Juno News - True North Election Night 2021

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00:12:57.580 Hi, we're live. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Candice Malcolm. I'm your host

00:13:20.940 tonight. I'm really excited about this evening, really excited for everything we have planned.

00:13:25.560 And thank you so much for choosing to be with us this evening. Thank you for choosing to tune in to True North. So this evening, we're doing things a little bit differently than previous shows that we've done. So I'm going to walk you through it all right now. So as you can see on your screen, I am joined by my co-host and friend, Andrew Lawton, who is in London, Ontario. And we also have Hamish Marshall, who has joined us as our in-house pollster for True North throughout the duration of this campaign.

00:13:53.700 Hamish is in Toronto. Hamish thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. So here we are it's

00:14:00.300 election night it's finally here I think that this has felt like a quick campaign 30 35 days

00:14:05.240 or 36 days and a lot has changed when we did our live show the evening that the writ was drawn up

00:14:11.700 Andrew you were out in Ottawa you were reporting live for us and the sort of writing on the wall

00:14:17.660 at that point and what everyone the foregone conclusion that everyone was saying was that

00:14:21.960 Justin Trudeau was going to win a majority government that he had called this opportune

00:14:26.980 election, sort of in a Chrétien style, Chrétien sort of known for having the perfect knack

00:14:31.540 for finding that timing when he would be able to, you know, get a bigger share of the vote.

00:14:36.800 And all signs were pointing towards a Trudeau majority. Well, we have seen a spectacular fall

00:14:43.040 from grace by those same liberals, the hubris, the arrogance that critics of Trudeau have seen

00:14:50.260 all along i think became evident to canadians in plunging the country into a pandemic election

00:14:57.540 and now here we are i mean it's it's uh too close to call the pollsters are saying and uh we don't

00:15:03.700 have a clear we don't have a clear picture of what what's going to happen we don't even know if we're

00:15:07.620 going to learn the uh outcome tonight we don't know if it's going to be like the us election

00:15:13.540 that we saw last year where it took what 10 days to to finally uh declare a winner so a lot has

00:15:19.380 changed uh we can we can go through all of that we can recant um you know the the highs and lows

00:15:24.740 i think there were a lot of lows throughout this campaign um some great highs for us here at true

00:15:30.500 north um but you know let's uh let's just dive right into it so andrew uh what are what are you

00:15:36.740 uh what are you seeing uh you've traveled across the entire country i think you've been to eight

00:15:41.060 out of the ten provinces uh throughout this campaign uh what what's sort of sticking out

00:15:46.100 to you what what do you think has been the major takeaway the major theme of this election and what

00:15:49.940 was the ballot question today there have been a few i think one of the big stories that the

00:15:55.080 mainstream media has started to talk about in the last week has been that the ppc isn't going to

00:16:00.760 just be that 1.6 minor annoyance that it was in 2019 that the ppc actually could be a bit of a

00:16:08.140 game changer here and we're going to start to see some of the results in the areas that the ppc have

00:16:13.160 been targeting once the main volley of poll closures happens at 9 30. I think going back

00:16:19.120 to that very launch of the campaign though you're right I mean Justin Trudeau was the only one in

00:16:23.720 control of when this election was he could have picked any point and he ended up picking it just

00:16:29.120 as this fourth wave was picking up as the crisis in Afghanistan was picking up and at a time when

00:16:34.980 there wasn't really an imminent reason for why and that idea of this is an unnecessary election

00:16:40.740 was really a consistent conservative message from the start of the campaign right up until

00:16:46.380 yesterday. And in fact, probably today. And whether that's something that resonates with

00:16:50.400 Canadians, we don't yet know. But a lot of people certainly have asked, and I've been hearing it

00:16:55.800 from people that aren't particularly political for the last 36 days of, you know, why are we

00:17:00.680 having an election again? What's the point of all of this? And that question, I think, gets more

00:17:04.740 acute when people tune in and see poll numbers that show the liberals could be in almost an

00:17:09.900 identical situation to where they were before the dissolution of Parliament. Absolutely. Well,

00:17:15.820 before we get to you, Hamish, and sorry to keep you waiting, but we're going to do a quick

00:17:19.780 introduction of some of our reporters that we have in the field tonight. So we're really excited to

00:17:25.300 have two of our reporters out on the ground, ready to report, ready to share stories, to get scoops,

00:17:32.540 to do interviews and so we'll start by heading over to Oshawa where our own Sue Ann Levy is

00:17:40.140 where our own Sue Ann Levy is set up I believe she's joining us now and uh if she's here I think

00:17:49.120 we're having some uh some technical difficulties getting to Sue Ann so I think we're actually

00:17:53.740 going to go out to Saskatoon where we have Harrison Faulkner standing by at the People's

00:17:59.200 party headquarters yeah hey guys i'm uh here outside of the hotel where we were planning to

00:18:05.040 be uh for the night but everything seems to have quickly moved last minute to this outdoor venue

00:18:09.560 and so i'm going to be stationed here for uh pretty much most of the night maxine bernier

00:18:14.400 is going to be giving a speech i think a lot of other ppc officials are going to be giving a speech

00:18:17.900 behind me so this is where i'll be for the night and uh yeah i'll be on the ground i have an

00:18:23.180 exclusive interview with maxine bernier coming up later tonight and a couple of other interviews

00:18:27.160 with some ppc candidates but uh all things uh all things considered here people are pretty

00:18:33.000 optimistic about their chances uh for tonight and about how how things are going to shape up for the

00:18:37.800 ppc in terms of their growth that's great well we're really excited to have you out in saskatoon

00:18:43.320 harrison do you know uh what's expected for the evening out there are you uh do you know how many

00:18:47.800 people are going to be there how many candidates that the leaders are obviously out there what

00:18:51.320 what are they sort of telling you about what's planned yeah so what i've heard is uh people are

00:18:56.440 are going to try and file in at around 7 here, which is, I believe, in around 20 minutes or so.

00:19:02.740 And I think the idea is that things are going to happen here all the way until 11 p.m.

00:19:07.440 Mountain Time. So I would imagine it's pretty empty right now, but I know people are going to

00:19:12.560 fill in. There's going to be a feed behind me, behind my other shoulder there. And that's kind

00:19:17.800 of the plan for the night. If things get really cold, though, they do have a venue indoors,

00:19:21.600 which is just across the street from here so we may end up going indoors uh but from what i hear

00:19:27.200 from the ppc people on the ground uh they really want to try and do as much as they can from out

00:19:32.400 here uh out here at their outdoor venue and i have to actually make a point about that because

00:19:37.440 originally when i was covering the ppc campaign on the road which i did as well as the conservative

00:19:42.720 campaign and some other campaigns they were telling me that they were planning on doing this

00:19:47.200 in alberta which is an area they've certainly been targeting and when alberta reintroduced a

00:19:52.240 mask mandate that was one of the reasons they moved it to saskatchewan and then just last week

00:19:57.200 saskatchewan followed suit and introduced a mask mandate as well is that i have to ask

00:20:01.520 is that why you're outside uh it definitely is a factor um they the hotel mandated mass on the 17th

00:20:09.440 i think that's province wide as well so uh yeah it does seem to be a little last minute in terms of

00:20:14.800 this setup but i have heard that uh the main reason we want to be out here is to avoid having

00:20:19.760 to wear masks well there you go and the ppc will really go to great length to avoid uh forcing

00:20:28.080 their supporters to do something that they don't want to do so hey at least they're uh at least

00:20:32.160 they're being consistent with their principles over there uh thank you so much harrison we'll be

00:20:35.840 coming through to you throughout the night to get updates and to see uh what's going on at ppc

00:20:41.360 uh headquarters or whatever you want to call it headquarters or the victory party i don't know if

00:20:45.680 it's going to be a victory party but they're uh we'll we'll keep going to you for that thank you

00:20:51.040 yeah so hamish i think that the ppc really has been one of the big stories of this campaign i

00:20:57.760 mean it's interesting even now when when you're when i'm reading articles about them that feature

00:21:02.880 them that they still sometimes call the far-right party or fringe party but you know watching this

00:21:08.560 campaign and seeing what has unfolded and how Bernie has really managed to capture

00:21:13.600 a huge swath of the Canadian public and not just people as media says on the fringe far right or

00:21:19.040 whatever. What do you make of the rise of the PPC? Has it caught you by surprise? And what do

00:21:26.000 you think the outcome is going to be with them tonight? Well, the PPC is a different animal this

00:21:31.520 time than it was last time. Last time was very much focused on immigration issues. Almost all

00:21:35.920 All their votes were pulled from conservatives.

00:21:37.760 Now it's taking a whole bunch of freedom issues and a whole bunch of issues around mandatory vaccines.

00:21:44.740 And we're ending up in a situation that they're drawing votes, certainly from conservatives, and probably more from conservatives than any other parties, but also from people who don't vote, from liberals, from New Year's, even from Greens.

00:21:55.140 So it's a bit of a different beast this time.

00:21:57.700 And that actually makes how well they're going to do very difficult to predict.

00:22:01.620 Polls closed in Atlantic Canada or in Maritimes an hour ago,

00:22:05.320 in Newfoundland an hour and a half ago,

00:22:06.940 and we're already seeing some results coming in.

00:22:09.300 And the PPCs, you know, it depends on the riding,

00:22:11.540 but getting 4% or 5% in a lot of these seats,

00:22:13.900 which is higher than I think people would have expected

00:22:16.920 in certain parts of Atlantic Canada.

00:22:20.640 Can we talk about these Atlantic numbers for a moment here?

00:22:23.840 And I know it's early.

00:22:25.220 One riding in particular, I think, 1.00

00:22:26.940 only has about half the poles reporting here,

00:22:29.000 which is long-range mountains.

00:22:30.320 This is an area that hasn't gone conservative for, I think 1974 was the last.

00:22:35.380 And I only know that because I was with the conservative campaign when Aaron O'Toole

00:22:39.080 went to Cornerbrook, Newfoundland, and everyone was asking the why.

00:22:42.580 But just looking at some of these Newfoundland and Labrador numbers, conservatives seem to

00:22:47.320 be neck and neck with the liberals.

00:22:49.180 And I'm wondering if you can explain a little bit about what's happening here and also whether

00:22:53.180 this is likely to keep going or if this just has to do with which polls tend to report

00:22:57.540 early.

00:22:58.580 Well, I mean, it's a little bit of that.

00:22:59.760 which polls tend to report early.

00:23:01.700 And the thing about Newfoundland,

00:23:02.940 especially in some of the smaller communities,

00:23:04.760 you get communities that are very much

00:23:06.320 one way or the other.

00:23:07.360 So you can get communities

00:23:08.100 that are very conservative, very liberal.

00:23:10.080 And all those votes come in

00:23:11.580 and it can create a trend

00:23:12.680 that doesn't hold up across the whole riding.

00:23:14.680 It looks like Long Range Mountain

00:23:15.900 is going to end up back with the Liberals.

00:23:18.160 You know, it's a fascinating story.

00:23:19.660 In the last election,

00:23:21.000 conservatives ran at eight

00:23:21.800 who only visited the riding once.

00:23:23.300 He was from Nova Scotia.

00:23:24.180 He wasn't, they couldn't find a candidate there.

00:23:25.960 And he did very, very well.

00:23:27.500 He got 35 or 36% of the votes.

00:23:29.560 So now they've got a local candidate, they're going hard for the seat.

00:23:32.900 I think that one's going to be hard for them to take by a look of it.

00:23:35.020 The seat in Newfoundland that they're talking the most about right now is the central seat that the Costa Bay central Notre Dame seat,

00:23:45.760 where the Conservative right now is leading by about six percent, about a thousand votes.

00:23:50.500 We'll see how that if that holds up across the rest of the night.

00:23:53.360 But it's looking pretty good.

00:23:54.560 I know people at Conservative Party headquarters were optimistic of about, say, two seats in Newfoundland, that one, and Bonavista.

00:24:03.240 I'm not sure how Bonavista is going to go, but right now it's looking like that central Coast of Bays seat could very well go Conservative and pick up in Newfoundland, which I don't think anybody was predicting when this campaign began.

00:24:15.180 So one thing I'm sort of wondering, and if you go by what Elections Canada is saying, that we might not even know the winner of the election tonight, that it could take them entire week to go through the mail-in ballots.

00:24:28.260 I think there's something like a million mail-in ballots, something like five million people who cast their vote early.

00:24:34.460 So I don't know if either of you have an idea at this point, you know, if it's too close to call, if a lot of these ridings are neck and neck, as the polls are predicting, as it seems is already playing out with these results that are coming in.

00:24:49.020 Is it possible that we're not going to know the winner and not going to know the prime minister tonight?

00:24:54.000 Well, often the advanced polls don't change things dramatically.

00:24:57.520 You know, it used to be the case that one party would often win the advanced polls by a significant margin.

00:25:02.700 and they would encourage all their supporters

00:25:04.600 to go vote early.

00:25:05.700 Now all parties do that, and advanced polls

00:25:08.520 are just much, much more mainstream.

00:25:10.020 So the chances that a seat that isn't very, very close

00:25:15.180 is swung by the advanced polls is becoming less and less likely.

00:25:19.380 But that said, if at the end of the night

00:25:21.200 there still haven't counted the advanced polls,

00:25:23.220 and in some cases large numbers of mail-in ballots,

00:25:26.320 especially in Vancouver Island where there's huge numbers

00:25:28.320 of mail-in ballots have been applied for,

00:25:32.280 we could say if a part of a seat's within a thousand votes or within 500 votes that's the

00:25:36.280 sort of thing that can be overcome but if it's within you know if it's a 2 000 vote margin or

00:25:41.160 something i don't think that's going to be be changed by any of these later ballots just taking

00:25:46.040 a look at nova scotia and new brunswick are you seeing any surprises there so far i know

00:25:51.080 nova scotia has not been a good one for conservatives the last couple of elections i

00:25:55.720 know new brunswick has been a bit of a bright spot for conservatives and it looks like they're

00:25:59.400 holding on to i think john williams seat most notably as well as uh i forget who's in it now

00:26:04.840 but uh to big mac to quack but but any surprises there so far yeah i mean well as you said richard

00:26:09.640 bragdon uh and tobik mac to clack has won again uh which is less of a surprise the big the biggest

00:26:15.560 surprise uh for me is uh the south shore saint margaret seat you know conservatives only lost

00:26:21.240 the cumberland culture cumberland colchester by one percent last time they uh lost sydney victoria

00:26:27.000 by not very much. Both those seats, they're leading right now by under 1,000 votes. They

00:26:32.580 may or may not hold them through to the end, but they're going to be tight. But South Shore St.

00:26:37.120 Margaris, which I don't think was on anybody's expected pickup list, we're seeing the conservatives

00:26:41.480 right now are leading by 878 votes. About a quarter of the polls are in. So that's pretty

00:26:47.920 unexpected, and I don't think it was on anybody's radar. And it's interesting because people

00:26:55.200 generally thought new brunswick was going to be a brighter spot you're right it was a brighter

00:26:58.000 spot in the past people are talking about seats like st john ross say and miramichi grand lake

00:27:02.960 uh or even fredericton and right now the conservatives are just a little bit ahead

00:27:06.480 in fredericton uh but miramichi and and st john we're not seeing uh the leads they're still very

00:27:12.160 close but it's uh it's going to be a little more a little more complicated so that south shore

00:27:17.200 seat's very exciting in in uh in nova scotia that's great well hamish we're going to keep

00:27:22.400 you with us all night you're going to be our uh election desk uh you know analysts letting us know

00:27:28.480 who's won the seats and filling us in on exactly what the polls or what the what the results are

00:27:33.360 uh as as they come in so we really appreciate that i want to take a step back and talk a little

00:27:39.520 bit about the campaign more broadly as i mentioned off the top i think that like if i were justin

00:27:45.360 trudeau i would deeply regret calling this election in the first place i think it was an absolute

00:27:50.400 huge blunder that may just cost him his entire political career just given that we're not out

00:27:56.160 of this pandemic yet we're still kind of in the midst of it if you look at what's happening over

00:28:00.960 in alberta um the the liberal voters we know are the ones who care the most about covet and so

00:28:06.560 they're going to be the ones that are the most put off by this whole uh you know covet election

00:28:12.080 campaign uh when you when you look back at the last parliament and you had a liberal minority

00:28:17.760 that was in no threat whatsoever. You had the opposition leaders, both Jagmeet Singh of the NDP

00:28:22.960 and Aaron Mitchell of the Conservatives, urging him not to call an election. You had the NDP

00:28:26.880 basically propping up the Liberals' progressive agenda, going along with almost everything that

00:28:32.480 they wanted, if not making them go even more progressive and even more left. When you look

00:28:37.280 back at that situation, it looks incredibly stable compared to what we have today. And the country

00:28:42.880 looked a lot more united compared to what we have today. I think that there were a lot

00:28:46.880 of fractures that were right below the surface that trudeau just didn't see and rather than

00:28:52.640 you know at a time like this when we have spent a year and a half in basically in lockdown and

00:28:57.440 varying degrees of lockdown when we have had people really a lot of people just completely

00:29:05.280 lose everything that they have lose their business lose their livelihood lose their home lose

00:29:09.520 everything that they have while other people have sort of barely noticed it maybe even benefited

00:29:14.480 from the pandemic. You sort of compare these two. And I think that some of these issues were

00:29:21.340 really hidden in plain sight. And the fact that all of the parties overlooked them, all the parties

00:29:26.020 except for Maxine Bernier and the People's Party, the only party that was really out there talking

00:29:30.360 about freedom, talking about anti-lockdowns, talking about enough is enough. We need to learn

00:29:35.100 to live with COVID. And the fact that they got so demonized by the media, I think that there's just

00:29:39.500 so many divisions in this country.

00:29:41.200 Andrew, I remember after the last election in 2019,

00:29:44.860 talking with you about how Canada just feels

00:29:48.040 more divided than ever.

00:29:49.020 And that was because we had this sort of surge

00:29:51.320 of the bloc in Quebec that came out and came back.

00:29:55.920 We had a huge majority of conservative victories

00:29:59.740 across the prairies.

00:30:01.100 And because of that, we had this huge wave

00:30:03.200 of Alberta separatism and Western separation

00:30:05.440 I hadn't seen ever, probably more so

00:30:08.820 than it had been in decades.

00:30:10.260 And it seemed at that point

00:30:11.840 that the country was really, truly divided.

00:30:13.780 And now I look back at 2019,

00:30:16.320 and I think, wow, that was a country

00:30:18.700 that was much more united,

00:30:19.740 that the divisions that have come out in society

00:30:22.800 in the last five weeks,

00:30:24.280 and really they had come out over the last 18 months,

00:30:27.040 we just didn't really see them as much as today.

00:30:29.060 It seems like they're even split within the parties.

00:30:32.200 You see the Green Party's fractures

00:30:34.840 are really out in the open and we all see it.

00:30:36.760 But I think that there are fractures

00:30:38.160 in all of the parties. I think that there are probably a lot of people in the Liberal

00:30:41.920 tent that are just angry at Trudeau for causing this election, just given where we are today.

00:30:47.660 A lot of people in the Liberal camp that are more worried about COVID than anyone else

00:30:52.160 in the country, and they probably do fear a fourth wave and having people go out, go

00:30:56.460 door knocking, go out to the polls today, worried about infections and spreading. Obviously,

00:31:01.520 there are huge divides in the Conservative Party. You can see a lot of them play out

00:31:06.220 the comment sections uh here at true north you know we have staunch conservative voters we have

00:31:11.260 staunch ppc people that are really really angry at erin o'toole and the conservative movement

00:31:16.540 uh that don't feel like that party really represents them anymore or that the conservatives

00:31:20.780 didn't do anything to try to uh court the base try to court the libertarians back into the party

00:31:25.660 they didn't really have a message of freedom um of individual liberty and individual responsibility

00:31:31.260 that that wasn't really on the table um in this campaign so i i see not not only a country divided

00:31:37.340 east west or you know quebec versus alberta liberal versus conservative i see divisions

00:31:42.860 across a lot of lines and and sort of throughout society it's sad i worry about whoever wins this

00:31:48.860 election whoever becomes prime minister is going to have a much more difficult job and and that's

00:31:53.180 particularly if we go back to the exact same situation that we had five weeks ago which is

00:31:59.580 sort of what it's looking like is going to be a liberal minority, whether that's reduced or

00:32:03.620 increased, it doesn't really matter. I think that if we walk away from this whole thing

00:32:07.420 with a liberal minority government, it's bad for Trudeau, but it's bad for the whole country.

00:32:13.780 Yeah, and I think you're right about how the lines have been redrawn in a way that isn't the

00:32:18.960 traditional left-right line on the pandemic in particular. I mean, I've had a lot of people I

00:32:24.140 know on the left that really started to align with a lot of the anti-mask mandate, anti-lockdown

00:32:30.040 rhetoric they were getting from some politicians. And this is why just to, we're not going to be

00:32:34.560 talking about the PPC all night, but I think they're an interesting story here. And a lot of

00:32:38.940 the PPC support anecdotally that I encountered just covering the party was coming from people

00:32:44.540 that were not traditional Conservative Party of Canada voters. And I think that's important to

00:32:49.280 take into consideration when we're talking about any sort of assertions of vote splitting. These

00:32:53.720 They're not votes that would have necessarily gone to Aaron O'Toole were it not for the

00:32:58.320 PPC, because there are a lot of people on the left that sort of resonate with not mandatory

00:33:03.780 vaccines.

00:33:04.440 A lot of people that resonate with, hey, I don't like my business has been shut down.

00:33:08.860 And you mentioned something I think very important in this, which is that Justin Trudeau is the

00:33:13.900 guy that's been telling us why we need to hunker down and worry about the fourth wave.

00:33:17.800 So when he's the one that comes out and says it's safe to have an election, he never actually

00:33:22.400 said that, but when he implies that, it's his own base that's like, well, hang on. And it interestingly

00:33:28.340 forced Aaron O'Toole to go against where a lot of his base was. And I talked about this when the

00:33:33.380 election was called and Aaron O'Toole really committed to that. This is an irresponsible,

00:33:37.780 dangerous election narrative. I said, the problem with that is that conservatives have been the one

00:33:42.280 saying, hang on, we don't want to be paranoid. We don't want to be panicked. So when Aaron O'Toole

00:33:46.820 has to sort of adopt that it's unsafe, it's dangerous, it's threatening, there's a fourth

00:33:52.420 wave. That sort of divides him and his base in a way that I think was important to pay attention to.

00:33:59.440 But it also hurt Justin Trudeau in the same way, because we know there were a lot of

00:34:03.340 alarmists within the liberal camp that have been certainly contributing to that idea.

00:34:08.140 And I saw a couple of exit poll type things just the other day that were saying conservatives were

00:34:13.540 more likely to vote in the advance polls and Liberals and NDPers were far more likely to vote

00:34:18.560 by mail. Now, what that means as far as the efficiency of the votes, we can certainly talk

00:34:23.500 about later on with Hamish. But I do think it is interesting that the people most likely to avail

00:34:28.540 themselves of mail-in ballots were people on the left. And you can sort of extrapolate from that

00:34:33.560 potentially just an organizational aspect of how the Liberals and the NDP were getting out their

00:34:38.980 vote, but also perhaps about where they are about comfort level in waiting in a line.

00:34:44.260 And we've been seeing footage today to talk about this for a moment of very, very long

00:34:48.620 lines at polling stations, a phenomenon we're not used to seeing in Canada that we always

00:34:53.620 sort of on U.S. election days see on CNN or Fox and be like, wow, you know, I couldn't

00:34:57.940 imagine having to wait for hours to vote.

00:35:00.260 And at a certain point, voter enthusiasm comes out.

00:35:03.500 How many of these people that were saying, yeah, I'll go and do my civic duty are prepared

00:35:07.440 to do that if it means standing in line for an hour or two hours? Well, I guess we will find

00:35:13.580 out. Hamish, you were telling me on my show, I think it was earlier today or maybe it was last

00:35:18.080 week. It's all kind of blurring together at this point. But we're talking about how, you know,

00:35:24.920 the long lines that we're seeing at campaign stations don't really convert into necessarily

00:35:33.360 high voter turnout. In fact, there's some signs that say that this might be one of the lower

00:35:37.900 voter turnout elections that we've had recently. And again, it sort of makes sense just given that

00:35:43.200 I don't really know what the ballot box question is. And I say that I don't mean to sound too much

00:35:48.340 like an insider, but when you talk about the ballot box question, it's like, what is the

00:35:52.000 motivating thing that people are going out to vote for? Are they really sick and tired of Trudeau?

00:35:56.540 Well, a lot of people are, but clearly there's a whole other half of the country that maybe

00:36:01.240 they're indifferent to him or they don't mind the guy um you know we're not really seeing that that

00:36:05.720 that big um movement to to move on from trudeau uh it sort of just seems either that the country

00:36:10.600 is completely split or enough people are you know indifferent um to it uh what what do you think we

00:36:17.560 can make of the uh uh of all of them basically well i mean a couple of things on the lineups

00:36:24.360 i certainly saw lineups today that at polling stations that i've lived near for years and not

00:36:28.760 seen lineups before but there's a couple of things happening one is depending on the province

00:36:34.120 there's increased covid restrictions they're not they're letting fewer people into the buildings

00:36:37.480 at a time so it pushes the lineups that normally would be inside you know the community center gym

00:36:42.200 or something and uh and and put it um and put them you know out onto the streets the lineups

00:36:49.480 are more visible the other thing that's happened is that a lot of school boards have said that

00:36:53.480 schools can't, aren't willing to host polling stations, which traditionally, of course,

00:37:02.000 we all know, we all probably voted in a school gym at some point or another. And a lot of school

00:37:05.800 boards said because of COVID, we're not going to have polling stations, which means that there's

00:37:09.440 more and more ballot boxes at single polling locations, which again, means more people in

00:37:16.220 one location, and they're going to spill out on the street. So just because it's spilled out on

00:37:20.140 street more it doesn't necessarily mean there's higher turnout elections canada's cagey with

00:37:24.300 their estimates how many people voted uh they don't want to presuppose these things seems like

00:37:29.580 they think there's something like 17 point something million people are going to vote i

00:37:33.420 think what 18.3 million voted last time 18.2 million something like that so it looks like a

00:37:38.620 little bit a little a little bit less which of course in percentage terms is lower because even

00:37:42.140 despite the pandemic the population of the country has increased a little bit uh in the last two

00:37:46.220 years. So I suspect we're going to see turnout down a bit, but not, you know, not catastrophically

00:37:51.940 turnout. It's not going to be 55% or something. It's still going to be somewhere in the mid to

00:37:57.720 low 60s. Generally speaking, when an opposition party surges to victory, you see turnout increase.

00:38:05.240 People who normally don't vote, who are pissed off or mad about something, come out and vote.

00:38:09.100 We don't seem to see any indications of that. Maybe some liberals are staying at home. Maybe

00:38:13.540 certainly in Atlantic Canada it looks like it's happening in a few places but on the other hand

00:38:17.760 I think this is going to be a very very what I would call a real patch recollection that the

00:38:23.280 trends are not what you would expect that we already discussed how in Nova Scotia and New

00:38:28.060 Brunswick we have unexpected trends happening that don't align with each other usually you can say

00:38:33.120 if this seat's going conservative that means these other seats are going to have conservative in the

00:38:37.200 same region that doesn't seem to be holding up we're going to be at a much more patchwork

00:38:41.000 defined by local candidates and what's happening in individual areas. So I think this election

00:38:47.940 is going to sort of defy a lot of trends and both conservatives and liberals are going to win seats

00:38:52.320 that people didn't expect them to and lose seats they didn't expect them to, no matter what the

00:38:56.580 total count is. So it's going to be very interesting to see. One of the things I thought

00:39:02.420 was a little amusing was a lot of people on social media were sort of sharing, trying to

00:39:06.640 like show how outrageous it was how long some of the lines were but of course you know we have

00:39:11.040 social distancing so everyone's spread out like 10 feet apart down on the side it's like oh my

00:39:15.220 goodness the the line is down the street it's like there's like eight people in front of me

00:39:19.500 yeah the line starts in the next riding over actually it's silly all right so i i think we

00:39:27.180 might be able to get to sue and levy she is in oshawa i understand that she might be available

00:39:32.540 to join us. She's at the Conservative Party Erin O'Toole headquarters tonight, calling it their

00:39:40.420 victory party. We're going to try to go to her. So if we have Sue Ann online, there we go. Hi,

00:39:46.340 Sue Ann. Thank you so much for joining us. Oh, Sue Ann, I think you might be muted.

00:39:58.780 I don't know if it's just me. I can't hear Sue Ann. I can see you, Sue Ann.

00:40:02.540 No, we're not getting your audio, Sue-Ann.

00:40:04.720 So perhaps we can get you off mute there.

00:40:08.360 Let's try one more time. 1.00

00:40:11.420 Sue-Ann was having a connection issue. 1.00

00:40:13.720 She's inside the Conservative Party where they're having a victory party.

00:40:19.220 It looked like it was a hockey arena or something.

00:40:20.940 I'm not familiar with Oshawa.

00:40:22.500 I might have been there once in my life.

00:40:23.620 Yeah, it's home of the Oshawa Generals, I'm told,

00:40:25.880 which is apparently a popular local hockey team.

00:40:29.000 But we're we're we're going to get back to Sue Ann in a moment when we can at the Conservative Victory Party for sure.

00:40:35.740 Yeah, it looked like a cool venue. We were we were live with Sue Ann a little earlier and she's she's set up.

00:40:40.560 They have the bleachers and the stage and everything set up.

00:40:43.160 So should should be a big, big location if they if they need it.

00:40:48.160 And we'll try to go to Sue Ann throughout the evening.

00:40:50.980 Hopefully we can figure out her audio and everything.

00:40:53.340 But we do have our own Sue Ann Levy on the ground in Oshawa at the Conservative Party headquarters.

00:40:57.820 And then we have our own Harrison Faulkner, who is out in Saskatoon at the People's Party headquarters tonight.

00:41:04.060 And we'll be going to both of them throughout the evening.

00:41:06.560 We also have Hamish Marshall here, who is running our decision desk, and he's joined to North as a pollster.

00:41:12.600 Folks who aren't familiar with Hamish, he has been around conservative politics for a very, very long time.

00:41:18.180 He was the pollster to Prime Minister Harper back in the day.

00:41:21.380 He ran Andrew Scheer's election campaign back in 2019.

00:41:27.820 and we're delighted to have him with us.

00:41:30.660 And then we also have our own Andrew Lawton,

00:41:32.620 senior correspondent, senior fellow

00:41:34.020 who has traveled across the entire country

00:41:36.460 throughout this campaign to bring you reports,

00:41:40.140 tell you the other side of the story,

00:41:41.160 really done a tremendous job.

00:41:43.260 So thank you for that, Andrew.

00:41:45.580 I wanna walk through some of the potential scenarios here.

00:41:49.760 Like I said, going into the election,

00:41:52.000 everyone thought that Justin Trudeau

00:41:53.620 was going to get a majority.

00:41:55.080 That was just sort of inevitable.

00:41:56.540 People thought, OK, he's riding high off this post-COVID lull.

00:42:01.740 People are just so happy that we've had this summer where everyone got vaccinated and you're allowed to go outside again.

00:42:07.600 Restaurants are opening up. Everything is sort of loosening.

00:42:10.640 And the sort of conventional wisdom of sort of political insiders was that Canadians would reward Trudeau with a majority government.

00:42:18.880 And that's what he wanted. So sort of callously called this election campaign.

00:42:22.580 And like I said, it has truly backfired on him.

00:42:24.960 And there is, I mean, maybe the polls will completely come out the other end and Trudeau

00:42:29.940 will come away with majority government tonight.

00:42:32.120 But I think that the odds of that happening are incredibly low at this point, that the

00:42:36.000 sort of greatest statistical outcome seems to be that Trudeau will walk away with pretty

00:42:42.820 much the exact same scenario as he had going into the selection of minority liberal government,

00:42:47.260 or it could flip to a conservative minority, which I think would be terrible for Trudeau.

00:42:54.040 So I don't think that we're likely to get a liberal majority.

00:42:58.280 Thank goodness.

00:42:59.000 We dodged a bullet on that.

00:43:00.840 And I'll say that for all Canadians.

00:43:02.900 I think that if Justin Trudeau had won a majority government, it would have been a huge, huge loss for the country.

00:43:10.160 Really, I can't imagine rewarding someone like that with another four years.

00:43:15.880 interestingly just today uh we we saw another picture unearth itself of justin trudeau our

00:43:22.280 prime minister once again wearing black face wearing black cartoon makeup like he used to

00:43:27.320 love to do and that was sort of spot splattered all over social media which is an interesting

00:43:32.040 thing uh embarrassing for the prime minister on the day that canadians are going to the poll to 0.72

00:43:35.880 see another image of him dressed up like a total clown that he is and uh what he had his tongue 0.88

00:43:42.280 sticking out. I think this was at the same West Point Grey Academy Gala. But it is so telling

00:43:46.960 because in the background, you can see two gentlemen wearing tuxedos and just sort of

00:43:51.720 looking at him like, what is he doing? And then there's Justin Trudeau in the foreground

00:43:54.940 with his tongue out. It's really a remarkable picture. But anyways, I don't think that Trudeau

00:43:59.760 will win that majority. And I think that Canadians dodged a bullet on that. Now, I think the

00:44:04.380 interesting thing will happen if the Liberals get another minority government, because again,

00:44:10.660 a liberal minority is basically a loss for Justin Trudeau. If Justin Trudeau gets that minority

00:44:16.380 government, he's lost. The whole gambit, the whole idea of him calling this election campaign

00:44:20.640 was to get a majority government. So if he doesn't get that, presumably he's lost. He's lost. And I

00:44:26.140 think that that is completely reasonable to say that a loss, a liberal minority is a loss for

00:44:31.380 Trudeau. It could also be a loss for Aaron O'Toole though. And I think that if Aaron O'Toole walks

00:44:37.080 away tonight with fewer seats than the conservatives had in 2019 or with fewer share a smaller share of

00:44:43.720 the popular vote um than than what the conservatives got in 2019 it will be a loss for for erin o'toole

00:44:49.640 just given especially given how he served he performed very well in his campaign he can talk

00:44:54.600 a little bit about his strategy but he he basically presented himself as a moderate he skillfully

00:45:00.760 avoided a lot of the traps that the liberals set for him throughout the campaign and he appealed

00:45:06.120 to a lot of Canadians that are sort of center of the road centrist. So he ran a very centrist

00:45:10.440 campaign as a moderate, but it wasn't that long ago, a week or two ago, where he was four or five

00:45:16.700 points up in the polls. So I think if he loses tonight, and especially if he loses with a

00:45:22.200 smaller share, then that will be a loss for Erno Toole. Obviously, if the Conservatives walk away

00:45:28.760 with any kind of a majority or minority government, if they win the most seats, that'll be a huge loss

00:45:34.840 trudeau and he'll probably have to resign i don't know if he will he should trudeau is is not known

00:45:40.600 for um you know being very uh self-aware or or um humble um but but really if if he doesn't walk

00:45:48.120 away with the most um seats he he should resign and obviously if there's a conservative majority

00:45:53.720 which i don't know if that is possible but i guess anything is possible one of the other things i

00:45:59.000 I want to say is for Erin O'Toole to not make any effort throughout the campaign to appeal to some

00:46:05.880 of the anti-lockdown people, some of the people who joined the People's Party, some people were

00:46:11.420 already at the People's Party. I think probably a lot of people who are sort of more in the base

00:46:16.120 of the Conservative camp on the sort of true blue side of things, that they may have left the

00:46:21.480 Conservative Party during this campaign. They didn't really see a lot being offered to them.

