00:12:57.580Hi, we're live. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Candice Malcolm. I'm your host
00:13:20.940tonight. I'm really excited about this evening, really excited for everything we have planned.
00:13:25.560And 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.
00:13:53.700Hamish is in Toronto. Hamish thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. So here we are it's
00:14:00.300election night it's finally here I think that this has felt like a quick campaign 30 35 days
00:14:05.240or 36 days and a lot has changed when we did our live show the evening that the writ was drawn up
00:14:11.700Andrew you were out in Ottawa you were reporting live for us and the sort of writing on the wall
00:14:17.660at that point and what everyone the foregone conclusion that everyone was saying was that
00:14:21.960Justin Trudeau was going to win a majority government that he had called this opportune
00:14:31.540for finding that timing when he would be able to, you know, get a bigger share of the vote.
00:14:36.800And all signs were pointing towards a Trudeau majority. Well, we have seen a spectacular fall
00:14:43.040from grace by those same liberals, the hubris, the arrogance that critics of Trudeau have seen
00:14:50.260all along i think became evident to canadians in plunging the country into a pandemic election
00:14:57.540and now here we are i mean it's it's uh too close to call the pollsters are saying and uh we don't
00:15:03.700have a clear we don't have a clear picture of what what's going to happen we don't even know if we're
00:15:07.620going to learn the uh outcome tonight we don't know if it's going to be like the us election
00:15:13.540that we saw last year where it took what 10 days to to finally uh declare a winner so a lot has
00:15:19.380changed uh we can we can go through all of that we can recant um you know the the highs and lows
00:15:24.740i think there were a lot of lows throughout this campaign um some great highs for us here at true
00:15:30.500north um but you know let's uh let's just dive right into it so andrew uh what are what are you
00:15:36.740uh what are you seeing uh you've traveled across the entire country i think you've been to eight
00:15:41.060out of the ten provinces uh throughout this campaign uh what what's sort of sticking out
00:15:46.100to you what what do you think has been the major takeaway the major theme of this election and what
00:15:49.940was the ballot question today there have been a few i think one of the big stories that the
00:15:55.080mainstream media has started to talk about in the last week has been that the ppc isn't going to
00:16:00.760just be that 1.6 minor annoyance that it was in 2019 that the ppc actually could be a bit of a
00:16:08.140game changer here and we're going to start to see some of the results in the areas that the ppc have
00:16:13.160been targeting once the main volley of poll closures happens at 9 30. I think going back
00:16:19.120to that very launch of the campaign though you're right I mean Justin Trudeau was the only one in
00:16:23.720control of when this election was he could have picked any point and he ended up picking it just
00:16:29.120as this fourth wave was picking up as the crisis in Afghanistan was picking up and at a time when
00:16:34.980there wasn't really an imminent reason for why and that idea of this is an unnecessary election
00:16:40.740was really a consistent conservative message from the start of the campaign right up until
00:16:46.380yesterday. And in fact, probably today. And whether that's something that resonates with
00:16:50.400Canadians, we don't yet know. But a lot of people certainly have asked, and I've been hearing it
00:16:55.800from people that aren't particularly political for the last 36 days of, you know, why are we
00:17:00.680having an election again? What's the point of all of this? And that question, I think, gets more
00:17:04.740acute when people tune in and see poll numbers that show the liberals could be in almost an
00:17:09.900identical situation to where they were before the dissolution of Parliament. Absolutely. Well,
00:17:15.820before we get to you, Hamish, and sorry to keep you waiting, but we're going to do a quick
00:17:19.780introduction of some of our reporters that we have in the field tonight. So we're really excited to
00:17:25.300have two of our reporters out on the ground, ready to report, ready to share stories, to get scoops,
00:17:32.540to do interviews and so we'll start by heading over to Oshawa where our own Sue Ann Levy is
00:17:40.140where our own Sue Ann Levy is set up I believe she's joining us now and uh if she's here I think
00:17:49.120we're having some uh some technical difficulties getting to Sue Ann so I think we're actually
00:17:53.740going to go out to Saskatoon where we have Harrison Faulkner standing by at the People's
00:17:59.200party headquarters yeah hey guys i'm uh here outside of the hotel where we were planning to
00:18:05.040be uh for the night but everything seems to have quickly moved last minute to this outdoor venue
00:18:09.560and so i'm going to be stationed here for uh pretty much most of the night maxine bernier
00:18:14.400is going to be giving a speech i think a lot of other ppc officials are going to be giving a speech
00:18:17.900behind me so this is where i'll be for the night and uh yeah i'll be on the ground i have an
00:18:23.180exclusive interview with maxine bernier coming up later tonight and a couple of other interviews
00:18:27.160with some ppc candidates but uh all things uh all things considered here people are pretty
00:18:33.000optimistic about their chances uh for tonight and about how how things are going to shape up for the
00:18:37.800ppc in terms of their growth that's great well we're really excited to have you out in saskatoon
00:18:43.320harrison do you know uh what's expected for the evening out there are you uh do you know how many
00:18:47.800people are going to be there how many candidates that the leaders are obviously out there what
00:18:51.320what are they sort of telling you about what's planned yeah so what i've heard is uh people are
00:18:56.440are going to try and file in at around 7 here, which is, I believe, in around 20 minutes or so.
