Juno News - The French Debate was a total waste of time

00:00:00.000 The Conservative leadership candidates participated in a French-language debate last night,

00:00:04.400 and were all worse off because of it. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:20.960 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the program. Originally, I was going to air

00:00:25.460 an interview that I did with Tom Flanagan today in sort of recognition of the one-year anniversary

00:00:30.360 of the apparent discovery of Unmarked Graves. But given the fact that there was a Conservative

00:00:35.200 debate last night, I think we're going to push that interview. We'll air it next week.

00:00:39.600 And today, I want to talk to you about the debate that happened last night. Now,

00:00:43.680 originally, I wasn't going to cover it because I don't think that there's a lot of interest

00:00:47.220 in Conservative circles and in Canada, frankly, to listen to a French-language debate. There's

00:00:53.580 such a small percentage of Conservative members who speak French, and I think we're better served

00:00:58.780 having debates in English. I don't think a lot of people tuned in last night, and I think the

00:01:02.920 viewership numbers will show that. We don't know them yet. But just judging by the number of people

00:01:07.460 watching them on YouTube and social media platforms last night, it was a small fraction

00:01:11.140 of what we had watching the debates, the English-language debate that happened in Edmonton

00:01:16.520 a few weeks ago. And I just want to say, I think it is a disservice to Conservatives,

00:01:22.660 and more broadly to Canadians, that we had this spectacle, this charade, pretending that we should

00:01:29.780 give equal weight to French and English language. It doesn't make sense for the Conservative Party.

00:01:35.240 We know that the Conservative Party is a party based mostly out of Western Canada. That is where the bulk

00:01:41.000 of the support of the party comes from, not just now, but traditionally as well. Quebecers don't vote

00:01:47.520 for the Conservative Party in large numbers, no matter what. No matter what the strategy,

00:01:51.200 no matter the candidate, no matter how well they speak French or how poorly they speak French,

00:01:55.900 we're going to go through the stats and numbers. But the idea that there should be two equally

00:02:00.520 weighted debates, right? There's two official debates in the Conservative leadership race,

00:02:04.240 the English one and the French one, and it's over now. We're done. No more debates. The decision

00:02:08.800 doesn't come until September. So we're now, what, four months out, and we're not going to have

00:02:12.880 another debate. That was it. Maybe someone will plan something and try to throw something together

00:02:16.980 over the summer. But at this point, the candidates have no more debates. So that was the last

00:02:21.760 opportunity that we had. And again, I think it's a disservice that it happened in French. And as we saw

00:02:27.760 last night, for those who did tune in, the French debate, it was humiliating, right? We have six

00:02:32.940 candidates on the stage. Three of them speak French fairly well. I think that Jean Charest is obviously a

00:02:38.460 native French speaker. Pierre seems to have very good French, Pierre Polyev. And it looks like Patrick Brown has

00:02:44.420 been working on his French. So you had those three candidates who were actively participating,

00:02:49.200 who really were the debate. And then the other three candidates, Roman Baber, Lessen Lewis, and

00:02:53.740 Scott Aitchison, weren't really part of the debate at all. They were just sort of on stage. Every now

00:02:59.200 and then they would read a line that they had or a prepared statement that they had in French, but they

00:03:04.960 weren't really participating. They weren't following along. They weren't able to jump in and interject with

00:03:09.420 their opinions and ideas because it's really hard to follow a fast-moving debate in another language

00:03:16.080 that you barely understand. And so it was pretty clear that those three candidates don't speak French

00:03:21.100 fluently enough to be able to actively participating. So again, we just heard them kind of repeating the

00:03:26.260 same thing over. It was humiliating for them. It was insulting for the crowd. I mean, the crowd is there,

00:03:31.460 the French-speaking crowd in Laval, Quebec, they're there to hear a debate and to have candidates

00:03:36.720 forced to read a statement that really doesn't have anything to do with what the debate is about,

00:03:42.100 because a lot of times it was just really lost in translation. The candidates, those three candidates

00:03:46.660 didn't really understand what the questions were, the context, the actual direction that the debate

00:03:52.140 had gone. Every time they spoke, it was just kind of a distraction. And it didn't make for good

00:03:57.020 viewing. It didn't make for an entertaining debate. And it didn't really make for a good exchange of

00:04:02.980 ideas, which is exactly what you want to see from a debate. The whole idea is to have them debate.