00:46:25.280 they didn't really feel like the leader was appealing to them. Maybe they were a part of

00:46:30.600 the people who just really opposed lockdowns. And, you know, having the prime minister call them,

00:46:37.320 you know, anti-vaxxers and anti-science and racist and misogynistic and all the things that

00:46:41.800 the prime minister does, that's sort of come to be expected. But I think from Aaron O'Toole and

00:46:47.140 the conservatives to sort of parrot some of those lines, to talk also about vaccine mandates and

00:46:53.320 mandatory vaccines and to sort of follow the liberals and the media down that path was truly

00:46:58.840 disappointing. And I think that if we see an election result tonight where the conservative

00:47:04.840 vote plus the PPC vote is more than the liberal vote, I think that that will also be a loss for

00:47:10.980 Aaron O'Toole. And that's something that he will have to explain himself to. So I'm curious, Andrew,

00:47:16.960 what you think at this point. What looks like a good night if you're Aaron O'Toole?

00:47:24.020 Well, I mean, I take this old fashioned view that a win is a win and a loss is a loss. And

00:47:28.480 I'm certain that if it comes to having to defend himself against the knives coming out internally

00:47:34.260 in the party, the Conservatives may spin whatever happens as well. You know, we increased our seat

00:47:40.340 count. But I think if they don't take Justin Trudeau out, that is a loss for the Conservatives.

00:47:45.620 And I'm happy to chat about this, but it does sound like we have Sue Ann Levy at conservative headquarters who maybe can give us a bit of a sense of what the mood is on the ground there.

00:47:55.480 I just if it's working, I don't want to lose it. So perhaps we can throw to Sue Ann there. Sue Ann, how are things in Oshawa?

00:48:08.100 I'm not hearing her audio. I may have spoken too soon.

00:48:11.360 sorry sue and we'll we'll keep trying with you but uh the consolation prize is me finishing the

00:48:17.700 answer to the to the question but but no and in all fairness look this was a winnable election

00:48:22.820 for the conservatives you had a liberal campaign that really didn't seem to ever launch we were

00:48:28.460 never quite in majority territory and and i'm not uh you know giving a eulogy before the campaign's

00:48:34.360 over because look look we're seeing in atlantic canada some strong showings for the conservatives

00:48:39.540 I think the Conservatives could still win at this point, but I also don't want to go down this road

00:48:44.320 of saying that a loss is actually a win. And earlier on, there was a bit of a controversy

00:48:49.060 about that. Waleed Solomon, who's the chair of the Conservative campaign, had said to the Toronto

00:48:54.520 Star that if Justin Trudeau gets a minority, that's a win. And then later on Twitter, he said

00:49:00.340 that was taken out of context. A lot of people were not happy to see it. I don't know what the

00:49:04.520 appropriate context was. And just on an aside here, I've seen some reports online that I want

00:49:10.320 to share about here. Apparently Elections Canada has actually given some results out before polls

00:49:16.200 closed in particular ridings. It looks like one in Quebec in particular. So I don't know if this

00:49:21.420 is a technical glitch or not, and not just one in Quebec, but I'm also, if I zoom in here, seeing one

00:49:27.160 in Brampton as well. So for whatever reason, we have two ridings that Elections Canada has released

00:49:32.700 some data on a bit prematurely. Perhaps Hamish can weigh in on that. But no, the long and short

00:49:39.340 of it, Candace, is that I think a loss is a loss and a win is a win for the Conservatives.

00:49:45.380 Yeah, I don't know. The Brampton one is clearly a mistake, and it's entirely possible their data

00:49:50.160 feed is just to put something wrong out there. In Quebec, actually, there's a small group of

00:49:55.600 islands, the Ile de la Madeleine, which are in the Atlantic time zone. So there's six poles or six or

00:50:01.480 seven poles. It's an island of a few thousand people that are in the Gaspésie riding. And

00:50:07.000 it's interesting riding because it's usually a Liberal bloc, fairly close riding. And right

00:50:13.260 now the bloc is leading. The Liberals won it last time. But the Ile de la Madeleine are

00:50:17.620 traditionally a little bit more separatist. So it's not a giant shock that the bloc seems

00:50:20.900 to be ahead by a little bit there. But yeah, those results always come in with the Atlantic

00:50:24.860 results. And you always have this one Quebec result that sort of hangs around for an hour

00:50:28.200 or two until until polls closed and the rest of the writing.

00:50:32.600 I want to go back to that story that you were talking with, Andrew, because you talked about

00:50:36.900 how the I think he's a campaign chairman for the Conservative Party, went to the Toronto Star today.

00:50:42.420 And if you didn't see the story, you really should go check it out because it's really something.

00:50:46.360 When you have the day of the election, the day that Canadians are going to the polls,

00:50:51.000 so the polls weren't even closed when this article came out and you already have the chair

00:50:55.280 of the campaign basically spinning on behalf of the candidate, Erin O'Toole, for seeing a loss,

00:51:03.600 saying, look, if the Conservatives lose tonight, it's really a win. And we have to continue on

00:51:08.680 this sort of progressive path that we were on to make the Conservative Party more palatable to

00:51:13.240 people reading the Toronto Star, which to anyone who knows anything about Conservative politics,

00:51:17.820 if you're going to the Toronto Star to leak a story, you really don't understand the Conservative

00:51:23.640 of base whatsoever. So seeing this story out, first of all, it completely undermines the

00:51:28.460 candidate. Aaron O'Toole is out there, presumably trying to win this election. Presumably he's

00:51:33.600 trying to beat Justin Trudeau, get his own minority or majority government. So having his

00:51:38.600 co-chair or campaign chair out there talking to the Toronto Star of All People, the most

00:51:43.460 left-wing awful newspaper, who basically have been running an anti-conservative campaign for

00:51:48.640 what the last 20 30 years going to them of all people and and and putting this story out there

00:51:53.960 is absolutely appalling i think i think that this is the kind of thing that conservatives hate this

00:51:59.620 is the kind of thing the base hates and again already spinning on the behalf of the fact that

00:52:04.160 your candidate might be losing and you want the takeaway to be that even if he loses tonight

00:52:08.680 he's winning i think that this shows a really desperate campaign on behalf of the conservatives

00:52:13.900 and you know if this is the direction that they're going that hey we're going to lose tonight but

00:52:17.760 it's okay because we've made some progress and we want to keep going. I think that they're going

00:52:23.060 to be in for a pretty rude awakening with their own base. Some of the issues I've been talking

00:52:27.180 about tonight, the fact that really we haven't seen much of a conservative campaign being run

00:52:34.040 here. So I think it was pretty appalling. And I also saw a similar article out in Global News.

00:52:43.240 Global News also had a story quoting, this one wasn't campaign insiders, but it was quoting conservative lobbyists, basically saying that, you know, Aaron O'Toole is taking the party in a more progressive direction, and that's a good thing, and we should let him continue on that path.

00:53:03.480 That's quite something, I think.

00:53:06.420 And again, I think that for the base of the Conservative Party, for people who want a

00:53:11.040 Conservative alternative, they don't want sort of two Liberal parties that we can alternate

00:53:15.640 back and forth.

00:53:16.440 They don't want a Liberal party that's just a little different than Justin Trudeau, maybe

00:53:21.760 without the scandals, maybe without, maybe with, you know, some more competent people

00:53:25.920 running the show.

00:53:27.880 There's a lot of people out there who want a real Conservative alternative.

00:53:31.580 They want a Conservative option.

00:53:32.560 they want conservative policies, they want their values and the worldview represented in that party.

00:53:38.160 And I think it is disappointing, especially when we see this campaign, really the story,

00:53:43.600 at least in the second half of the campaign, has been the rise of the PPC, the rise of Maxime

00:53:48.160 Bernier, speaking to not just disgruntled conservatives, not just sort of people in

00:53:52.960 the base that don't feel represented, but going beyond that, tapping into a whole new audience

00:53:59.840 of canadians some people who have never voted before some people who might have voted for

00:54:03.920 other protest parties in the past perhaps the green party um people who are not part of the

00:54:09.120 traditional conservative tent and you know good on maxine bernier for for going out and finding

00:54:14.400 those people uh but i think that the conservatives could have done a lot more to try to keep um

00:54:20.240 members of the base happy um to to to offer offer a few more things that would sort of make those

00:54:27.840 pull those people back into the conservative tent as opposed to just sort of letting them go to the

00:54:32.280 PPC, shrugging and focusing back on trying to win over liberal voters who just might not like

00:54:38.360 Justin Trudeau. Yeah. I mean, what it seemed like in the last week was that the conservative

00:54:43.340 campaign really didn't have a strategy to defend on its right flank. And perhaps when they were

00:54:49.540 devising the strategy, there was no need for that because they thought that, yeah, the PPC is going

00:54:54.060 to be, like Hamish said earlier, just this 1.6% non-contender. And we saw for most of the campaign,

00:55:00.440 Aaron O'Toole was very clinically on message. And I say this as someone who sort of appreciates

00:55:06.840 campaigning, I can applaud it. But as a journalist that was trying to get answers from him sometimes,

00:55:10.940 it was a bit frustrating. And I know for a lot of the other media in the conservative pool as well,

00:55:16.420 because he was just unflappable when it came to the message of the day and the talking points.

00:55:21.560 but it was a very safe measured message. And even as recently as Saturday, when he was being asked

00:55:28.580 about the PPC support and asked about the West and asked about all of these things, he just said,

00:55:34.460 listen, Justin Trudeau wants you to vote smaller parties. That was the message. And it was only,

00:55:39.000 I think, this morning or perhaps yesterday that he even used the term PPC, that he even named the

00:55:44.740 party and sort of recognized that, yeah, I need to tell people not to vote for that party

00:55:49.620 specifically. Now, whether or not that message actually sells is besides the point. And we'll

00:55:54.380 see that as the results come through. But it doesn't look like the Conservatives were prepared

00:55:58.900 to defend against that thread. They were too focused at trying to pick up votes on the other

00:56:04.160 side of the flank, which admittedly is very important. You obviously want to expand your base,

00:56:07.960 but you also need to hold on to your base as well. And I think that may be one of the weaknesses

00:56:13.160 that we see in retrospect, depending on what happens tonight. Well, and I mean, I'm perhaps

00:56:18.520 being a little hard on Erin O'Toole. But, you know, part of the issue was that we didn't really

00:56:24.020 talk about a lot of the important issues in the country. It was sort of just taken for granted.

00:56:29.100 And this especially stood out to me watching those debates. And I know you were reporting live

00:56:33.880 on the ground, Andrew, so you might not have caught on to this as much, although you were

00:56:37.460 there in the room, so maybe you did. But it felt like when it came to the issues that the media

00:56:43.080 wanted to talk about, the major party leaders basically agreed on everything. Like there wasn't

00:56:48.500 really a lot of points of contention other than just sort of you know tinkering with with things

00:56:53.060 here and there when it came to uh climate change when it came to alberta's energy industry uh when

00:56:58.660 it came to indigenous reconciliation when it came to uh government spending you know what we saw

00:57:05.940 from the conservatives versus the liberals was sort of a consensus um even on government spending

00:57:11.860 uh you know obviously justin trudeau has really blown the bank and he's he's absolutely uh you

00:57:17.540 you know, spending has gone up exponentially. And Erin O'Toole's response to that is sort of like,

00:57:23.340 okay, I'm going to continue to increase the size of government and spend a lot more. But I will

00:57:28.640 have a plan 10 years from now, like if you elect me and reelect me and reelect me, where I'll start

00:57:33.820 to finally focus on the sort of fiscal conservative side of the aisle. And so it did feel like maybe

00:57:40.740 it was the issues that were that were talked about and discussed in this campaign, the way that they

00:57:45.440 were framed made it seem like all the parties had the same opinion. And there were a lot of

00:57:50.320 really big, important issues, Andrew, that I just don't really feel got the kind of coverage that

00:57:55.520 they deserve. We didn't get into the issues. We didn't really talk about, for instance, a post-COVID

00:58:01.500 economic recovery. It seemed like all of the discussion when it came to post-COVID economic

00:58:06.140 recovery was focused on government. It was focused on socialist government welfare programs,

00:58:10.980 more more bribing middle class voters with their own money uh sort of the you know the typical

00:58:16.120 bidding war that we see uh in in election campaigns and we didn't really hear a lot about

00:58:21.620 you know what what what the actual economic policies will be to create an economic recovery

00:58:26.920 that will pay for all of this big government and i i think that was a huge missed opportunity for

00:58:31.580 the conservatives that's typically where they're the strongest that's where they should be talking

00:58:34.400 and spending most of their energy focused on um you know you you followed erin o'toole on the

00:58:39.920 campaign for a week. Maybe you want to talk about that and it just didn't break through all the

00:58:43.600 noise of the campaign. But what do you think in terms of sort of the major issues of this campaign

00:58:49.060 and whether they were addressed or not? Well, I think that one of the things that was very clear

00:58:54.560 is that there was the story of the day that Aaron O'Toole wanted to talk about. And then there was

00:58:59.360 the story of the day that the media wanted to talk about. And oftentimes you see there tends

00:59:04.380 to be a story that the media, in sort of a grander, broader, abstract sense, is covering

00:59:10.500 one day. And this is sort of true in any campaign. There's going to be Abortion Day, and there's

00:59:16.040 going to be Gun Day, and there's going to be Cheryl Gallant Day, and all of these different

00:59:19.600 sort of days where the story of the day for the Conservatives is not whatever policy they're

00:59:24.200 announcing or whatever message they want to stick to. But the thing was, some of these stretched on

00:59:29.700 to be week-long events, firearms in particular. And that was, I think, a bit of a turning point

00:59:35.100 where something that the Conservatives had a very clear position on, it was in their platform,

00:59:39.300 it was in the leadership platform. Aaron O'Toole had done numerous interviews on this in the past,

00:59:45.180 but then when that media barrage kept up, it ended up being something that the Conservatives

00:59:51.200 saw the only way out of was to just flip the position on. So things like that are noticeable,

00:59:57.200 And I think that ended up becoming very frustrating and very confusing for a lot of voters.

01:00:02.320 Included in that were conservative voters.

01:00:06.040 Yeah, absolutely.

01:00:07.520 Well, I think we're going to try one more time, Andrew, to go over to our own Sue Ann Levy, who is at CP headquarters in Oshawa.

01:00:15.480 I can hear you, Sue Ann.

01:00:16.620 So that's good news.

01:00:18.800 You can hear me breathing.

01:00:20.300 Well, I first want to apologize to all the folks out there for the technical issues.

01:00:25.880 But here I am at Tribute Communities Arena in Oshawa, anxiously awaiting the results.

01:00:34.040 There are a lot of Conservative people pacing the arena back and forth.

01:00:39.080 I think they've worn out the soles of their shoes doing so in the last two hours.

01:00:45.800 I had a chance to talk to Conservative strategist, Jason Leder, who said that, you know,

01:00:51.800 Now, Aaron O'Toole ran an impeccable campaign, of course, a strategist will say that, but he said, and I agree with this, that he went from an unknown to a contender in just a few weeks.

01:01:04.040 Talked to him about the anger at the door that I personally encountered canvassing for a candidate in St. Paul's.

01:01:12.140 And he said it was not unexpected that the PM expected this to be a cakewalk.

01:01:20.700 And it didn't end up being a cakewalk, far from it.

01:01:24.420 And, you know, they were not surprised at all with the anger, both at the doors and in various sort of live, you know, appearances by the Prime Minister, if we can all recall.

01:01:42.140 screaming, the yelling, and sometimes it got a bit out of hand. In any event, this

01:01:48.300 afternoon, Aaron O'Toole came and cleared us all out and so he had a

01:01:55.280 chance to practice his speech. I don't know whether that was a concession speech

01:02:00.500 or a victory speech, that remains to be seen, but he was here practicing his

01:02:05.900 speech for an hour and I suspect that it's going to be a couple hours before

01:02:11.380 we hear that victory or concession speech. In the meantime because of COVID

01:02:16.840 you'll see that the seats behind me are empty unfortunately because there is a

01:02:22.420 lot of social distancing going on. It is a very exciting night. As I said the

01:02:28.180 Conservatives are piecing the room they're nervous but they're also

01:02:31.660 excited. Back to you Candace and Andrew. Thank you very much Sue Ann. We're gonna

01:02:39.180 to check back in with Sue Ann at various points throughout the evening and of course we'll have

01:02:42.560 the speeches from the leaders concession or victory as we get to that point in the night

01:02:47.720 hopefully it won't be you know in four or five days like a lot of us are fearing but I want to

01:02:52.060 move now out west to Danielle Smith who's obviously no stranger to many of those of you

01:02:57.860 tuning in she's a former mover and well she is a mover and shaker in Alberta politics former leader

01:03:02.800 of the Wild Rose, longtime MLA.

01:03:06.120 She's doing this now.

01:03:07.720 Danielle, good to talk to you.

01:03:08.780 Thanks for coming on today.

01:03:10.080 Where is the West on this right now?

01:03:12.600 You know, you and I might have the same view.

01:03:14.180 And hello, Candace.

01:03:15.000 I must say, I'm really enjoying your platform.

01:03:17.640 I love the fact that you can get the immediate feedback

01:03:20.840 from your audience at the side.

01:03:22.200 And I can see that there are a lot of PPC voters there,

01:03:25.520 which surprises me because, you know,

01:03:27.280 I didn't really give them very much credit

01:03:30.240 for being able to get a breakthrough.

01:03:32.040 I thought Erin O'Toole was running a really great campaign and then all of a sudden I ran into you

01:03:36.760 Andrew at a major rally in Spruce Grove where the room was packed to overflowing and I said what in

01:03:43.000 the world is going on here and so the interesting thing I noticed out of the Atlantic results is

01:03:48.840 that the Green Party vote has totally collapsed and it looks like the beneficiaries of that have

01:03:56.040 been both the People's Party of Canada and the the Conservative Party of Canada and that's what I'm

01:04:01.400 I'm going to be watching for out here is whether that vote that is so strong for the PPC is pulling

01:04:07.520 kind of equally from all the parties or particularly from the Conservatives. I'm not expecting there to

01:04:13.340 be any seat upsets in Alberta or Saskatchewan, but it very well could be that they could be a spoiler

01:04:19.580 in Ontario. I've heard as many as 25 seats could end up going to the Liberals as a result of people

01:04:26.440 voting for Maxime Bernier's party. And that I think is why you saw that Erin O'Toole couldn't

01:04:31.040 ignore the party anymore in the last week it did a pretty hard pitch for a vote for them as a vote

01:04:36.160 for the liberals and i guess we won't see that until it comes through ontario it's funny to see

01:04:43.920 the two parties because the liberals were saying the same thing about the ndp and the same can

01:04:48.240 easily be said i'm sure that the ndp will spoil a lot more than 25 seats uh for the liberals and

01:04:53.840 then you had erin o'toole uh coming out and basically saying the same thing about the ppc

01:04:58.400 or not him, sort of his proxies. And you had Conservative MPs posting it. The Toronto Sun had

01:05:03.600 a whole front page saying, you know, a vote for Maxine is crowning a crown on top of Justin

01:05:09.780 Trudeau's head. Danielle, we were talking a little bit earlier about some of the major issues in the

01:05:15.660 country at this time. And I remember when we spoke to you, I think we spoke to you on the very first

01:05:19.940 night when the writ was drawn up, you were talking about how you were concerned about the vaccine

01:05:24.300 passports and how we just didn't really have a good fulsome debate about it. We didn't really

01:05:28.800 talk about it as a country. We just kind of all of a sudden had everyone agreeing

01:05:32.340 that this was the way to go. And even among conservatives, we didn't really hash it out

01:05:36.960 and say, is this really a good idea? We want this precedent. So I'm wondering, you know, now,

01:05:41.760 35 days later, do you feel like the major issues of this campaign really came up? Do you feel like

01:05:48.240 they were ignored? Do you think they were addressed? And as someone in Alberta, you know,

01:05:52.560 How does it feel watching, you know, these parties, the Conservative Party led by someone

01:05:58.560 from Ontario, even the PPC is led by someone in Quebec.

01:06:03.140 Do you feel involved?

01:06:04.820 Do you feel included?

01:06:05.640 And has this been a good campaign out there?

01:06:08.120 Well, I think the sad part about Justin Trudeau launching with that surprise that he was

01:06:13.660 going to bring in mandatory vaccination for federal workers is that it seemed to catch

01:06:18.740 on like wildfire.

01:06:20.020 And in fact, you probably saw last week, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney did a complete 180, and he's accepted vaccine passports, he's accepted mandatory vaccination, and he's facing some pretty fierce internal pushback in his party as a result of that.

01:06:34.320 That is how dramatically that issue overtook this campaign.

01:06:38.380 It's, I think, responsible for the lion's share of the People's Party of Canada surge.

01:06:43.100 It's actually taken the Maverick Party off the playing table.

01:06:46.140 I think when we spoke last time, I thought that the Maverick Party might have a bit of a breakthrough.

01:06:51.300 They're a party that was led by Jay Hill.

01:06:53.640 They were trying to be strategic and just identify ridings where if they did end up winning or taking a large share of the vote, it wouldn't result in a vote split.

01:07:02.440 But I think that the oxygen got taken out of the room when Maxime Bernier took such a strong position on vaccine passports and Jay Hill was relatively weak.

01:07:12.460 And they haven't been able to get any traction.

01:07:13.900 And so what happens in these results, if we see another liberal government, whether it's a minority or a majority, backed by the same old crew, the Bloc, probably not the Greens this time, but the Bloc and the NDP, I think that there's going to be a lot of frustration that there isn't an outlet for some of the concerns in the West.

01:07:33.900 And one of the things I would just mention is that there is going to be an equalization vote a month after this election campaign.

01:07:40.700 Depending on how this vote turns out, we'll probably have some influence on how Albertans decide to vote to send a message in that vote on October the 18th.

01:07:50.360 One thing I would ask about that is about Western alienation and where it comes from.

01:07:54.980 Because I would say, despite being an Easterner, I'm one who's always tried to have an ear to the ground in Alberta and try to represent Alberta and Western issues here.

01:08:03.480 And in the campaign, I have heard virtually nothing that really is about that.

01:08:08.600 I've heard no appeals to alienated Westerners.

01:08:11.340 I've heard no conversation about Western issues.

01:08:13.900 The only thing adjacent to that is some passing discussion about pipelines.

01:08:18.820 Are pipelines enough?

01:08:20.380 Is a leader who gets up and says, yes, I'm committing to building pipelines.

01:08:24.000 Is that enough to start bringing some of these disgruntled Albertans back into the fold of federalism here?

01:08:29.480 You know, I think it is.

01:08:30.740 I think it's just recognizing that we all have to have strong economies to contribute to the fiscal mess and cleaning up the fiscal mess that we have.

01:08:42.020 And I think maybe that's why some of the issues that might have featured more prominently in previous elections didn't feature here.

01:08:48.360 I was really expecting there to be quite as strong and robust debate against Alberta's energy sector, greenhouse gas emissions.

01:08:56.020 And it was really muted.

01:08:57.840 In fact, I think that there were a number of times that Jagmeet Singh was asked to disavow the Trans Mountain Pipeline and pledged to cancel it or to say that he wouldn't support Aaron O'Toole.

01:09:08.440 And he was being very pragmatic about it.

01:09:10.460 So I can only hope what that means is that as Alberta talks about the importance of the hydrogen economy and doing carbon capture utilization and storage and looking at ways that we can have lithium and helium and hydrogen and geothermal and new types of energy,

01:09:26.440 I'm really hoping that that shows that our energy sector here is trying to transform itself in its own way so that it can help to meet some of those national goals.

01:09:35.820 Maybe that'll bring some of the temperature down when it comes to the division in the country because there has been a major transformation.

01:09:42.420 I mean, having Catherine McKenna leave the environment ministry was probably the best thing that ever happened for Alberta because all she ever wanted to talk about was wind and solar and battery power and everyone in this province.

01:09:52.940 And hopefully the country understands that that is just such an unrealistic vision of how to run a modern industrial economy.

01:09:59.460 So maybe there's some pragmatism setting in.

01:10:01.540 I can only I can only hope that's the case, because I expected Alberta to be a bit more at the center of some of the some of the disputes between the parties at the federal level.

01:10:12.020 And I didn't see it to the same extent as I expected.

01:10:14.720 It's an interesting take, because usually if your province isn't really featured at all in the election, you might be like, hey, guys, why aren't you talking about Alberta?

01:10:22.360 But in this case, you know, it might be a good thing because the less they pay attention to you, the less they want to meddle in your industry and in your life.

01:10:29.980 And, you know, if they finally have sort of moved past that demonizing Alberta and talking about facing all the old stuff, hey, let's let's take that as a victory.

01:10:38.120 It's a funny thing. It's so funny that you should say that because I think that was actually a deliberate strategy because there was a whole bunch of us that wanted to fight the just transition task force report that came out.

01:10:48.120 And the energy industry said, you know what, we don't really want the issue of carbon capture, utilization, storage to be an election issue because we don't want the prime minister or any of the more left wing parties to feel like they've got to take a hard line against it.

01:11:00.640 We want them to keep an open mind that this might be part of the solution.

01:11:03.720 So from that point of view, I think it's mission accomplished.

01:11:05.860 And it allows for since nobody's taken a really hard line on some of those issues, it allows to see us to see whether or not some of that innovation is going to help address the problem.

01:11:14.780 Interesting. Yeah, no, it's it's it's a good strategy because you're absolutely right.

01:11:17.680 the prime minister is paying attention he's devising some scheme to regulate or to to do

01:11:22.240 something one of the very first things that aaron o'toole did when he became leader of the

01:11:26.640 conservative party was he he met with the prime minister to talk about alberta and he wanted to

01:11:32.720 make sure that albertans felt uh represented and and involved and you know i remember thinking okay

01:11:39.360 that's a great first step uh for a leader from ontario uh to to say you know i'm not of the

01:11:44.480 Alberta part of the Conservative Party but you know the Conservative Party stands and represents

01:11:49.520 Alberta but then again we haven't really heard much in this campaign so just again from a sort

01:11:54.240 of Alberta conservative perspective you said that you thought that Erin O'Toole ran a pretty strong

01:11:58.960 campaign and that you didn't really see the PPC coming what was it about Erin O'Toole's campaign

01:12:06.000 that that you liked what would you give it if you if you were giving it a grade there are two

01:12:12.560 strategies that you can embrace when you're the leader of a conservative party one is to recognize

01:12:17.360 that you do have kind of a strident uh group of social conservatives who care very strongly about

01:12:23.200 moral issues and then you bring them along with you and you kind of bridge the the divide in the

01:12:28.880 center as much as you can aaron took a pretty radically different approach he hived off that

01:12:34.800 part of his party by kicking out derek sloan at the beginning by not reaching out to maxime

01:12:40.880 Bernier and he really set a line in the sand that where he was going for was to try to get more of

01:12:46.720 that liberal vote now if it doesn't succeed there's going to have to be some kind of reckoning in the

01:12:52.080 conservative party i mean there's you've got to in some ways i think that the conservative movement

01:12:57.040 probably feels like they're often abandoned by their leaders because they court them when they're

01:13:03.520 trying to win the leadership and then when it comes to trying to win government they turn their

01:13:07.920 back on them because the issues that resonate um among the conservative base simply don't sell the

01:13:13.920 same way in in if you're trying to win seats in in quebec and in in toronto and so a leader has to

01:13:19.120 make a choice about what they're going to do on that and i think aaron o'toole made a the choice

01:13:24.720 to be a centrist candidate that's came as a surprise to me because i seem to recall him

01:13:29.920 running saying don't vote for peter mckay because he's too red he's too much of a squish he's too

01:13:34.720 much of a red tori and then he ended up positioning himself in the same in the same place now i guess 0.74

01:13:40.400 here's the question if you win and can implement enough of your agenda does it matter that you

01:13:48.320 have hived off a certain number of issues that you're not going to touch at all i think that

01:13:53.360 again if we're gonna have to debate to debate that out after we see what the results are tonight

01:13:58.480 because it could well be that all he's done is alienate core support and failed to attract any

01:14:05.760 of that centrist vote and that's not a winning strategy either yeah i was trying to think about

01:14:11.120 which was worse for aaron o'toole which was worse for the conservative movement if uh you know we

01:14:16.000 have another liberal minority government where aaron o'toole you know doesn't do as well as as

01:14:21.760 andrew shear did in 2019 i think there will be some kind of a reckoning because people will say

01:14:26.160 look you didn't really move the ball forward here uh but on the other hand danielle if if

01:14:30.800 aaron o'toole manages to win big say he wins a majority tonight and goes in that same direction

01:14:36.240 where he governs as a centrist i don't really know what the future of the conservative party

01:14:41.040 will be i think that there has been a lot of the base that feels very alienated feels very ignored

01:14:46.800 uh neglected uh you know the last week of the campaign it almost seemed like aaron o'toole

01:14:51.680 was apologizing for conservative views and saying, you know, if you looked at our party in the past

01:14:56.720 and we said something that turned you off, we're sorry and we're not going to do that anymore,

01:15:00.580 was sort of the gist of one of the posts that he put and apparently one of the speeches he gave

01:15:04.460 in Quebec. So I do think that if he wins, unless he's going to sort of go back and govern

01:15:11.620 more from the right or, you know, hone in that leader that when he was running for

01:15:19.140 leader of the Conservative Party some of those true blue ideas, I think that it could be bad

01:15:26.000 for the Conservative Party in general. Yeah, well, and I don't know where that social

01:15:30.920 Conservative vote is going to go if it doesn't go to the Conservative Party. I think that's part of

01:15:36.600 the taking for granted that does happen. Because I look at Maxime Bernier People's Party, and he's

01:15:42.380 a libertarian. He's not particularly socially conservative. If you feel very strongly about

01:15:47.120 the life issue. I'm not sure that you would say, yeah, Maxime Bernier is my guy. And so I'm not

01:15:52.140 entirely sure where that vote would go to if it doesn't go to the conservatives. But look,

01:15:57.500 what we've experienced in Canada in the last year and a half is that the religious communities have

01:16:02.460 a lot bigger fears than sort of the bread and butter issues they've talked about in the past.

01:16:10.180 We had three pastors that were put in jail in Alberta. We had a church that had a barricade

01:16:15.920 of rcmp around it and it was it was held and seized by the state for two months so it may well be

01:16:22.800 that uh our religious conservatives understand that the freedom to practice their religion

01:16:28.240 unhindered by the state is the one number one thing they should be advocating for

01:16:33.040 and that leaders who will speak up and defend their freedom to do that maybe those are the ones

01:16:38.080 they should align with and and as opposed to looking at whether or not a leader has a particular

01:16:42.720 orthodoxy that lines up with their particular religious views i i'm gravely dismayed at how

01:16:47.760 our religious how our religious communities were treated in uh in the country over the the last

01:16:53.040 year gravely concerned about religious freedom so maybe that's part of the pivot that uh that

01:16:58.880 some of the social conservatives will do is in looking to embrace issues of conscience and

01:17:03.520 freedom of of religion um freedom of assembly which we seem to have lost in the last 18 months

01:17:09.520 as well and that might give more common cause with a more libertarian bent of a party yeah no

01:17:15.480 that's a really good point i can't help but wondering or thinking that if uh you know that

01:17:20.500 the attacks we've seen on christian churches were happening to any other faith group if even if they

01:17:24.580 were happening in any other part of the country like if it was this was happening in quebec it

01:17:28.700 would be a huge national issue and it would be something that we would have been talking about

01:17:31.720 throughout the campaign uh but because it's happening in alberta and western canada and

01:17:35.340 as Christians, barely mentioned at all.

01:17:38.280 So thank you, Danielle, for bringing that up

01:17:40.160 and reminding us of that issue,

01:17:41.700 because you're right, it absolutely is a huge issue.

01:17:43.940 Well, Danielle Smith, it's been such a pleasure

01:17:45.620 to have you on our show.

01:17:46.460 Thank you for your wisdom

01:17:48.300 and all of your very insightful comments.

01:17:50.340 We really appreciate you joining us.

01:17:51.400 My pleasure, yes.

01:17:52.340 And thank you so much for your coverage as well.

01:17:55.060 Andrew, I don't know if you told everybody

01:17:57.080 about the picture that you showed me

01:17:59.180 of that voter in Edmonton that was kind of like

01:18:01.860 the archetype of the exact opposite

01:18:04.180 of who you'd expect to vote for Maxine Bernier,

01:18:06.140 but I've told that story many times.

01:18:07.480 I should leave it to you to tell,

01:18:08.520 because it was a good one.

01:18:10.020 I will do that next time we're talking

01:18:12.200 about the PBC tonight.

01:18:13.200 Thanks for the reminder in Alberta last week, Danielle.

01:18:16.500 You bet, nice to see you too.

01:18:17.520 Take care, bye now.

01:18:18.760 Thanks, Danielle.

01:18:22.660 Well, Andrew, you're gonna have to tell us about that story.

01:18:24.740 What's happening out West?