00:19:02.740And I think the idea is that things are going to happen here all the way until 11 p.m.
00:19:07.440Mountain Time. So I would imagine it's pretty empty right now, but I know people are going to
00:19:12.560fill in. There's going to be a feed behind me, behind my other shoulder there. And that's kind
00:19:17.800of the plan for the night. If things get really cold, though, they do have a venue indoors,
00:19:21.600which is just across the street from here so we may end up going indoors uh but from what i hear
00:19:27.200from the ppc people on the ground uh they really want to try and do as much as they can from out
00:19:32.400here uh out here at their outdoor venue and i have to actually make a point about that because
00:19:37.440originally when i was covering the ppc campaign on the road which i did as well as the conservative
00:19:42.720campaign and some other campaigns they were telling me that they were planning on doing this
00:19:47.200in alberta which is an area they've certainly been targeting and when alberta reintroduced a
00:19:52.240mask mandate that was one of the reasons they moved it to saskatchewan and then just last week
00:19:57.200saskatchewan followed suit and introduced a mask mandate as well is that i have to ask
00:20:01.520is that why you're outside uh it definitely is a factor um they the hotel mandated mass on the 17th
00:20:09.440i think that's province wide as well so uh yeah it does seem to be a little last minute in terms of
00:20:14.800this setup but i have heard that uh the main reason we want to be out here is to avoid having
00:20:19.760to wear masks well there you go and the ppc will really go to great length to avoid uh forcing
00:20:28.080their supporters to do something that they don't want to do so hey at least they're uh at least
00:20:32.160they're being consistent with their principles over there uh thank you so much harrison we'll be
00:20:35.840coming through to you throughout the night to get updates and to see uh what's going on at ppc
00:20:41.360uh headquarters or whatever you want to call it headquarters or the victory party i don't know if
00:20:45.680it's going to be a victory party but they're uh we'll we'll keep going to you for that thank you
00:20:51.040yeah so hamish i think that the ppc really has been one of the big stories of this campaign i
00:20:57.760mean it's interesting even now when when you're when i'm reading articles about them that feature
00:21:02.880them that they still sometimes call the far-right party or fringe party but you know watching this
00:21:08.560campaign and seeing what has unfolded and how Bernie has really managed to capture
00:21:13.600a huge swath of the Canadian public and not just people as media says on the fringe far right or
00:21:19.040whatever. What do you make of the rise of the PPC? Has it caught you by surprise? And what do
00:21:26.000you think the outcome is going to be with them tonight? Well, the PPC is a different animal this
00:21:31.520time than it was last time. Last time was very much focused on immigration issues. Almost all
00:21:35.920All their votes were pulled from conservatives.
00:21:37.760Now it's taking a whole bunch of freedom issues and a whole bunch of issues around mandatory vaccines.
00:21:44.740And 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.
00:21:55.140So it's a bit of a different beast this time.
00:21:57.700And that actually makes how well they're going to do very difficult to predict.
00:22:01.620Polls closed in Atlantic Canada or in Maritimes an hour ago,
00:22:05.320in Newfoundland an hour and a half ago,
00:22:06.940and we're already seeing some results coming in.
00:22:09.300And the PPCs, you know, it depends on the riding,
00:22:11.540but getting 4% or 5% in a lot of these seats,
00:22:13.900which is higher than I think people would have expected
00:23:54.560I know people at Conservative Party headquarters were optimistic of about, say, two seats in Newfoundland, that one, and Bonavista.
00:24:03.240I'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.
00:24:15.180So 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.
00:24:28.260I think there's something like a million mail-in ballots, something like five million people who cast their vote early.
00:24:34.460So 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.
00:24:49.020Is it possible that we're not going to know the winner and not going to know the prime minister tonight?
00:24:54.000Well, often the advanced polls don't change things dramatically.
00:24:57.520You know, it used to be the case that one party would often win the advanced polls by a significant margin.
00:25:02.700and they would encourage all their supporters
00:43:02.900I think that if Justin Trudeau had won a majority government, it would have been a huge, huge loss for the country.
00:43:10.160Really, I can't imagine rewarding someone like that with another four years.