00:04:07.440 So why not stick to English, the language that all six of them fluently speak, instead of the

00:04:11.680 spectacle of trying to force conservatives to speak French? And let me just say, on the conservative

00:04:18.200 side of the aisle, it's hard enough to recruit really good talent into politics, okay? If you're a very

00:04:25.320 smart, capable, talented, competent person who has a conservative worldview, who is sort of pro-free

00:04:31.780 market, pro-business, you know, believes in a sort of tradition of our structures and is generally

00:04:37.520 speaking pro-Western liberal democracy and capitalism, you're more likely to be successful

00:04:42.840 in the private sector. You're more likely to be a business owner or an entrepreneur or an executive

00:04:48.580 at a big company. You're more likely to be successful in that realm. And it's really hard to take people

00:04:53.340 who are successful over there and convince them to come into politics. That's hard enough as it is.

00:04:59.460 Add on top of that, the layer of the fact that the media hates conservatives. And so whoever comes in

00:05:04.220 to the conservative fray is automatically going to get smeared as soon as they're the leader or as

00:05:09.540 soon as they're running an election. We saw this with, interestingly, Chris Alexander, who is a very

00:05:14.540 respected diplomat in Canadian political circles. He came into the fray of politics. He joined the

00:05:20.360 Harper conservatives, eventually becoming the immigration minister. And he talked about how

00:05:25.540 kind of blindsided he was by the smears that are regularly aimed against conservatives. It's so

00:05:30.980 different than for liberals. They will ruin your life and attack every angle of you. And so this

00:05:38.660 already makes, that's two shots against conservatives, right? Number one is that most competent, capable

00:05:43.820 people who lean conservative are successful in business and have no interest in politics.

00:05:47.500 The second is that the media will destroy your life. And the third one is that this idea that

00:05:53.700 you must speak French in order to be the conservative leader, you basically eliminate 1.00

00:05:57.600 like, like 60% of the Canadian population from ever being able to want to get involved in federal

00:06:04.040 politics. I remember Kevin O'Leary, when he was running for leader of the conservative party,

00:06:07.780 he talked about this. He didn't speak French. He was a businessman. He's from Ontario. He never

00:06:11.860 learned French. He's not from a bilingual family. That's just not part of his life. 0.87

00:06:16.120 And this idea that he was going to be forced to learn French, he was like, you know, that's not

00:06:20.440 worth my time. There's so many other things that I would rather do to, if I'm going to lead this

00:06:25.860 party and going to lead this country, but rather focus on making me learn French is a distraction.

00:06:31.080 I think that's completely right. And I think that the numbers bear this out. So again, by participating

00:06:36.020 in this event, by putting it on equal footing, saying we're going to have two official debates,

00:06:40.020 one in English, one in French, it backs up this idea that conservatives must speak French in order to

00:06:45.820 become prime minister. And I think that's a dangerous position and a dangerous president.

00:06:49.660 And it doesn't help when it comes to electoral outcomes. So conservatives don't win in Quebec.

00:06:55.040 That's the reality. Conservatives currently have 10 seats in the province of Quebec.