01:18:26.860 Yeah, you're gonna have to tell us that story,

01:18:28.240 because I haven't heard that one yet.

01:18:30.820 Yeah, we will do that.

01:18:31.780 But first, let's talk about what's happening now.

01:18:33.720 The polls have closed in most of Canada, including in Alberta.

01:18:37.380 And we, I believe, have Hamish Marshall back on with us.

01:18:41.360 Hamish, what are we seeing in this early wave of results?

01:18:44.880 What's coming in from Atlantic Canada from earlier and also from the polls that just closed about five, six minutes ago?

01:18:50.580 Well, right now across the country, in the last five minutes, polls closed everywhere from the New Brunswick border all the way to the Rocky Mountains.

01:18:58.880 So it's the vast majority of the country.

01:19:00.400 It's all going to come in at once.

01:19:01.420 We're going to get results bits and pieces from across the country for the next little while.

01:19:06.100 So that's that's the big the big thing that's been happening now.

01:19:08.660 Well, a few results are popping up, but they don't mean anything right now.

01:19:12.440 It's just one or two polls here or there. What's happened in Atlantic Canada is it looks like the Conservatives have won a seat in Newfoundland, which I think was a surprise to most folks.

01:19:22.640 They were certainly optimistic there. It was it was a seat. The Conservatives did decently, did better than expected last time and were able to capitalize and grow on that from here.

01:19:29.720 as well as South Shore

01:19:32.340 St. Margaret's in Nova Scotia, which I think

01:19:34.240 was, again, another surprise. They've won

01:19:36.260 that seat, as well as Cumberland,

01:19:38.340 Colchester and Hunt holding on to West Nova.

01:19:40.680 But I want to talk a little bit about

01:19:41.960 Fredericton. Fredericton's an interesting seat.

01:19:44.500 Right now, about half the votes are in in

01:19:46.000 Fredericton, 72 out of 154 polls,

01:19:48.260 a little less than half the votes.

01:19:50.520 And the Conservative, Andrea Johnson

01:19:52.280 is ahead by about 300

01:19:54.240 votes, but 2% of the vote.

01:19:57.080 And what makes that seat interesting

01:19:58.280 is it was one of the seats won by the greens last time jennica atwin won it for the greens in the

01:20:02.280 last election in a very very tight through a fight between uh the liberals uh and uh the consert same 0.53

01:20:08.520 conservative candidate last time and uh miss uh atwin across the floor to the liberals back in

01:20:14.840 april or may it was may this year um it was one of the signs that the greens were having a lot of

01:20:19.240 trouble uh and the general consensus was that was that was a great move they were gonna liberals

01:20:24.280 were going to be able to take that seat and hold it um but the conservatives are ahead uh the green

01:20:29.320 vote uh obviously several a lot of green people are pretty annoyed about that um that happening

01:20:36.040 so the so the greens are still at 13 in that riding obviously way down from where they were

01:20:39.800 last time but it's certainly putting them uh putting them in contention or it's keeping the

01:20:43.960 liberals from winning what's also interesting if we're talking about vote splits a little bit

01:20:48.040 is there is no ppc uh candidate in that riding and the conservatives are ahead by 300 votes

01:20:53.480 if we look around the rest of new brunswick the idea that if there had been a ppc candidate that

01:20:57.720 could have got uh 300 votes there would be would be very very believable so in that case it looks

01:21:03.000 like the conservatives might be able to win that seat we'll see it's still very very close there's

01:21:06.920 half the riding to come uh and we do know that uh the liberals did have a big push and the greens

01:21:12.280 too actually had a big push on the uh the um uh mail-in ballots so we'll see how that comes but

01:21:18.360 conservatives could pick up fredgerton which i think would be a surprise since it was definitely

01:21:21.560 a target liberal seat and one of those seats the liberals needed on their on the road to a majority

01:21:27.000 is there anything that we can extrapolate about conservative success in atlantic canada and other

01:21:32.200 regions or is it a bit early for that i think it's a bit early i think these seats are have a bit of

01:21:36.680 a different um um sense to them they're with the exception of frederich and they're all quite rural

01:21:42.200 seats uh and seats that are sort of that equivalent amount of rural uh are generally already mostly

01:21:48.760 held by uh by conservatives certainly in the west and and pretty much in ontario as well uh you know

01:21:54.120 atlantic canada is a much less urban part of the country uh so you know like in a province like

01:21:59.640 newfoundland and labrador there's there's seven seats but only two of them really are city seats

01:22:03.880 whereas in you know ontario the majority of seats are city seats uh so conservatives have to the

01:22:09.560 the bigger surprise is historically if we think of the conservatives as a party that does well in

01:22:14.120 in rural areas is that the part that haven't been able to sweep uh large chunks of atlantic canada

01:22:19.640 in the past so these are these are important victories but i don't know if they really mean

01:22:24.440 uh there's certainly a positive sign i'm not going to say they're they're not a good sign

01:22:27.800 because they're certainly a good sign but uh you know whether it means a greater trend going forward

01:22:33.720 or not i don't think that's i don't think that's we should we definitely necessarily assume that

01:22:37.960 as i said before this is a really really going to be a very very divided election where there's

01:22:42.200 different things happening in different provinces and as a result I think we're really looking at

01:22:47.460 338 separate elections as opposed to one big one all right we'll let you get back to the number

01:22:52.960 crunching polls have closed in most of the country as of 10 minutes ago you'll start to see drips and

01:22:58.720 drabs of color if you're looking at the map but some of these don't get too excited just you know

01:23:03.240 a handful of votes in thanks very much for that update Hamish we're going to go back to Sue Ann

01:23:07.840 Levy at Conservative headquarters in just a moment. But first, I want to put in a bit of a

01:23:12.880 plug for the work we're doing here at True North. As Candace mentioned earlier on, I've been to eight

01:23:17.740 out of 10 provinces. I think Candace herself was in another province. So we've done almost the

01:23:22.780 entire country as far as the lower 10 are concerned. As far as on the ground coverage,

01:23:28.140 we've put together live shows. A lot of this is stuff that we do because we love, but it costs

01:23:33.220 money to do it and you are our supporters. We don't get any government money. We don't get

01:23:38.200 a $1.2 billion subsidy. We don't get any of the $600 million media bailout fund. Our support comes

01:23:44.960 from the people like you who watch our work, who read our work, who like what we're doing. If you

01:23:49.660 can contribute to make this happen, please do. Head on over to donate.tnc.news. Donate.tnc.news.

01:23:57.820 We very much thank all of you who have donated to our election coverage so far.

01:24:02.760 And those of you who haven't, it is not too late.

01:24:05.380 So thanks very much for that.

01:24:06.860 In the meantime, let's head over to Oshawa, Ontario, where the Conservatives are hoping for a victory party.

01:24:12.840 We have our own contributor, Sue Ann Levy, on hand.

01:24:16.380 Sue Ann, how are things in Oshawa?

01:24:18.920 Oh, they're great.

01:24:20.060 Conservatives are pacing even more frenetically now that the polls have closed in Ontario and Quebec.

01:24:26.080 and as we head west now I want to talk just a minute about the PPC because I

01:24:33.220 also spoke to Jason Leder the conservative strategist about the effect

01:24:39.520 of the PPC and whether that will eat into as our legacy media have said eat

01:24:47.380 into the conservative win or possible win and he said he wouldn't deny that it

01:24:54.640 It is an issue, they are concerned about it,

01:24:57.560 but he also said that conservatives

01:25:01.420 who support Erin O'Toole are not likely

01:25:05.320 to support Maxime Bernier.

01:25:07.400 I guess we will see as we move further west.

01:25:10.260 In the meantime, here in Ontario,

01:25:13.380 the sort of ground zero for whether there are swing ridings,

01:25:18.720 whether people will move from liberal to conservative.

01:25:22.880 As I said in the last segment, I noticed a lot of anger at the door

01:25:28.460 in a very liberal rioting in Midtown Toronto.

01:25:32.900 Whether that will translate into votes is another story.

01:25:37.040 I mean, I guess we will see as the next hour goes on

01:25:40.620 whether that will translate into actual votes for the Conservatives.

01:25:46.340 You know the way voters are.

01:25:47.900 They express their anger at the door, but when they get into the poll,

01:25:51.240 it's better the devil they do know than the devil they don't so you know i'll be very eager to see

01:25:57.880 whether the conservatives can capture some of those gta swing ridings and i think we pretty

01:26:04.200 well will rule out toronto although i would hope that they'd be able to capture a seat or two in

01:26:10.200 toronto but you know how liberal toronto is i've lived it for many many years frustratingly so

01:26:19.240 you know i guess it we will see in the next hour but uh i i could see the conservatives as i say

01:26:26.680 they're wearing out those soles of their shoes as they pace back and forth now back to you andrew

01:26:32.280 back to you candace great thank you so much suanne for that report yeah it's definitely

01:26:38.600 uh nerve-wracking uh you know a couple of minutes when your polls are closed you're waiting for

01:26:43.480 things to come up there's nothing you can do and i know a lot of people get this way on election

01:26:47.080 day it's like you know you want the new to happen you want there to be something and usually it's

01:26:51.400 like a very quiet news day so we we all know it can be it could be rather tense anytime but we're

01:26:56.820 gonna we're gonna come back to you a little later on in the evening Sue Ann so thank you so much for

01:27:00.720 your report. I have to say on that Candice I so in a former life I ran as a candidate and

01:27:09.180 unfortunately it was at the provincial level in Ontario which uses electronic counting so I didn't

01:27:14.360 get any of the suspense. The polls closed at 9 and like 9.03, my opponent had been declared the

01:27:19.680 winner. So on the reporter side, I like quick results. On the candidate side, I like being

01:27:24.400 able to stretch it out and give yourself a bit of false hope. Well, I mean, I think I don't

01:27:31.300 actually know how these votes are being counted. All I saw was that Elections Canada report saying

01:27:37.440 that they are not going to start counting the absentee ballots until later this week and it

01:27:42.800 might be a mess tonight so we really don't know what to expect andrew and you and i have sort of

01:27:46.700 been in this boat before because we hosted a live show for true north back in sort of the earlier

01:27:51.460 days of our organization uh but we did the live show uh after the on the night of the conservative

01:27:56.660 leadership race uh where we were expecting to do a live show for maybe an hour an hour and a half

01:28:01.120 while the conservatives uh counted the ballots who was going to win and you know we knew that

01:28:05.320 back in 2000 what was it 16 15 when uh they were replacing stephen harper it went to like the 17th

01:28:12.020 ballot or something crazy like that and so it took a little while but that was all done in one

01:28:16.120 evening whereas the show we did uh i i can't remember exactly i think we started at 5 p.m

01:28:20.620 and it went until one of the it was eight hours i remember i've blocked the rest from uh from

01:28:24.580 memory yeah so uh we we know what these long long evenings uh will be like although uh fortunately

01:28:32.100 we have um you know a lot of things lined up in case tonight does uh go long and you know you

01:28:37.740 you did your campaign, you did your TNC donation pitch. And I just want to add really something

01:28:44.640 that I think is so important. So this is the third election in a row that Justin Trudeau has

01:28:49.140 pledged more money to the CBC. And to me, it's one of the most transparent, dishonest exchanges

01:28:56.300 in Canadian politics, because you can see it in the CBC's coverage. And, you know, you could say,

01:29:01.200 okay, the CBC is a left-wing news organization. They have that prerogative, I guess. You know,

01:29:05.780 for me they're the public broadcaster they should be as centrist as they come um but you know they

01:29:11.060 they they they're left wing actually it's interesting andrew i downloaded an app the

01:29:14.660 other day and it's supposed to help you cut through the um partisan bias of the media outlets

01:29:20.500 so i like now at least we're in a point where we can be honest about the idea that all news

01:29:25.780 organizations have a partisan bias it's not just you know oh some of these are right wing and some

01:29:30.900 of these are it's like every single news outlet um is placed somewhere on a political spectrum

01:29:35.460 And I appreciate that because so many media outlets are just completely dishonest about who they are.

01:29:40.720 They don't admit to be left-wing.

01:29:42.480 They don't admit to be whatever they are.

01:29:44.400 And they pretend to be straight down center, neutral, unbiased, even though they're not.

01:29:48.300 So this app sort of helps to decode that.

01:29:51.940 And interestingly, or not surprisingly, just about every news organization in Canada falls on the left,

01:29:57.500 either hard left, left, leans left, or center.

01:30:01.100 There's very few in Canada that are on the right.

01:30:03.800 But the CBC is listed as left, not even leans left, not centrist, not leans left, but left.

01:30:08.960 So so the third one over, not not not one of the center three.

01:30:12.980 So so so they're openly left wing. But it's not just that they're openly left wing, Andrew.

01:30:16.900 They're openly pro Justin Trudeau. And I think that if you wanted the clearest example of that, all you had to do was watch the CBC town halls that they did with each of the leaders.

01:30:26.900 So they had Aaron O'Toole on Sunday. They had Justin Trudeau on Monday.

01:30:30.920 They had Jagmeet Singh on Tuesday and the same host every night, Rosemary Barton.

01:30:36.080 It wasn't a walk in the park for Justin Trudeau, but you could see that her line of reasoning and her line of questioning aligned perfectly with the liberal worldview, with the liberal, not even worldview, but his campaign, what he was running on, what he wanted, his messaging, everything was just perfectly aligned.

01:30:53.540 and she just sort of helped him along the way. And then when you saw, you know, contrast that,

01:30:58.640 it was a perfect contrast with Erin O'Toole, how argumentative she was, how much she pushed back,

01:31:04.560 how much she was twisting and distorting the truth. And even though it was billed as an

01:31:09.420 opportunity for the leaders to sit down with undecided voters, it was like, you know,

01:31:13.620 the undecided voter would ask a question. They really found some very interesting left-wing

01:31:18.880 people, like really niche issue left-wing people to come out and ask their questions. They didn't

01:31:23.260 really talk a lot about the economy or any of the stuff that we've been talking about

01:31:26.600 on this show. But once they ask their question, then Rosemary Barton would jump in with her own

01:31:32.460 line of questioning. And I bring us all up because it's not just that the CBC is on the left. It's

01:31:38.080 that the CBC is acting like they're the media arm of the Liberal Party. And you could see that when

01:31:43.800 you go to watch Jagmeet Singh and his interview with Rosemary Barton, where she did the same

01:31:48.320 thing. She was argumentative. She pushed back. She was using liberal attack lines as her line 0.91

01:31:53.440 of questioning towards the NDP leader. And so it was really stark that here we have a $1.2 billion

01:32:01.440 recipient of taxpayer dollars, the CBC, and they're not even trying to be fair. They're not

01:32:07.280 even trying to be neutral. They're openly out there in favor of Trudeau. And I think that's a

01:32:13.020 huge threat to the country. I think that any conservative leader needs to stand firm with

01:32:18.400 the idea that the CDC has got to go. It has to change. It has to be defunded or privatized or

01:32:24.820 something. Something has to change. If conservatives ever want to stand a chance of winning in this

01:32:30.200 election, that has to change. And it's interesting that Aaron O'Toole had said when he was running

01:32:35.560 for leader of the conservative party that his plan was to defund it or privatize it. And then

01:32:41.360 he kind of walked that back a little bit in the campaign. He said he's still going to review their

01:32:44.440 mandate, but he certainly wasn't as strong. So that's one of those things that I hope he leaves

01:32:49.980 it at that in order to get elected, if he gets elected, and then he goes back stronger with what

01:32:54.680 he had said pre-being leader of the Conservative Party. But it's not just the CBC, Andrew, because

01:33:00.540 it's also the media. It's also the newspapers. The fact that Justin Trudeau, on top of already

01:33:05.780 bribing the CBC, this is the third election in a row, he's also bribing the newspapers with

01:33:11.220 a 600 million dollar media bailout and it just seems so so off so off-putting so terrible that

01:33:18.520 we live in a country where almost every single journalist every mainstream media every legacy

01:33:22.720 media journalist almost every single one is in some way subsidized or paid for by the government

01:33:29.260 and not just the government the the political party the liberal party they're the ones that

01:33:32.300 created these grants are the ones that created these bailouts and these uh new funds to give

01:33:37.760 to journalists. And so again, how do you have a neutral situation where you have journalists

01:33:43.080 that are supposed to be holding the government to account when literally their livelihood and

01:33:47.020 their jobs depend on this party getting reelected so that they can continue down this path of more

01:33:53.840 government, more money, more bailouts to these media. And it's really a dangerous time. And so

01:33:59.580 I just can't stress enough the importance of independent media, of having independent

01:34:05.720 journalists who aren't funded in any way shape or form by the government that's us at true north

01:34:10.120 they're very few in the country anymore not just the fact that we have uh you know a fact-based

01:34:16.280 news team we do breaking reports we have journalists all over the country even tonight

01:34:20.440 you know we have harrison faulkner one of our new young reporters out in saskatoon we have sue ann

01:34:25.320 levy who is a seasoned veteran um a journalist in toronto very well-known local reporter in the city

01:34:31.480 of Toronto covering the Conservative campaign. But having these reporters, having these independent

01:34:36.800 minded people to break these stories, as well as a media organization that represents sort of the

01:34:42.340 other side of the story. I'm talking about the fact that we have a small C Conservative editorial

01:34:46.380 position, that we do tell the other side of the story. We're not funneling the news to you

01:34:51.340 from the sort of elite, Laurentian elite, downtown Toronto, this is what you should think because

01:34:57.960 is what we think uh we we actually encourage free thinking and and even within uh our staff and our

01:35:03.480 team at true north there's a lot of people that that a lot of differentiate a lot of difference

01:35:08.520 between the way that we think there's some people who you know and you can see it in in the the chat

01:35:13.720 uh playing out right now you know you have the staunch conservatives you have the staunch ppc

01:35:17.720 people you have the people saying uh that the ppc is terrible because you're gonna split the vote

01:35:23.880 and you're going to give the prime ministership to justin trudeau and then you have the ppc people

01:35:28.440 saying well we don't you don't we don't you don't own our vote we can we can vote for whoever we

01:35:33.160 want and that kind of um discourse and and thinking and you know the fact that we can disagree

01:35:39.640 um but but we're here to to sort of represent all of that and to try to bring that side of the

01:35:45.080 equation to you where really the other media companies just shun that i think them it's like

01:35:49.720 they don't talk about conservatism they don't understand conservatism much like you know some

01:35:55.160 some of the strat strategists within the conservative party who just sort of want to move

01:35:58.360 away from the social conservatives and they want to move away from the populism uh no that's an

01:36:05.160 important part of conservatism that's important part of the canadian population and we think that

01:36:09.960 deserves to be covered and focused on a little bit and that's part of why we're here so if you're

01:36:16.200 you're watching, if you're enjoying the coverage, I really encourage you to head on over to tnc.news

01:36:20.420 slash donate. Anything that you can. If you're enjoying the show right now and hey, you just

01:36:23.780 want to buy Andrew Lawton a beer or you want to, you know, make sure that Harrison, our young

01:36:29.700 reporter out in Saskatoon, you know, make sure he gets something to eat tonight. Just consider

01:36:35.200 donating $5, $10. That would be awesome. So really appreciate that. Andrew, are you still with me

01:36:42.220 here? Yeah, I am. And we actually only bought Harrison a one-way ticket to Saskatoon. So unless

01:36:46.960 you donate, he's not actually coming back, which he may love it there. Actually, I've never been

01:36:52.140 to Saskatoon. I've been to Moose Jaw and I've been to Regina. Most recently for Regina was in the

01:36:57.020 2019 election where I was playing the role of Sue Ann Levy in covering the Conservative Victory

01:37:02.360 Party. So we'll have some more reports from Sue Ann in Oshawa very shortly. But I do want to go to

01:37:08.680 the PPC Victory Party in Saskatoon. And just before we do, Danielle Smith asked me to tell

01:37:14.520 a story, which I can tell very quickly, when I was out covering the People's Party campaign

01:37:19.720 in Alberta. It feels like a while ago, but it was last weekend. And I was at a rally in Edmonton,

01:37:25.680 and there was this woman there who was the quintessential non-PPC, non-conservative, 0.53

01:37:31.260 non-right-wing voter. She was wearing these very sort of earthy robes. She had a gemstone on her 0.93

01:37:39.440 forehead. She was talking to me about how her kids were homeschooled because she wanted to give them

01:37:44.880 a new earth education. She was a Reiki energy healer and she was a diehard Maxime Bernier

01:37:51.000 PPC supporter, not your conventional right of center voter. So this is why I do think to what

01:37:58.040 Danielle was saying. There's not an entirely discernible left-right split here or right-right

01:38:03.860 split that we can chalk up to the PPC's rise. And certainly as we see the numbers later on,

01:38:09.160 we'll be able to parse that a little bit better. But without further ado, we will go to Harrison

01:38:14.100 Faulkner, who is live from the PPC party in Saskatoon. Harrison, you've moved the party

01:38:20.100 inside now, I see. Oh, we've lost your audio, Harrison, so we'll get that sorted out. Hopefully

01:38:27.880 in just a moment here.

01:38:29.940 We can see, you got to tell them

01:38:31.480 to put True North up on the big screen behind you though.

01:38:34.380 We've just been telling people

01:38:35.660 about supporting independent media.

01:38:37.200 And I see we're showing the competition very briefly here.

01:38:40.820 Harrison, do we have you now?

01:38:44.520 All right, let's try to get Harrison

01:38:46.020 to maybe dial back in.

01:38:47.500 I love that story you told, Andrew, though,

01:38:49.460 of the, you know, you have a sort of alternative person

01:38:53.840 that would really not, not the type of person

01:38:56.500 that when the media describes, you know, an angry far right PPC supporter. And I mean, that's great.

01:39:02.580 The fact that someone like that, really, when it comes down to it, the message that the PPC

01:39:06.780 is giving is a message of freedom, personal freedom, allowing anyone, you know, it's not

01:39:12.740 necessarily a conservative message. It's a message that anyone, regardless of what they're interested

01:39:17.520 in, how they want to raise their children, what they want to focus on, what their religious

01:39:21.380 beliefs are, any number of things that they feel might be running against the mainstream or that

01:39:26.880 there's pressure on them to not do it that way. They go to a political party that says, you're

01:39:32.840 welcome to do whatever you want. And that's sort of the basis of it. So it's not necessarily a

01:39:38.260 conservative position. And it is nice to see people. I've read a lot and heard a lot of people

01:39:44.360 who have never voted before, who all of a sudden came around to vote for Maxine Burien People's

01:39:49.720 Party because they've never really felt like anyone was communicating to them. And I think

01:39:53.340 that for Bernier, I mean, I don't always agree with him. I think that a lot of the stuff he says

01:39:58.180 is quite off-putting and it's not my brand of conservatism per se. But, you know, I see him

01:40:04.540 out there pushing a message that's different and in some ways broadening his own tent in a way

01:40:10.540 that traditional conservative parties could never do. Yeah. And I actually think there's an

01:40:16.620 interesting discussion to be had here. And I'm not sure how easy it would be to find the data on

01:40:21.620 this, but that is the influence and power of single issue voters in this election. Because

01:40:26.480 when I sat down with Maxime Bernier in, when would it have been, or where would it have been?

01:40:31.540 It was in Mundair, Alberta, if that means anything to those tuning in. He had said the election is a

01:40:36.640 referendum on the vaccine passport and a referendum on vaccine mandates. And a lot of those people,

01:40:42.560 like the woman I described, have come to the PPC because of that issue. That issue has galvanized

01:40:47.680 a lot of people. And that may be an issue that cuts across partisan lines. Firearms owners,

01:40:52.900 a group that has become a very single issue motivated group to say, listen, if Trudeau

01:40:57.880 is reelected, we're going to lose our guns. We've got to vote conservative. They're the only hope.

01:41:02.480 Social conservatives. Historically, it's been, well, do you want the liberals to win? No.

01:41:06.780 So vote conservative. But this time, social conservatives have in some writings,

01:41:10.440 I've noted, as Danielle Smith was alluding to, been going PPC. So some of these coalitions

01:41:16.140 are actually very important. And if we do see narrow ridings, may actually be the make or

01:41:22.760 break difference here. We're going to see if we can get Harrison Faulkner from Saskatoon back on

01:41:28.140 the line. If not, we do have an interview Harrison did with Maxine Bernier, but hopefully we'll be

01:41:33.140 able to sort out the audio issue that we had there. Harrison, do we have you?

01:41:38.000 hey guys I just want to know can you hear me now yes yeah okay great so yeah they obviously decided

01:41:45.140 to move from the outdoor venue back into the indoor venue and uh it's much more comfortable

01:41:49.320 for me much more comfortable for the guests but yes I got the chance to sit down with Maxime

01:41:53.640 Bernier earlier in the day and I wanted to ask him about some of the issues that frankly didn't get

01:41:58.980 enough attention in the election and as Candace you were saying uh the fact that most of the

01:42:04.300 mainstream press will never talk about any issues that real conservative voters and potential

01:42:09.200 conservative or PPC voters actually care about. So I took this opportunity to speak to them about

01:42:14.400 a couple of issues. One of them was about his use of alternative media and the state of the

01:42:19.720 mainstream media, which we've already touched on. The other was about national unity, how the PPC

01:42:24.200 would go about trying to divide, trying to unify a clearly very divided country, and also about his

01:42:30.180 vision for canada we hear very little from party leaders about what their grand vision is from

01:42:34.660 canada we more often hear what the uh what the news cycle issue is so i had that opportunity

01:42:40.340 to speak with him and this is how this is how it looks it's a pleasure thank you very much for

01:42:47.620 giving us the time thanks for the invitation very pleased to be with you fantastic so this is

01:42:52.260 obviously not your first election night but i have to imagine that for yourself this is the most

01:42:56.340 exciting one that you've had in many years I think you're right I think

01:42:59.640 you're right because we had a very good campaign and I believe that we have a

01:43:03.720 kind of a momentum people are looking at us now more people know that we exist

01:43:08.880 in the beginning of the campaign the People's Party of Canada was not so

01:43:12.680 well known with the majority of Canadians and that campaign gave me the

01:43:17.520 opportunity to speak about what we believe and to bring our message to more

01:43:22.780 Canadians.

01:43:23.780 So, I want to ask you about PPC's strategy going forward after tonight.

01:43:28.780 So, if the polls are correct, what we know is that your party is going to have a significant

01:43:33.600 increase in vote share nationally and far surpass the expectations of the legacy media.

01:43:38.600 I want to know what the PPC's strategy would be if after tonight, the Conservative Party

01:43:43.400 were to perhaps move more right and perhaps try and crowd your party and yourself out

01:43:50.060 of the right-wing vote.

01:43:51.560 No, you know, actually, the Conservative Party of Canada is not a conservative party anymore.

01:43:58.500 They are only conservative in name.

01:44:00.260 And they are going to the left.

01:44:02.020 They were going to the left with Andrew Scheer.

01:44:04.220 Now they're going more to the left with O'Toole because we are living in a socialist era.

01:44:09.260 And their only goal is to be in power, to be in government.

01:44:12.520 And, you know, they have the same narrative and they're speaking like liberals and like leftists.

01:44:17.840 That's because they want to have the support of the left.

01:44:20.160 And I believe that the real conservative voters are looking at us like the real option on a lot of issues, speaking by more freedom and saying no to lockdown, saying no to vaccine passports.

01:44:33.200 We are the only one that is ready to fight for freedoms and for Canadians.

01:44:37.460 So one thing I observed of your campaign was your adoption of alternative media.

01:44:42.620 You went on to several podcasts and used longer form discussions to try and speak to your base.

01:44:47.400 You were just on the Jordan Peterson podcast, and previously you did a show with Michael Malice.

01:44:52.260 So given that you've clearly had success in using new media to reach out to your base,

01:44:56.620 do you think that in the future we're going to see other political leaders, party leaders, adopt your same alternative media strategy?

01:45:04.000 I don't know.

01:45:05.400 You know, they don't want...

01:45:08.600 All these establishment political leaders, they don't want to have a real discussion with Canadians.

01:45:13.860 They try to appeal to your emotions during a campaign and after a campaign with soundbite and clips.

01:45:19.940 And for us, like I said, we are doing politics differently.

01:45:24.240 I'm not afraid to speak about our platform and taboo subject for someone.

01:45:29.360 And there's no taboo subject for us.

01:45:32.040 So, yes, that's why I'm able to do this kind of a podcast and having a discussion for one hour and 30 minutes with Jordan Peterson.

01:45:40.860 As you know, Jordan Peterson said and wrote that he asked Aaron O'Toole to come.

01:45:45.740 And Aaron O'Toole declined to be with him because they cannot have that.

01:45:50.960 The way that they're doing politics, they don't want to sit and having a real conversation about their platform.

01:45:56.200 They're doing politics based on survey and poolings.

01:45:59.280 And that's why people are fed up with that.

01:46:01.120 So I want to ask you about national unity.

01:46:03.300 And I think a lot of Canadians would agree that we do have a unity problem in this country.

01:46:06.980 We have two separatist movements in two very different parts of the country, born out of different frustrations.

01:46:13.940 And on top of that, almost all the provinces have now introduced a vaccine mandate system, which will only further divide Canadians.

01:46:20.420 How would we possibly try and unify this country? And what would the PPC strategy be to do that?

01:46:25.740 Yeah, we won't divide people by race, by gender, and now by vaccination status. We won't do that.

01:46:34.840 Our goal is to unite every Canadian under the freedom umbrella.

01:46:39.900 Everybody must be free to choose if they want the vaccine or not.

01:46:42.940 We respect everybody.

01:46:44.580 That's the freedom of choice.

01:46:45.880 Same thing for mass mandate.

01:46:47.860 And that's an important issue for this election.

01:46:51.200 But yes, you're absolutely right about this country right now, the unity.

01:46:56.840 And it's a little bit sad that I'm the only one that has a solution for the unity of our country.

01:47:03.480 When you have Western Canadians and you have Western alienation, and we have, like you said, about 30% of the population in Alberta that are ready to separate, we need to address that.

01:47:15.860 O'Toole and Trudeau, they won't speak about that.

01:47:19.540 I'm doing interviews in Toronto or in Eastern Canada, and I said, you know, people in Western Canada, they're not so happy with the situation.

01:47:28.160 They didn't know that because nobody's speaking about that except ourselves.

01:47:31.360 So, yes, we have a solution.

01:47:33.060 The solution is to respect the constitution. If you respect the constitution, you will have a radical decentralization. Provinces like Alberta will have more autonomy. You need to be able also to build pipelines in this country. We are for that. We need to change the equalization formula to be less generous, to give the right incentive to other provinces like my own province in Quebec to develop their own natural resources.

01:47:57.740 so often in in politics party leaders are forced to talk about whatever's in the

01:48:02.480 news cycle and we never really get to hear their their grand vision for this

01:48:05.840 country but I want to frame it in this context so what would you say to a

01:48:09.560 Canadian that looks at this country and sees a country that is no longer what it

01:48:13.280 once was that sees it standing on the world stage dropping precipitously that

01:48:17.620 sees fewer economic opportunities available to them and and sees their

01:48:21.420 freedoms are eroding what would you say to that Canadian to motivate them about

01:48:25.460 the future. And what is your grand vision for Canada? What can Canada become?

01:48:30.240 First of all, I believe that the problem in Canada is the government and more government

01:48:37.140 intervention in our day-to-day life. And our position on that, we are putting Canada first

01:48:42.820 and our country first. But that's not a slogan. That's a reality. By working on our own agenda,

01:48:50.140 Not the UN agenda, the socialist agenda, our own agenda, keeping our sovereignty.

01:48:56.280 I see that country in the near future, if we win that battle of ideas, and I believe we win.

01:49:01.900 Because, you know, the truth always wins, and we will, but I don't know when.

01:49:08.080 But that election is a big step toward that.

01:49:11.300 So, you know, I believe in a smarter government in Ottawa that will respect individual rights,

01:49:16.620 that will respect people, that will look at Canadians as responsible adults,

01:49:22.120 a smaller government that won't interfere in provincial jurisdiction.

01:49:26.020 Well, you will have constitutional peace in this country.

01:49:30.120 And doing that, you'll have more autonomy for every province.

01:49:34.520 So there's a lot of challenges.

01:49:36.580 But if we speak about it, and if people are putting their vote where they believe in,

01:49:45.640 And I'm telling people, don't vote against something for this election.

01:49:49.620 Vote for something.

01:49:50.820 Vote for your values.

01:49:52.320 Vote for us, for the PPC.

01:49:53.940 Look at our platform.

01:49:55.420 And so that argument about splitting the vote, it's very, you know, it's a little bit when I saw the conservative at the end of the campaign saying to everybody, don't vote for the PPC.

01:50:07.820 You will split the vote.

01:50:09.080 No, you won't split the vote because O'Toole is not conservative.

01:50:12.060 And people don't understand that.

01:50:13.680 So it is election night. And before you go, we'd be wrong to not ask you for a prediction about what's going to happen tonight. What do you think is going to happen for you and your party?

01:50:21.300 I believe that we'll have at least four, five, six percent of the votes. That would be a huge victory, maybe more than that. And maybe a couple of our candidates elected. But the most important, the mainstream media won't be able to ignore us anymore.

01:50:37.000 But, you know, we were able to grow without them because of our using social media, podcasts,

01:50:43.640 YouTube, and all these real, I say, you know, alternative media, but real independent media.