00:43:15.880interestingly just today uh we we saw another picture unearth itself of justin trudeau our
00:43:22.280prime minister once again wearing black face wearing black cartoon makeup like he used to
00:43:27.320love to do and that was sort of spot splattered all over social media which is an interesting
00:43:32.040thing uh embarrassing for the prime minister on the day that canadians are going to the poll to
00:43:35.880see another image of him dressed up like a total clown that he is and uh what he had his tongue
00:43:42.280sticking out. I think this was at the same West Point Grey Academy Gala. But it is so telling
00:43:46.960because in the background, you can see two gentlemen wearing tuxedos and just sort of
00:43:51.720looking at him like, what is he doing? And then there's Justin Trudeau in the foreground
00:43:54.940with his tongue out. It's really a remarkable picture. But anyways, I don't think that Trudeau
00:43:59.760will win that majority. And I think that Canadians dodged a bullet on that. Now, I think the
00:44:04.380interesting thing will happen if the Liberals get another minority government, because again,
00:44:10.660a liberal minority is basically a loss for Justin Trudeau. If Justin Trudeau gets that minority
00:44:16.380government, he's lost. The whole gambit, the whole idea of him calling this election campaign
00:44:20.640was to get a majority government. So if he doesn't get that, presumably he's lost. He's lost. And I
00:44:26.140think that that is completely reasonable to say that a loss, a liberal minority is a loss for
00:44:31.380Trudeau. It could also be a loss for Aaron O'Toole though. And I think that if Aaron O'Toole walks
00:44:37.080away tonight with fewer seats than the conservatives had in 2019 or with fewer share a smaller share of
00:44:43.720the popular vote um than than what the conservatives got in 2019 it will be a loss for for erin o'toole
00:44:49.640just given especially given how he served he performed very well in his campaign he can talk
00:44:54.600a little bit about his strategy but he he basically presented himself as a moderate he skillfully
00:45:00.760avoided a lot of the traps that the liberals set for him throughout the campaign and he appealed
00:45:06.120to a lot of Canadians that are sort of center of the road centrist. So he ran a very centrist
00:45:10.440campaign as a moderate, but it wasn't that long ago, a week or two ago, where he was four or five
00:45:16.700points up in the polls. So I think if he loses tonight, and especially if he loses with a
00:45:22.200smaller share, then that will be a loss for Erno Toole. Obviously, if the Conservatives walk away
00:45:28.760with any kind of a majority or minority government, if they win the most seats, that'll be a huge loss
00:45:34.840trudeau and he'll probably have to resign i don't know if he will he should trudeau is is not known
00:45:40.600for um you know being very uh self-aware or or um humble um but but really if if he doesn't walk
00:45:48.120away with the most um seats he he should resign and obviously if there's a conservative majority
00:45:53.720which i don't know if that is possible but i guess anything is possible one of the other things i
00:45:59.000I want to say is for Erin O'Toole to not make any effort throughout the campaign to appeal to some
00:46:05.880of the anti-lockdown people, some of the people who joined the People's Party, some people were
00:46:11.420already at the People's Party. I think probably a lot of people who are sort of more in the base
00:46:16.120of the Conservative camp on the sort of true blue side of things, that they may have left the
00:46:21.480Conservative Party during this campaign. They didn't really see a lot being offered to them.
00:46:25.280they didn't really feel like the leader was appealing to them. Maybe they were a part of
00:46:30.600the people who just really opposed lockdowns. And, you know, having the prime minister call them,
00:46:37.320you know, anti-vaxxers and anti-science and racist and misogynistic and all the things that
00:46:41.800the prime minister does, that's sort of come to be expected. But I think from Aaron O'Toole and
00:46:47.140the conservatives to sort of parrot some of those lines, to talk also about vaccine mandates and
00:46:53.320mandatory vaccines and to sort of follow the liberals and the media down that path was truly
00:46:58.840disappointing. And I think that if we see an election result tonight where the conservative
00:47:04.840vote plus the PPC vote is more than the liberal vote, I think that that will also be a loss for
00:47:10.980Aaron O'Toole. And that's something that he will have to explain himself to. So I'm curious, Andrew,
00:47:16.960what you think at this point. What looks like a good night if you're Aaron O'Toole?
00:47:24.020Well, I mean, I take this old fashioned view that a win is a win and a loss is a loss. And
00:47:28.480I'm certain that if it comes to having to defend himself against the knives coming out internally
00:47:34.260in the party, the Conservatives may spin whatever happens as well. You know, we increased our seat
00:47:40.340count. But I think if they don't take Justin Trudeau out, that is a loss for the Conservatives.
00:47:45.620And 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.
00:47:55.480I 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?
00:48:08.100I'm not hearing her audio. I may have spoken too soon.