00:06:59.480 The most that they've won in recent elections was 12, and that was in 2015, right? So no matter what

00:07:05.820 conservatives do, they have a very, very, very, very small footprint in Quebec. The majority of

00:07:11.500 people in Quebec don't like the conservatives, won't vote for the conservatives. They have

00:07:15.260 fundamental differences in terms of their worldview and their values. And so the fact that we waste so

00:07:19.880 much time, the conservatives waste so much time trying to make inroads, trying to win in Quebec,

00:07:24.240 participating in the spectacle that we saw in the debate last night, it doesn't help, right? It

00:07:28.920 doesn't help. And the reality is the majority of Canadians don't speak French. Only 22% of Canadians

00:07:34.840 have French as their first language that's about just a little under 8 million. And then another 6

00:07:40.680 million are bilingual. So Canadians from the rest of the country who have learned to speak French or

00:07:46.200 have French families, a lot of those people live in other sort of bilingual areas, like francophones

00:07:51.720 in Ontario or in New Brunswick. So just a few more stats on the official languages according to

00:07:59.820 the census. So you can go through and you can see by province, what percentage of the population

00:08:05.080 is bilingual. So Newfoundland 5%, PEI 12%, Nova Scotia 10%, New Brunswick 33%. You know, those aren't

00:08:15.060 provinces, again, where conservatives do very well or win very well. But 11% of people in Ontario are

00:08:20.600 bilingual. And then once you start to go west, those numbers really drop off, right? 8%. Saskatchewan 4.7%

00:08:26.920 are bilingual. Alberta 6.6%. British Columbia 6.8%. So really, there's not a lot of need out west to

00:08:34.440 learn French. It doesn't seem like an important language. I mean, I grew up in British Columbia. And I

00:08:39.940 remember in grade 11, they started offering Spanish at my school. And most of the students got out of

00:08:45.880 French and started taking Spanish because I don't know, maybe they thought it was more useful or a

00:08:50.780 language that they would actually use in the world. French isn't that useful. West, the point that JJ McCullough

00:08:56.580 makes a journalist who I've talked about this topic on the show with before, he talks about how the

00:09:02.520 only real reason that you could learn French is if you're forced into a situation where you have to

00:09:08.100 speak French, right? It's not just a choice. You can go take some courses at a local community college

00:09:12.600 and learn French. The way that you're going to learn French is if you're in a situation where

00:09:17.020 you must speak French to survive. You have no other option. And the reality is in Western Canada,

00:09:22.080 that's never the situation that you're going to confront unless you go and choose to like spend a

00:09:27.020 spend a year abroad or go spend some time in a very kind of French part of Quebec, not Montreal,

00:09:33.740 but outside. I want to draw your attention to a really interesting op-ed written by Ken White,

00:09:39.440 who is a conservative publisher. And he picked up on this topic again. He said that conservatives think

00:09:45.460 the next party leader should be bilingual. They're wrong. Now, this was a older op-ed that he wrote

00:09:50.080 back when Aaron O'Toole was running for leader. This was back in January 2020. But the points are

00:09:56.320 still very relevant. And I want to explain why. So Ken White says this, he says,

00:10:01.500 bilingualism is not a constitutional or legislative requirement for a party leader or prime minister.

00:10:08.100 It's not even a convention. Bilingualism as a leadership prudential arose relatively recently in

00:10:13.860 our history in response to a discrete event, the rise of separatist sentiment in Quebec,

00:10:18.760 the retiring liberal prime minister, Lester B. Pearson, thought it advisable under the

00:10:23.340 circumstances that his predecessor be a bilingual French Canadian capable of countering the appeal

00:10:28.140 of René Levesque. So it's not constitutional. It's not a legislative requirement. And it's not

00:10:33.740 even a convention. This is a very recent undertaking, this idea that the Canadian prime minister would

00:10:38.960 be bilingual. And it came from the liberal side. And look, maybe it makes sense that a liberal prime

00:10:43.940 minister would be bilingual because liberals tend to win most of the seats in Quebec, or at least

00:10:49.520 they compete with the bloc for those seats in Quebec. Whereas the idea that the conservative

00:10:53.380 party, the other party would also have to have a bilingual leader, it doesn't, again, it doesn't

00:10:59.420 make sense. It's not, it's not part of our convention. And it's all very, very recent that

00:11:04.100 conservatives have decided that they must have a bilingual leader. We'll continue reading from Ken

00:11:09.380 White's piece. He says, election after election, conservatives chose bilingual leaders with an eye

00:11:14.180 to cracking the Quebec electorate, election after election, they fail. In 15 attempts since the end

00:11:19.940 of the Diefenbaker Pearson era, bilingual non-Quebeckers leading the conservative, progressive 0.65

00:11:24.640 conservative, or the Canadian Alliance Party. So those are all just the recent iterations of

00:11:28.400 conservative parties federally. They have won a total of 66 seats. Okay, 66 seats in 15 elections.