01:50:50.200 So we will focus there. For me, just before the vote, I feel very good. I did everything that

01:50:57.640 I had to do. I traveled across the country, we did rallies, I did my best. And we'll see what

01:51:03.000 will happen but i'm pretty confident that this this election will be an historical one for the

01:51:08.840 people's party and maybe for the country well thank you for the time mr bernier best of luck tonight

01:51:13.320 you'll see thank you very much interview with uh harrison faulkner true north and maxine bernier

01:51:21.160 that was an abridged version of a longer interview they sat down for about 20 minutes and we're going

01:51:26.440 to play that entire interview and put it up online tomorrow. So you come back over to TNC

01:51:32.220 to check that out. But really kind of touching on a lot of the points that we were having

01:51:38.080 earlier in the show, Andrew, the idea that voting for Max St. Bernier isn't necessarily

01:51:43.800 a split for the Conservatives, just given how he, in his own way, has managed to increase his own

01:51:49.600 tent, build a big tent of the sort of alternative protest parties or just freedom-loving

01:51:55.540 canadians so should be really interesting to watch and now hamish uh we have uh hamish marshall back

01:52:01.700 with us our decision desk uh hosts tonight and so the polls have now been closed for 39 minutes

01:52:07.700 uh what what can you tell us about what is happening uh out there well it's still very early

01:52:12.100 days especially in in ontario and quebec uh there's not really strong patterns emerging um generally

01:52:19.300 looks like uh as i said these are very very very early results a lot of writings don't have any

01:52:23.620 results in yet and some uh some of them have maybe one or two polls so it's very very early

01:52:30.340 generally looks like the liberal vote's holding up uh conservatives are doing well in some areas

01:52:34.660 you expect them to but it's not looking you know the liberals are ahead but it's very very very

01:52:40.180 very very very early um and the bloc is not doesn't look like it's making um uh big gains uh

01:52:48.580 uh, either, um, they're sort of holding, you know,

01:52:52.500 there was a lot of talk that the block was going to be able to pick up a bunch

01:52:54.660 of seats. I think we're looking at more or less on the same pattern of where

01:52:58.820 it's been, but this is very, very early days.

01:53:00.900 We're looking at only a couple of polls in, uh, there's a few results, uh,

01:53:04.780 from, uh, from out west. Um, again, no, nothing,

01:53:09.540 no very big significant changes at this point. There's a, there's really,

01:53:13.620 it's very, very quiet. Um, we'll see how it is.

01:53:16.260 polls are now closed in bc uh so every riding in the country is now uh is now has now closed

01:53:22.020 but one thing i will say is we spoke about fredericton earlier uh and since we've spoken

01:53:26.100 about whatever it was 45 minutes ago i think fredericton's flipped the lead about four times

01:53:31.540 we've gone from conservatives to liberals to conservatives again to liberals again then i

01:53:34.580 think back to the conservatives are about 100 votes ahead right now i predict that's an elect

01:53:38.820 that's a that whatever we end up with tonight it doesn't matter the mail-in ballots are going to

01:53:44.100 to determine who wins, who wins

01:53:45.660 French in one way or the other.

01:53:46.980 And we think we could see a bunch

01:53:48.180 of seats like that.

01:53:49.740 So it's just early, early days.

01:53:52.020 But it doesn't at this point,

01:53:54.060 it doesn't look like there's any

01:53:55.160 big indications of a liberal

01:53:56.880 collapse or a conservative surge.

01:53:59.160 I would point out for all our

01:54:01.020 all our fans who are interested in

01:54:03.000 the PPC that in Oxford

01:54:05.100 and southwestern Ontario, the

01:54:06.900 PPC is in second to the

01:54:08.400 conservative

01:54:10.320 with 14 percent of the vote.

01:54:11.960 There's only one poll in that's

01:54:13.380 still uh still sort of significant considering they would have gotten you know a couple percent

01:54:17.300 there last time so ppc is certainly doing uh about as well as expected but we're not we haven't

01:54:24.260 really seen any big patterns really evolve just on a technical note uh advanced polls where do

01:54:30.100 they fit fit in or when do they get added to some of the totals that we see if they're not there

01:54:34.580 already so they start they generally what happens is they start counting them right away so they

01:54:39.220 when the polls close they'll they'll have all the advanced polls that they've brought in from the

01:54:42.660 the days before they're sitting in the returning office and they start counting them right away

01:54:46.260 but your average advanced poll has a lot more votes in it than your average normal election

01:54:50.820 poll so they generally take longer to to count um and the further complication that i've heard

01:54:57.140 that elections can is dealing with is usually in order to get these big advanced polls counted

01:55:00.660 quickly they have row upon row of people they're counting but because of social distancing they

01:55:06.820 just don't they don't have the room for it so they expect them to to uh to take longer so if you go

01:55:12.100 and look at some of the you know like a riding in like the one in newfoundland that the conservatives

01:55:16.180 are in the head and the conservatives are ahead by 750 votes there's three polls left to come

01:55:22.340 you know it took a long time for the for the one more poll to come in those are almost certainly

01:55:26.660 the advanced polls left to come in i'm sure they'll come in this evening um but uh uh they

01:55:33.140 will they'll take a time and and could make the difference and i see 750 votes is probably a lot

01:55:37.460 to overcome uh so it's probably going to be i mean that one will stay conservative but on the other

01:55:43.620 hand so they'll come in but they're going to take their time but in some ridings you have a really

01:55:48.020 organized returning officer and they get them done quickly so have have any vote have any ridings

01:55:53.700 been determined like it says leading or elected has anyone been elected at this point hamish

01:55:59.300 well you know elected is just whatever a decision desk person like me decides so yeah i i would say

01:56:04.340 on the whole that you know the the results for atlantic canada pretty much every seat is is is

01:56:09.380 in i think it was about i'd say three or four seats that haven't been decided in atlanta canada

01:56:14.580 looks like uh at at best the conservatives won four seats in atlantic canada last time

01:56:20.180 uh they're now uh best case winning um let's see four and nine so that would be an increase of five

01:56:30.740 worst case uh was would probably be uh an increase uh up to six uh so that you know there's three

01:56:38.100 seats in play that the conservatives can still win they're leading in them today but we'll see where

01:56:42.740 they where we go there's a lot of counting left to come in in two of them at least so there's that uh

01:56:49.620 the rest of the country i think it's too early to say if anyone's being elected but atlantic

01:56:53.060 canada it looks like of the 32 seats uh all but uh four or five have been decided now and now are you

01:57:00.100 prepared to call coast of bay central notre dame or do you still think those final three polls

01:57:05.220 need to come in a little bit more before you could say that decisively i'd like to see one more

01:57:10.180 if if one more of those polls comes in and the conservative margin goes up i think i'd be i

01:57:14.820 think i'd be prepared to say that that's going to stay conservative uh but i've certainly seen uh

01:57:19.860 you know margins of six or seven hundred votes overturned in advanced polls but those are often

01:57:24.260 in bigger ridings in ontario or bc where they have larger population whereas in newfoundland

01:57:29.460 the population is simply smaller so 750 votes is a bigger uh task to overcome um but you know uh

01:57:38.180 it's looking like the conservatives will take that seat but that can still change in the advanced

01:57:41.300 polls when they when they come in and then over the next half hour or 45 minutes great all right

01:57:46.740 hamish we'll definitely keep you standing by so you can give us any updates as they come in but

01:57:51.540 i want to bring in sun new toronto sun editor because sun news network toronto sun editor

01:57:58.180 uh anthony fury who's going to be joining in on the conversation to talk a little bit about what's

01:58:03.460 going on so anthony thank you so much for joining our program tonight hey candace great to be here

01:58:09.220 yeah so you had a great video out i think it was yesterday talking about why haven't uh we

01:58:14.580 increased hospital capacity and it just seems like we're in this like never-ending cycle of like

01:58:20.500 you know covid cases lockdowns covid cases lockdown and it's like haven't we figured

01:58:25.540 that we're really going into a fourth wave and the the solution is exactly the same as it has been

01:58:30.420 for wave one two and three like how are we not making any progress in this country when it comes

01:58:35.700 to covid this is one of the issues that has barely been talked about in the election and really thank

01:58:39.460 you for bringing it up and then continuing the conversation but i mean what do you what do you

01:58:44.340 make of the the state of covet at this point um and also the fact that we're barely talking about

01:58:49.380 it even throughout the course of this election well yeah the things that government has been

01:58:53.780 been deciding to do this past year and a half whether it's the federal government or your

01:58:57.520 municipality is the most momentous things I've seen government enact upon its people in my entire

01:59:02.680 lifetime whether or not you agree with these measures or you disagree with them so it's just

01:59:06.400 bizarre that more people do not feel this shouldn't be sort of the primary issue of the election

01:59:12.260 campaign right now clearly Maxime Bernier and his party and candidates and those supporters

01:59:16.120 they certainly do but a lot of other people do not think this should really be much of a thing

01:59:21.220 that is discussed to your point about you know the hospitalizations or hospital capacity issues

01:59:26.260 uh when jason kenney announced recently okay we're actually going to what i would say sort

01:59:31.600 of regress their response in all of this because they're they're unfortunately dealing with a lot

01:59:35.440 of people in hospital with code 19 right now and they have hospital capacity issues i thought is

01:59:40.140 this actually a live news clip are you replaying something that jason kenney said 12 months ago or

01:59:45.200 14 months ago because that's exactly what they said back then and i remember writing columns

01:59:50.800 giving commentary more about the ontario situation where i live saying okay well instead of saying we

01:59:56.800 have to shut down you know children's outdoor sports is the solution why not surge hospital

02:00:01.760 capacity said well yeah we're working on it but it's not that easy and we're getting a few more

02:00:05.120 beds but staffing's an issue too and finding the right nurses and so forth okay interesting point

02:00:10.160 14 months later wait you're you're saying it again and there are people who were paid impressive

02:00:15.440 six-figure salaries 500k a year and so forth uh to be hospital administrators and to manage the

02:00:20.880 hospital systems uh in our provinces and regional healthcare hubs i'm like what have they been doing

02:00:26.880 the past 12 months okay fine first wave they were like what is this we don't know what's going on

02:00:31.360 and then you get into the second wave and you're like okay guys that excuse is a little less

02:00:34.560 justified and now when you get to right now it is just surreal i think that uh they have not

02:00:40.800 actually done the things necessary uh to to prepare these arguments i mean one of the things

02:00:46.080 we see in other jurisdictions around the world is they just have more beds per capita and better

02:00:49.760 staffing resources so while there's a lot of discussion debate and drama and so forth they're

02:00:54.160 just not feeling as compelled to shut things down that argument just doesn't carry as much so very

02:00:58.880 frustrating to see jason kenney pull out a pretty old argument that highly paid people should have

02:01:03.920 solved well it also feels like there's a huge elephant in the room that no one really wants

02:01:08.720 to discuss i know aaron o'toole talked about it a little bit and then he instantly got attacked by

02:01:13.600 the liberal war machine campaign machine and that is talking about hey maybe our very rigid

02:01:19.280 government-run health care system isn't all it's cracked up to be right when there's a huge

02:01:23.120 pandemic and all these people need to be administered and yet we can't really have

02:01:27.840 an honest conversation about the possibility of increasing capacity through private means through

02:01:34.880 through individual investments through you know people who want it not wanting to wait in queue

02:01:40.320 would rather just pay money and not necessarily because they're wealthy but just because that's

02:01:44.080 their priority and and they would rather spend the money there than elsewhere um why can't we

02:01:49.280 have these kind of conversations anthony i mean you uh write about this stuff a lot in the toronto

02:01:53.920 sun and you understand this issue really well uh is it that we're just so obsessed with this natural

02:02:00.320 cultural identity that we have government health care that we can't even have conversations about

02:02:05.200 ways to improve the capacity and improve our health care system or what is this yeah i mean

02:02:10.320 we're one of the few advanced nations out there that doesn't have some form of two-tier health

02:02:14.240 care and that phrase has become some sort of left-wing dog whistle or i don't know what the

02:02:18.560 right term is where you hear the phrase two-tier health care and you're supposed to you know sort

02:02:22.480 of hiss and howl and cringe and so forth i go i don't know that seems to be a pretty good term

02:02:27.040 in terms of efficacious delivery of scarce healthcare resources.

02:02:31.760 And it helps a number of countries that we're supposed to emulate.

02:02:34.620 We're supposed to be more like those, I guess, somewhat more left-wing European countries

02:02:38.980 that have models that are, I'd say, far more advanced than ours

02:02:42.400 in terms of offering more options in the healthcare system.

02:02:45.200 So you're right, Candice, it's just bizarre that we're told this is somehow like the third rail

02:02:50.880 of talking about these issues and it's sort of political poison,

02:02:53.900 but it kind of seems like it's a solution to some very serious problems, COVID and non-COVID.

02:03:00.120 How many third rails do we have in Canadian politics? I mean, I can't even keep track because

02:03:04.260 we're definitely not supposed to talk about immigration. We're not supposed to talk about

02:03:07.840 health care. We're not supposed to talk about pensions. We're not supposed to talk about

02:03:11.080 abortion. There's just so many issues that we're not supposed to talk about. And because of it,

02:03:16.020 our elections are kind of boring. When you see the debate, when you think about what the major

02:03:21.300 issues that were discussed it's like it's not a very exciting election it's not a very motivating

02:03:25.860 election because the things that we are told that we're supposed to care about aren't really the

02:03:30.700 things that canadians care about and things that the media spend the entire election droning on

02:03:36.040 and on and on about uh canadians just totally disengage and zone out so that that's a problem

02:03:42.440 for another day no it's a really good point i mean i have small kids at home and obviously they like

02:03:47.300 to do a lot of coloring and as they get older they want more advanced coloring charts they want

02:03:51.740 pictures and scenes and so forth where there's more different colors and so forth but it's like

02:03:56.000 in Canada it's like no no no you got a color within the lines and we're just giving you a

02:03:59.600 picture of a ball and you just have to color the one ball one color and you can't get any more

02:04:03.900 elaborate pictures any more diagrams you can't you can't sort of have a more complex framework

02:04:09.960 that you're dealing with here so it is frustrating when people do try to kind of evolve the

02:04:15.100 conversation in more directions. They're always encouraged to say, no, you got to stay within

02:04:19.840 these narrow confines. It's upsetting. And then we don't really see a lot of difference between

02:04:26.340 the parties on these issues. And again, it's like we don't really hit on the major issues.

02:04:33.320 Anthony, what are you seeing tonight? Is there anything so far that you've seen tonight that

02:04:36.820 surprises you? Or what do you make of the sort of last week of the campaign? And here we are

02:04:41.580 election night what do you think is going to happen yeah i mean the big question of course

02:04:45.240 everyone had is will justin trudeau be remaining as prime minister will he have a diminished minority

02:04:50.000 government and if the minority government is diminished even further there's going to be a

02:04:53.920 lot of liberals pretty frustrated uh that they even went through this exercise of having this

02:04:58.540 election right now because if they did not benefit well then why did they go through this process

02:05:02.820 uh already some liberals are going to lose out they're going to have lost their jobs and they're

02:05:07.460 they're going to not get their pensions not that that's a concern of mine but they'll be kind of

02:05:11.000 frustrated about all of that and those sort of logistical details out there a lot of people

02:05:16.180 watching that then again it's hard to say with the polls and the mail-in ballots so we shall see what

02:05:21.300 what actually happens a lot of people regardless of their political perspective I think we're

02:05:26.160 really interested I was really curious to see what happened with the People's Party of Canada

02:05:29.720 because we have gone through such a momentous year and a half and the mainstream parties have

02:05:34.660 not really touched on that that just big thing that's happening you're telling me I can't go out

02:05:40.280 to live my life pretty much. You know, I'm a little upset about that, you would think. And

02:05:43.640 while the majority of Canadians seem to be on board with most of those restrictions, it wasn't

02:05:48.620 100% majority. It was, you know, two thirds or what have you. So how would the people who

02:05:52.900 disagreed, how would they express themselves? And I think a lot of people are curious to see

02:05:56.620 what the PPC vote is, certainly much stronger than it was in 2019. But right now, from what I'm

02:06:03.560 seeing, not what, you know, Maxime Bernier would have wanted it to be, but it's still early. We'll

02:06:08.580 see as the numbers come in so those are kind of the big questions because you and i talked about

02:06:12.020 this previously candace at other uh on air for other discussions i mean it's it's kind of just

02:06:17.940 interesting and exciting to see a new party out there and what's been a pretty stale political

02:06:22.180 landscape landscape in canada for the past 20 years well and i just think it's a cautionary tale

02:06:27.060 it's like you know we take for granted this idea that we have a united right in canada that that

02:06:33.700 you know we used to have a divide there used to be the progressive conservatives and the alliance

02:06:38.180 and you know we we found a way to unite these two factions and you know forever they will remain

02:06:45.140 but but that's not necessarily the case and just because um the new i remember anthony and i think

02:06:50.420 we probably had this conversation at the time but when uh harper stepped down and there was a new

02:06:55.540 race to who's going to replace him um people people kind of guessed it would be peter mckay

02:07:01.540 versus jason kenney so you'd have that old kind of pc versus alliance and then that didn't

02:07:06.580 didn't come to be and it turned out to be in Andrew Scheer and Max St Bernier um you know two

02:07:12.580 two different uh parts of the conservative party we didn't have that old divide but we had kind of

02:07:16.580 a new a new splinter between the libertarian part of the party and the more social conservative

02:07:21.700 part it's interesting now that we've kind of ditched the social conservative part too and

02:07:25.540 found more of a centrist moderate um and and we're seeing this sort of breakaway libertarian movement

02:07:31.060 So, you know, my preference would be that, again, it would all be united under one big tent. And that way you would have a stronger possibility of knocking out the liberals. But at the same time, you can't neglect the base. You can't say, OK, libertarians, you have to stay in our party. But we will not talk about libertarian issues. We won't talk about freedom. We will shun you and talk down to you and dismiss you.

02:07:54.880 And yet you still have to vote for us. And we're going to, you know, put up the same sort of annoying tactic that the liberals do, saying, oh, an NDP, a vote for the NDP is a vote for the conservatives. It's like, no, they're a different party. And if you have those values, you can vote for them. It's a free country and you can vote for whoever you want. And you can never take a certain part of the party for granted. You can't take those votes for granted. So absolutely super interesting.

02:08:17.760 yeah certainly i mean i think one of the challenges always with the conservative

02:08:22.880 party wanting to you know get into power of course and appeal to as many people as possible

02:08:26.920 is they end up falling into the trap of wanting to do what uh uh more liberal and left-leaning

02:08:32.000 media would like them to do and just want to be more liberal more liberal liberal light i mean

02:08:36.320 i'm a big advocate of saying let's forget about this paris deal let's just withdraw from the

02:08:40.780 paris deal or let's at least acknowledge that these are not real targets we actually have to

02:08:44.900 hit we actually created them ourselves i think people maybe think everybody agreed to the same

02:08:49.360 targets in the world no uh here in canada we we've devised these nationally determined contributions

02:08:54.540 there's no penalty if we don't hit them and so forth so let's just acknowledge it as some

02:08:58.500 aspirational stretch goal and let's just move on and and talk about other things you can talk about

02:09:02.780 other you know green issues and so forth there's a lot of interesting stuff with uh r d going on

02:09:07.680 with electric vehicle companies and various other products and so forth by all means you know that's

02:09:11.600 a thing that's happening but this obsession with the Paris deal and remember the debate uh the

02:09:16.700 other week Candace it was like half an hour talking about climate change but then really

02:09:20.800 it was talking about the Paris deal and we're like good grief I mean we're just so fixated on all of

02:09:24.880 this and I feel like if somebody stepped forward and said we're not going to participate in that

02:09:29.040 I appreciate that is Maxine Bernier's PPC platform but I think if the conservatives just offered

02:09:33.180 something a little different rather than oh here's how we're going to chase after Trudeau and say

02:09:37.840 we're going to just do the Trudeau targets better than Trudeau's going to do them. I just don't know

02:09:41.960 what the added value is there for voters. Well, it's so interesting to hear the media say, I know

02:09:49.200 one of the questions in the debate was quite literally, you know, this is the climate change

02:09:53.980 election. And it's like, no, it isn't. This is a COVID election. You can't just say it's the

02:09:59.200 climate change election. The last election. They're always saying that. Every day is the

02:10:03.500 climate change day for these people yeah if you're if you're an alarmist who is so obsessed with this

02:10:08.380 topic then yes every every campaign is but for most canadians that's just not the main priority

02:10:13.100 right now and it seems like so much of this campaign has just been recycled old campaigns

02:10:18.360 that we that we see the liberals kind of throwing out their playbook we've seen all these attacks

02:10:22.440 before we've seen it all before and i one of the things that the media is really starting to pick

02:10:27.200 up on anthony is how divided the country is we were talking about a little earlier in the program how

02:10:32.020 after the 2019 election, you had the surge of the bloc in Quebec. You had the Wexit movement

02:10:37.700 emerge out of nowhere. It was dormant. It was out of nowhere, but it really came front of mind out

02:10:43.520 in Alberta. And the country seemed really divided at that point. And now looking back, I mean,

02:10:48.100 that didn't seem very divided at all because, you know, the basic assumptions were the same.

02:10:53.620 Whereas in this election, I mean, if you look at Trudeau's negative numbers, they're really,

02:10:57.840 really high a lot of Canadians really don't like the prime minister and you know if if the polls

02:11:02.920 are correct and if the things play out tonight as as it appears they will and the liberals win and

02:11:07.780 Trudeau's the prime minister again you know he's going to have a really different landscape than

02:11:12.620 he did five weeks ago and he called an unnecessary election wasted all of our time you know really

02:11:18.480 pushed on these wedge issues to divide the country even further scapegoated all of the sort of PPC

02:11:24.120 protesters, people who are just pretty much sick and tired of being told to stay inside

02:11:29.340 and stepping outside, protesting for their freedom, anti-lockdown people, sort of unfairly

02:11:35.220 maligned as being anti-vaxxer, racist, misogynistic, Trudeau threw every name at the book at them.

02:11:41.400 And then you have groups like the Anti-Hate Network jump in to say, oh, these are actually

02:11:45.300 far-right, radical conservatives over there.

02:11:49.000 And, you know, you really have just a divided country.

02:11:51.840 So, you know, what do you think is going to happen to Trudeau at the end of this all?

02:11:57.300 Well, you know, I think he's going to be in a weakened position, regardless of really what happens other than getting a majority.

02:12:04.160 Like it's a it's a status quo minority. It's a slightly downgraded minority, whatever it is.

02:12:09.040 I mean, people are going to go, why did you do all of this? This was hubris on your part.

02:12:12.860 There's going to be a handful of liberals who who lost their seats that we're seeing, you know, across the board already.

02:12:18.900 they're pretty upset at him uh people who are saying i would rather be liberal leader christy

02:12:24.520 freeland or whoever they are people who say i want a shot at being prime minister i mean

02:12:27.900 that pressure is going uh to materialize for sure i mean one wonders who is a hundred percent

02:12:34.320 in his camp right now i mean a lot of people used to talk about the pmo and the liberal party under

02:12:38.800 trudeau as this sort of cult of personality and i i think that was definitely true for the longest

02:12:44.520 time I mean particularly in 2015 I mean the Liberal Party was just Trudeau because it was decimated

02:12:49.760 after the Michael Ignatieff election there were no power brokers who really wanted much to do with

02:12:54.400 it they were like I don't know we're just kind of tired of this party right now we're going to sit

02:12:57.160 this one out and then Trudeau took it over and made it a party of him and he banished the senators

02:13:01.340 which was sort of the old guard and the people who had the institutional memory so it was the

02:13:06.100 the cult of personality behind Trudeau well that personality is is gone now I mean even even if

02:13:11.760 he's managing to govern he's managing to pull through this election i mean he's just this kind

02:13:16.420 of workaday politician that certainly has more enemies than he has friends and fans right now

02:13:21.660 and how does he navigate that it's not going to be pretty and yet we've also seen uh from the past

02:13:27.080 years that trudeau does not despite the fact that he talked about sunny ways and unity and the book

02:13:32.320 he put out common ground or we're going to unite each other he doesn't do that to your point when

02:13:36.620 he sees a crowd there he doesn't go and say how can i neutralize this person i'll embrace them on

02:13:40.360 the camera it'll be a feel-good moment no he starts yelling at them and pointing a finger at

02:13:43.720 them and getting that animosity going and I think that can backfire Candace I think he's kind of

02:13:48.800 backed himself into a corner well it's interesting I mean even just the comment that he made you know

02:13:53.680 here he has uh he was apparently so outraged over the idea that people were protesting outside of

02:13:59.180 hospitals so that was beyond the pale for him and he decided to introduce a new law mid-election

02:14:05.220 a law that was already on the books by the way but he said okay if you block critical infrastructure

02:14:09.300 you block a hospital it's against the law uh okay so you had networks like ctv and other

02:14:14.980 legacy media outlets jumping in saying oh trudeau's gonna ban this thing and it's like okay that's

02:14:19.940 already against the law then trudeau had a heckler outside of one of his events and he turned and said

02:14:24.740 to the guy uh isn't there a hospital somewhere you could be protesting almost like kind of encouraging

02:14:29.140 that behavior it's like what an immature divisive man i just i couldn't get over that comment and

02:14:34.100 it barely gets picked up it barely gets covered in the legacy media but to me well like the first

02:14:38.820 nation's lady who protested at that event and he that snide sort of thank you for your donation

02:14:43.940 comment i mean good heavens and that's the the constituency that he's supposed to

02:14:48.180 have the most sort of uh you know emotional uh commitment to and yet you know when he thinks

02:14:54.020 the cameras aren't on he really he really flips the bird to them absolutely it's pretty pretty

02:14:59.300 shocking so uh i'm gonna go to hamish marshall bring hamish in to give us a quick update about

02:15:04.740 what is going on with these polls anthony thanks so much you can uh stay on if you want that and

02:15:10.100 hear hear this update from hamish so uh so far uh right now about um a million and a half last

02:15:17.540 time i checked about a million and a half votes have been uh counted yeah about 1.5 million votes

02:15:22.740 being counted across the country the popular vote sitting about 38 for the liberals 32 for the

02:15:27.700 conservatives but not a lot of votes being counted out west so those numbers are going to change that

02:15:31.620 liberal number is going to come down a bit as well um what we're seeing in terms of seats is it looks

02:15:37.860 like the uh there's a bit of a realignment going on it's hard to say how it's going to shake out

02:15:44.180 it doesn't look like the blocks making the gains people talked about the liberals you know there's

02:15:47.860 a seat like uh gasp z that the liberals won uh by uh by 1.7 last time they're hanging on by uh you

02:15:57.300 know five percent with with with four with half of votes in so there's seats like that in quebec

02:16:02.500 where the bloc is not making the gains are expected the interesting thing in quebec is that in uh

02:16:07.940 bertie masculino gonnay ruth ellen brosseau who was the uh the the bartender who was elected in

02:16:15.060 the orange crush in 2011 who'd never been to the riding and didn't speak french it looks like she's

02:16:20.820 back she's leading as it for the ndp by 650 votes only about 20 23 percent of the polls are in but

02:16:27.460 i don't think anybody expected she would perform like that it's it's it's quite the quite the

02:16:31.380 comeback story she ends up pulling that off um and then in ontario uh it looks like there's there

02:16:37.300 there's a bit of horse trading going on um and again it's still fairly early days you know right

02:16:42.900 now with about 10 of the polls in uh marion moncef is about 108 votes behind in peterborough

02:16:48.740 Kawartha, so that'd be a Liberal cabinet minister going down. But on the flip side, a long-time

02:16:54.820 Conservative MP, Bob Soroya, and a Conservative MP who crossed over from the Liberals, Eliana

02:17:01.260 Alislev, in two York Region seats close to Toronto, both of them are now behind the Liberals.

02:17:07.780 The Conservatives are also behind in Niagara Falls, a seat they've held since 2004, but

02:17:12.180 they look like they're taking back Kitchener, Conestoga, where they're ahead very slightly

02:17:16.740 at the moment. So what we're seeing is a bit of horse trading. It's not looking like the absolute

02:17:20.740 number of seats is going to change an awful lot in Ontario, but which seat is held, it looks like

02:17:26.440 it's going to change. You know, even a seat like Sault Ste. Marie, which I don't think it was on

02:17:30.980 anybody's conservative target lists, the conservatives were leading, they're now behind

02:17:35.220 by about 70 votes, but it was certainly looking quite close there. If we move on to the prairies

02:17:41.700 In Winnipeg or Manitoba, we're not seeing any significant changes except for in Charleswood, St. James, Assiniboia, Headingley, where the Conservatives are about 200 votes behind.

02:17:53.960 The Conservatives had won that seat, picked it up last time, and now the Liberals are back.

02:17:59.940 And we'll see if they'll be able to hold it for the rest of the night.

02:18:02.120 In Saskatchewan, again, we're looking at the Conservatives right now are ahead in every riding except for Saskatoon West, where the NDP is 120 votes behind.

02:18:12.000 There's a lot of votes left to come, and it's quite close in the northern riding as well.

02:18:17.420 In Alberta, it's looking pretty solid for the Conservatives.

02:18:21.220 In Calgary, Calgary Skyview, there was some concern that the Conservatives are ahead.

02:18:26.600 they thought they might lose uh and then but in edmonton it looks like right now the conservatives

02:18:32.260 are uh well it's just actually just changing as we go uh edmonton center is flipping back and forth

02:18:37.980 as i as i see it um but the ndp is currently leading at edmonton greasebox so the conservatives

02:18:43.860 could be down one or two seats in alberta um and then in bc we're still waiting for a lot of

02:18:48.820 meaningful results to come in uh northwest territories looks like it's going to stay for

02:18:52.880 Liberals and Nunavut it looks like the NDP is going to hang on although that's a very regional

02:18:58.640 sort of riding or territory so it's hard to say exactly so right now it looks like you know

02:19:06.400 Conservatives had gains in Atlantic Canada Ontario it looks like they might be net down one or two

02:19:12.400 but again it's still very early days the prairies net down one or two I think we could end up more

02:19:18.000 or less the same number of seats that the Conservatives won in the last election

02:19:20.960 the NDP seems to be rising. We'll see where the Liberals end up. Right now, in terms of the seats

02:19:27.840 that people are ahead in, the Liberals are ahead in 148 seats, the Conservatives in 110,

02:19:35.600 but some of those are only a couple of polls, so we shouldn't take too much for that. But

02:19:40.160 generally, it's looking like the Conservatives are on track for more or less where they ended

02:19:45.120 up last time great thank you for that hamish marshall we will check back in with you very

02:19:50.560 shortly i want to move to one of the candidates who has just been re-elected right now sitting at

02:19:56.160 62 of the vote and that is the mp elect of regina capell and also the former conservative party of

02:20:03.920 canada leader andrew shear andrew it is good to have you on the show tonight what's been the

02:20:09.280 feeling out west in saskatchewan specifically for the campaign and certainly today yeah

02:20:15.040 You know, ever since Justin Trudeau started cancelling pipelines and chasing away investment in our energy sector, the hurt here in Saskatchewan has been very pronounced.

02:20:25.680 And so the white hot anger about what Justin Trudeau has done to our province has continued from the last election where we swept the province.

02:20:34.220 And I'm feeling optimistic about tonight because people realize just how bad Justin Trudeau has been for our province and for Western Canada.

02:20:44.100 certainly in the you know there's been a lot of issues that have kind of come up throughout the

02:20:48.760 campaign but generally speaking the the way Justin Trudeau has ignored Western Canada

02:20:53.600 or when he's not ignoring us he's outright attacking us certainly was a big part of it

02:20:58.600 and and the conservative message of championing our oil and gas sector believing that we need

02:21:03.260 more Canadian energy both in Canada around the world has always resonated so I'm feeling pretty

02:21:09.120 good about uh about this evening uh still still a couple close races but uh feeling pretty good

02:21:14.000 yeah that western alienation is a very real problem i think it certainly ballooned in 2019

02:21:20.140 when justin trudeau was re-elected and since then it has as well you look at a lot of developments

02:21:25.800 such as the cancellation by the incoming u.s administration of keystone xl and so on what are

02:21:32.660 the big issues and we were talking about this a little bit earlier with danielle smith but it

02:21:36.220 really does go beyond pipelines I know and I'm curious in your view what the things are that

02:21:41.660 people in the rest west really want to see coming out of this well you're absolutely right it's not

02:21:46.620 just about energy policy you know it's not just like like there was one grievance it's a whole

02:21:50.780 host of issues we had a terrible drought this summer and uh and and when uh livestock producers

02:21:57.340 are having cattle die because there's no water for them to drink on their farms and when feed

02:22:02.780 prices start going to the roof there's hurt in real time and there was a real sense that the

02:22:08.060 trudeau government was dragging its feet not there are federal programs in place that are designed

02:22:12.940 to kick in when there's a natural disaster beyond farmers control and and and he was very slow to

02:22:19.820 to react you know not addressing that he started off the campaign remember he started off the

02:22:25.260 campaign threatening to claw back saskatchewan's health care transfers for the crime of allowing

02:22:32.700 some private delivery of diagnostic services. Now, there are private clinics in Justin Trudeau's

02:22:38.260 own riding. There are private clinics all over Quebec and in Ontario. I've never once heard

02:22:43.620 Justin Trudeau threaten Ontario or Quebec with their health care transfers. But when he comes

02:22:48.600 to Saskatchewan and makes that threat, there's this real sense that there's a double standard,

02:22:55.200 that he's going to do things to our province, to our region, that he would never dream of doing

02:22:59.900 in other provinces, and there's a real sense that under the Trudeau Liberals, Confederation isn't

02:23:05.480 working for Western Canada, and that was there in the last election, 2019. It's certainly

02:23:10.920 continuing, and I'm hopeful for tonight. We can, you know, we'll see some good news. It's still

02:23:15.580 early hours here, but there's just a lot of, and it's not just anger, Andrew, you know, there's a

02:23:21.920 real sense of, and it's not even frustration. It's like out here, we just can't understand

02:23:28.560 why Canadians in eastern Canada would continue supporting a government that treats western

02:23:33.200 Canada like that and and there's a there's just a real puzzlement that you know we feel like we're

02:23:37.840 there for the rest of Canada when other regions are in trouble and and we've been hurting for the

02:23:41.920 last few years directly as a result of government policies and so there's a real sense of frustration

02:23:47.760 alienation and a lack of understanding about why other provinces wouldn't understand what's going

02:23:52.480 on here and it seems just like andrew like that issue is is just hardly covered i mean we're

02:23:58.240 talking about tonight we had danielle smith on earlier and she was echoing a lot of the same

02:24:02.240 concerns and it's interesting andrew because you know this is sort of the first time i'm hearing

02:24:06.400 about this in the campaign and i know i went out to calgary a couple years ago and we did a

02:24:10.240 documentary about the oil and gas sector collapsing there but it just seems like the issues that

02:24:15.760 dominated this election were not the same ones that i i know are the ones that canadians are

02:24:20.880 sitting around the dinner table talking about the ones that are of concern to sort of working

02:24:25.280 canadians and i can't help but feel that so much of that is because of the media landscape in this

02:24:30.640 country because the cbc really leads the charge that you know that that instance that you were

02:24:35.120 talking about where justin trudeau said that uh you're gonna punish uh saskatchewan for for doing

02:24:39.920 something that every province does especially quebec and british columbia but the media is

02:24:44.080 right there uh to cheerlead to push liberal wedge issues to repeat their talking points

02:24:48.800 it just seems like we really need a change in this country and i i wish this was something that was

02:24:54.320 more top of mind but the idea that all of these journalists are getting money from the government

02:24:59.760 and then those journalists are turning around and they're the ones that are supposed to be

02:25:03.040 holding the government to account when it's specifically one party the liberal party uh

02:25:07.280 that are pushing these narratives so what do you what do you make of the media landscape

02:25:11.360 and the way that the important issues especially in western canada are just

02:25:14.880 ignored by the rest of the country and the media. You're absolutely right. If you only listen to

02:25:22.400 the media, you would believe that there are a certain number of issues that every single

02:25:26.940 Canadian cares about and it's top of mind. And then in every opinion poll, when you ask people

02:25:32.060 to rank their issues, the issues that the CBC spends like 80% of their time talking about don't

02:25:38.360 even show up. They don't even show up. I've knocked doors all over my riding for the past

02:25:42.800 35 days in 2019. I was all across the country. It was always, it was like there are two different

02:25:48.440 worlds. There's a media world. And when I was standing there and the media were asking their

02:25:52.140 questions, they were asking questions about all kinds of issues, mostly amplifying liberal talking

02:25:57.240 points, mostly taking the liberal attack from the war room and, you know, turning it into a question

02:26:02.300 that I had to deal with during the leadership, during the election race. Same thing they did

02:26:07.280 to Aaron O'Toole, this campaign. And then when I talked to my candidates, you know, and I had my

02:26:11.260 candidates on the bus, I'd say, okay, well, you know, what are you hearing at the doors?