00:48:11.360sorry sue and we'll we'll keep trying with you but uh the consolation prize is me finishing the
00:48:17.700answer to the to the question but but no and in all fairness look this was a winnable election
00:48:22.820for the conservatives you had a liberal campaign that really didn't seem to ever launch we were
00:48:28.460never quite in majority territory and and i'm not uh you know giving a eulogy before the campaign's
00:48:34.360over because look look we're seeing in atlantic canada some strong showings for the conservatives
00:48:39.540I think the Conservatives could still win at this point, but I also don't want to go down this road
00:48:44.320of saying that a loss is actually a win. And earlier on, there was a bit of a controversy
00:48:49.060about that. Waleed Solomon, who's the chair of the Conservative campaign, had said to the Toronto
00:48:54.520Star that if Justin Trudeau gets a minority, that's a win. And then later on Twitter, he said
00:49:00.340that was taken out of context. A lot of people were not happy to see it. I don't know what the
00:49:04.520appropriate context was. And just on an aside here, I've seen some reports online that I want
00:49:10.320to share about here. Apparently Elections Canada has actually given some results out before polls
00:49:16.200closed in particular ridings. It looks like one in Quebec in particular. So I don't know if this
00:49:21.420is a technical glitch or not, and not just one in Quebec, but I'm also, if I zoom in here, seeing one
00:49:27.160in Brampton as well. So for whatever reason, we have two ridings that Elections Canada has released
00:49:32.700some data on a bit prematurely. Perhaps Hamish can weigh in on that. But no, the long and short
00:49:39.340of it, Candace, is that I think a loss is a loss and a win is a win for the Conservatives.
00:49:45.380Yeah, I don't know. The Brampton one is clearly a mistake, and it's entirely possible their data
00:49:50.160feed is just to put something wrong out there. In Quebec, actually, there's a small group of
00:49:55.600islands, the Ile de la Madeleine, which are in the Atlantic time zone. So there's six poles or six or
00:50:07.000it's interesting riding because it's usually a Liberal bloc, fairly close riding. And right
00:50:13.260now the bloc is leading. The Liberals won it last time. But the Ile de la Madeleine are
00:50:17.620traditionally a little bit more separatist. So it's not a giant shock that the bloc seems
00:50:20.900to be ahead by a little bit there. But yeah, those results always come in with the Atlantic
00:50:24.860results. And you always have this one Quebec result that sort of hangs around for an hour
00:50:28.200or two until until polls closed and the rest of the writing.
00:50:32.600I want to go back to that story that you were talking with, Andrew, because you talked about
00:50:36.900how the I think he's a campaign chairman for the Conservative Party, went to the Toronto Star today.
00:50:42.420And if you didn't see the story, you really should go check it out because it's really something.
00:50:46.360When you have the day of the election, the day that Canadians are going to the polls,
00:50:51.000so the polls weren't even closed when this article came out and you already have the chair
00:50:55.280of the campaign basically spinning on behalf of the candidate, Erin O'Toole, for seeing a loss,
00:51:03.600saying, look, if the Conservatives lose tonight, it's really a win. And we have to continue on
00:51:08.680this sort of progressive path that we were on to make the Conservative Party more palatable to
00:51:13.240people reading the Toronto Star, which to anyone who knows anything about Conservative politics,
00:51:17.820if you're going to the Toronto Star to leak a story, you really don't understand the Conservative
00:51:23.640of base whatsoever. So seeing this story out, first of all, it completely undermines the
00:51:28.460candidate. Aaron O'Toole is out there, presumably trying to win this election. Presumably he's
00:51:33.600trying to beat Justin Trudeau, get his own minority or majority government. So having his
00:51:38.600co-chair or campaign chair out there talking to the Toronto Star of All People, the most
00:51:43.460left-wing awful newspaper, who basically have been running an anti-conservative campaign for
00:51:48.640what the last 20 30 years going to them of all people and and and putting this story out there
00:51:53.960is absolutely appalling i think i think that this is the kind of thing that conservatives hate this
00:51:59.620is the kind of thing the base hates and again already spinning on the behalf of the fact that
00:52:04.160your candidate might be losing and you want the takeaway to be that even if he loses tonight
00:52:08.680he's winning i think that this shows a really desperate campaign on behalf of the conservatives
00:52:13.900and you know if this is the direction that they're going that hey we're going to lose tonight but
00:52:17.760it's okay because we've made some progress and we want to keep going. I think that they're going
00:52:23.060to be in for a pretty rude awakening with their own base. Some of the issues I've been talking
00:52:27.180about tonight, the fact that really we haven't seen much of a conservative campaign being run
00:52:34.040here. So I think it was pretty appalling. And I also saw a similar article out in Global News.
00:52:43.240Global 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.
01:00:20.300Well, I first want to apologize to all the folks out there for the technical issues.
01:00:25.880But here I am at Tribute Communities Arena in Oshawa, anxiously awaiting the results.
01:00:34.040There are a lot of Conservative people pacing the arena back and forth.
01:00:39.080I think they've worn out the soles of their shoes doing so in the last two hours.
01:00:45.800I had a chance to talk to Conservative strategist, Jason Leder, who said that, you know,
01:00:51.800Now, 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.
01:01:04.040Talked to him about the anger at the door that I personally encountered canvassing for a candidate in St. Paul's.
01:01:12.140And he said it was not unexpected that the PM expected this to be a cakewalk.
01:01:20.700And it didn't end up being a cakewalk, far from it.
01:01:24.420And, 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.
