over,
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the media find a conservative MP who was just elected in Ontario
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who has a very different message and has a very different outlook.
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You know, it actually makes it seem like the conservatives are pretty well-rounded,
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pretty representative, pretty much a big tent party
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that welcome people of all backgrounds and all orientations.
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And yet we only see this side of the conservative party after the election.
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And because that conservative MP is willing to talk about the issues that the mainstream media want,
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to talk about willing to indulge them on this theory that Andrew Scheer made a huge mistake
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Well, doesn't this candidate and this MP's, you know, very presence show the opposite?
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Why would a person who's part of the LGBT community join a conservative party
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and run as a conservative and become a conservative MP
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if they really were as awful and as horrible as the mainstream media make it out to be?
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And again, this is just, you know, media bias in a nutshell
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because obviously the conservatives are not the people who they get painted as in the media.
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And this is sort of like, you know, the CTV letting its masks slip saying,
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oh, look, we found this one person who doesn't fit our mold of what an evil, mean, scary conservative is.
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Well, maybe if you had interviewed folks like this during the campaign,
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maybe if you had told the other side of the story, people wouldn't have had those impressions in the first place.
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And again, this is the problem with our media in Canada.
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Thank you so much for joining me and I will be back with another episode on Friday.