02:26:14.800 Nothing, nothing like what the media were pushing. Certainly, rarely was there any

02:26:20.220 correspondence between what my candidates were telling me they were hearing. So there's a huge

02:26:23.720 disconnect that, you know, there's a very thin aspect of our geography where a whole bunch of

02:26:30.540 people live in ivory towers and breathe the rarefied air and they pontificate down to us.

02:26:37.560 And I was listening to what you were chatting about before about the divisiveness that Justin Trudeau's brought about in this country.

02:26:44.440 And a lot of it also has to do with the media, the way they cover stories, you know, the way they, you know,

02:26:48.500 there are legitimate concerns in this country about whether or not the government should be able to mandate medical decisions.

02:26:55.780 And when the media and Justin Trudeau together are saying, well, you know, those types of people, it's not just that they're wrong.

02:27:02.740 like it seems like when I was younger you know you follow politics and you know you have people

02:27:07.140 who disagree and I might think you're wrong and I might think I'm right but what's happened

02:27:10.820 recently with with the mainstream media and with the true liberals is it's not just that you might

02:27:14.980 be wrong it's that you're a bad person for disagreeing with that and that really has brought

02:27:19.540 about a much more negative aspect to our politics so we need a big change in this country and and

02:27:24.500 and I absolutely agree that the the traditional mainstream media you know they just continue to

02:27:29.940 to the way they cover the issue sets,

02:27:32.200 the way they ask the questions,

02:27:33.200 it's already baked in from a far left

02:27:35.980 or a far left of center perspective.

02:27:38.540 Let me just ask you, Andrew,

02:27:39.840 as someone who's been a leader of a national party

02:27:42.220 doing this campaign,

02:27:44.200 what's the feeling that you had at this point

02:27:47.700 in the night in 2019,

02:27:49.320 where you sort of get a sense

02:27:50.400 of some of the overarching narratives,

02:27:52.040 but you're still seeing drips and drabs.

02:27:54.000 How is that when you've been going across the country

02:27:56.400 for over a month?

02:27:58.000 It's like nothing else, you know?

02:28:00.280 It's a combination of a night before an exam,

02:28:02.620 a night before your wedding,

02:28:04.160 and you know, a night before a big job interview.

02:28:07.340 It's just, it's incredibly nerve-wracking

02:28:09.100 and you know, your mind's going at a thousand miles an hour

02:28:11.760 and you know, you've got well-wishers reaching out

02:28:14.880 and then you've got kind of people bringing in early results

02:28:17.640 and it's really hard to kind of just stay sane

02:28:21.600 for the first couple hours.

02:28:24.120 And it's also incredibly exhausting, you know?

02:28:27.080 All kinds of credit to Aaron O'Toole and his wife and kids,

02:28:31.560 the personal sacrifice that they put into this campaign,

02:28:34.840 you know, regardless of the outcome tonight,

02:28:38.080 Aaron put his name, his reputation out there.

02:28:43.040 He put his family through sacrifices.

02:28:45.000 He put himself through sacrifices.

02:28:46.240 It was incredibly physically and mentally exhausting for me

02:28:50.000 when I was leading the party.

02:28:51.600 And the best analogy I could come up with was,

02:28:54.040 imagine you're playing a sports game

02:28:55.520 where you've got a ball,

02:28:57.060 but you don't know where the goal is.

02:28:59.660 And you're just kicking it around

02:29:01.140 and the other guys are kicking it around

02:29:02.480 and everybody's commenting on how you think it's going.

02:29:05.040 And then all of a sudden the game stops

02:29:06.920 and a whole bunch of people get together

02:29:08.040 and tell you whether or not you won or not.

02:29:09.760 You know, the whole time you're a leader of the party,

02:29:13.120 you know, you've got a daily media cycle,

02:29:15.040 you've got a weekly media cycle,

02:29:16.320 you've got long-term narrative tracks

02:29:17.800 that you're trying to put down.

02:29:18.940 You're trying to recruit candidates

02:29:20.720 and raise money for the party

02:29:22.020 and deal with tricky issues

02:29:24.080 and avoid all the bear traps

02:29:26.460 that the other parties put out for you.

02:29:28.160 And you have no idea how it's going really,

02:29:30.300 other than maybe some polls

02:29:32.260 that give you some indication of trends

02:29:33.720 until election night.

02:29:34.760 And then it all just hits you like a ton of bricks.

02:29:36.880 So it's an emotional night.

02:29:38.880 It's the end of a marathon

02:29:41.800 and it's kind of like a marathon of sprints.

02:29:43.480 So it's an incredible feeling.

02:29:46.040 You know, I wish we had it done better in 2019.

02:29:48.000 I hope we're gonna improve upon that tonight,

02:29:50.040 but it's like nothing else.

02:29:54.080 Well, you guys did great in 2019. I mean, you knocked Trudeau down to a minority. You won the popular vote. I think you should be really proud of what happened then. And I mean, you're pretty optimistic tonight. We've been kind of running a bit of a pessimistic program here because it just feels like the country is so divided. And, you know, for us, it's like enough with Trudeau, right? Like you were saying, some of your constituents out in Saskatchewan just don't understand what the rest of the country is thinking.

02:30:21.600 and you know watching some of these uh results come in it's it's a little uh disheartening so i i

02:30:26.800 appreciate your uh your optimism and uh certainly keep uh keep fighting the good fight out there

02:30:32.080 andrew yeah thank you you know i really appreciate that we we had a real you know we had a different

02:30:38.720 dynamic in 2019 but uh you know we did win the popular vote we did gain seats in uh in just about

02:30:44.560 every region of the country um fell short in some areas for sure and and you know i i think back and

02:30:49.920 And I say, OK, I can see now that we could have done that better, done that differently and improved upon it.

02:30:54.820 But, you know, it was a first term majority liberal government with an economy that was doing well.

02:31:01.660 And and, you know, it is what it is.

02:31:04.460 Canadians made their decision. But I like to I like to believe that, you know, we laid a nice foundation to build upon.

02:31:12.240 And the key now is, you know, taking a look at the results and seeing, you know, where we've improved and ensuring that everybody, you know, keeps the party together and thinks about how we keep the country together, too.

02:31:28.460 Because what you talked about, about the divisiveness, it's really tough here in Western Canada right now.

02:31:34.780 You talk about the mainstream media and the coverage that, you know, if there's a downturn in Ontario or Quebec, if there's some job losses in Ontario or Quebec, if there's a factory that closes, you know, the media are all there.

02:31:46.740 I was there. I went to a GM plant that was being closed and, you know, the media were all there.

02:31:53.720 They had all the different traditional media outlets were there covering it.

02:31:57.700 Well, in my own riding at Evraz Steel, it's a steel company that makes pipelines.

02:32:04.140 They actually made the Keystone Pipeline.

02:32:06.580 They laid off around 500 people this past Christmas.

02:32:11.340 It's not because the world's using less oil and gas.

02:32:13.780 It's not because the U.S. isn't using as much oil and gas.

02:32:17.580 It's that Canada's been shut out of those markets, and it's directly a result of government policies.

02:32:23.620 People in Western Canada, we understand downturns.

02:32:25.720 you know, we are very much a commodity based province

02:32:29.120 and we have a boom and bust cycles.

02:32:31.020 We have times when grain prices are through the roof.

02:32:33.020 We've got time when grain prices are low.

02:32:34.740 You got time when oil's up, times when oil is down

02:32:37.460 and everyone's okay with that kind of dynamic

02:32:40.480 and we understand that there's market conditions and forces

02:32:42.580 but when it's your own government doing to you,

02:32:44.720 you know, you have to go pay taxes to a government

02:32:48.100 that then attacks our province.

02:32:50.480 It just, to call it a kick in the teeth,

02:32:53.320 To call it a kick in the teeth doesn't convey the sentiment that people are hearing.

02:32:57.420 It's really, really tough here right now.

02:32:58.980 And it's just, you know, my commitment to my voters is to always be the champion for Saskatchewan that I have been since the beginning of my career.

02:33:06.460 We're going to figure out how to do that in this parliament.

02:33:09.200 But, yeah, I'm glad to hear you address it because certainly the CBC and CTV and the mainline traditional media,

02:33:17.260 they don't give that issue the coverage that it deserves to tell that story to the rest of Canada.

02:33:23.320 Well, speaking of the mainstream media, I always remember your farewell speech as Conservative

02:33:27.700 Leader when you gave a very generous shout out to independent media specifying True North. So we

02:33:33.060 appreciated that support then. And we appreciate you coming on tonight. And congrats on your

02:33:38.340 re-election in Regina Capel. Thanks so much, Andrew.

02:33:41.660 Thank you very much, Andrew. Good to see you, Candice.

02:33:43.940 All right. Take care.

02:33:45.120 Andrew Scheer, former leader of the Conservative Party of Canada,

02:33:47.900 and also now the re-elected member of parliament in Regina Capel. Great to have him on the show

02:33:54.720 here. Candice, what do we have up next? Well, we're going to be joined by Hamish

02:33:58.480 Marshall from our decision desk, and Hamish, you're going to be giving us an update of what's

02:34:03.320 going on out there. Yeah, so it looks like right now in Quebec, the Conservatives right now were

02:34:11.260 actually leading in a new seat in Trois-Rivières, one of the seats we picked out in our writings to

02:34:15.560 watch that we talked a whole bunch about, Candace. Last time was a tight three-way race

02:34:20.480 between conservatives in the bloc and the liberals. Right now, the conservatives are about 50 votes

02:34:26.060 ahead. There's still a lot of counting to come, but that's interesting that that race is very,

02:34:30.220 very tight. Looks like for all the talk of the bloc rising and picking up a whole bunch more

02:34:35.040 seats, it looks like they're down about three or four seats since the last election. One to the

02:34:40.500 NDP, currently one to the Liberals and one to the Conservatives. So that certainly seems to be

02:34:48.500 defying what all the pundits were saying. In Ontario, the Conservatives are a net up one seat.

02:34:53.860 There are 37 seats. Having picked up what looks like or certainly are ahead in seats like Bay of

02:35:00.820 Quinty, Peterborough-Cawartha, as well as Kitchener-Conestoga, seats that were lost in the last

02:35:12.620 election, St. Sault Ste. Marie, but on the flip side, losing seats like Kenora, Markham-Unionville

02:35:19.900 and Aurora Oak Ridge's Richmond Hill. So what it looks like is the Conservatives are consolidating

02:35:26.560 their vote in the rural parts of the province while losing in the GTA because of what, you know,

02:35:33.000 the Conservatives came into this election with four seats in York region. Right now, it's looking

02:35:38.240 like they're only ahead in two of those. So that's a bit of a change. We'll see how it plays

02:35:44.600 out across the rest of the rest of the night. These are still, you know, comparatively early

02:35:49.500 results, we're talking 10 or 15% of the polls in. In Western Canada, again, the conservatives look

02:35:58.940 like they're fairly sure to lose. Charles Wood, they can still come back, perhaps in Winnipeg.

02:36:04.140 In Saskatchewan, everything is leaning conservative with the exception of Saskatoon West.

02:36:10.860 in Alberta. Right now, it looks like the Conservatives are ahead in Edmonton Centre.

02:36:20.680 It's a very, very tight race, and the NDP might be pulling away an Edmonton greasebox,

02:36:24.520 so down a couple of seats in Alberta. British Columbia, we're still early days.

02:36:31.360 Looks like more or less the same set of seats from last time being held in rural British

02:36:37.240 colombia although the liberals are ahead in one seat in the middle of the of the interior bets

02:36:41.720 based on very early results um and then in the lower mainland we've still got a few conservative

02:36:47.400 seats yet to come um but it looks like the liberals are doing uh reasonably well but there's a bunch

02:36:53.480 of seats that are ndp targets that we don't have any results in from yet so you know right now if

02:36:59.480 if we look at it nationwide, it's 151 seats for the Liberal, 121 for the Conservatives. That's

02:37:08.440 the same number of seats the Conservatives won last time. The Liberals are down six. There's

02:37:12.840 still eight seats left to come. Some of those are Conservative, some of the Conservative leads.

02:37:18.800 You know, it looks like the Conservatives could win a couple of more seats than last time,

02:37:22.540 very unlikely to break 130 seats. That's where it's sitting. Big disappointment for the NDP.

02:37:28.800 Everybody was talking about how the NDP was going to pick up a bunch of seats.

02:37:31.800 I know I certainly was.

02:37:33.820 And, you know, the NDP are currently right now sitting at 30, 27 seats, which is up only three over last time.

02:37:43.020 And they've still got some seats in British Columbia they can pick up.

02:37:45.740 So I think they'll break 30 seats reasonably easily, but they're not going to hit 40 like a lot of people were talking about.

02:37:52.220 And the interesting thing is the Greens.

02:37:53.860 the greens are uh on track to uh win three seats just like last time despite their their their

02:38:00.020 terrible campaign they uh elizabeth may is winning in saanich gulf islands uh they're ahead in the

02:38:06.820 nano although that's still uh pretty early days um and it's it looks like in kitchener's kitchener

02:38:13.140 center where the liberal candidate resigned after uh being accused of sexual harassment uh the

02:38:17.860 greens who come in a strong second last time are currently ahead so the greens you know lost their

02:38:23.460 their seat in Frederick, they're going to pick up a seat in

02:38:27.220 Kitchener Center. I think I know the NDP is trying very hard

02:38:29.940 to see in Nanaimo and they're still they've only counted one

02:38:32.300 poll. So that's still very, very possible. But that's where we

02:38:35.960 are across the country.

02:38:37.280 I'm just reading the the banner that came across the screen 0.91

02:38:39.840 said breaking Leslie Lewis won her seat. So that's great.

02:38:42.840 That's exciting news. Is that is that it has that she been

02:38:47.260 elected? Or is she just leading at this point?

02:38:49.380 Well, she's she's leading which you know, about about 25% of

02:38:52.840 polls are in or a little bit more than that she's she's leading by 20 so it's extremely unlikely

02:38:57.240 that it's going to be uh it should be overturned that's a very safe conservative seat uh you know

02:39:02.440 diane finley held that for many years and and it looks like leslin's continuing that tradition

02:39:06.920 so uh that is a uh that that's uh that's certainly exciting news for the conservative party

02:39:13.400 yeah absolutely welcome someone new out in ottawa and should be good and refreshing to

02:39:17.960 have a real conservative uh as part of the the caucus out there uh wow so so the 905 looks like

02:39:25.320 the conservatives are really getting shut out uh which is really surprising because it seems like

02:39:30.440 that was sort of the the bet of this campaign was it uh aaron tool was running as a moderate the

02:39:35.880 sort of idea was that he wanted to win seats in quebec and in around toronto it doesn't really

02:39:40.680 look like that has come to fruition um and it looks like the conservatives are right

02:39:47.160 close to where they were heading into this what what were what were they heading into this 121

02:39:52.040 is that right yeah the conservatives won 121 seats in the last election they were down to 119 because

02:39:56.920 of changes during the last parliament but yeah in 2019 we won 121 seats and liberals 157 uh and

02:40:04.280 right now the liberals are at 152 and the conservatives are at 121. so i i think the

02:40:09.880 conservatives will win a couple more seats i think they'll probably end up maybe 123 124

02:40:14.920 more, depending how some of these counts go. But although, you know, it is worth noting,

02:40:19.080 I went and looked at the number of ballots in some of those, the mail-in ballots in some

02:40:25.920 of those, some of those seats. And, you know, it's quite a lot, you know, in that seat in

02:40:31.200 Newfoundland we were talking about earlier, you know, there are 2000 mail-in ballots.

02:40:39.220 So, you know, that's a significant number of ballots when you're looking at margins in the

02:40:42.760 hundreds of votes. So you can certainly see some changes happen

02:40:47.160 there. You know, right now, with one poll left to go in that

02:40:50.140 writing, you know, the conservatives are ahead by 569

02:40:54.160 votes, you know, with 2000 mail in ballots that won't be

02:40:57.080 counted until tomorrow. You know, these these leads are

02:41:00.160 pretty are pretty small. So right now, it's looking like I

02:41:04.360 think the conservative will get somewhere in the in the mid 120

02:41:08.400 seats seats or so uh look i think we can safely say um you know it looks like it's going to be

02:41:14.880 a liberal minority government i don't think anything's changed i think we can project the

02:41:18.480 liberal liberals one of minority government and we could be a situation where the number of seats

02:41:23.280 that actually change hands the total is actually shockingly small and we've just gone through

02:41:27.440 an election that cost 600 million dollars uh and achieved very very very little it almost seems

02:41:33.280 like canadians weren't paying attention to the election at all because you know the green party

02:41:37.040 completely imploded they basically didn't run a campaign and yet they got the exact same results

02:41:41.520 as they did before uh despite all the efforts of the conservatives to try to moderate they didn't

02:41:46.320 seem to win any of those target seats so you know here we are 600 million dollars poorer and five

02:41:52.800 weeks later and it looks like we're gonna have pretty much a replica of the last parliament

02:41:56.880 it's pretty wild yeah the bit the big distinction will now be that you know the ndp went after

02:42:02.160 Justin Trudeau in a way that they haven't done ever before. And it will be very interesting to

02:42:09.360 see how Mr. Singh deals with that going forward, whether he's going to be more collaborative with

02:42:14.060 Mr. Trudeau, or he's going to take the more aggressive stance he's been taking the last

02:42:17.680 few weeks and continue that into Parliament. And I think that's going to be a could be a

02:42:21.900 significant change in the dynamic. I know that Maxine Bernier has lost his seat in

02:42:28.620 boasts it looks like uh nationally where are we seeing that ppc vote at is it living up to

02:42:34.060 some of those double digit polls let me just uh refresh the number uh the last time i checked

02:42:41.500 let's see uh five percent on 3.2 million votes have been counted uh they're at uh the ppc is

02:42:49.180 exactly five percent of the vote so significantly above last time but not nearly that uh you know

02:42:55.900 eco's projection of you know 10 11 percent right yeah i mean look they've effectively tripled their

02:43:01.180 vote from last time which is frankly incredible for any party to triple your vote uh in an election

02:43:06.060 but it hasn't won them any more seats it's interesting because i remember watching the

02:43:11.820 greens sort of in early days where they they kind of had a bit of a national movement um and then

02:43:16.700 it seemed like they've changed their strategy to focus on getting one member of parliament elected

02:43:22.140 and they did that with elizabeth may and she sort of became uh you know the cornerstone of the party

02:43:27.180 so i wonder if we'll see a change in strategy from the ppc going forward because well frankly

02:43:32.460 if we're in another minority government situation we'll probably be in an election again in two years

02:43:36.700 so um you know we can we can start we start planning that now i think i think justin true

02:43:42.140 might have learned his lesson i don't think we're gonna see justin trudeau uh take a take a gamble

02:43:45.740 in an early election anytime soon perhaps although i don't know that any party is going to be really

02:43:50.300 willing to prop him up in the same way hopefully Jagmeet Singh will learn his lesson too but

02:43:55.020 regardless maybe we'll see you know it seemed like this time around the strategy for the PPC was

02:44:00.060 really just to get out there and to try to appeal to all these people and to hold these big rallies

02:44:05.820 and and and kind of jump on that movement of the anti-lockdown crowd perhaps next time you know

02:44:13.180 learning from this they'll they'll try to focus their efforts on getting Bernier into the House

02:44:19.580 of commons where you know he'd be a lot more effective if he's actually there and you know

02:44:23.580 he does still have the the the name recognition um in both and the sort of ability if there's

02:44:29.660 anywhere in the country uh where he could win it's it's definitely there i i would also point

02:44:34.380 out just because i know there's some interest in how derek sloan did uh with with about 10

02:44:38.620 of the polls in in in banff erudry derek sloan's at three percent of the vote um uh and the maverick

02:44:44.860 parties at 2% and the PPC is at 8% in that riding. So, you know, the combination of those three

02:44:51.640 groups is certainly, you know, comes out to 13%, but it's not enough to make a difference. And

02:44:58.040 Conservative Blake Richards has got over half the votes and is walking away with it.

02:45:02.960 Okay. Well, I understand that speaking of the devil, Maxime Bernier is speaking live at the

02:45:08.240 PPC headquarters in Saskatoon. So we're going to head over and cover that for you live right now.

02:45:14.860 in the street in order to influence public opinion of the order parties will fight for

02:45:24.580 your rights and that's why today the People's Party has become Canada's only only real opposition

02:45:34.700 party in Ottawa, the only party that's opposed to all this nonsense that is destroying our

02:45:51.640 society, our economy, and our country.

02:46:00.140 If we had a proportional voting system, we would have elected about 20 MPs today.

02:46:10.760 Unfortunately, we won't be able to carry on this fight in Parliament, but we will continue

02:46:19.380 this battle to unite Canadians under the freedom umbrella.

02:46:25.380 Canadians who oppose the rise of tyranny and authoritarian government need a voice.

02:46:39.300 are going to be that voice all right listening to some of what the People's Party of Canada leader

02:46:51.340 Max Bernier has to say the supporters in his speech tonight People's Party of Canada hasn't

02:46:57.700 won a single seat tonight was Maxime Bernier that was Maxime Bernier live in Saskatoon not giving up

02:47:07.220 not giving in. I actually sat down with Maxime Bernier last weekend. And while I was chatting

02:47:13.680 with him, I asked a question that a number of people have asked me, which is whether he would

02:47:19.020 stand for a leadership review. And he actually said, yes, he said it would be a time to make

02:47:23.860 sure he gets a mandate from the PPC members, because a lot of people have criticized that

02:47:28.360 party for simply being the party of Max and the party of Maxime Bernier. So that is one of the

02:47:35.320 big questions that's going to come up there. I know people are going to ask what is going to come

02:47:40.040 of the People's Party of Canada. Interestingly enough, I would also add that at 5% of the vote,

02:47:47.420 now this is based on early numbers, of course, but at 5% of the vote, the PPC would actually be

02:47:53.300 in the debates next time around. This was a big question that came up earlier on in the election

02:47:59.060 when the PPC, when Maxime Bernier was excluded from the official government run leaders debates,

02:48:05.840 the debates commission has set out three criteria. One, you have to have had an MP elected under your

02:48:12.160 party's banner in the previous election. Two, you have to have gotten 4% of the vote in the last

02:48:17.880 election. Or three, you had to have a polling showing you were in that range of getting 4%,

02:48:24.340 which earlier on in the campaign when they did that sample, the PPC wasn't at just yet.

02:48:29.440 So unless they change the rules, Maxime Bernier or whomever the leader of the PPC is

02:48:34.500 would be in the debate's next election, which could be, as Bernier said,

02:48:38.720 an opportunity to keep kind of building off of that.

02:48:42.500 But again, we're also looking at a situation in which the PPC, despite that 5%, 0% of the vote.

02:48:49.240 Candace, what did you think about what we just heard there?

02:48:51.140 It didn't sound like he was prepared to back down.

02:48:54.060 And ultimately, it sounded like a victory speech to some extent.

02:48:57.660 Well, I mean, it was.

02:48:58.620 Just think about how much the media wrote them off.

02:49:02.200 And, you know, really, this is the second time that Bernier has won an election.

02:49:07.220 The first time around, it really was sort of more of a sort of fringe party focused

02:49:12.480 sort of on immigration and other niche issues, issues that are obviously very, very important

02:49:16.480 and near and dear to my heart.

02:49:17.680 But really, you've seen Bernier sort of expand and mature into a real party. He's a real contender now. And the media can't ignore them. The Conservative Party can't ignore them. The country can't ignore them. And you have to acknowledge that as as as frustrating as it can be for many conservatives that just wish that they would have stayed in the party and that they would have supported the big tent O'Toole conservatives.

02:49:40.820 it's like no you know they have different issues they have different values they have

02:49:44.820 different priorities and Bernier has done a tremendous job at really pulling that together

02:49:50.660 and it's interesting I sometimes see this with with different political parties it's like

02:49:57.200 when you're in a situation where your votes where your seats don't match your votes all of a sudden

02:50:04.160 you're a proponent of proportional representation it's not a matter of principle it's really a matter

02:50:08.520 of, you know, practical politics. So you'd have someone who, like Justin Trudeau, remember in

02:50:14.140 2015, part of his campaign, part of his platform was moving away from first pass and post and

02:50:19.680 moving to proportional representation. And his whole perspective on that was basically a country

02:50:25.640 that can elect, a system that can elect Stephen Harper to lead and become prime minister is

02:50:30.520 clearly a system that is broken according to liberals and according to Justin Trudeau at the

02:50:34.200 time. And then as soon as he won, it was like, okay, well, maybe the system isn't so bad,

02:50:39.140 because here I am, Prime Minister, and it was the, you know, the system that gave me the majority

02:50:44.220 government. And so it was interesting to hear Maximilian, I don't think I've ever heard him

02:50:47.900 talk about proportional representation. I don't know if that is an issue that he has ever cared

02:50:52.940 about or mentioned in the past. But, you know, he raises a hell of a good point when he says that,

02:50:59.100 you know, that the media and the country will be taking him a lot more seriously,

02:51:02.900 if he was proportionally represented.

02:51:05.380 And he said that that would be about 20 seats.

02:51:07.340 Now, I haven't crunched the numbers myself, 0.52

02:51:09.420 so I can't verify that, but it seems accurate.

02:51:12.160 And of course, you know, when you look at the block,

02:51:14.340 you look at NDP, that's about where they are.

02:51:17.380 So I think that clearly Maxime Bernier

02:51:21.040 has tapped into something and good on him

02:51:23.780 for recognizing that

02:51:26.120 and then being able to act on it and capture it.

02:51:28.940 So a lot of interesting things.

02:51:30.720 And certainly I think that the PPC is here to stay.

02:51:34.020 I wish that the conservatives could find a way

02:51:37.280 to mend that bridge and to bring those people

02:51:40.160 back into the fold and have a bigger tent party

02:51:43.180 with a better shot at taking out Justin Trudeau.

02:51:46.340 But that's not where we are.

02:51:47.580 That's not where we're at as a country right now.

02:51:50.240 So there we have it.

02:51:52.520 Yeah, and I do think, and again,

02:51:54.200 I don't know how Aaron O'Toole is gonna respond to this.

02:51:57.640 I think the big question,

02:51:58.660 if the liberal minority projection holds up is going to be whether Aaron O'Toole sticks around

02:52:04.680 and says, yeah, we've got to try again next time, or if he does go through the process that we went

02:52:09.720 through in 2019 with the conservative leader stepping down and going to a leadership race.

02:52:15.220 But I do think that one of the big changes between 2019 and now is that a conservative leader cannot

02:52:22.020 ignore this group of Canadians and this group of people who, many of whom could be and should be

02:52:27.480 conservative voters, not all, but a conservative party of Canada leader cannot ignore that

02:52:32.500 anymore. And as we talked about earlier, it was clear Aaron O'Toole did not have a plan or an

02:52:38.020 interest in the campaign in defending the right flank. And even without PPC seats, when you see

02:52:43.160 in some writings, I'll just look at one, Elgin Middlesex, London, not far from me. This was one

02:52:48.020 of the more targeted seats by the PPC because their candidate there was Chelsea Hillier, the

02:52:53.000 daughter of randy hillier higher profile in the party 10 of the vote not enough to change the

02:52:59.320 result the conservative incumbent karen vecchio still uh winning handily with about 50 of the

02:53:04.520 vote right now but 10 in a rural riding a safe conservative riding that is not insignificant

02:53:10.600 and when you look at in the impact of that in a lot closer ridings you can't ignore that so i

02:53:15.960 certainly whether o'toole stays on or leaves the idea of unity has to become a very key part of

02:53:21.640 his message to Canadians and to conservatives in particular.

02:53:26.060 What do you think, Andrew, you went out to Alberta during this campaign. I'm just reflecting

02:53:29.800 on some of the things that Andrew Scheer said and some of the things that Danielle Smith said.

02:53:35.560 You know, I was a little bit surprised that we didn't really see much or hear much from the

02:53:39.320 Maverick Party. And I don't know if they're even, like, I don't know how many ridings they're

02:53:45.960 running in, but they didn't really seem to do what many predicted that they sort of would,

02:53:50.600 which was come out and become this force in Alberta, capture the frustration that we hear

02:53:57.180 in Western Canada, and sort of create this alternative, sort of like the block, but in

02:54:02.880 Alberta. And I don't know that that's really a message that's resonating. Maybe a lot more of

02:54:08.080 those people are interested in Maxine Bernier and the People's Party, even though he's not

02:54:12.000 from Alberta. I know he considers himself sort of an honorary Albertan. And I know that that's

02:54:19.020 where you were when you interviewed him. So, yeah, what do you make of the sort of

02:54:25.520 Maverick Party's inability to break through versus the People's Party?

02:54:31.360 Well, it's no surprise right now that Maxime Bernier is in the West and not in Beausquebec.

02:54:37.060 He's very much thought that even more than his own riding, he needed to focus on getting votes

02:54:41.900 for his candidates in Alberta in particular, but also in Saskatchewan. So the Maverick Party has

02:54:48.060 a couple of key issues here and i covered them considerably as well i would have gone on the

02:54:52.380 maverick tour except the maverick didn't have a tour and i think this is a big issue they have

02:54:57.100 an interim leader who's not actually seeking a seat he's a well-known figure in canadian

02:55:01.820 conservative politics jay hill but he's not running he is the leader but only really in

02:55:07.900 interviews so they didn't have a voice they didn't have a spokesperson and even their individual

02:55:13.340 candidates. They were few and far between. There were only 29 of them spread across ridings, a

02:55:19.060 couple in BC, a couple in Saskatchewan, maybe one or two in Manitoba, and then the rest in Alberta.

02:55:25.660 But they also had a name that didn't really align with what they were. Originally, they were called

02:55:30.760 Wexit Canada, which I actually think would have been a stronger name on the ballot because Wexit,

02:55:35.580 silly as it may sound, people know, oh yeah, this is the Western exit party. Maverick is just a name

02:55:41.060 that you look at and if you aren't tuned in or you're not seeing them represented in debates and

02:55:45.620 in media coverage, you'd say, oh, well, you know, Maverick, are they just like the Animal Protection

02:55:49.740 Party or the Marxist Lenin or whatever? But you don't necessarily know what it is if they haven't

02:55:54.280 reached you directly. So I do think that's a bit of a challenge. It's going to be more interesting

02:55:59.420 for me to see how provincially the Wild Rose Independence Party, which is the independence

02:56:05.780 minded party in Alberta that's running at the provincial level, how they fare when Albertans

02:56:11.320 go to the poll next year. And I think a lot of that will also depend on what happens in the

02:56:16.240 equalization referendum in October. But yeah, the idea of a federal party for Albertans just

02:56:22.040 didn't really seem to gain the steam that a lot of the Wexiteers thought it would or hoped it would

02:56:27.900 going into this. Yeah, well, Andrew, I think we're going to have to send you out to Alberta to

02:56:32.280 report live when that referendum happens because that's going to be super interesting

02:56:36.560 to watch. I want to go back to Harrison Faulkner out in Saskatoon to have a report on what you're

02:56:47.200 seeing out there. So Harrison, Maxine Bernier took the stage. What else is going on out there?

02:56:52.780 Yeah, well, obviously the crowd was quite excited to see Maxine speak and everyone was really

02:56:57.800 excited. But I think the general sentiment that I've heard from talking with volunteers and

02:57:02.160 officials of the party is they are disappointed. They are disappointed to see that Maxime

02:57:06.420 didn't win his seat in Boas. And they are disappointed that the vote share hasn't turned

02:57:11.040 out the way it has or the way they expected. But I will say in my interview with Maxime earlier in

02:57:15.560 the day, I asked him kind of what would be the what would be a victory for you? What were you

02:57:20.340 looking at as a potential as a potential victory? And he said around 6% of the vote, if you get if

02:57:26.140 he could get 6% of the vote, then he would be kind of looking at that as a potential victory. And I

02:57:31.360 think they're around 5% now hovering around that area. So not too far off. I know that the Western

02:57:37.640 ballots are still to sort of finally come in and of course the mail-in as well. But I would say

02:57:43.280 that the mood here briefly changed when Maxime came to speak. But I would say it's also general

02:57:50.960 disappointment um they they were hoping to do a little bit more than they have

02:57:57.440 well part of it is just the system right it's like they they did a great job they doubled their vote

02:58:01.760 count but again the system that they're working in uh so how many people would you say are there

02:58:07.440 what is the crowd what's the mood what's the demographic of people there well the demographic

02:58:12.640 i would say is uh is sort of mostly uh there are a couple young people here but there's a there's

02:58:18.560 There's a large contingent of older people here, larger than I was expecting.

02:58:22.900 I would say there's probably over 1,000 in the venue, maybe a bit more than that.