01:01:42.140screaming, the yelling, and sometimes it got a bit out of hand. In any event, this
01:01:48.300afternoon, Aaron O'Toole came and cleared us all out and so he had a
01:01:55.280chance to practice his speech. I don't know whether that was a concession speech
01:02:00.500or a victory speech, that remains to be seen, but he was here practicing his
01:02:05.900speech for an hour and I suspect that it's going to be a couple hours before
01:02:11.380we hear that victory or concession speech. In the meantime because of COVID
01:02:16.840you'll see that the seats behind me are empty unfortunately because there is a
01:02:22.420lot of social distancing going on. It is a very exciting night. As I said the
01:02:28.180Conservatives are piecing the room they're nervous but they're also
01:02:31.660excited. Back to you Candace and Andrew. Thank you very much Sue Ann. We're gonna
01:02:39.180to check back in with Sue Ann at various points throughout the evening and of course we'll have
01:02:42.560the speeches from the leaders concession or victory as we get to that point in the night
01:02:47.720hopefully it won't be you know in four or five days like a lot of us are fearing but I want to
01:02:52.060move now out west to Danielle Smith who's obviously no stranger to many of those of you
01:02:57.860tuning in she's a former mover and well she is a mover and shaker in Alberta politics former leader
01:06:20.020And 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.
01:06:34.320That is how dramatically that issue overtook this campaign.
01:06:38.380It's, I think, responsible for the lion's share of the People's Party of Canada surge.
01:06:43.100It's actually taken the Maverick Party off the playing table.
01:06:46.140I think when we spoke last time, I thought that the Maverick Party might have a bit of a breakthrough.
01:06:51.300They're a party that was led by Jay Hill.
01:06:53.640They 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.
01:07:02.440But 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.
01:07:12.460And they haven't been able to get any traction.
01:07:13.900And 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.
01:07:33.900And one of the things I would just mention is that there is going to be an equalization vote a month after this election campaign.
01:07:40.700Depending 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.
01:07:50.360One thing I would ask about that is about Western alienation and where it comes from.
01:07:54.980Because 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.
01:08:03.480And in the campaign, I have heard virtually nothing that really is about that.
01:08:08.600I've heard no appeals to alienated Westerners.
01:08:11.340I've heard no conversation about Western issues.
01:08:13.900The only thing adjacent to that is some passing discussion about pipelines.
01:08:30.740I 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.
01:08:42.020And I think maybe that's why some of the issues that might have featured more prominently in previous elections didn't feature here.
01:08:48.360I was really expecting there to be quite as strong and robust debate against Alberta's energy sector, greenhouse gas emissions.
01:08:57.840In 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.
01:09:08.440And he was being very pragmatic about it.
01:09:10.460So 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,
01:09:26.440I'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.
01:09:35.820Maybe that'll bring some of the temperature down when it comes to the division in the country because there has been a major transformation.
01:09:42.420I 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.
01:09:52.940And hopefully the country understands that that is just such an unrealistic vision of how to run a modern industrial economy.
01:09:59.460So maybe there's some pragmatism setting in.
01:10:01.540I 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.
01:10:12.020And I didn't see it to the same extent as I expected.
01:10:14.720It'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?
01:10:22.360But 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.
01:10:29.980And, 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.
01:10:38.120It'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.
01:10:48.120And 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.
01:11:00.640We want them to keep an open mind that this might be part of the solution.
01:11:03.720So from that point of view, I think it's mission accomplished.
01:11:05.860And 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.
01:11:14.780Interesting. Yeah, no, it's it's it's a good strategy because you're absolutely right.
01:11:17.680the prime minister is paying attention he's devising some scheme to regulate or to to do
01:11:22.240something one of the very first things that aaron o'toole did when he became leader of the
01:11:26.640conservative party was he he met with the prime minister to talk about alberta and he wanted to
01:11:32.720make sure that albertans felt uh represented and and involved and you know i remember thinking okay
01:11:39.360that's a great first step uh for a leader from ontario uh to to say you know i'm not of the
01:11:44.480Alberta part of the Conservative Party but you know the Conservative Party stands and represents
01:11:49.520Alberta but then again we haven't really heard much in this campaign so just again from a sort
01:11:54.240of Alberta conservative perspective you said that you thought that Erin O'Toole ran a pretty strong
01:11:58.960campaign and that you didn't really see the PPC coming what was it about Erin O'Toole's campaign
01:12:06.000that that you liked what would you give it if you if you were giving it a grade there are two
01:12:12.560strategies that you can embrace when you're the leader of a conservative party one is to recognize
01:12:17.360that you do have kind of a strident uh group of social conservatives who care very strongly about
01:12:23.200moral issues and then you bring them along with you and you kind of bridge the the divide in the
01:12:28.880center as much as you can aaron took a pretty radically different approach he hived off that
01:12:34.800part of his party by kicking out derek sloan at the beginning by not reaching out to maxime
01:12:40.880Bernier and he really set a line in the sand that where he was going for was to try to get more of