00:11:36.500 That's an average of four seats, 4.4 seats per election. So all of this effort, all of this focus,

00:11:43.800 this whole idea on shrinking the talent pool to an incredibly small pool, just to find a guy or a gal

00:11:50.160 who can speak French. And yet, what has that resulted in about, on average, four seats per election? It's

00:11:57.220 really staggering that this is where we are as a conservative movement. And the conservative party is

00:12:02.200 so focused on this, given the data here. So Ken White continues, he says, the bilingual Albertan,

00:12:08.380 Joe Clark, won three seats in Quebec in two federal elections, 1979 and 1980. The bilingual British

00:12:14.920 Colombian, Ken Campbell, took one seat in 1993. The fluently bilingual, Jean Charest, who's now running

00:12:22.100 again, well, he also ran for leader of the PC party in 1997, and the rehabilitated Joe Clark,

00:12:27.960 leading the rump of the PC party in 1997 and 2000, respectively, earned six seats between them. So yes,

00:12:34.040 you got it right. Jean Charest, when he led the PC party, back in 1997, he only won five seats in Quebec,

00:12:39.920 five seats, despite being from Quebec, and obviously fluently bilingual. Ken White continues, he says,

00:12:45.600 they fail because Quebec isn't attracted to bilingual leaders from outside Quebec. In every election since

00:12:51.120 retirement of Lester B. Pearson, Quebec has given the vast majority of its seats to a Quebecer.

00:12:57.880 What Quebec wants is what Americans call a favorite son or presumably a favorite daughter would do as

00:13:02.980 well. One of their own, a Brian Mulroney, a Gilles Duceppe, or a Jack Layton. You get this? So Quebecers

00:13:08.980 are not going to vote for a bilingual Canadian who's not from Quebec. That's what the stats, that's what

00:13:15.720 history shows us, that it doesn't matter if you speak perfectly fluent French, if you spend all your 1.00

00:13:20.860 time campaigning in France, in Quebec. The people of Quebec are going to vote for their own favorite

00:13:27.440 son, their own native Quebecer. So all of these efforts to find a fluently bilingual candidate,

00:13:33.520 to find a conservative who has perfect French, it's all basically just a waste of time. Final point from

00:13:40.380 Ken White, he says, Preston Manning, who did not speak French, he, his reform party did not win a

00:13:46.800 single seat in Quebec in 1993 or 97. The Canadian Alliance brought in Stockwell Day, who was bilingual,

00:13:53.000 who did speak French, and he matched Preston Manning's record with zero seats in Quebec. So it

00:13:57.740 didn't matter that Stockwell Day was fluently French versus Preston Manning, who did not speak

00:14:02.720 French. They both won zero seats in Quebec. That's because Quebec values don't match up with the 0.61

00:14:08.620 conservative values by and large. And so again, the whole spectacle of last night, the whole idea that

00:14:12.840 we have two debates, one in French, one in English, just reiterates this, this, I think, flawed notion,

00:14:18.760 this foolish notion that conservatives can somehow crack through in Quebec, all we have to do is pander

00:14:24.200 more and speak better French. And somehow that will change things where we can just go through the

00:14:29.140 election results. So in 2021, when Aaron O'Toole lost the election, he got 10 seats in Quebec, 10 out of

00:14:35.540 78 seats went to the conservatives, the conservatives won 119 seats, only 10 of those were in Quebec,

00:14:41.860 despite Aaron O'Toole's French, despite him spending a lot of time working on his French and a lot of