02:58:28.720 But it's quite a good turnout and quite exciting.

02:58:31.460 But it's been pretty quiet here most of the night, I will say.

02:58:35.300 Given the fact that there was quite a large turnout,

02:58:37.620 you would have thought there would have been a bit more excitement

02:58:39.680 when some of the numbers came through,

02:58:41.440 especially when they put up the graphic of the PPC getting 5% of the vote

02:58:45.920 just a couple, I would say, about 30 minutes ago.

02:58:48.360 But it was just kind of quiet.

02:58:50.060 People were not too focused directly on the results.

02:58:53.720 They more so just wanted to be here.

02:58:55.060 I get the sense that they more so wanted to be here for the atmosphere

02:58:57.700 to see fellow PPC supporters and to really feel that connection.

02:59:02.760 And I can certainly say that being here on the ground, that is there.

02:59:05.600 There's a lot of people mingling and talking,

02:59:07.260 a lot of people that are just happy to be here and happy to see this party rising.

02:59:12.060 Because, as I said before, in some ways this is technically a victory

02:59:15.940 in some people's eyes for the PPC.

02:59:17.760 They have significantly increased their national vote share.

02:59:20.940 I think the next election is going to be very, very interesting if the PPC remain on this trajectory.

02:59:28.460 Well, I mean, it's certainly not a victory when you have Justin Trudeau regaining his minority position and not winning any seats.

02:59:38.140 But certainly, you know, caused a big stir in this campaign.

02:59:42.240 Interesting, I saw over your shoulder that they have the rebels live stream up there.

02:59:46.140 So they're not just showing CBC and CTV, which is kind of nice.

02:59:52.480 But for folks who weren't listening earlier, Harrison, can you walk us through the decision to host their party tonight, their election party in Saskatoon, of all places?

03:00:02.580 We have Maxime Bernier, a leader from Vos, Quebec.

03:00:05.320 And, you know, you kind of think of the stronghold for the PPC is maybe in southern Alberta.

03:00:09.580 So why are you in Saskatoon right now?

03:00:11.880 Well, so the decision to move from, well, the plan originally was to be in Alberta, but the decision to move to Saskatoon was because of the Alberta announcements, the vaccine mandate announcement and the mask mandate.

03:00:27.000 So the decision was really all about coming to Saskatchewan to get away from the mask mandate.

03:00:33.700 And then, of course, what happened was just today, out of a contingency, they set up an outdoor venue, which I was at at the beginning of the live stream.

03:00:42.780 And it turns out that most people wanted to file in here.

03:00:45.540 There is a mask mandate here.

03:00:47.160 Most people are not wearing masks.

03:00:49.060 And I think the decision to move inside has turned out to be much better than it was to be outside.

03:00:54.760 But certainly there was a bit of a last minute change of plans for the party.

03:00:59.020 And it's pretty it's a classic PPC move, I would say, to always be looking out for their supporters.

03:01:06.580 Interesting. All right, Harrison. Well, thank you so much for that report.

03:01:09.820 We'll leave it there. And if there's any other news you want to get to, we'll go back to you.

03:01:14.240 But thank you for going out to Saskatoon and doing that on behalf of Trinor.

03:01:18.040 It's great to have you part of the team and reporting on the ground.

03:01:20.700 So great work with that. And we'll talk to you again later.

03:01:23.220 Thank you, guys.

03:01:23.820 Thanks. If I can just cut in for a moment here, Candice, one riding I'd like to spotlight before we go to conservative headquarters is Peterborough Kawartha, which is Miriam Monsef's riding. I'm just looking at the latest numbers here.

03:01:37.660 And Mariam Monsef is being handily defeated by the conservative candidate there.

03:01:44.160 Michelle Ferreri is at 40% of the votes.

03:01:48.360 And Mariam Monsef is about 2,100 votes behind with about 37%.

03:01:53.780 And that's with 170 out of 289 polls reporting.

03:01:58.600 And I was really confused for a moment because Lawton is getting 5% of the votes.

03:02:03.400 I am not running against Mariam Monsef.

03:02:05.380 There is a PPC candidate there named Paul Lawton, which is not Andrew Lawton, no relation at all.

03:02:11.140 But I was I was your middle name or something like that.

03:02:14.600 Yeah, no, no. And there's a picture of him and he does not look like me, thankfully.

03:02:17.860 But I was concerned I may have been signing nomination papers in my sleep or something again.

03:02:22.500 But that that's a big win for conservatives unseating a cabinet minister in Miriam Monsef.

03:02:27.680 Yeah, I really have to wonder whether it was, you know, bad strategy on the ground or whether her ridiculous comment that she made during the election, which was perhaps one of the most offensive things I have ever heard any Canadian politician say ever, not just liberals, not just a cabinet minister, but referring to the despicable, gruesome, regressive anti-woman terrorist group as our brothers,

03:02:54.660 while speaking in her capacity as a Canadian government official 0.89

03:02:59.620 was truly despicable and appalling.

03:03:02.660 So she deserves to win just for that one sole thing.

03:03:06.760 And then she was asked twice, Andrew, by the media,

03:03:09.380 once by a friendly journalist saying,

03:03:11.540 is that really what you mean?

03:03:13.680 You know, why did you call them our brothers?

03:03:16.900 She didn't walk it back.

03:03:18.080 Then asked more firmly by one of the few,

03:03:21.040 perhaps the only independent journalist in the parliamentary press gallery, and that

03:03:26.460 is our friends over at Black Fox Reporter, asked in a more sternly way, it was really jarring,

03:03:31.480 Miriam Monson, to hear you refer to the Taliban as our brothers, this terrorist group who just

03:03:37.360 violently took over Afghanistan. During an election, you're calling them our brothers.

03:03:42.600 And she, again, declined the opportunity to retract what she had said and doubled down 0.51

03:03:48.340 on calling the Taliban our brothers.

03:03:50.400 So just for that comment alone,

03:03:53.120 she deserves to never represent Canada

03:03:56.320 in any capacity ever again.

03:03:59.280 I don't know if that was the reason why she lost.

03:04:01.400 Maybe it was just people in Peterborough

03:04:04.300 more interested in what Erin O'Toole was saying

03:04:07.520 throughout the campaign or a better ground game

03:04:08.960 or something like that.

03:04:09.640 I don't want to speculate

03:04:10.460 because I haven't been paying too close of attention

03:04:12.800 to that specific writing.

03:04:15.180 But if it holds and that number maintains

03:04:18.100 and Merry Monsters Outland, good riddance.

03:04:21.160 Yeah, and I spent a little bit of time,

03:04:23.240 not during the campaign,

03:04:24.420 but earlier this year in her riding

03:04:26.780 when I was filming my firearms documentary,

03:04:28.860 Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners.

03:04:31.620 And interestingly enough,

03:04:32.600 there are a lot of firearms businesses in her riding

03:04:35.600 and they did not have, the owners of these businesses,

03:04:37.860 a lot of good things to say about her.

03:04:39.820 But it was interesting

03:04:40.720 because Peterborough is obviously a city,

03:04:43.100 but she has a lot of rural parts of the riding.

03:04:45.760 And the sense that I got,

03:04:46.780 Now, granted, it wasn't a representative sample. I was talking to people in the firearms business and gun owners was that she was not particularly interested in the totality of her riding and they didn't feel like she was interested in the stuff that was happening in the rural parts.

03:05:01.080 And the problem with politicians that have ridings like that is if you aren't representing the people, eventually they are going to tire of you. And that may have been what happened here. And interestingly enough, just to compare this to 2019, this seems analogous to when the conservatives had lost the election in 2019, but unseated Ralph Goodale.

03:05:21.080 And I was in Regina at the Conservative victory. Well, it wasn't a victory party, but what they called a victory party. And that was, I guess, the glimmer of joy for a lot of the people there. Even though they had lost, they were cheering when Wascana had been called for, I believe, Michael Cram is his name. And I think it's probably very similar in Miriam Monsef's case, where even if the Conservatives' things aren't looking good, probably very happy to have unseated her.

03:05:47.860 Yeah, I mean, it can be certainly seen as a moral victory for conservatives, especially someone like Maryam Monsef, who had absolutely no business being in cabinet to begin with.

03:05:56.620 She had basically no experience coming in. The entire reason she was there was because she was billed as an Afghan refugee, and that was what made the headlines.

03:06:05.880 And she had these glowing profiles. And then, of course, we learned that none of that was true. And she actually wasn't from Afghanistan.

03:06:11.360 and she was from Iran and most of her story was completely made up and untrue. And in fact,

03:06:17.680 there were interviews that she had done where she talked about moving back to the Middle East,

03:06:22.160 going back to Afghanistan or Iran because she wasn't happy in Canada. So that was pre-politics.

03:06:28.560 Maybe she'll choose to go back there post-politics. Who knows? But certainly that could be billed as 1.00

03:06:34.960 a moral victory to conservatives who want to see someone like that leave. And I say someone like

03:06:40.320 that someone who Trudeau based you know everything with Trudeau is based on appearances and based on

03:06:46.640 quotas and based on making you feel good so this idea of a gender neutral or gender balanced cabinet 0.75

03:06:52.800 where we had half women and half men and then it turned out a lot of the women had no business 0.54

03:06:57.120 being there just because they didn't have any experience that would make them good at their 1.00

03:07:00.560 jobs and she was certainly one of those token appointees who turned out to be terrible at her

03:07:05.760 job so much so that she got demoted because she couldn't handle her original file which was 0.86

03:07:09.760 democratic reform and so she got sort of just moved over to a status of women which is a 0.93

03:07:14.960 cabinet position that doesn't really do anything it's a insult to women that they even have that

03:07:19.360 kind of uh a cabinet position anyway i digress uh we're gonna head over to sue ann levy who is at

03:07:25.920 the conservative uh headquarter party tonight out in oshawa so sue ann let's uh hear your report on

03:07:32.640 what's going on out in Oshawa well it's become kind of sad here there's no more frenetic pacing

03:07:42.080 very slow pacing and I think they're trying to rally the troops up there in the boxes I hear

03:07:47.920 noises I hear cheers being led you know to get people because I presume that Aaron O'Toole is

03:07:55.760 going to come out very shortly and and give his concession speech but it's very eerily quiet here

03:08:03.200 at the other than the cheerleading brigade up top uh i guess getting people ready um

03:08:11.760 i said before that a lot would depend on toronto and the gta and they didn't prove me wrong uh

03:08:18.800 liberonto as i call it toronto uh is once again liberonto and uh you know outside in the gta

03:08:27.840 very few seats uh acquired and you know you talked about uh erin otoo possibly staying on i think

03:08:36.480 that there's going to have to be another leadership review you know uh it's sad to think after two

03:08:44.080 years and it has to happen again but i thought he read a good campaign but in my view he veered too

03:08:52.240 far to the center uh and and tried very very hard to to win over voters that probably um really had

03:09:03.120 conservative that that wouldn't vote for conservatives and and and instead of sticking

03:09:08.240 to Conservatives' values. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I felt that, you know,

03:09:15.840 and that there was probably too much pandering to the middle vote. However, we'll have to hear

03:09:23.760 what he has to say when he comes on stage and what he says about the future, his future.

03:09:31.760 No, I don't think you're wrong at all, Sue-Ann. I think that that's sort of the consensus that,

03:09:36.000 sure he ran a great campaign he didn't make any major errors there were no major gaffes he didn't

03:09:40.400 embarrass himself there is no uh there's no blackface picture of him that that emerged on

03:09:45.520 social media um you know he he didn't soil his own reputation however he basically spent the

03:09:51.920 entire campaign apologizing for the conservatives in his party and i think that that kind of thing

03:09:57.360 will really come back uh to hurt him with the base when when you're when you're looking at

03:10:01.680 these results and you're saying wait a minute you didn't even win in toronto you didn't even

03:10:06.080 win the 905 that i thought that was what the whole campaign was geared towards um so and

03:10:13.360 and with the broad tent the whole idea of the broad tent well i mean it's 2021 do we have to

03:10:20.880 keep explaining who we are and who conservatives are i mean let's just stick to the knitting

03:10:27.280 A term I learned way back in MBA school, let's stick to those conservative values.

03:10:33.680 We are from a wide tent.

03:10:35.720 Why do we keep apologizing about it?

03:10:37.880 I mean, I'm an openly gay married woman who's a conservative.

03:10:41.760 I don't apologize for being conservative.

03:10:44.520 Well, good for you.

03:10:46.880 I noticed in a global story, Sue Ann, this would boil your blood, but it said that even

03:10:53.540 though Aaron O'Toole claimed to be part of the true blue conservative part of the party,

03:11:00.380 he still supports LGBT rights. And so, you know, the idea from the media is that the

03:11:04.380 two things are mutually exclusive. You can either be a true blue conservative or you

03:11:08.480 can be pro-LGBT. And it's like anyone who's spent any time around conservative politics

03:11:14.180 knows that there's no intolerance. I mean, like one out of every five people you meet

03:11:20.060 in conservative politics happens to be gay, and it's not that big of a deal. It's not

03:11:23.060 something to emphasize it's like we don't ever we don't obsess over these divisions in our identity

03:11:28.180 it's like that's just who you are good for you let's move on and talk about our values and the

03:11:32.440 things that we agree on it's not the most important thing and you know a lot well and in fact that you

03:11:38.340 just perpetuate uh the stereotypes that uh some liberal or progressive allegedly progressive

03:11:45.840 voters have about conservatives that, you know, they're not interested in LGBT rights or trans

03:11:54.860 rights or whatever. I think we just go on and be who we are and stick to the very important issues

03:12:01.340 that brand us as conservatives. Stop apologizing for being who we are and the fact that we come

03:12:08.560 from a wide spectrum of people. Well, I can answer that. So, Sue Ann, so, you know, you said that

03:12:14.940 people are kind of pacing. Are you hearing from the sort of typical spinners? You said that there's

03:12:19.620 a group of cheerleaders up top. I'm surprised that it's completely empty behind you. I thought

03:12:24.460 that, you know, when we were doing the test show earlier in the night and you were like,

03:12:27.680 this is where I'm going to sit, I kind of envisioned a group of people behind you with

03:12:31.580 like, you know, conservative signs and stuff. I thought it'd be a little more lively. Is this

03:12:36.080 because of COVID rules or where are the people? Where are all the Tory supporters that are

03:12:41.840 supposed to be there and what is what are the spinners telling you that this is you know good

03:12:47.100 night it could be election still turn with with mailing ballots what do you what are you hearing

03:12:52.540 on the ground there? Well I heard about I would say just as the Ontario results were starting to

03:12:59.000 come in that you know that there was a lot of hope and a lot of pause you know a lot of optimism

03:13:05.760 about the results now you don't see any of them around none of them and the seats in the middle

03:13:13.020 of the arena are completely empty it's it's a it's so surprising to me that there aren't people here

03:13:20.200 I saw a few people with signs wander in and out but there doesn't all they seem to be are

03:13:26.540 conservative handlers they don't seem to be any supporters which really shocked me I don't think

03:13:31.120 it's even covid rules i think it's that they don't have because why would they put seats out if they

03:13:37.140 didn't have an intention to have people here a few people wandered through and and now they're

03:13:43.320 not here anymore interesting yeah you kind of expect there to be sort of like an electric

03:13:49.000 energy and lots of people even even with a loss uh as their natural is clearly lost uh but you

03:13:56.040 know maybe they picked up some more seats or maybe they were expecting something more

03:14:00.360 Have you heard from the organizers? Is it COVID related or is it just a lack of enthusiasm?

03:14:07.360 I would say it's probably a combination of both. COVID restrictions for sure because it was

03:14:14.380 extremely difficult to get in here. You had to pass certain tests so perhaps they had less people

03:14:21.440 because of that but I also don't see any energy at all in this room. It's actually quite shocking

03:14:28.720 to me um having covered many many elections over the years that there's it just seems like deadsville

03:14:36.400 here interesting all right sam well thank you so much for that update it's great to hear from you

03:14:40.960 great to get a better understanding of what's happening Oshawa we will come back to you

03:14:44.320 especially uh if and when Erin O'Toole comes out to give that concession speech so uh thanks

03:14:49.280 your time and we'll come back to you a little later okay we'll be live from Oshawa

03:14:54.880 so andrew uh let's bring let's bring in hamish marshall hamish you've been crunching the numbers

03:15:02.420 at turner's decision desk so is there any uh any update you want to share what's happening across

03:15:06.940 the country with it well and i appreciate the numbers are changing a little bit but right now

03:15:11.520 the liberals are at 157 and the conservatives are 121 which is exactly the same number of seats they

03:15:18.040 both won in the last election this is the most pointless election ever really yeah really

03:15:22.700 underscoring the uh the necessary question yeah like right now the block's down three seats the

03:15:28.300 greens are down one the ndp are up four i guess and that's it wow oh and and and the other the

03:15:36.700 independence down one so the block ndp is actually up five uh i mean we'll see what happens when the

03:15:41.580 when the mail-in ballots come in the ndp looks from some analysis done that the ndp probably

03:15:46.540 did a pretty good job in the mail-in ballots so i think i think they might there might be a couple

03:15:50.540 of close seats where they can uh they can uh they might be able to up that number a little bit but

03:15:56.140 this whole thing is completely ridiculous uh as an election what i would say is a couple of

03:16:02.380 interesting trends one you picked up on the fact that the conservatives seem to be losing seats

03:16:06.700 in the um in uh around toronto it's also looking like they're losing seats around the

03:16:12.700 vancouver as well uh uh port moody uh coquitlam um it looks like it's gone to the ndp uh langley

03:16:21.420 aldergrove the conservatives behind the liberals it's still close there uh and then you know one

03:16:26.380 of the things that i think is underappreciated by people who seem to think that conservatives

03:16:30.460 uh don't do well with uh with non-white voters is that the conservatives traditionally done very

03:16:35.500 well with chinese canadians in fact of the four constituencies in canada they're the have the most

03:16:41.260 number of chinese canadians conservatives won three in the last election and missed the fourth

03:16:47.500 by a couple hundred votes uh right now they're behind in all four of those seats uh including

03:16:53.180 uh in richmond uh now that's very very close right now it could still change but they're behind

03:16:58.060 in richmond where a seat they've held since uh 2006 or 2000 yeah 2008 i guess um and uh

03:17:05.660 that's a big, big change and very significant because, you know, we all remember the successful

03:17:12.000 ethnic outreach that the Stephen Harper government did under Jason Kenney. And while parts of that

03:17:16.900 had declined in time, the connection with the Chinese Canadian community was still very, very

03:17:21.080 strong. And that seems to be melting away. And that causes that's a big cause for concern for

03:17:26.860 the future. The other one I want to point out, I know Andrew had covered this, was the situation

03:17:33.340 in the Yukon, where Jonas Smith, who was the conservative candidate who very, very nearly won

03:17:38.020 the Yukon in the last election, was barred from running at the last moment. Andrew can explain

03:17:45.360 a bit more of the story there. But it looks like the liberals are currently winning, not only

03:17:50.440 winning that seat, but Mr. Smith decided to run as an independent. And very clearly, he is running

03:17:58.920 fourth with about 14% of the vote. And the Conservatives are only about three points

03:18:03.900 behind. So it looks like, barring Mr. Smith, has resulted in a situation where the Conservatives

03:18:09.480 pretty much gave up that seat. So that's something that I think is going to have to be examined

03:18:16.400 closely after this election. A slightly different situation, but one I'm curious for your take on

03:18:23.440 is Glengarry Prescott Russell. This is one where the former MP there, Pierre Lemieux,

03:18:29.020 wanted to run again. He had been barred from running the last, or he had lost 2015 and 2019.

03:18:35.260 So the party's rules didn't allow him to run. And this was one where the Conservatives,

03:18:40.960 some of the local Conservatives there thought they could pick it back up. The candidate they

03:18:45.180 have there doesn't seem to be doing all that well there, but I don't know enough about the

03:18:49.560 intricacies of that riding? Well, it's a fascinating riding. It's basically the rural

03:18:53.920 area of Ontario between Ottawa and Montreal. And it is part of it's the sort of suburban

03:19:00.460 exurban Ottawa, but a lot of it is Franco-Ontarian territory. Conservatives won it in 04 right

03:19:07.260 through 2015 with Pierre Lemieux. He ran again last time, lost, I think I could be wrong,

03:19:13.480 but I think he lost by about 8%. So it was not super close, but it wasn't a blow.

03:19:19.560 either. They decided not to let him run. Susan MacArthur came in to run there. And Susan's a

03:19:26.000 friend of mine and a great lady, but it's a difficult seat for someone who's not from that

03:19:30.120 community. It's a very specific community with a strong local identity, and it's difficult for

03:19:35.000 someone to come in there. And right now, she's 12 points behind. So it doesn't look like that

03:19:40.040 gamble has paid off at all. And, you know, hard to say if Mr. Lumia would have done better, but

03:19:46.640 I think with the local connections that he had that I couldn't have heard.

03:19:55.480 Fascinating. Well, thank you, Hamish. We're going to go over to our next guest who is from

03:20:02.040 the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We have the federal director, Franco. I don't want to butcher

03:20:09.320 your last name, Tarzanu. Thank you so much, Franco, for jumping in and joining us tonight.

03:20:14.440 so uh just right at the top uh to we did an internal poll here at true north and we found

03:20:21.960 internal it was a scientifically uh accurate poll that we pulled uh i think a thousand canadians

03:20:27.160 and asked what the top issue was and if you were someone who was tending to vote conservative you

03:20:32.920 said the number one issue was uh debt and government spending uh number two issue was

03:20:37.080 jobs in the economy yet we didn't really see that covered very closely in the election so

03:20:42.440 you know you're from the ctf and those are sort of your bread and butter issues that you

03:20:46.360 uh tackle were you happy with the way uh this election was was was focused do you think it

03:20:51.560 should have been focused a little bit more on uh the the pocketbook issues and and the financial

03:20:56.760 issues yeah not not happy at all i think politicians really missed their mark here i

03:21:01.160 think a lot of canadians are rightly worried about the debt they're rightly worried about

03:21:04.600 the economy and affordability and and and right now right we are are more than a trillion dollars

03:21:09.800 in debt federally which means that each canadian is on the hook for about thirty thousand dollars

03:21:14.440 in federal government debt alone and remember one way or another if these politicians don't

03:21:19.400 find a way to save some money that's got to come from taxpayers um but there's another crucial

03:21:23.640 point here too and i think a lot of canadians are rightly wondering what type of nation they're

03:21:28.120 going to leave for future generations and even before the election um under the trudeau

03:21:33.000 government's current trajectory we wouldn't see a balanced budget until 2070 and if that was going

03:21:38.440 to happen then per person federal debt would balloon to 67 000 by 2070 which would just be a

03:21:45.640 huge huge bill that we would be sticking to canadians kids and grandkids to eventually pay

03:21:51.080 back so i mean sorry go ahead andrew you can ask the next question no i was just going to jump in

03:21:56.440 there because you had actually criticized the conservative plan which was the most uh directly

03:22:02.600 balance focused aaron o'toole's commitment in the platform was to balance the budget within 10 years

03:22:07.800 And I know the media was asking very, very relentlessly, how are you going to do it?

03:22:12.220 How are you going to do it?

03:22:12.800 And you would actually criticize that slightly.

03:22:14.560 But at the same time, that was the only party to put forward a plan to balance the budget.

03:22:18.600 So I was curious what it was that you were looking for in platforms.

03:22:22.320 Well, you know, I guess give the Conservatives just a little bit of credit for at least talking about balancing the budget.

03:22:29.160 But the reason we criticized it is because it was not a credible plan.

03:22:32.700 The Conservatives under O'Toole were essentially just paying lip service to balancing the budget.

03:22:36.580 Now, first of all, O'Toole was essentially betting the farm that the economy would balance the books.

03:22:41.820 Well, I mean, the first question is, well, what if reality isn't as rosy, right?

03:22:45.540 Would O'Toole finally find some savings or would he let the debt continue to balloon?

03:22:49.580 But here's really the bigger issue that we had with the Conservative plan.

03:22:53.300 So O'Toole was saying he would spend about $50 billion more than the last Liberal government's budget, which had a massive amount of spending in it.

03:23:01.520 And if I can go back to those PBO numbers, the parliamentary budget officer numbers that were based on the last liberal government's budget, said that we wouldn't balance the budget until 2070.

03:23:10.940 So essentially, O'Toole wanted to spend billions of dollars more, but somehow thought that he could balance the budget decades sooner.

03:23:18.120 So, I mean, the math just doesn't add up there.

03:23:20.560 Yeah, it's almost like Justin Trudeau's the budget will balance itself.

03:23:24.980 I don't know if that was a gaffe or if he meant it or if he understood it.

03:23:27.980 Franco, I had a question.

03:23:29.180 So, you know, we have an election that really didn't talk much about government spending, didn't really talk about government debt, but it's ballooning and it's happening.

03:23:38.700 One of the things that we did talk about a lot in this election was Jagmeet Singh leading the conversation on we need to raise taxes, we need to tax the wealthy, and this is how we're going to do it.

03:23:47.780 It seems inevitable at this point that with the ballooning debt that we have, the way that we're going to have to pay it off at some point, some government will have to, is probably by raising taxes.

03:23:58.640 Where does the CTF stand or what do you guys advocate for in terms of bringing in more revenue?

03:24:04.340 I mean, obviously, we have a spending problem and we have to curb that.

03:24:07.840 But I'm just talking about paying back COVID.

03:24:10.140 Like, how are we ever going to pay off this mountain of debt?

03:24:13.520 Do you advocate a specific kind of tax increases or are you for tax increases at any kind?

03:24:20.840 Where do you guys stand on that?

03:24:22.840 No, we're against tax increases.

03:24:24.980 I mean, especially now, right after just so many Canadians, millions of Canadians have struggled through COVID-19.

03:24:30.600 I mean, there's really only so much blood that you can draw from a stone.

03:24:33.860 And look, the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, even to an extent the Liberals, too, they have this soak the rich mentality.

03:24:40.900 Well, for everyday Canadians, these politicians are going to come after you once they're done soaking the rich.

03:24:46.480 And if you see all of these tax increases proposed by the NDP, they still have no idea how they would balance the budget.

03:24:53.020 I mean, same with the Liberals.

03:24:54.380 So essentially what we're hearing from the NDP is, is they want Canadians to believe that it's just going to be the wealthy or big businesses that would end up paying for those tax increases.

03:25:03.620 But the truth of the matter is, it would be everyday Canadians who feel the pain of those tax hikes through higher prices at the till and through fewer job opportunities.

03:25:13.540 So was it was there any anything about any of the party platforms that you saw, Franco?

03:25:18.180 what did you think of the PPC and Maxine Bernier? Was there anything out there that you liked in

03:25:23.420 terms of their tax policy, their spending policy, or their paying down the debt policy?

03:25:28.220 Well, in terms of the PPC, they said that they would work to balance the budget within

03:25:33.300 the political terms. So within four years, presumably. Now, the one thing that I think

03:25:38.440 we need to highlight from the PPC, which we didn't see from other parties, other main parties,

03:25:42.800 is that they wanted to cut corporate welfare, right?

03:25:46.680 Which essentially means taking tax dollars

03:25:48.720 from everyday working class Canadians

03:25:50.920 and giving those tax dollars to select

03:25:53.480 and handpick businesses and companies.

03:25:55.920 Now-

03:25:56.520 Including many media companies,

03:25:58.520 including many journalists out there.

03:26:01.460 Sorry, do you still have me?

03:26:03.000 No, yeah, I'm saying including many journalists

03:26:04.680 and many media companies

03:26:05.940 who are more than happy to take that corporate welfare as well.

03:26:08.660 Well, that's correct.

03:26:10.020 And so it was good to see the PPC talk about cutting corporate welfare.

03:26:14.740 It's very unfortunate that we didn't see the other major parties actually talk about eliminating corporate welfare.

03:26:21.100 I mean, look, the way these politicians try to balance the books, they would bankrupt the lemonade stand.

03:26:27.080 But they still think that they can run around playing investment banker with their tax dollars.

03:26:31.360 So, you know, we do think that we do need to focus on growing the economy.

03:26:35.520 but we need to see a bottom-up approach, which means leaving more dollars in Canadians' families' pockets

03:26:40.480 and in businesses' bank accounts so that they can reinvest in their operations and get more Canadians back to work. 0.51

03:26:48.660 Excellent. So as far as, one of the things that I was sort of disappointed about, Franco,

03:26:53.500 was the lack of, talking about the actual economic recovery side of things,

03:26:57.760 because one of the things that even Aaron O'Toole and certainly Justin Trudeau, certainly Jagmeet Singh,

03:27:02.360 Whenever they talk about, whenever the media would ask them, you know, what's your post-COVID economic recovery plan?

03:27:07.740 How are you going to jumpstart the economy?

03:27:09.720 It was always about big government spending.

03:27:11.640 It was like, oh, we're going to provide this tax cut or tax incentive to homebuyers.

03:27:17.880 We're going to provide government daycare for families with kids.

03:27:22.480 There wasn't really anything on the economic side.

03:27:25.380 So from your perspective, what needs to be done at this point?

03:27:28.880 I mean, I think we can see the end in sight in terms of COVID.

03:27:32.380 Hopefully, we're not going to go into more lockdowns.

03:27:34.580 But at this point, what needs to be done from an economic sort of jobs perspective to really just get this thing going?

03:27:42.020 Yeah, Candice, I think that's a fantastic question.

03:27:44.060 And I think that's really the question that's on top of most Canadians' minds, right?

03:27:48.160 How are we going to get our economy firing again?

03:27:50.200 How are we going to get people back to work in the post-pandemic world?

03:27:54.180 And you know what?

03:27:55.380 I think there's two things.

03:27:56.340 The first is that we're looking for broad-based tax relief, but we didn't see that from the parties.

03:28:01.340 We saw the Liberals, the NDP, proposing a bunch of new tax increases.

03:28:06.860 The Conservatives, their tax plan was a bit of a mixed bag.

03:28:10.080 They did propose some niche tax credits, a one-month GST holiday,

03:28:14.920 but even the Conservatives didn't propose broad-based income tax,

03:28:19.060 broad-based business tax, or broad-based sales tax relief.

03:28:21.840 We didn't see that from the Conservatives.

03:28:23.220 So I think that was a very big missed opportunity, especially when affordability is on top of Canadians mind. But Candace, the second thing very important is we have to get control of this deficit spending, we have to rein in the deficit spending, we have to rein in the money printing by the Bank of Canada, we just saw the Stats Canada report that showed that what prices increased by more than 4% over a year to year basis.

03:28:48.240 Well, I mean, that's what happens when you have the printing press on overdrive, which we have seen during the pandemic since February 2020.

03:28:56.880 We've seen the Bank of Canada's assets increase by about 300 percent.

03:29:01.660 We've seen the printing of about three hundred and seventy billion dollars from the Bank of Canada.

03:29:06.160 So these higher prices are showing Canadians that there is no free lunch when it comes to government spending.

03:29:11.840 and all of that money that politicians spend it has to be paid back one way or another whether

03:29:16.480 that's through taxes today taxes plus interest tomorrow or through the inflation tax well frank

03:29:22.640 final question for you we saw those bank of canada numbers we saw inflation is up up to

03:29:27.520 two months in a row that it doubled what the projections were supposed to be in around four

03:29:31.440 percent and then we also see the issue on the campaign trail of cost of living that things

03:29:36.560 are just getting so expensive so hard to buy a house uh you know cost of groceries gasoline

03:29:41.040 everything is going up up up and yet that didn't really seem to translate again uh to circle back

03:29:46.240 to the idea that the the election wasn't really about the top issues uh that are facing the

03:29:51.600 country i mean you you work at the canadian taxpayers federation you you live this day in

03:29:55.600 and day out trying to talk to canadians and remind them that how important these issues are and what

03:30:00.800 they connect to so you know if we're living this situation where inflation is is soaring things

03:30:06.800 are expensive affordability is an issue and it doesn't really seem to translate uh on election

03:30:11.920 day what do you think we could do to to try to get canadians to to really understand these issues

03:30:19.200 and to tie them together and get them to pay attention uh to these sort of fiscal issues

03:30:24.080 yeah that's that's the question that we grapple with every day especially the canadian taxpayers

03:30:27.920 federation you know i wish i had a silver bullet i wish i had a a switch that i could flick uh to

03:30:33.360 to to to make it all better but i mean the truth of the matter is it's going to take concerted

03:30:38.240 effort from everyday canadians everyday taxpayers pushing our politicians day in day out month in

03:30:43.760 month out to get a control of the spending um i mean it's really unfortunate that we didn't

03:30:48.480 see the affordability issue really raised to prominence during this election i mean especially

03:30:54.240 when you consider the fact that even during the pandemic the average canadian family paid about

03:30:58.720 36 percent of its budget to taxes which is more than what the average canadian family paid for

03:31:04.800 food housing and clothing combined right um but look even the conservatives they really didn't

03:31:11.280 have a leg to stand on here because they flip-flopped on the carbon tax it's very it can be

03:31:16.400 very tough for a politician to really drive home the affordability message when you're going to

03:31:20.480 turn around and hammer families with a carbon tax of your own 100 yeah that was that was shocking

03:31:26.160 and I think that O'Toole needs to answer for that.

03:31:28.900 Well, Franco Terzano, I don't want to get your name wrong again,

03:31:32.260 I got it right the first time, Terzano,

03:31:34.180 from the Canadian Tax Force Federation.

03:31:35.700 Thank you so much for joining us, Franco.

03:31:36.920 Great to have you on.

03:31:38.180 Hey, thanks for having me on.

03:31:40.500 Yeah, thank you very much, Franco.

03:31:42.800 We want to bring back into this discussion

03:31:44.900 our very own Decision Desk, Hamish Marshall.

03:31:48.120 Talk about a couple of the developments

03:31:49.700 that are taking place across the country.