01:12:46.720that liberal vote now if it doesn't succeed there's going to have to be some kind of reckoning in the
01:12:52.080conservative party i mean there's you've got to in some ways i think that the conservative movement
01:12:57.040probably feels like they're often abandoned by their leaders because they court them when they're
01:13:03.520trying to win the leadership and then when it comes to trying to win government they turn their
01:13:07.920back on them because the issues that resonate um among the conservative base simply don't sell the
01:13:13.920same way in in if you're trying to win seats in in quebec and in in toronto and so a leader has to
01:13:19.120make a choice about what they're going to do on that and i think aaron o'toole made a the choice
01:13:24.720to be a centrist candidate that's came as a surprise to me because i seem to recall him
01:13:29.920running saying don't vote for peter mckay because he's too red he's too much of a squish he's too
01:13:34.720much of a red tori and then he ended up positioning himself in the same in the same place now i guess
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01:13:40.400here's the question if you win and can implement enough of your agenda does it matter that you
01:13:48.320have hived off a certain number of issues that you're not going to touch at all i think that
01:13:53.360again if we're gonna have to debate to debate that out after we see what the results are tonight
01:13:58.480because it could well be that all he's done is alienate core support and failed to attract any
01:14:05.760of that centrist vote and that's not a winning strategy either yeah i was trying to think about
01:14:11.120which was worse for aaron o'toole which was worse for the conservative movement if uh you know we
01:14:16.000have another liberal minority government where aaron o'toole you know doesn't do as well as as
01:14:21.760andrew shear did in 2019 i think there will be some kind of a reckoning because people will say
01:14:26.160look you didn't really move the ball forward here uh but on the other hand danielle if if
01:14:30.800aaron o'toole manages to win big say he wins a majority tonight and goes in that same direction
01:14:36.240where he governs as a centrist i don't really know what the future of the conservative party
01:14:41.040will be i think that there has been a lot of the base that feels very alienated feels very ignored
01:14:46.800uh neglected uh you know the last week of the campaign it almost seemed like aaron o'toole
01:14:51.680was apologizing for conservative views and saying, you know, if you looked at our party in the past
01:14:56.720and we said something that turned you off, we're sorry and we're not going to do that anymore,
01:15:00.580was sort of the gist of one of the posts that he put and apparently one of the speeches he gave
01:15:04.460in Quebec. So I do think that if he wins, unless he's going to sort of go back and govern
01:15:11.620more from the right or, you know, hone in that leader that when he was running for
01:15:19.140leader of the Conservative Party some of those true blue ideas, I think that it could be bad
01:15:26.000for the Conservative Party in general. Yeah, well, and I don't know where that social
01:15:30.920Conservative vote is going to go if it doesn't go to the Conservative Party. I think that's part of
01:15:36.600the taking for granted that does happen. Because I look at Maxime Bernier People's Party, and he's
01:15:42.380a libertarian. He's not particularly socially conservative. If you feel very strongly about
01:15:47.120the life issue. I'm not sure that you would say, yeah, Maxime Bernier is my guy. And so I'm not
01:15:52.140entirely sure where that vote would go to if it doesn't go to the conservatives. But look,
01:15:57.500what we've experienced in Canada in the last year and a half is that the religious communities have
01:16:02.460a lot bigger fears than sort of the bread and butter issues they've talked about in the past.
01:16:10.180We had three pastors that were put in jail in Alberta. We had a church that had a barricade
01:16:15.920of rcmp around it and it was it was held and seized by the state for two months so it may well be
01:16:22.800that uh our religious conservatives understand that the freedom to practice their religion
01:16:28.240unhindered by the state is the one number one thing they should be advocating for
01:16:33.040and that leaders who will speak up and defend their freedom to do that maybe those are the ones
01:16:38.080they should align with and and as opposed to looking at whether or not a leader has a particular
01:16:42.720orthodoxy that lines up with their particular religious views i i'm gravely dismayed at how
01:16:47.760our religious how our religious communities were treated in uh in the country over the the last
01:16:53.040year gravely concerned about religious freedom so maybe that's part of the pivot that uh that
01:16:58.880some of the social conservatives will do is in looking to embrace issues of conscience and
01:17:03.520freedom of of religion um freedom of assembly which we seem to have lost in the last 18 months
01:17:09.520as well and that might give more common cause with a more libertarian bent of a party yeah no
01:17:15.480that's a really good point i can't help but wondering or thinking that if uh you know that
01:17:20.500the attacks we've seen on christian churches were happening to any other faith group if even if they
01:17:24.580were happening in any other part of the country like if it was this was happening in quebec it
01:17:28.700would be a huge national issue and it would be something that we would have been talking about
01:17:31.720throughout the campaign uh but because it's happening in alberta and western canada and
01:17:35.340as Christians, barely mentioned at all.
01:17:38.280So thank you, Danielle, for bringing that up
01:18:31.780But first, let's talk about what's happening now.
01:18:33.720The polls have closed in most of Canada, including in Alberta.
01:18:37.380And we, I believe, have Hamish Marshall back on with us.
01:18:41.360Hamish, what are we seeing in this early wave of results?
01:18:44.880What's coming in from Atlantic Canada from earlier and also from the polls that just closed about five, six minutes ago?