00:14:47.340 time campaigning in Quebec. Likewise, Andrew Scheer, who also speaks French fluently, he only won 10

00:14:53.780 seats in Quebec, again, despite having a very significant Quebec strategy, gearing many of his

00:15:00.260 policies towards Quebec, spending a lot of time in Quebec, only 10 seats out of the conservatives 120,

00:15:06.180 only 10 seats out of Quebec's 78 seats. So not a lot of results, right? Prime Minister Harper, same thing,

00:15:13.960 he spoke French, 12 seats, 12 seats in Quebec in 2015. In his majority government, his historic majority

00:15:21.140 government in 2011, Stephen Harper won a mere five seats in Quebec. So this idea that you need to speak

00:15:28.320 French and you need to make inroads in Quebec in order to win an election, it's just not true.

00:15:33.160 It's obviously not true, given what has happened over the past 30, 40 years, and we can see that.

00:15:40.360 And so I think conservatives would be better off focusing on the areas where they can win,

00:15:46.140 trying to win over voters in suburban parts of the country, and perhaps even more urban parts of the

00:15:51.540 country, and not do this whole spectacle where they humiliate their own candidates by forcing them up on

00:15:57.840 the stage, and pretending that speaking French is the quintessential foundational value to becoming

00:16:06.780 a prime minister in this country. It's just not true. So let's get to the debate itself. Unfortunately,

00:16:13.140 the majority of Canadians did not watch the debate and will not watch the debate, which is too bad,

00:16:17.140 because overall, I thought it was a pretty good debate. The moderator, Marc-Olivier Fortin,

00:16:20.980 who is a longtime conservative activist and insider, is a former staffer, a former member of the National

00:16:26.500 Council in Quebec. He was moderator. He did a pretty good job, pretty decent job. You could see

00:16:31.820 that the Conservative Party was pushing the same kind of rules and nonsense that they did at the

00:16:36.320 Edmonton debate because the moderator was constantly shushing the crowd, telling them not to clap, not to

00:16:42.360 applaud, not to boo, not to participate in the debate at all, just to basically sit there silently with

00:16:46.960 their, you know, sitting on their hands and not participating, which again, defeats the whole

00:16:52.560 purpose of doing a debate in front of a live audience. But overall, the debate format allowed

00:17:00.040 for actual debate back and forth between the candidates. The questions were a lot better.

00:17:06.260 The questions were certainly Quebec heavy and focused on Quebec, but they also touched on important

00:17:11.880 issues that we that that that matter to Canadians, things like energy, inflation, COVID restrictions, and a

00:17:18.480 little bit on foreign affairs. So I thought overall, it was it was a better debate. Of course, the way that it was

00:17:24.600 broadcasted was a problem because basically, again, most people watching these debates are going to be English

00:17:31.660 speaking. And the way that we were watching it was online through these feeds. And the way that the

00:17:36.880 translators were translating, the debate just didn't really work. They had like one, they had one person

00:17:42.520 that was translating for each of the candidates. And so when you're thinking about a debate where

00:17:46.880 they're kind of going back and forth, you just have one voice that is translating for all the candidates.

00:17:51.880 It was confusing as to who was saying what, usually, you know, if you have six, six people on the stage, and

00:17:58.060 your translators, you would at least want two or three different translators that are assigned to

00:18:01.380 different candidates so that you could see the back and forth, you could hear who is saying what, but the way that

00:18:06.340 they had it translated, really didn't make for good TV at all. There were also some technical issues,

00:18:12.580 the feed continued to freeze, it froze multiple times. And so you'd be right in the middle of

00:18:17.400 exchange, and then the screen would freeze. And then it would come back like two minutes later,

00:18:21.920 and they'd be talking about something totally different. One of the things that we saw was that

00:18:26.660 the lines of attack were pretty similar to what we had seen in previous debates. They were kind of just

00:18:32.840 really repeating themselves at this point. The candidates all accused Pierre of telling people