03:31:52.520 And Hamish, I was hoping you could actually explain

03:31:54.680 a little bit about what's happening in edmonton and calgary too i i know these were uh some of

03:31:59.640 the ridings that the liberals were hoping to reclaim that they did well in in 2015 and it

03:32:04.200 looks like they might be having a little bit of success there yeah so in i'll start in edmonton

03:32:10.760 and edmonton uh everybody acknowledged that the liberals were going to come hard for edmonton

03:32:15.400 center conservatives won it last time by not a huge amount right now the conservatives are ahead

03:32:20.440 275 votes still about a little more than half the polls are are uh are counted we'll see if they'll

03:32:27.640 be able to hold on it's certainly very very tight 275 votes with with you know 79 polls to come is

03:32:33.560 nothing that can't uh can't be overcome uh the the big so not surprised the other area that was

03:32:40.200 targeted heavily was actually by the ndp was edmonton griesbach which is sort of the area

03:32:45.160 uh east of downtown it's uh very working class and um the the conservative organization there

03:32:53.240 has never been particularly strong despite holding it for many years and the ndp came on very very

03:32:58.520 strong the ndp has done a very good job um of becoming the default non-conservative party in

03:33:03.880 edmonton we've seen that uh because of rachel notley um and the provincial ndp that this is

03:33:10.920 something that's happening and they're taking over and it's actually interesting that um the uh

03:33:17.000 reason that the conservatives are holding on in edmonton center servers are only 33 percent of

03:33:21.480 the vote in edmonton center and they're one percent ahead of the liberal at 32 the democrats are in

03:33:26.360 third at 30 percent in past you would have expected the democrats to fall back in that vote to rally

03:33:31.800 around the liberals but that split uh the anti-conservative vote is split there which is

03:33:36.360 very much helping helping them win um in calgary uh it looks like every seat in calgary has gone

03:33:42.840 safely conservative with the exception of calgary skyview this is the northeast corner of the city

03:33:48.120 um it's uh heavily uh indo-canadian um uh the liberals uh the conservative conservatives won

03:33:55.320 it last time uh with jag sahota uh and but it looks like the liberals right now are two percent

03:34:00.920 ahead with George Chahal, who's a well-liked long-term city councillor. And it's still a very,

03:34:08.280 very tight, very, very tight riding. But looks like the Liberals might be able to be back and

03:34:13.960 holding a seat in Calgary. So, you know, it says a lot that the conservatives are losing seats in

03:34:20.900 cities like Edmonton and Calgary when, you know, they need to hold those seats and grow elsewhere

03:34:26.460 in order to win a government if i can put you on the spot here with another one that is near and

03:34:31.500 dear to my heart london west this is a riding that the conservatives carried in 2008 and 2011

03:34:38.380 with ed holder who's now the mayor of london i bring this up because erin o'toole was actually

03:34:43.500 here just a couple of days ago with the conservative candidate and it looks like

03:34:47.980 despite being just 2 000 votes behind it's been called for the liberals yeah there's no there's

03:34:54.620 there's only about 60 polls left, 2000 votes is tough to overcome. We don't know where those

03:34:59.860 polls are coming from. When they when when some of these people do this, they have they know which

03:35:04.120 polls are coming in. Yeah, I mean, that's the sort of seat that conservatives need to win on

03:35:09.760 the road to majority. It's, it's become a bit of a funny seat. You're right, it was traditionally

03:35:14.140 quite a conservative liberal switching seat. But as you'll know, provincially, it's held by the NDP.

03:35:18.480 It's been held by the NDP for quite a few years. It's a I've spent a lot of time in that seat as

03:35:23.280 you as you know as well um but it's the sort of seat conservatives need to win others there is no

03:35:28.440 way a conservatives can win government without winning a london west certainly not a major not

03:35:33.020 maybe they might really get a point a seat or two ahead but a government a government you can

03:35:36.720 actually run they need a london west um so i was just gonna say looking nationally where are the

03:35:42.880 where are the anomalies that you're seeing or the things that are jumping out at you

03:35:46.040 well the anomalies are um you know what we're seeing is that the conservatives have consolidated

03:35:52.500 their vote in rural areas. So we talked about Peterborough, Bay of Quinty, which is Prince

03:35:56.940 Edward County, Kitchener, Conestoga, which is the rural area around Kitchener, have all gone

03:36:03.240 conservative. A seat like Essex, which we thought the NDP could win off the conservatives,

03:36:08.080 looks like the conservatives are on track to win by 10% or 5,000 votes and win it very,

03:36:13.200 very clearly. We've talked about the conservative wins in Eastern Canada, in Atlantic Canada,

03:36:19.480 uh where they're they've picked up a bunch of these rural seats um the other one that jumps

03:36:25.160 out as i mentioned before is tall revier they're still ahead by 59 votes there's still 75 polls to

03:36:31.620 come so that could very much flip but that's certainly a you know a significant gain going

03:36:35.840 up to 11 seats in quebec would be it would be a gain for the conservatives um the that's what's

03:36:42.260 happening but then on the flip side we're seeing this losing seats in the uh uh in the in the urban

03:36:48.220 areas and we've lost two seats in york region and you know the one another one that really jumps

03:36:53.100 out which is completely crazy is markham stoville markham stoville is a mixed seat of uh it's got

03:36:59.980 some rural areas some suburbia uh some significant amount of chinese canadians in there and uh the uh

03:37:08.620 it was jane philpot seat conservatives didn't win it last time there was some thought that

03:37:12.220 her as an independent she might be able to take it uh but uh right now not only the liberals get

03:37:17.340 more than half the vote the conservatives actually came third or 15 percent they nominated for

03:37:22.060 reasons that nobody knows a 22 year old candidate and uh the greens have come in a strong second at

03:37:28.780 26 percent there uh which is wild and the conservatives should be um you know maybe

03:37:34.300 not winning on a night like tonight but be competitive in um so there's that and as i

03:37:39.420 said before you know we're seeing a a decline in conservative vote in um in uh the lower mainland

03:37:47.580 as well so we're seeing a retreat of conservative votes uh in the lower mainland which was you know

03:37:53.020 uh you know richmond is now the conservatives now further behind steveson richmond east

03:37:58.300 conservatives who won that seat fairly cleanly last time we're now 1800 votes behind um uh

03:38:04.540 you know port moody coquitlam where the conservatives won by a few hundred votes or 800

03:38:07.500 votes behind it just keeps it's a lot of these suburban seats the conservatives need to win that

03:38:12.380 they are just they're not winning on the flip side and we'll see what happens when the when the um

03:38:18.700 other polls get counted nanaimo ladysmith and nanaimo ladysmith is a uh uh you know a seat on

03:38:25.100 the vancouver island along ndp in green history is held by the greens right now the conservatives

03:38:29.660 are in the lead at 28 percent the new democrats in second at 27 and the greens in third at 26

03:38:36.300 um which is you know absolutely wild if the conservatives can win that on that kind of a

03:38:42.200 split that would be quite an accomplishment but that's the sort of seat where there's a huge

03:38:46.200 number of of uh of mail-in ballots let me just let me just check the number of mail-in ballots

03:38:51.940 in a seat like that um uh where there are 7 000 mail-in ballots and the current conservative

03:39:01.520 lead is 123 votes. So, you know, that, that seat will be determined by the mail-in ballots when

03:39:07.300 they come in, hopefully count it tomorrow. I hope this doesn't spill into Wednesday.

03:39:11.680 Heading back to the GTA for just a moment. I note that in Aurora Oak Ridge's Richmond Hill,

03:39:17.760 the conservative Leona Alislev seems to be on track to be defeated. I know half of the polls

03:39:23.520 are in and the lead for the liberals is 961. So I don't know if that's one that can be called as

03:39:28.460 of yet, but this one's interesting because Leona, of course, was first elected as a liberal and

03:39:33.100 then crossed the floor before the 2019 election, won as a conservative, but could be on her way

03:39:39.020 out now. Yeah, I know Leona Alislev was one of the, you know, she was a very successful military

03:39:46.040 veteran with a stellar career in the corporate sector. You know, it's a fascinating story that

03:39:53.100 one that I think is worth digging into. She turned up in Ottawa as one of these newly elected

03:39:59.820 Liberals, a woman. She expected Trudeau was going to be this amazing person to work with

03:40:05.040 and discovered that he never talked to her. He was never interested in talking to his MPs.

03:40:11.220 And I mean, she told me once that, you know, until she, the time she was nominated

03:40:16.020 and until she crossed the floor, her sum total of conversations with Justin Trudeau was under

03:40:20.960 two minutes um and uh you know and she realized that what the liberals stood for was and what they

03:40:27.440 were actually doing was was not what she signed up for and that she was much more of a conservative

03:40:32.360 heart as i said uh uh you know comes from a military background uh and she decided to cross

03:40:37.580 the floor and what was i think a fairly electrifying moment just over three years ago when she uh

03:40:42.100 stood up and crossed the floor in the middle uh you know actually didn't just do it at a news

03:40:46.220 conference she stood up in the house of commons and and gave a speech and then one by one and a

03:40:50.740 half percent last time liberals really came on but look what really hurt her this time there's no

03:40:54.660 green vote you know the greens got almost 2 000 votes in that seat in the last election there's

03:40:58.880 no green on the ballot so a lot of those voters who are green voters and we know the green party

03:41:02.700 has been suffering but still hundreds of them would have walked into that polling booth expecting

03:41:05.860 to vote green and then said well there's no green and some of them voted ndp and some of them would

03:41:10.180 have voted liberal and you know and she's behind by uh 11 1100 votes yeah and speaking of the green

03:41:18.940 party i i have to note that anime paul the green leader who i i don't think anyone was suspecting

03:41:23.500 would win her seat but i i'm looking right now uh granted we're 50 of 137 polls reporting

03:41:30.220 but just dismal at nine percent yeah i mean i i i mean she ran in a by-election a little over

03:41:36.780 a year ago or a little under a year ago and and came at a very respectable i think she got about

03:41:40.620 30 of the vote in the by-election i remember correctly um her high 20s anyway and and people

03:41:45.420 thought she was the exciting coming thing and i mean nine percent is is unbelievably dismal behind

03:41:50.660 the conservatives in toronto center yeah and you know and and ryan lester is is a good fellow the

03:41:56.500 conservative candidate he tries hard but we have no illusions that the that uh that that conservatives

03:42:01.980 are going to do particularly well there um and for the greens to come in fourth is is absolutely

03:42:06.360 damning i mean she will be you know i don't know what's going to happen with all the leaders after

03:42:10.160 this but i i'm i feel very safe in predicting that she will not be the the green leader tomorrow 0.97

03:42:15.240 So you mentioned when we were talking about one of the other ridings that mail-in ballots

03:42:19.740 will be the determining factor.

03:42:21.740 And I think you actually called this when we were chatting internally as an organization

03:42:25.400 a couple of days ago.

03:42:26.320 You said, you know, yeah, there will be a couple of ridings where the mail-in votes

03:42:29.600 will have an effect, but the overall story will be told in relatively short order.

03:42:34.460 And I'm pleased to share with our audience that you nailed that absolutely perfectly.

03:42:39.080 Realistically, how many ridings are there where you think the mail-in ballots could

03:42:43.060 be the the deciding factors at this point in the next couple of days well i think first of all we

03:42:48.500 don't know the total number of of mail-in ballots uh yet because the elections canada's only posted

03:42:54.580 them up to uh effectively the end of yesterday um they were able to accept them up to six o'clock

03:43:02.260 local time um uh today so obviously that all hasn't been um hasn't been tallied yet so um but

03:43:10.100 But looking at it, you know, there are seats on Vancouver Island, you know, they're like

03:43:16.520 Nanaimo Ladysmith certainly will be determined that way.

03:43:22.840 Just see if there's any others that jump out at me looking at the list here.

03:43:26.580 Vancouver Centre, possibly, but probably not.

03:43:28.840 South Okanagan, West Kootenai is a seat that the Liberals and the Conservatives, Liberals

03:43:33.660 and the NDP have been trading back and forth all night.

03:43:35.700 um was it see if they came down 800 votes last time uh there's 6500 uh mail-in ballots so some

03:43:44.060 of these mostly they're going to be bc writings i think where it'll it'll make a difference

03:43:47.820 um but frankly you know in some of these other writings if they come down being very very close

03:43:52.220 if we see some writings that tonight end up you know anything under 300 votes probably maybe it's

03:43:58.920 maybe even 500 can can be determined by these ballots but i would be shocked if that's more

03:44:03.780 than a dozen ridings. And I think, you know, we're pretty safe in saying that, you know, right now

03:44:08.780 we're at 156 liberals, 123 conservatives. You know, I think, you know, that conservative number

03:44:17.080 is unlikely to grow more than about 124, but it could probably go down to about 120 liberals go

03:44:21.700 up to maybe 157, maybe down to 154. We're not talking, you know, the NDP might go up a couple

03:44:26.540 block might change one. The storyline from the election is pretty much set.

03:44:31.260 all right hamish marshall staffing the true north decision desk thanks very much for that

03:44:37.000 uh candace what else do we have coming up well just interesting uh to note that what what hamish

03:44:43.800 is talking about vancouver island i lived in vancouver island for a bit i went to high school

03:44:47.280 out there and it's interesting to the divide between left and right because there is the

03:44:51.480 strong conservative sentiment but they don't often uh shine through for the election uh but

03:44:56.420 We're going to bring in our next guest, who is my friend, JJ McCullough.

03:45:00.460 JJ is a popular YouTuber.

03:45:02.220 He is a Washington Post columnist.

03:45:04.660 So JJ, thank you so much for joining us.

03:45:06.660 You're out in Vancouver and it's awesome to have you in on our show.

03:45:10.180 Thanks for having me.

03:45:11.660 And you're rocking the mullet.

03:45:14.660 Yeah, every time I see you look totally different.

03:45:18.080 So I never know what to expect.

03:45:19.960 It's what I go for.

03:45:21.320 So what do you what are you making of what's going on today?

03:45:23.420 It's been a pretty crazy night.

03:45:25.220 And here we are. I think our seat count is almost exactly what it was five weeks ago.

03:45:30.260 So what do you make of this pretty needless election that we've been plunged into?

03:45:35.380 Well, yeah, I mean, needless is, I think, the watchword of the evening.

03:45:39.380 Although what is what is sort of curious about it is that and I think for conservatives,

03:45:43.700 something that makes it perhaps even a little bit more dire is that I think that we are pretty much

03:45:48.740 stuck with Justin Trudeau for the next four years, because I think that, you know, Trudeau has been

03:45:53.780 burned in some small way by this election, by this sort of unnecessary election. I think that

03:45:59.720 the concept of a prime minister using his prerogative to call an early election has now

03:46:04.760 been like, I think, quite severely discredited. I think that we are, as a country, done with the

03:46:12.700 sort of Chrétien era practice of looking at the polls and then calling an opportunistic election

03:46:18.140 just for sort of self-serving cynical reasons. I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.

03:46:22.620 But what that means, conversely, is that barring some sort of, you know, non-confidence vote in the Trudeau government, I think Trudeau is likely to sort of, you know, lumber along for the next four years until 2025.

03:46:36.600 So in a weird way, even though Trudeau hasn't won his majority government, I think that he is probably more secure in the prime ministership than than he was, you know, just a couple of weeks ago.

03:46:47.820 Well, it's absolutely remarkable that he's not getting punished whatsoever for this entire 0.80

03:46:52.780 gabbit, which hasn't paid off at all. And from a conservative perspective, it's like, 0.94

03:46:57.180 you plunge us into an election that nobody wanted, and we don't want to pay for it. And here we have

03:47:02.300 you. And then on the liberal perspective, it's like they're paranoid about COVID. And they're

03:47:06.540 the ones that are worried about, you know, fourth wave or the Delta variant, or what have you.

03:47:11.660 And yet, you know, again, there's no punishment. We were talking about this earlier on the show

03:47:17.660 about how you know if it's a minority government we might be back in two years

03:47:22.700 but like you said you know we're not we're not going to see Trudeau punch into the next election

03:47:28.060 do you think what do you think of the NDP you know the fact that they were sort of

03:47:33.660 Justin Trudeau was in a comfortable minority position where he could rely on the NDP to

03:47:39.260 promote sort of progressive agenda and they were willing to prop him up do you think that they will

03:47:43.900 be willing to prop them up again just given that we went through this whole election exercise like

03:47:49.100 i guess the question i really want to ask jj is will there be any consequences to justin trudeau

03:47:53.660 for making us have this election that nobody wanted and that the results is basically the

03:47:58.060 exact same as uh what it was going into the campaign no i don't and and i don't think there

03:48:04.540 will be any negative consequences and sort of just to repeat what i just kind of said i think

03:48:08.380 that in some ways trudeau has won a kind of de facto majority government he doesn't have a

03:48:13.500 a majority government in terms of the seat count, but in terms of his security of grip on the

03:48:19.020 prime ministership, I think the next four years could very easily function as if he had a majority

03:48:23.340 government. When this election was called, Jagmeet Singh, one of his, I think even in his letter to

03:48:30.040 the governor general, if we remember how he did this little stunt, he actually made it very explicit

03:48:34.340 that his party had supported the liberal government in every confidence vote that they had put before

03:48:40.680 the house right uh jagmeet singh had sort of held himself up as a guy that was willing to be a loyal

03:48:46.360 partner of the liberal minority government and i don't think there would be any reason why he would

03:48:52.140 change course now particularly since as i said the whole concept of an early election has been

03:48:57.620 so stigmatized when justin trudeau made his comment in the french debate that uh you know if

03:49:03.320 he gives them another minority we're just going to be back to the polls and you know another 18

03:49:06.920 months you know trudeau got tremendous backlash for saying that comment and so i think as a result

03:49:12.680 trudeau as much as anyone else is now going to be able to constantly sort of dangle this

03:49:17.240 in over the heads of the opposition parties uh whenever he there seems to be any threat of him

03:49:23.160 not getting his own way he will be able to say well you people said you didn't want an early

03:49:27.560 election you people said you wanted to make this parliament work for the next four years

03:49:31.560 well here i am i'm willing to do it if you're willing to play ball so i think trudeau is is

03:49:36.360 really sort of perversely in a sort of stronger position he will not only not have really sort

03:49:41.880 of suffered for this election call but in some ways he is now going to be able to use his

03:49:46.280 critics criticism of his own cynicism against them if that makes sense so it is really a very

03:49:52.440 bizarre sort of state of affairs that we're going to find ourselves in over the next four years

03:49:56.840 no it's pretty wild and i sort of cringed the idea of the ndp having to support a government that they

03:50:03.640 you know use the support and then after this whole election gambit we'll have to go back

03:50:08.280 and supporting again but i want to get your thoughts uh jj you're sort of tuned into the

03:50:12.520 internet culture um much more than the rest of us and you know you're a youtube guy

03:50:17.400 um what what do you think of the ppc because i hear from my perspective i see they got some

03:50:22.200 really sort of high profile um endorsements from the sort of internet people when you think of

03:50:28.520 uh you know jordan peterson michaela peterson you had uh viva fry run as a candidate uh people

03:50:34.120 like lauren southern you know you had a lot of sort of well-known well-watched the the people

03:50:41.160 with the high um subscriber counts really on board with that but it didn't translate into anything in

03:50:47.240 the real world so so you have this guy that's got like a big sort of internet army and we we did see

03:50:52.520 some big you know rallies and and marches and stuff in montreal and toronto but didn't translate

03:50:58.360 to anything tonight nothing uh no seats nothing maybe maybe they're going to play the spoiler

03:51:03.080 for a couple of conservative seats but i don't think it would have made the difference in terms

03:51:06.440 of trudeau winning a minority so uh what's your perspective on the ppc uh in this campaign and

03:51:11.880 going forward yeah i mean certainly anybody that spends a great deal of time online or anybody that

03:51:18.200 sort of talks about canadian politics online as i do before an online audience is very familiar with

03:51:23.080 the sort of the army supposedly of sort of ppc supporters who inevitably fill the comments

03:51:28.440 sections of any social media post or youtube video or what have you talking about how you

03:51:32.920 know the cpc is or the the ppc is going to shock everybody it's going to have a tremendous showing

03:51:37.720 you know the polls are underestimating you know the ppc army and all this kind of stuff and you

03:51:41.640 know much as as was the case in 2019 i think they have very clearly underperformed in in this

03:51:47.560 this election as well. I think that this is a bit of an online phenomenon that doesn't really have

03:51:52.640 a real world manifestation. And if you spend a lot of time in sort of an online bubble in which

03:51:57.440 you only sort of talk to like-minded people, you can very easily come away with an impression that

03:52:02.440 this party is much more popular than it is. And that the sort of the flavor of politics that

03:52:07.280 Maxime Bernier and his sort of folks, you know, sort of champion has, I think, much more sort of

03:52:14.320 broad buy-in than it really does. I mean, that being said, I wrote a column about this recently

03:52:20.760 in the Washington Post. You know, the PPC, even though I think it has underperformed based on what

03:52:25.740 some of its supporters had hoped for in this election, it has passed the precedent set by

03:52:31.400 the Green Party in 2014 or in 2004. In 2004, the Green Party got 4% of the popular vote.

03:52:39.380 And from henceforth, you know, we've been sort of living in this world in which the media has treated the Green Party as if it is one of Canada's major political parties.

03:52:47.700 You know, I was tweeting about this earlier.

03:52:49.960 You know, you look at any newspaper in this country and they have Anna Mae Paul's face up there along with, you know, Trudeau and O'Toole as if she's a serious candidate for prime minister, which she's not.

03:52:58.360 But we've been playing this game in which we've sort of pretended that the Green Party is a major party because in 2004, they won 4% of the vote and the media sort of arbitrarily decided that that's what it takes to be treated as a major party.

03:53:10.560 That's what it takes to have the leader in all of the prime ministerial debates and to have the Green Party included in all of the graphics.

03:53:18.620 If the media is not hypocritical, they're going to have to now do that for the People's Party.

03:53:23.860 They're going to have to sort of treat it as an official or not an official party, but a major party.

03:53:28.520 And, you know, I think that that puts Bernier in, I suppose, a strong place to at least stay relevant in the political conversation,

03:53:35.880 even though they are actually not unlike the Green Party in a lot of ways in the sense that there tends to be a lot of hype,

03:53:41.980 lot of noise around them, a lot of even media attention that is not really ultimately fulfilled

03:53:46.380 by them upholding their end of the bargain and actually sort of achieving even a modest

03:53:54.300 parliamentary delegation. Well, I mean Maxi Bernier was at one point in his life a cabinet

03:53:59.420 minister, so it's hard to argue that he's like this weird fringe outsider character when he was

03:54:04.460 literally a cabinet, one of the highest positions that you can get in an inner circle of a Canadian

03:54:09.820 government. And I know you've been very critical, JJ, of the sort of cult of personality that

03:54:15.580 happened around the Green Party and Elizabeth May. And I see something kind of similar happening

03:54:20.280 around Max and Bernier. Hamish Marshall, I'm going to bring you into the conversation because you've

03:54:25.940 been looking at the numbers and seeing sort of how perhaps the PPC may have played a spoiler

03:54:31.500 in some of the writing. So pull you into it. Yeah. And I also wanted to get a perspective

03:54:36.820 of of jj's on uh jagmeet singh we we've you know we talked a lot there was a lot of speculation

03:54:42.340 in the media that the the ndp was going to surge they're going to get 20 they were going to get

03:54:46.900 38 39 42 seats something like that right now they're at 31 but it's been as 29 28 there there

03:54:56.180 there looks like they're at about 17 of the vote which is up about one and a half percent from last

03:55:01.780 time so do you think jagmeet sings can hang on as leader like you know after two elections of

03:55:07.140 disappointing i mean last time he sort of won by by losing but you know this time when expectations

03:55:12.020 were higher you know it could be not just anime i think it's obvious anime paul is going to be

03:55:15.300 gone as leader but will jagmeet be gone as well that's an interesting question because i think

03:55:20.100 the ndp sort of plays by a sort of different expectations game than the the real parties do

03:55:26.340 you know I think improving the seat count at all I mean I think in some ways is an accomplishment

03:55:32.500 for the party right I mean they've had how many elections was it previously that the seat count

03:55:36.900 declined you know it declined from from Leighton to Mulcair and then declined from Mulcair to Singh

03:55:42.260 and so Singh has now sort of reversed that course for the first time in you know several election

03:55:46.340 cycles that might be enough to sort of save his skin just because NDP people are sort of used to

03:55:50.820 to having such you know low expectations of what their party is capable of I mean I think that you

03:55:56.940 know if we're going to be completely honest I think that Jagmeet Singh's background probably

03:56:00.720 protects him to some extent as well I think that you know he has you know he's made a lot about how

03:56:05.740 people have sort of underestimated him or treated him by different standards because of you know

03:56:09.760 who he is and I think that you know he would be in I'm not in a terribly dishonest place to make

03:56:15.860 that argument to sort of say hey you know uh you know i led the party to a better showing than the

03:56:21.980 previous uh you know leader did and why am i sort of getting turfed out when you know i like it's

03:56:27.920 not it's not illegitimate i suppose for him to make that that argument but at the same time i

03:56:31.800 think you're absolutely right that uh you know he had a very specific style of campaign that was

03:56:36.980 based on a premise of of canadian politics and i think politics in general that is just manifestly

03:56:42.140 not true that if you just spend a lot of time on social media and follow a lot of trendy you know

03:56:47.820 you know fads on tick tock and play video games and all this kind of stuff that somehow you're

03:56:53.100 going to activate this sort of groundswell of disaffected young people who previously

03:56:57.100 don't vote and they're going to sort of carry you to new heights in the same way the ppc you

03:57:01.260 know failed to live up to its own online hype i think that uh the ndp did the same yeah i i almost

03:57:07.020 think that that's it's not even about connecting to voters it's not about like appealing to young

03:57:11.660 people it's about impressing the media it's about like the journalists thinking that you're cool and

03:57:15.740 it's like wow guys jagmeet singh is on tick tock like he's so cool because he does these weird

03:57:21.820 videos that we don't understand but we'll just pretend we understand so that we seem cool too

03:57:25.500 it's like jagmeet singh is just he's trendy he's he's hip he's not that young but he he acts like

03:57:31.900 he's young and and that's like enough uh for the media which shows you sort of again how out of

03:57:37.740 touch they are uh with the people one of the questions i have just to circle back to you hamish

03:57:42.700 is did the polls seem like they're right at all because for me what i was looking at it seemed

03:57:48.620 like the conservatives and the tories sorry the conservatives liberals were neck and neck

03:57:52.380 the ndp had swelled up to like 22 23 percent it doesn't really seem like the the the polls the

03:57:58.940 last week of the campaign what we saw over there is really matching up with the with the vote count

03:58:03.660 today yeah i mean just like the last election i believe i certainly know in 2019 the highest

03:58:09.980 final poll previously for the conservatives was 33 i believe that's the same in this election

03:58:14.780 and right now the conservatives are at 34.1 which is exactly the same percentage of the vote the

03:58:20.140 conservatives got in the last election um so but the liberals are down even further the liberals

03:58:25.660 got 33.0 last time and they're down to 31.9 um so they've dropped another percent uh so it doesn't

03:58:33.580 doesn't look like the polls were particularly accurate. We saw pollsters as recently as a

03:58:38.940 couple of days ago having the NDP at 22. They're at 17 and a half. I think Nanos had them at 17

03:58:44.180 and a half. They did a one day poll just yesterday, which I think they had the NDP at 17 and a half,

03:58:48.760 which is going to look prophetic. But, you know, on the whole, the, you know, this, I think this

03:58:57.220 election more than anything else, it continued, not that I'm a particular fan of electoral reform,

03:59:01.660 But, you know, we're looking like the party that loses, you know, has ended up growing its, you know, the losing party is growing its margin from 1% to looks like two and a half now, and still is going to end up with basically exactly the same number of seats.

03:59:19.080 And the disconnect between the number of votes you get and the number of seats you get is becoming even more out of whack.

03:59:27.580 and I think that's going to be a

03:59:29.900 I think it's going to be a concern

03:59:31.480 I think it should be

03:59:34.060 a conversation, Maxime Bernier brought it up

03:59:35.960 I think it should be a conversation in conservative circles

03:59:38.100 right, you know, if we had proportional

03:59:40.160 representation we wouldn't be in government

03:59:41.980 some left-wing coalition against us

03:59:44.160 but that probably wouldn't be substantially different

03:59:46.160 from what's happening right now in government

03:59:47.880 and conservatives would have the largest number of

03:59:50.220 MPs in the House of Commons in 2019

03:59:52.340 and in 2021

03:59:54.420 and that, you know, has

03:59:56.200 there's some advantages to that so of course we never would have had there never would have been

04:00:00.080 a Stephen Harper government on the other hand so you know it's it's difficult to say but I think

04:00:04.320 it's something that that needs to be considered going forward yeah no it's certainly an opportunistic

04:00:09.000 I mean not opportunistic but it's like it works in this scenario and then other scenarios can go

04:00:12.800 terribly wrong uh we're standing by because Aaron O'Toole might be coming live at any point so if

04:00:17.900 if that does happen we'll we'll break away but I want to circle back to you JJ you did a great

04:00:22.520 YouTube video where you basically declared that Canada had failed and you kind of broke it down

04:00:27.260 on these three metrics that this is the point of Canada and you know we don't do this thing so it

04:00:32.980 was you know keeping the Americans out uh keeping the um um the French in and um somehow making the

04:00:41.240 First Nations people disappear um and that none of those things have come to fruition so I I wanted

04:00:47.740 to just sort of ask you, I mean, you're a big thinker. You obviously know very much the history

04:00:55.980 of Canada. You studied it. You spent a lot of time thinking about it. Were you happy with this

04:01:00.440 election? Do you feel like the issues that matter to you were talked about? And if not, what can

04:01:06.820 you do to change that? Because it seems like, you know, we're just in this sort of, it's like a

04:01:12.560 hamster wheel. We just keep hashing over the same dumb issues that no one cares about. The 0.96

04:01:17.200 elections are not really consequential, the issues that really matter to us don't really

04:01:22.640 get brought up and talked about, you know, how can we change that?

04:01:26.140 How can we make Canada something that we're all really proud and excited to be a part

04:01:31.200 of? How can we make our elections matter?

04:01:33.320 I know it's a huge question, but it is a big it is a big question.

04:01:39.260 I mean, Canada is a is a complicated country, right?

04:01:42.080 Like, Canada is a very complex nation state that has a lot of different sort of moving parts, that has a lot of historical inheritance, that has a lot of complex institutions and institutional legacies.

04:01:54.880 I think that Canada has also produced a couple of decent leaders who have thought deeply about this country and have come to power with a vision of how they want to steer it into the future.

04:02:06.340 I think the old man Trudeau, I think Pierre Elliott Trudeau, for all of his many flaws, was a man who had thought very deeply about Canada and had a coherent philosophy of the sort of country that Canada should be and how to resolve what he perceived to be some of Canada's sort of core deficiencies and sort of main historical legacies that needed to be sort of sorted out.

04:02:26.560 I think that Stephen Harper was a similar sort of man. I think you can go back and you can read

04:02:30.800 some of the speeches that Stephen Harper gave in his Reform Party days. And it was very clear

04:02:35.260 that he was a man that had thought deeply about Canada and its institutions and its economy and

04:02:39.700 its history and all of these other sorts of things, what we would today call sort of like

04:02:43.480 systemic dimensions of Canada. And I think that by contrast, when you look at somebody like Aaron

04:02:49.900 O'Toole, it was not clear to me that he was a man that really sort of had a vision for this country.

04:02:54.500 I think he was somebody that wanted to govern Canada, wanted to manage the government of Canada, and perhaps would have done a better job managing the government of Canada than Justin Trudeau.

04:03:05.080 I have little doubt that he probably would.

04:03:07.580 But that said, I do think that it's not wrong to want a higher caliber of leader.

04:03:16.600 I think it's clear that if the choice is between just two different flavors, not even two different flavors, just two different personalities of manager with the same philosophy of management, that is going to hit a very low ceiling of public support.

04:03:34.480 I think that this is a sort of thing that's easy for perhaps people like me to say, who kind of want politics to be about something more substantial, who kind of want to have more, you know, more sort of philosopher king types in charge.

04:03:47.240 But I think that, you know, I don't feel like it's completely illegitimate to desire a conservative leader in this country that has an actual vision, that actually understands what Canada is and has a sort of coherent plan for how he wants to perfect or address some of these deep-seated problems with this country that I think we all kind of understand are kind of deep-seated problems with this country. 0.96

04:04:15.540 Like there's I think, you know, there's no one honestly, I think, on the right that thinks that the situation in Quebec is perfectly hunky dory, that the situation with the Aboriginal people is perfectly great, that there are not like deep, deep problems at the root of these sort of dramas that we discussed so endlessly that require more engagement than just reciting the same old platitudes and just saying sort of disingenuous things like, well, Trudeau is a hypocrite.

04:04:44.160 And I'm going to somehow be a more authentic champion of the rhetoric that Trudeau spouts,

04:04:49.440 even though I think that a lot of conservative people don't even like the rhetoric that Trudeau

04:04:53.360 spouts. They have a sense that the problems that Trudeau is sort of articulating require deeper,

04:04:58.800 more thoughtful solutions than the ones that he is offering. But I just don't think that

04:05:02.880 there is that kind of leader even waiting in the wings in this country, like somebody who

04:05:08.240 is the equivalent of a pure Elliott Trudeau or a Stephen Harper for the new generation.