01:18:50.580Well, 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.
01:18:58.880So it's the vast majority of the country.
01:19:01.420We're going to get results bits and pieces from across the country for the next little while.
01:19:06.100So that's that's the big the big thing that's been happening now.
01:19:08.660Well, a few results are popping up, but they don't mean anything right now.
01:19:12.440It'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.
01:19:22.640They 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.
01:29:42.480They don't admit to be whatever they are.
01:29:44.400And they pretend to be straight down center, neutral, unbiased, even though they're not.
01:29:48.300So this app sort of helps to decode that.
01:29:51.940And interestingly, or not surprisingly, just about every news organization in Canada falls on the left,
01:29:57.500either hard left, left, leans left, or center.
01:30:01.100There's very few in Canada that are on the right.
01:30:03.800But the CBC is listed as left, not even leans left, not centrist, not leans left, but left.
01:30:08.960So so the third one over, not not not one of the center three.
01:30:12.980So so so they're openly left wing. But it's not just that they're openly left wing, Andrew.
01:30:16.900They'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.
01:30:26.900So they had Aaron O'Toole on Sunday. They had Justin Trudeau on Monday.
01:30:30.920They had Jagmeet Singh on Tuesday and the same host every night, Rosemary Barton.
01:30:36.080It 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.
01:30:53.540and she just sort of helped him along the way. And then when you saw, you know, contrast that,
01:30:58.640it was a perfect contrast with Erin O'Toole, how argumentative she was, how much she pushed back,
01:31:04.560how much she was twisting and distorting the truth. And even though it was billed as an
01:31:09.420opportunity for the leaders to sit down with undecided voters, it was like, you know,
01:31:13.620the undecided voter would ask a question. They really found some very interesting left-wing
01:31:18.880people, like really niche issue left-wing people to come out and ask their questions. They didn't
01:31:23.260really talk a lot about the economy or any of the stuff that we've been talking about
01:31:26.600on this show. But once they ask their question, then Rosemary Barton would jump in with her own
01:31:32.460line of questioning. And I bring us all up because it's not just that the CBC is on the left. It's
01:31:38.080that the CBC is acting like they're the media arm of the Liberal Party. And you could see that when
01:31:43.800you go to watch Jagmeet Singh and his interview with Rosemary Barton, where she did the same
01:31:48.320thing. She was argumentative. She pushed back. She was using liberal attack lines as her line
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01:31:53.440of questioning towards the NDP leader. And so it was really stark that here we have a $1.2 billion
01:32:01.440recipient of taxpayer dollars, the CBC, and they're not even trying to be fair. They're not
01:32:07.280even trying to be neutral. They're openly out there in favor of Trudeau. And I think that's a
01:32:13.020huge threat to the country. I think that any conservative leader needs to stand firm with
01:32:18.400the idea that the CDC has got to go. It has to change. It has to be defunded or privatized or
01:32:24.820something. Something has to change. If conservatives ever want to stand a chance of winning in this
01:32:30.200election, that has to change. And it's interesting that Aaron O'Toole had said when he was running
01:32:35.560for leader of the conservative party that his plan was to defund it or privatize it. And then
01:32:41.360he kind of walked that back a little bit in the campaign. He said he's still going to review their
01:32:44.440mandate, but he certainly wasn't as strong. So that's one of those things that I hope he leaves
01:32:49.980it at that in order to get elected, if he gets elected, and then he goes back stronger with what
01:32:54.680he had said pre-being leader of the Conservative Party. But it's not just the CBC, Andrew, because
01:33:00.540it's also the media. It's also the newspapers. The fact that Justin Trudeau, on top of already
01:33:05.780bribing the CBC, this is the third election in a row, he's also bribing the newspapers with
01:33:11.220a 600 million dollar media bailout and it just seems so so off so off-putting so terrible that
01:33:18.520we live in a country where almost every single journalist every mainstream media every legacy
01:33:22.720media journalist almost every single one is in some way subsidized or paid for by the government
01:33:29.260and not just the government the the political party the liberal party they're the ones that
01:33:32.300created these grants are the ones that created these bailouts and these uh new funds to give
01:33:37.760to journalists. And so again, how do you have a neutral situation where you have journalists
01:33:43.080that are supposed to be holding the government to account when literally their livelihood and
01:33:47.020their jobs depend on this party getting reelected so that they can continue down this path of more
01:33:53.840government, more money, more bailouts to these media. And it's really a dangerous time. And so
01:33:59.580I just can't stress enough the importance of independent media, of having independent
01:34:05.720journalists who aren't funded in any way shape or form by the government that's us at true north
01:34:10.120they're very few in the country anymore not just the fact that we have uh you know a fact-based
01:34:16.280news team we do breaking reports we have journalists all over the country even tonight
01:34:20.440you know we have harrison faulkner one of our new young reporters out in saskatoon we have sue ann