00:18:38.360 to make bad investments when it came to Bitcoin, accusing him of, you know, saying, oh, if you took

00:18:43.640 Pierre Polyev's advice, you lose your life savings, and your grandparents would lose their pensions,

00:18:48.760 or something like that, because of Bitcoin, which is total nonsense. We heard the same lines of attack

00:18:54.040 about abortion, and the trucker convoy against Pierre Polyev. We saw the attacks about his record

00:19:01.320 as Quebec Premier, his job with Huawei, and his position on carbon taxes. Same with Brown,

00:19:07.640 same accusations were left against him about how he flip-flopped, and how he used to be very opposed

00:19:13.640 to carbon taxes until he became leader of the Progressive Conservative Party Ontario, when all of a

00:19:18.040 sudden, he changed his tune and announced that he was for those carbon taxes. So nothing new there.

00:19:23.400 There were a couple of highlights from the debate that I'll play for you. I think this is sort of

00:19:28.760 a new line of attack that they are levying against Pierre Polyev. So this is going to be Patrick Brown,

00:19:34.920 who accuses Polyev of supporting Pat King. Pat King is a racist, white supremacist guy who sort of tried 0.95

00:19:42.760 to cling on to the trucker convoy. The media really, really gave him an outsized platform and pretended 0.98

00:19:50.200 that he was the leader of the convoy because he was the only guy that they could find saying despicable

00:19:55.160 things. And basically, they wanted the trucker convoy to be a group of stupid racists. They found 1.00

00:20:00.920 one stupid racist and made him a star. And so Patrick Brown is sort of giving credence to the media 1.00

00:20:08.120 narrative lies about the trucker convoy and using it to pile on to Pierre Polyev. So here's what that

00:20:15.160 exchange looked like. Well, on a daily basis, I've been working very, very hard

00:20:20.600 to build our party and to attract new members. I want to build a multicultural party. But there's a 0.99

00:20:27.080 problem. As Mr. Polyev has said, he supports Pat King, who has attacked our immigration system. Mr. Polyev has

00:20:37.400 said, it's important to use Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. How can he actually hope to expand our party when he uses that

00:20:46.520 terminology? People want to build a bigger party, a party that can lead this country. That's not true, Mr. Brown.

00:20:57.160 I rejected Mr. King. I've spoken out against him and against what he said. I said, I've said that openly.

00:21:09.000 I'm open to immigration and to diversity.

00:21:11.560 Okay, so I made this point on the show before, but I will repeat it. This whole line of attack, this whole

00:21:17.400 accusation here is not good for conservatives. And I put the blame on both Patrick Brown and Pierre Polyev

00:21:23.240 for this. So again, Patrick Brown is repeating the lies of the media and giving them credibility, which is not

00:21:28.920 helpful. This idea that white nationalists and conservatives are all intertwined, and that the trucker convoy was

00:21:34.840 really about racism and not about freedom just hurts the credibility of so many people on the right.

00:21:41.720 And conservatives shouldn't be the one bringing that into the fold. So that's on Patrick Brown. I

00:21:47.080 don't like his strategy. I don't like what he's doing here. I think the conservatives should use a loud

00:21:52.040 voice and just say, enough, Patrick Brown. Stop giving the media narratives credibility. Just stop. This

00:21:59.800 isn't true. And then blame also falls, of course, on Pierre Polyev for even allowing these accusations

00:22:07.560 to have oxygen. Like he needs to very firmly, very clearly denounce this idea, say that I never

00:22:15.880 supported Patrick King. I loudly distance himself. And I know he did that in the clip, but I would like

00:22:21.800 to see him be even more fearful and unequivocal in the idea that he would have anything to do with 0.99

00:22:28.760 these stupid racists that are trying to, I don't know, have their 15 minutes of fame or whatever. 0.99

00:22:35.240 Pierre Polyev is absolutely right that this is very much dividing conservatives, and it's unfortunate 1.00

00:22:41.000 to see. Another interesting moment at the debate I thought last night was this moment. So Jean Charest,

00:22:47.320 he's done this in every single debate so far. He accuses Pierre Polyev of supporting the Freedom

00:22:53.960 Convoy and he calls that convoy an illegal blockade. What I think is interesting about this clip is the

00:23:01.000 reaction of the crowd, because you can see the crowd really, really reacts to Jean Charest's accusation.