04:05:12.400 maybe it's naive to expect that caliber of of person in in the 21st century but that's the

04:05:18.320 kind of person that i'm waiting for but you know maybe i'm not even doing so well just to get past

04:05:23.440 the sort of personality and and and get more towards the the root of it i mean you're talking

04:05:28.400 about a philosopher king so your video is about how canada doesn't have a core project anymore

04:05:33.680 or like we don't know what canada stands for that the canadian identity was sort of uh used to be

04:05:39.040 very rooted in the sort of british empire and were part of the the the crown were part of this big

04:05:45.520 mighty empire and then obviously post-world war ii that changed and it became the sort of

04:05:51.280 liberal identity that canadians uh identify themselves basically as being not americans

04:05:56.080 so we're kind of like more progressive more more liberal americans and you know that that that

04:06:03.200 seems to have fallen flat especially with the latest sort of media um moral panic over residential

04:06:08.480 schools and how horrible that all was so to you jj i mean what do you see canada what do you see

04:06:14.240 the canadian project and what what what could canada be um in in in an ideal world and jj's

04:06:20.960 sort of vision for a future of canada well you know like i would just sort of say that

04:06:26.480 we shouldn't perhaps on some level be too hard on the left right like the left i think accurately

04:06:32.960 perceived that you know the old understanding of what Canada was that sort of British Empire sort

04:06:39.020 of first kind of understanding of Canada that was an identity that had ceased to become relevant for

04:06:43.500 the vast majority of Canadians by the time that say somebody like Pierre Elliott Trudeau came on

04:06:47.420 the scene he offered a different sort of sense of what Canada was and then you know I think you could

04:06:52.240 sort of argue it was sort of perfected by Jean Chrétien who really sort of went at it hard with

04:06:57.480 this kind of anti-america vision that was defined in part that canada was superior to america because

04:07:03.560 it was the more progressive country because of the health care system because of the gun control

04:07:07.420 because of the immigration system because of all those kind of things like i don't i might not agree

04:07:12.240 with that vision of canada you might not either but at least it was a vision of canada that you

04:07:17.360 know built on an absence of a certain identity and offered something else in its place and you're

04:07:23.300 absolutely right that like you know the conservatives have very much struggled i think to offer a sort

04:07:27.960 of counter vision of identity for this country and uh you know at best you sometimes have people

04:07:34.440 i think like jason kenny who are kind of wistful and nostalgic and kind of want to bring back a

04:07:39.940 kind of flavor of that sort of crown and empire kind of identity but again like it doesn't ring

04:07:45.280 true for 21st century canadians even more than it rings true for you know canadians in the in the

04:07:50.560 in the mid-century of the 20th century so i don't know like my own vision of canada like i am not a

04:07:56.400 super nation builder kind of type of person just by disposition you know i'm not a super nationalistic

04:08:01.520 kind of person i mean i personally like the fact that canada is a lot like the us i personally

04:08:07.200 am a sort of continentalist minded person i think that canada and the us should be much closer i

04:08:12.080 think that canadians should find virtue in the fact that we're a country that's very much like

04:08:16.080 the u.s but you know i'm also aware that canada is a country with a very deep-seated anti-americanism

04:08:20.960 just at its core that dates back to the earliest days of this country and thus you know a sort of

04:08:25.120 pro-american vision of what canada's all about i don't think is necessarily going to resonate with

04:08:29.600 the great majority of of people but it is it's a very difficult challenge i mean canada's national

04:08:34.720 identity at this point might just be so wedded to the liberal party or at the very least to the

04:08:40.000 liberal project that you can't really articulate or win an election articulating a vision of this

04:08:48.060 country that in any way sort of substantially differs from that. We might have passed this

04:08:51.560 somewhat a point of no return. And I sometimes wonder if sort of the end game of this is just

04:08:56.580 that you're going to get, if O'Toole sort of shuffles off, you're going to get somebody that's

04:09:00.680 even more sort of to the left than he is. And that ultimately the destiny is that someday we

04:09:05.900 will have a conservative government that is functionally indistinguishable from the liberals

04:09:10.480 and sort of has a vision of Canada that's indistinguishable from the liberals. And that

04:09:15.240 will just kind of be the culmination of the sort of the Canadian national project will basically be

04:09:20.220 the elimination of a sort of honest conservative counter vision in Canadian democracy. And that's

04:09:27.620 like not something that's super great or super exciting. But I think that reflects just the

04:09:31.960 fundamental inability for conservatives both intellectually and politically to champion a

04:09:37.660 coherent alternative. Well, JJ, you've mentioned so many things and I feel like I could have asked

04:09:43.520 like 20 follow-up questions from that, but it looks like we have Erin O'Toole taking the stage

04:09:49.440 over in Oshawa. So you did a great job of talking right up until the point where we

04:09:55.420 had to cut you off, but thank you for joining us. Hopefully we can have you on at some other point.

04:09:59.580 we can jump into some of those uh issues a little deeper because it's a great uh area of

04:10:04.620 conversation thank you jj mccullough for joining us and thank you for your time

04:10:08.460 thanks for having me all right so we're gonna head over to suan levy who is live in oshawa

04:10:14.940 at the conservative i i don't want to call it a victory party anymore at the conservative

04:10:19.020 headquarters in the evening and uh looks like we have some action over there so suan what's going

04:10:23.900 on in oshawa well aaron motul has just hit the stage and it's very funny candace remember those

04:10:32.060 uh seats that i said were empty well they have now filled with uh conservative um supporters i

04:10:41.420 guess people who worked on the campaign who have signs and uh have i guess the cheerleading squad

04:10:48.540 and erin otu has started to speak perhaps you want to hear a few words from him

04:10:52.540 all right yeah let's uh let's go to air natural thank you so much sue-ann for setting that up

04:10:57.260 friends thank you

04:11:02.860 thank you thank you well it was after one in the morning when i first addressed the nation

04:11:11.260 as leader of canada's conservatives so it's fitting i address you late again at the start

04:11:17.960 this pandemic i called for a team canada approach to combat covet 19. 18 months later our nation

04:11:26.760 needs that more than ever the canadiens have spent too many sleepless nights about worrying about the

04:11:35.400 health of the people close to them the loss of jobs and the future of their children the

04:11:41.000 pandemic has increased to the small differences between us and it has also aggravated the division

04:11:49.000 amongst canadians unfortunately this election has only made unworkable but tonight canadians

04:11:56.440 did not give mr trudeau the majority mandate he wanted in fact canadians sent him back with

04:12:07.960 another minority at the cost of 600 million dollars and deeper divisions in

04:12:13.600 our great country just days ago he said he would hold yet another election within

04:12:19.420 18 months if he didn't get his way a few days ago mr. Trudeau was saying that he

04:12:27.040 would hold another election in 18 months if he didn't get to what he wants

04:12:32.980 Mr. Trudeau was hoping for a quick power grab. Instead, he has thrust us into what he has

04:12:39.860 promised will be 18 months of perpetual campaigning. Our country is facing the most

04:12:46.740 serious economic challenge since the Great Depression. Even before the pandemic led to

04:12:53.140 record debt and deficits, investment and jobs were leaving Canada.

04:12:58.100 The prices are creeping from clothes to gas and everything.

04:13:08.100 Inflation is its highest level in 20 years, and it is continuing to climb every day.

04:13:14.100 Families have difficulty in making ends meet.

04:13:19.100 But to face up to this challenge, we have to work together. We have to continue the fight.

04:13:26.100 For too long, we have been divided. For too long, we have seen politicians pit region against region, neighbour against neighbour.

04:13:37.580 But when we are divided, Canadians get left behind.

04:13:42.660 Mr Trudeau thinks Canadians should endure 18 more months of divisive campaigning so he can try once again to get the election result he wants.

04:13:50.920 We need to heal the divides in Canada, not risk worsening them for selfish gains.

04:14:02.260 A few months ago, I told Conservatives that our party needed the courage to change because Canada has changed.

04:14:12.100 Over the past 36 days, we have demonstrated to Canadians that we have set out on a path

04:14:19.240 to engage more Canadians in our Conservative movement.

04:14:23.920 One that addresses is the challenges of today while advancing the dreams of tomorrow.

04:14:30.060 Ours is a Conservatism that dwells not in the past, but learns from it to secure the

04:14:36.140 future.

04:14:37.140 Our new conservative movement, a new conservative movement to deal with today's challenges,

04:14:46.580 a conservative movement to actually realize the dreams of tomorrow, a conservative movement

04:14:53.600 that's not only looking backwards, but learns and moves forward.

04:14:59.060 it is a conservatism that reveres strong communities and compassion for one another

04:15:09.640 for our environment and for those in need at home and abroad it is a conservatism that respects

04:15:18.180 hard work and character and the fact that millions have come to this great country

04:15:23.460 country for liberty and opportunity. It's a conservatism that believes reconciliation

04:15:29.520 is more than a box to check. It is the very keystone of Canada reaching its potential.

04:15:36.060 And it starts with clean drinking water as a basic human right still denied to Indigenous

04:15:41.880 children born today. And above all else, it is a conservatism that believes Canada is

04:15:50.100 the greatest country on earth, and that our best days are on the horizon.

04:15:58.080 A conservatism that builds Canada up.

04:16:12.340 build it up

04:16:17.300 in the months ahead

04:16:20.820 thank you friends in the months ahead as mr trudeau gears up for yet another

04:16:25.460 election we must continue this journey to

04:16:28.980 welcoming more canadians to make to take another look at our party

04:16:33.540 more people voted for canada's conservatives

04:16:36.580 than any other party and that's a strength to build on

04:16:42.180 our support has grown it's grown across the country but clearly there is more work for us

04:16:48.820 to do to earn the trust of canadians we're the founding party of this country we're the

04:16:57.460 party of its future as well the conservative party will beat the liberals but only if the

04:17:04.580 the party continues to grow to have the courage to be called to be bold and to

04:17:09.860 have the courage to change we must hold fast to that courage we must show

04:17:16.400 Canadians that we will not waver in our commitment to growth on the walk on to

04:17:22.100 you we do gagne a lack of finance we must continue to gain the trust of

04:17:27.500 Canadians we've made progress we've worked hard but progressive the progress

04:17:32.580 has to continue once in another 18 months we will take stock of what worked and what didn't

04:17:42.020 and we will continue to put in the time showing more canadians that they are welcome in the

04:17:48.500 conservative party of canada above all we must continue to show canadians that whether you're

04:17:58.180 black white brown or from any race or creed whether you're lgbtq or straight whether you

04:18:06.100 are an indigenous canadian or came to canada five weeks ago or five generations ago

04:18:16.260 be the free french or first or second language whether you worship on fridays saturdays sundays

04:18:22.980 every day or not at all you are an important part of canada and you have a place in the conservative

04:18:29.860 party of canada friends i'm standing here tonight

04:18:51.380 because of the steadfast support of my true partner, the love of my life, Rebecca.

04:18:58.340 Thank you for being my rock and my safe harbor.

04:19:04.340 And I'm so glad more Canadians got to know the wonderful person you are these last five weeks.

04:19:10.460 I also want to thank my children, Molly and Jack, for being my inspiration.

04:19:15.140 It's because of you that I believe so strongly in securing Canada's future.

04:19:23.280 My mother passed away when I was nine, but I know she is here tonight because I see her

04:19:28.700 in my daughter Molly, who shares her name.

04:19:31.900 I've been so grateful to have my second mother to guide me to this very day.

04:19:36.540 I'm thankful that she and my dad, who inspired me into public service, are here tonight.

04:19:43.300 I would like to thank my fantastic campaign team, thanks for your trust, thanks for your

04:19:54.700 commitment to serving this big and marvellous country, thanks to our incredible slate of

04:20:00.140 candidates and to our fantastic volunteers as well.

04:20:03.740 I joined the military at 18 to serve Canada and its people.

04:20:09.140 Some of the people I served with are in this room tonight.

04:20:12.140 I will never stop serving this great country.

04:20:18.480 And my pride in Canada has deepened these past five weeks as I've gotten to meet more

04:20:24.100 incredible Canadians from all walks of life.

04:20:27.640 My family and I are resolutely committed to continuing this journey for Canada.

04:20:33.840 Tonight I talked to Mr Trudeau and I congratulated him

04:20:41.760 on a hard-won campaign.

04:21:11.760 all right peter van dusen are watching along with you as we listen to conservative leader

04:21:19.820 i'm getting flashbacks when i hear that song that was the song that was at every single one

04:21:25.140 of his campaign stops only on a 20 second loop well here it is back on again we've got no no

04:21:31.460 it wasn't even like the actual song it was like just like a 20 second loop it was like the world's

04:21:37.160 most tedious ringtone. But in any case, here we are back after that. We have Sue Ann Levy in Oshawa

04:21:44.920 where Aaron O'Toole has just conceded, but it sounds very much like he's planning to stay on.

04:21:50.680 He was throwing that line of Trudeau's that if we had another minority government, we'd be back at

04:21:55.740 the election in another 18 months. We'll go to Sue Ann in just a moment here. Candace, what were

04:22:02.020 your thoughts on that? Well, it didn't sound like he thought that he lost. It sounds like he thought

04:22:07.380 that he had done quite well and won. And I mean, if you're looking from day one of the campaign,

04:22:12.900 when it looked like, you know, no one had ever heard of him, and he wasn't really known at all,

04:22:18.220 sure, he's gone up. But you look at the campaign, and it's like, at one point, he was pulling five,

04:22:23.120 six points ahead of the liberals. And he's just, you know, had it all handed to him on a platter.

04:22:28.440 So I think that there needs to be some reckoning in the Conservative Party.

04:22:32.740 Aaron O'Toole has to acknowledge the fact that he didn't appeal to the base and that a lot of people in the base of the party are very unhappy, very angry.

04:22:39.520 The fact that 5% went over to Maxime Bernier, that needs to be discussed and there needs to be some reckoning.

04:22:46.520 It didn't really sound like a very self-aware speech, but I'll hand it over to you, Sue Ann.

04:22:51.700 You're in the room. So what do you make of it?

04:22:53.680 Well, there was a lot of phony excitement in the room, sort of, you know, manufactured excitement.

04:23:01.120 And I think that Aaron O'Toole has some explaining to do, Candace and Andrew.

04:23:07.120 He talked about the new conservatism, and then he talked about all the groups, LGBT, Indigenous, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

04:23:16.060 and this is just what we were talking about before getting away from the true conservative values

04:23:23.760 and and being liberal light did not work for him and I think there's going to be

04:23:29.060 some real reckoning within the party you know

04:23:32.960 defeats by the conservatives federally and I always shake my head and say what will it take

04:23:42.640 to win Canada, win over a Trudeau, for example.

04:23:47.500 I think my hair stood on end in 2015, and it's about to stand on end again.

04:23:54.260 Why can't we find a leader who can appeal to the base, as you say?

04:23:59.220 Why we keep trying to pander to groups that will never vote for the Conservatives?

04:24:05.020 And I think that there's going to have to be some inner awareness within the party.

04:24:10.100 Well, talking about groups that will never appeal to conservatives,

04:24:14.060 it almost seemed like Aaron O'Toole's speech was aimed entirely at the media

04:24:18.100 to prove to the media that he's not as bad as the media thinks that he is.

04:24:24.220 And it's like, dude, the media are never going to like you, no matter what.

04:24:27.700 Look, you just ran a campaign that was super liberal and super moderate,

04:24:30.960 and you did all the things and said all the things that they wanted you to say,

04:24:34.240 and they still didn't treat you fairly, and you didn't win.

04:24:36.780 So at what point are you going to change your strategy?

04:24:38.860 away from trying to appeal to the centrist or left-wing media and trying to actually get

04:24:43.900 conservatives excited about you and go and vote for you. And you're not playing to the media. As

04:24:48.920 you said, they're going to still rip you to shreds, and they did. They did. The legacy media still

04:24:54.900 gave him a hard time, still just tolerated him, found every excuse to beat up on him. So let's

04:25:04.180 start concentrating on the people that matter, the people who vote, the people who went into the

04:25:08.640 polls today not the media because people are frankly are tuning out the legacy media they

04:25:15.920 know that they're biased we saw it during the election and that was the big mistake in this

04:25:20.560 election absolutely well sue ann thank you so much for your coverage tonight thank you for being live

04:25:26.720 on the ground in oshawa we've really appreciated uh your commentary your coverage your interviews

04:25:32.560 your reports so uh thank you for being with us you've really helped add some color and add some

04:25:37.120 perspective uh from that uh campaign and at that uh conservative uh headquarters with us we

04:25:43.360 appreciate having you on and uh we appreciate you being part of the turn our team thank you

04:25:49.040 all right have a good one

04:25:53.120 all right andrew i think we're going to bring in harrison faulkner at this point who is still

04:25:57.680 live in saskatoon where the people's party's headquarter was we'll bring

04:26:02.080 me uh harrison in to provide some final words of um coverage and uh feedback from what's going on

04:26:09.520 out in saskatoon harrison yeah so everything is pretty much wrapped up here uh people are pretty

04:26:15.600 much going home there's just a small group of people still left here who seem to be all members

04:26:20.640 of the party but like i said you know uh earlier uh this was not the result the ppc wanted they

04:26:27.680 obviously wanted to gain seats when I spoke with Maxime Bernier. He did say that he was looking for

04:26:34.220 around 6% of the national vote share and, of course, a pickup in some seats. And I also had

04:26:39.300 a chance to speak with many other candidates today as well. And they were a little more optimistic

04:26:46.380 than Maxime was about the potential number of seats they could pick up today. But I do think

04:26:52.440 that the way this party has really grown, especially from the vote share nationally

04:26:58.480 and how things have changed from 2019 until now, the future looks pretty interesting for the PPC.

04:27:06.480 You don't want to get too ahead of yourselves if you are in the PPC camp, but you do have to think

04:27:11.060 that if they stay on this trajectory and they keep whittling away at some of these conservative

04:27:16.760 seats. They've certainly played a role tonight in taking away some of O'Toole's seats. If they

04:27:22.460 continue to do that, they're going to certainly be a big player in the next election.

04:27:28.120 Yeah, and one point that I would bring up there is that the PBC has not hit that 6% threshold

04:27:33.800 they were hoping for. They're at about 5.2%, but you contrast that with the Green Party,

04:27:38.560 which is at 2.2%, and obviously a bit of a different sense because they did elect two

04:27:44.560 MPs with that, but not one of not their leader in that group. So certainly, as Hamish was saying

04:27:49.640 earlier, that is still tripling the PPC vote. So I understood Maxime Bernier taking almost a bit of

04:27:55.720 a victorious tone when he was giving his concession speech earlier. Yeah, absolutely.

04:28:00.940 In that speech, he talked about electoral reform, which I know you touched on earlier when he did

04:28:06.000 say it about how that's kind of a unique position for the PPC to take. That's not something we've

04:28:10.140 heard recently but obviously if that were to be the case the ppc would be in a different position

04:28:15.360 uh tonight if that was if that was happening so i did speak to one of the uh provincial organizers

04:28:21.060 for saskatchewan i asked her about that question and she basically said that this is not something

04:28:26.380 she was aware of that the party was really thinking about this but uh it could end up being

04:28:30.960 one of those other policy plans the ppc end up pick and ends up picking up uh which which will

04:28:37.400 play a role in increasing their vote share i think it was really interesting to see uh the failure

04:28:43.000 of the green party and and the uh and the interesting kind of coalition of voters that

04:28:48.120 the ppc were able to to grab um this election so all of that is to say that this wasn't a perfect

04:28:54.520 night by any means for the ppc uh but it was certainly as you said they are moving in the

04:28:59.800 right direction well it's so interesting to see that the greens sort of had a vote collapse and

04:29:07.000 fall apart they didn't do very well at all and yet they're going to walk away with two maybe three

04:29:10.840 seats uh whereas the ppc like you said harrison uh doubled their vote share and they're going to

04:29:16.200 walk away with nothing to show for it so uh yeah again an interesting uh verdict for our system

04:29:22.280 well thank you so much harrison for being on the ground in saskatoon flying out there and giving

04:29:26.920 us some great coverage you got an interview with maxi bernia which we're gonna play in its entirety

04:29:32.120 tomorrow and we really appreciate the uh work you did running in and out and i guess it must be cold

04:29:37.320 outside because you seemed pretty relieved when you got to come back inside so my guess is you

04:29:41.320 forgot to bring your scarf for you didn't think that it was already uh fall in in saskatoon because

04:29:46.600 it's still pretty warm in toronto but we appreciate it yeah it was it was great to be here and uh

04:29:52.360 thank you guys and i want to thank the viewers as well for being able to send us out on these

04:29:56.280 important trips and being on the ground here so thank you very much all right harrison falcon

04:30:00.760 and reporting from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

04:30:02.840 Thank you so much.

04:30:03.620 Harrison.

04:30:05.460 Before we move on, Candice,

04:30:08.040 can perhaps we tell people

04:30:09.380 how they can get Harrison back to where he lives?

04:30:12.440 Oh, yeah, we did say,

04:30:14.140 Harrison, I don't know if you're still listening,

04:30:15.520 but we only booked you a one-way ticket,

04:30:17.320 so we have to fundraise

04:30:18.780 and make sure that we can pay

04:30:20.460 for your return flight back to Toronto.

04:30:22.560 So, yeah, folks, if you're tuning in,

04:30:24.280 you're enjoying the coverage that we're providing,

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04:31:08.900 you can join us become a true north insider where you get special access to programming you get

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04:31:48.580 sharing it uh subscribing to our email list so that you can stay in touch um and again you know

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04:32:32.520 donate.tnc.news and making a small donation we appreciate every dollar that we get we really do

04:32:39.320 um we we actually i'll make a small shout out i don't know if my mom is still watching it

04:32:44.360 today is my mother's birthday she turns uh 61 today so happy birthday mom it's actually not

04:32:49.960 Not her birthday anymore.

04:32:50.800 I forgot to do the shout out on her actual birthday.

04:32:52.780 September 20th was her birthday.

04:32:54.200 So it's after midnight.

04:32:55.780 Wait, did she, which time zone is she in though?

04:32:58.080 Well, so she, right now she is in the central time zone

04:33:02.140 cause she's visiting my sister.

04:33:04.060 So it's her birthday for another 10 minutes.

04:33:05.640 It is her birthday.

04:33:06.500 All right.

04:33:07.340 Well, mom, if you're watching happy birthday, I love you.

04:33:09.200 And my mom, for a long time,

04:33:11.800 she was sort of true North's, I don't know, librarian.

04:33:15.680 She'd keep all of the letters that I got

04:33:17.900 she put them into a beautiful sort of scrapbook of all the nice letters that we got. So people

04:33:23.060 who send us, you know, handwritten letters of support, they mail us checks. My mom would sort

04:33:29.320 of keep that all in a nice book that we keep. And it really means a lot to us, you know, as a

04:33:34.260 journalist and as anyone who's online, anyone who's involved in politics, you know, you get a lot of

04:33:38.620 love, you get a lot of hate. And sometimes the hate is really, you know, a lot. And then, you

04:33:44.200 know, you have something to turn back and you realize that there are so many people out there

04:33:47.480 who really appreciate what you do and support it and so like i was saying my mom put together

04:33:52.200 a really nice little scrapbook of all the uh true north support uh letters we've gotten so

04:33:57.480 appreciate that mom again happy birthday and uh if you are so inclined to uh chip in and help

04:34:03.720 support true north going forward we really do appreciate that so i think we have uh hamish

04:34:08.600 marshall our in-house pollster at true north and our decision desk guy who has been calling it all

04:34:15.960 tonight hamish are there any other final numbers that you want to uh let us know about or is it

04:34:20.840 sort of a done deal at this point well i mean nothing substantial has changed uh the liberals

04:34:25.960 look like on the whole as of right now they're down to 156 seats which is one less than the last

04:34:31.080 election the conservatives are at 121 exactly the same the block is at 32 exactly the same

04:34:38.920 the ndp is at 27 up three the greens down one uh to two seats so very few top line changes the ppc

04:34:47.160 is at 5.2 um the conservatives are at 34.1 same as they got in the last election not an awful lot

04:34:54.760 change at the top line but there's actually quite a lot of seats moving around beneath the service

04:34:58.680 so while the overall numbers in parliament aren't going to be that different there's quite a lot of

04:35:01.880 change i think one of the big stories of this campaign is going to be there's two really one

04:35:06.440 One is the failure of the NDP, despite there seem to be punching above their weight in the polls the last few weeks.

04:35:12.460 Failure of the NDP to substantially grow, although the mail-in ballots might change that slightly.

04:35:18.120 And the fact that the Conservatives lost gains, lost the gains they had in urban areas.

04:35:23.660 They lost seats in the GTA. They lost seats in the greater Vancouver area.

04:35:26.940 They lost seats in Edmonton. Might lose a seat in Calgary.

04:35:29.720 Looks like the seat they won in Winnipeg, they're now ahead by a couple hundred votes.

04:35:34.020 So maybe that'll come back. We'll see how it goes.

04:35:36.440 But on the whole, for a campaign that was built around reaching out and broadening the base of the Conservative Party, it looks like a lot of they lost seats in these urban areas that are so important to winning.

04:35:52.360 That's really interesting. And earlier you were talking about how that might have been pegged on sort of lack of outreach to immigrant communities, lack of ethnic outreach as we call it, that the Chinese Canadian vote may have collapsed.

04:36:06.100 Do you think that has something to do with Aaron O'Toole sort of, well, you know, one of the few things that he did that was sort of sounding like conservative was taking a hard stance against China.

04:36:16.680 I know China came back saying that if a conservative government was elected, that it would be sort of bad for China.

04:36:23.960 Do you think that has something to do with sort of loyalty back to China or misunderstanding of what the campaign was or was it really just a laugh?

04:36:30.260 No, you know, I think it's honestly a little more devious than that. 0.96

04:36:33.900 know the the chinese government and through their foreign propaganda arms has a lot of has a lot of 0.86

04:36:39.100 influence in chinese media uh kenny chu the conservative mp for richmond steves richmond

04:36:44.300 stevesman um who lost tonight uh is a born in hong kong uh he was targeted by a whole bunch

04:36:51.580 of allegations from people in the from media associated with the chinese government or chinese

04:36:57.740 organizations um and there's been a concerted push by the efforts of the chinese government to

04:37:04.460 uh influence uh the votes of overseas canadian overseas chinese chinese chinese canadians here

04:37:10.700 uh and it's it's something that wasn't happening five or six years ago in the same way

04:37:15.420 uh and i think that it has to be taken seriously and and has to be pushed back on extremely serious

04:37:21.820 extremely aggressively uh frankly by all parties i mean i i don't think we should we should

04:37:26.380 uh you know uh approve of any foreign interference in our elections uh and it's it's a it's a big

04:37:31.580 big big concern um uh and it seems to have paid off uh because both as i said both uh kenny chu

04:37:38.300 lost and uh uh looks like alice wong has lost as well uh both two strong supporters of democracy

04:37:44.780 in hong kong great chinese canadians who uh who uh are it looks like they're going to be defeated

04:37:50.700 well that's pretty uh disconcerting uh any any allegations and again this is one of those issues

04:37:56.940 that wasn't really brought up i know there was sort of murmurings about it before the campaign

04:38:01.500 began that oh for an election uh interference and we hear about it a bit more in the u.s context

04:38:06.780 i really wasn't brought up but you know just the idea of uh that uh sort of propaganda arm

04:38:13.660 of the chinese government being able to reach into canada is pretty pretty disturbing well

04:38:18.860 Well, Hamish, we really appreciate you manning the decision desk tonight.

04:38:22.060 We appreciate all your insight and analysis.

04:38:24.000 It's been great to have you part of the Trenorth team over the last few weeks,

04:38:27.520 and we hope to continue the relationship and have you on to provide your analysis and opinion in the future.

04:38:34.300 So thanks for joining us tonight, and thank you for joining us throughout the campaign.

04:38:37.460 My pleasure.

04:38:38.900 All right. Have a good night, Hamish.

04:38:40.200 Thanks a lot.

04:38:42.440 All right, Andrew.

04:38:43.160 Well, so it's been a long night.

04:38:45.680 I don't think it was quite as long as our broadcast air natural mentioned that the first time he gave his concession speech or victory speech, I guess, back then, it was one in the morning.

04:38:55.000 So it was a little earlier tonight, but we still haven't heard from Trudeau or Jagmeet Singh.

04:39:00.020 But I don't think we're going to wait around for that just because there's not really much more that can be said other than Trudeau giving some kind of a smug justification of why it was all worth it when it really wasn't at all.

04:39:13.780 So any final thoughts for this evening?

04:39:16.340 What are you thinking of as you wrap this up tonight?

04:39:19.800 Yeah, just a couple of things.

04:39:21.560 One point that I would raise here is that the NDP,

04:39:25.360 which was hoping that it could make some serious gains over last election,

04:39:29.680 is now going to have to face the big question of what is it getting from the Liberals?

04:39:35.080 I mean, the NDP has made all of these promises,

04:39:37.400 but they've been propping up the Liberals for the last two years.

04:39:40.040 And I think the NDP right now is in a bit of a bargaining position

04:39:42.760 because even though Justin Trudeau has won the election,

04:39:45.900 and like I said earlier, a win is a win, a loss is a loss,

04:39:48.940 Justin Trudeau is in a bit of a weaker position

04:39:51.200 because he couldn't convert this into a majority.

04:39:53.640 He couldn't consolidate his power.

04:39:55.760 So if I were the Bloc Québécois, if I were the NDP,

04:39:58.060 I'd be saying, all right, well, I mean, you want our support.

04:40:00.360 It's going to cost you more now than it did last time around.

04:40:03.560 And I don't anticipate the Conservatives being able to cobble together

04:40:07.460 any sort of a coalition here,

04:40:09.140 but I do think that's going to be the thing to watch

04:40:11.540 is how much more are the NDP and bloc going to be able to play hardball to get something out of

04:40:18.040 this liberal minority? And I wouldn't be surprised. And again, I'm not making a prediction,

04:40:22.380 but I wouldn't be surprised if Justin Trudeau is not the prime minister for the entirety

04:40:27.280 of the next session of parliament. I could see him still having to step aside, but whether that

04:40:33.400 happens in a month or whether it happens in a year and a half still stands to be seen.

04:40:37.960 Interesting. I wouldn't even think about that at all, because at one point a reporter did ask him whether he would step down if the liberals lost. And I think his response was something along the lines of, I'm not anywhere near done fighting yet or something like that. So it didn't didn't really seem like any backing down from Trudeau. What makes you think that he could be, you know, stepping down or getting replaced?

04:41:01.680 well simply put the NDP or block will depend it will depend how the numbers shake out but they

04:41:07.860 will have to support them and and they could very easily say yeah we'll back a liberal government

04:41:11.880 but not with Justin Trudeau at the helm of it and and he does have baggage he we talked earlier

04:41:17.320 about yet another blackface photo uh the popularity that he had the personal popularity in 2015 and

04:41:24.160 2019 wasn't there this election and I know a lot of our audience not fans of Trudeau I'm not trying

04:41:30.040 to give you false hope here. I'm not making any guarantee, but I could see the liberal leadership

04:41:34.680 becoming a very big question that the liberal party has to contend with. Certainly in the

04:41:39.540 campaign, when Justin Trudeau is asked, he can't say anything but I'm here for the long haul. But

04:41:44.540 remember, that was also what Andrew Scheer said two years ago, and in a matter of weeks, he was

04:41:48.580 gone. I just think that the liberals have become such a cult of personality, and it's so Trudeau

04:41:54.820 I mean, think about, Andrew, what the Liberal Party looked like before Trudeau came in.

04:42:00.440 I mean, Michael Ignatieff as leader absolutely decimated, like not even the opposition party in 2011.

04:42:07.000 It was so embarrassing for the liberals that they're almost becoming obscure.

04:42:10.860 Like we were thinking maybe we'll have a realignment or a two-party left-right system where you have the left-wing NDP and the conservative on the right.

04:42:20.020 it it is hard for me to imagine um trudeau having the humility uh to to be that self-aware it seems

04:42:27.160 like he's the kind of guy that wants to stick around and and prove that he could be just as

04:42:32.140 you know influential and powerful as his father was yeah it'll be screaming if he goes out

04:42:38.040 yeah no it's it's an interesting uh potential situation there but uh yeah well uh well i guess

04:42:47.060 So we can only wait and see.

04:42:48.680 It should be interesting just to see how the media reacts to this and how they interpret it all.

04:42:53.560 Because basically, based on what Trudeau wanted, he's lost.

04:42:57.440 I mean, there's no winners tonight, right?

04:42:59.020 It's like Trudeau is still the prime minister, but he didn't really win.

04:43:02.020 And O'Toole didn't win because he's pretty much worse off than he was before.

04:43:05.900 And given how at some points in the campaign it looked like he could have won and really just didn't do much to appeal to the base of his own party,

04:43:15.680 Doesn't really feel like there's a lot of winners out there tonight. 0.95

04:43:20.100 Nope, but every party tends to try to find a way to spin its malaise-inducing performance as a win.

04:43:27.560 So that's certainly what we saw from O'Toole, and I expect what people will see from Justin Trudeau when he speaks as well. 0.89

04:43:34.060 All right, folks.

04:43:34.820 Well, thank you so much to viewers out there for tuning in.

04:43:37.920 I think we're in hour five now of this broadcast, almost five hours.

04:43:41.520 It's one o'clock here in the Eastern Time Zone.

04:43:44.460 So thank you so much for tuning. We really appreciated your commentary. The platform that we use tonight has kind of a cool feature. So we were actually able to see all the comments all night on the right hand of our screen from Facebook and YouTube. So usually you don't get to see them real time when you're doing these kind of videos. It's been sort of amusing. A lot of sort of disagreement in terms of, you know, some people are really ardent PPC people. Some people are hardcore conservatives and sort of seeing that out.

04:44:13.540 and also a lot of trolling going on over there i'll just uh mention that sometimes the comments

04:44:17.780 are like wait what uh yeah you're just doing that to get a rise out of us but anyway amusing all the

04:44:22.500 same so uh we've really appreciated the uh people tuning in the format's been fun i know we had some

04:44:28.260 audio issues with our previous broadcast and i think uh tonight was a lot better the way that

04:44:32.740 we did it so i'm gonna give a quick shout out to our entire uh production uh team back there

04:44:38.180 i won't name everyone by name but um just a quick shout out to to phil who's sort of our

04:44:43.140 um head uh quarterback uh behind the scenes doing a lot of work and putting this all together so

04:44:48.740 thank you phil thank you to the others who i won't name but you know who you are and uh it's been

04:44:54.660 really fun to come to you live great uh to provide an alternative to the legacy media we don't have

04:44:59.220 the budget that they do but i think we did a pretty decent job uh putting something together

04:45:03.060 on a shoestring here so thank you uh to everyone watching the everyone who's made a contribution

04:45:07.780 and who supports true north we really really appreciate we wouldn't be here uh without you

04:45:12.100 and we'll be back again tomorrow every day day in and day out you can find news and opinion

04:45:17.860 over at tnc.news subscribe to our youtube channel like our facebook page get our notifications sign

04:45:24.180 up for our email list there's lots of ways that you can consume and enjoy true north so we really

04:45:28.660 appreciate everyone out there who's on team true north uh andrew lawton thank you so much for uh

04:45:34.020 joining us have been great throughout the entire campaign and a great co-host tonight

04:45:38.420 and i'm candace malcolm and thank you so much everyone for joining us we're gonna

04:45:42.820 end it here and we'll be back again with more more analysis and opinion tomorrow okay goodnight guys

04:46:04.020 .

04:46:34.020 .

04:47:04.020 You

Juno News - September 21, 2021

True North Election Night 2021

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