00:23:07.800 It stirred quite the controversy in the room so much so that you'll see the moderator had to sort of get

00:23:12.280 up and say, order, order, please, please stop, stop. So I'm going to play that clip. Just notice,

00:23:19.000 notice the crowd reaction, because it is really interesting. Here's that clip.

00:23:21.720 It's a bit ironic to hear Mr. Polyev talk about law and order. He's the one who supported

00:23:27.960 an illegal blockade in Ottawa. Remember that. Remember that.

00:23:33.400 You can see Pierre Polyev kind of laughing there because the crowd is booing Jean Charest, but you could

00:24:01.880 also hear that the crowd is cheering. So the crowd is split. Some people in the crowd are very loudly

00:24:07.640 booing Jean Charest. Other people in the crowd are cheering for him. You can hear that they sort of

00:24:11.640 start chanting his name, Charest, Charest. So I think the room is divided. I don't think it's unanimous that

00:24:16.840 everyone there supported the trucker convoy. But just really interesting that in Quebec, in Laval,

00:24:22.600 Quebec, a very French heavy population, that these people, you know, they don't follow the media 0.82

00:24:29.800 narrative that the trucker convoy was a group of racists. You can see that there is a lot of

00:24:34.120 support for the sentiment and the idea, the notion behind the trucker convoy in that room,

00:24:39.800 which I think is really interesting, kind of counter to the media narrative. I think the

00:24:43.000 media narrative is that the trucker convoy was a bunch of rednecks from Western Canada. I don't

00:24:47.240 think that's true. I think that the majority of the people at that convoy were from Quebec

00:24:51.400 and Ontario. And that was why it was such a threat to Justin Trudeau. That's why he wanted to get

00:24:56.040 rid of it ASAP because the trucker convoy was much more popular in Quebec than a lot of these elites

00:25:03.080 feel comfortable with. Okay, final clip I want to show you was this interesting line of attack,

00:25:07.960 which I hadn't heard before. This was new to me. So Pierre Polyev accusing Patrick Brown of breaking

00:25:13.960 the law. He highlights a 2018 Globe and Mail report that alleges that Patrick Brown took money from a

00:25:22.120 candidate for the down payment on a multi-million dollar waterfront home that he bought. So Patrick

00:25:27.800 Brown had originally said the money to buy that home came from his mother. He said that his mom was

00:25:32.200 the one that helped him buy the house. And then records came out that showed that it wasn't actually

00:25:37.160 his mom who helped him buy that house. It was a candidate, one of the candidates that ran under Patrick

00:25:43.880 Brown when he was a leader of the PC party in Ontario, an individual called Jal Johal, who is a paralegal

00:25:51.240 in Brampton, Ontario. Apparently he deposited $375,000 into Patrick Brown's account in June of 2016.

00:26:00.920 This all came out and the ethics watchdog reprimanded Patrick Brown when he was leader

00:26:05.880 of that party for failing to disclose this. He later called it a loan. So really, really interesting

00:26:13.000 in story. You can see in this clip how Pierre Polyev brought this up and how Patrick Brown defended

00:26:20.200 himself. Here's that clip. Mr. Brown, you have no credibility on law and order. You were found

00:26:27.080 guilty of having broken the integrity rules. You've said that the money you used to buy your $2 million

00:26:37.160 home came from your family. But after investigation, we now know that this money came from someone

00:26:43.480 that was a candidate for you. How can you forget where $375,000 comes from, Mr. Brown? You thought it

00:26:57.560 came from your family. But all of a sudden, you realized during the investigation that in fact,

00:27:02.680 the money had come from a candidate. No one believes you when you say that you're in favor of law and order,

00:27:08.680 when you were found guilty yourself of having broken the law by hiding that payment. You're

00:27:16.040 just like Justin Trudeau who hides the gifts people give to him as well and the donations people give to

00:27:22.840 him. Mr. Brown, the only person here who has broken the law, the electional law, is Mr. Polyevre.

00:27:33.560 At the same time, I won't take any lessons from Mr. Polyevre. He's a person who has made secret

00:27:47.000 deals. It's much easier for Polyevre to attack other conservatives. That's his policy. That's his

00:27:54.120 approach, really, isn't it? Okay, so those were some of my favorite parts of the debate. Those were some

00:27:59.080 of the highlights that I could find. And again, you can see how, from a viewer perspective, it was

00:28:03.320 hard to enjoy the debate just because of the weird way that it was translated. And of course,

00:28:08.520 again, the fact that it was in French, a language that most conservatives do not speak. And there

00:28:14.440 was one other element of the debate that really played in. There was an entire section of the

00:28:19.240 debate on Quebec focused on protecting Quebec, giving Quebec its special status, protecting the

00:28:24.440 French language, giving the French language its special status. A lot of the debate was geared towards

00:28:28.920 those questions. So we just saw repeated pandering from the candidates, basically all pledging that

00:28:33.960 they love French, that they want to do more to protect French, they want to do more to ensure

00:28:38.680 that Canadians across the country speak French. They were specifically asked about the appointment

00:28:45.560 of the governor general. The current governor general of Canada doesn't speak French, and that

00:28:49.000 is very controversial in Quebec. So they're basically all cuddled into pledging that they would only

00:28:54.840 appoint French speaking candidates to top positions of the civil service, and they would do more to

00:28:59.400 protect the French language. But you can juxtapose that support and that pandering that we saw from

00:29:05.240 all the candidates when it came to French, with the discussions around Bill 21. So of course, Bill 21 is

00:29:12.760 the bill that prohibits government employees, anyone from prosecutors to police officers to teachers,

00:29:19.160 from wearing religious symbols. So specifically, a headscarf, or a turban, while carrying out their 1.00

00:29:25.320 civic duties. So this is very controversial, federally. In Quebec itself, it's not that

00:29:30.120 controversial. It's actually very popular. Polls show that somewhere between 55 and 70 percent of

00:29:36.040 Quebecers support Bill 21. Whereas the candidates last night, every single one of them opposed Bill 21.

00:29:43.640 They all said that it goes against religious freedom and that religious freedom is a cornerstone

00:29:48.680 of the conservative ideology and the conservative worldview. And so this idea that they're all up

00:29:54.440 there pandering about French language and participating in this French debate and saying

00:29:58.440 that they love Quebec, they're going to do more to protect Quebec. But then the main issue that is

00:30:03.080 really, really popular in Quebec and unpopular among the rest of Canadians, Bill 21, they all came out

00:30:08.840 against it, which again, just shows why conservatives don't win in Quebec, because their values don't

00:30:13.480 align, right? They don't see things the same way as people from Quebec. And I think this

00:30:18.440 issue, Bill 21 illustrates that perfectly, that no matter how much they pander, they're not going

00:30:22.920 to win over people because they don't share the fundamental values that Quebecers look for. And

00:30:28.040 again, I think that's why last night's debate ultimately was just a total waste of time.

00:30:32.840 All right, thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:30:36.200 And for the next thing is, I hope that college changes in the extremeillon in country.

00:30:42.440 That's right.

00:30:44.600 Bye.

00:30:46.760 Bye.

00:30:49.720 Bye.

00:30:52.800 Bye.

00:30:53.680 Bye.

00:30:57.000 Bye.

00:30:57.640 Bye.

00:30:58.840 Bye.

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00:31:00.280 Bye.

00:31:01.560 Bye.

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00:31:04.200 Bye.

00:31:05.000 Bye.

Juno News - May 26, 2022

The French Debate was a total waste of time

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