01:34:25.320levy who is a seasoned veteran um a journalist in toronto very well-known local reporter in the city
01:34:31.480of Toronto covering the Conservative campaign. But having these reporters, having these independent
01:34:36.800minded people to break these stories, as well as a media organization that represents sort of the
01:34:42.340other side of the story. I'm talking about the fact that we have a small C Conservative editorial
01:34:46.380position, that we do tell the other side of the story. We're not funneling the news to you
01:34:51.340from the sort of elite, Laurentian elite, downtown Toronto, this is what you should think because
01:34:57.960is what we think uh we we actually encourage free thinking and and even within uh our staff and our
01:35:03.480team at true north there's a lot of people that that a lot of differentiate a lot of difference
01:35:08.520between the way that we think there's some people who you know and you can see it in in the the chat
01:35:13.720uh playing out right now you know you have the staunch conservatives you have the staunch ppc
01:35:17.720people you have the people saying uh that the ppc is terrible because you're gonna split the vote
01:35:23.880and you're going to give the prime ministership to justin trudeau and then you have the ppc people
01:35:28.440saying well we don't you don't we don't you don't own our vote we can we can vote for whoever we
01:35:33.160want and that kind of um discourse and and thinking and you know the fact that we can disagree
01:35:39.640um but but we're here to to sort of represent all of that and to try to bring that side of the
01:35:45.080equation to you where really the other media companies just shun that i think them it's like
01:35:49.720they don't talk about conservatism they don't understand conservatism much like you know some
01:35:55.160some of the strat strategists within the conservative party who just sort of want to move
01:35:58.360away from the social conservatives and they want to move away from the populism uh no that's an
01:36:05.160important part of conservatism that's important part of the canadian population and we think that
01:36:09.960deserves to be covered and focused on a little bit and that's part of why we're here so if you're
01:36:16.200you're watching, if you're enjoying the coverage, I really encourage you to head on over to tnc.news
01:36:20.420slash donate. Anything that you can. If you're enjoying the show right now and hey, you just
01:36:23.780want to buy Andrew Lawton a beer or you want to, you know, make sure that Harrison, our young
01:36:29.700reporter out in Saskatoon, you know, make sure he gets something to eat tonight. Just consider
01:36:35.200donating $5, $10. That would be awesome. So really appreciate that. Andrew, are you still with me
01:36:42.220here? Yeah, I am. And we actually only bought Harrison a one-way ticket to Saskatoon. So unless
01:36:46.960you donate, he's not actually coming back, which he may love it there. Actually, I've never been
01:36:52.140to Saskatoon. I've been to Moose Jaw and I've been to Regina. Most recently for Regina was in the
01:36:57.0202019 election where I was playing the role of Sue Ann Levy in covering the Conservative Victory
01:37:02.360Party. So we'll have some more reports from Sue Ann in Oshawa very shortly. But I do want to go to
01:37:08.680the PPC Victory Party in Saskatoon. And just before we do, Danielle Smith asked me to tell
01:37:14.520a story, which I can tell very quickly, when I was out covering the People's Party campaign
01:37:19.720in Alberta. It feels like a while ago, but it was last weekend. And I was at a rally in Edmonton,
01:37:25.680and there was this woman there who was the quintessential non-PPC, non-conservative,
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01:37:31.260non-right-wing voter. She was wearing these very sort of earthy robes. She had a gemstone on her
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01:37:39.440forehead. She was talking to me about how her kids were homeschooled because she wanted to give them
01:37:44.880a new earth education. She was a Reiki energy healer and she was a diehard Maxime Bernier
01:37:51.000PPC supporter, not your conventional right of center voter. So this is why I do think to what
01:37:58.040Danielle was saying. There's not an entirely discernible left-right split here or right-right
01:38:03.860split that we can chalk up to the PPC's rise. And certainly as we see the numbers later on,
01:38:09.160we'll be able to parse that a little bit better. But without further ado, we will go to Harrison
01:38:14.100Faulkner, who is live from the PPC party in Saskatoon. Harrison, you've moved the party
01:38:20.100inside now, I see. Oh, we've lost your audio, Harrison, so we'll get that sorted out. Hopefully
01:44:02.020They were going to the left with Andrew Scheer.
01:44:04.220Now they're going more to the left with O'Toole because we are living in a socialist era.
01:44:09.260And their only goal is to be in power, to be in government.
01:44:12.520And, you know, they have the same narrative and they're speaking like liberals and like leftists.
01:44:17.840That's because they want to have the support of the left.
01:44:20.160And 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.
01:44:33.200We are the only one that is ready to fight for freedoms and for Canadians.
01:44:37.460So one thing I observed of your campaign was your adoption of alternative media.
01:44:42.620You went on to several podcasts and used longer form discussions to try and speak to your base.
01:44:47.400You were just on the Jordan Peterson podcast, and previously you did a show with Michael Malice.
01:44:52.260So given that you've clearly had success in using new media to reach out to your base,
01:44:56.620do you think that in the future we're going to see other political leaders, party leaders, adopt your same alternative media strategy?
01:46:47.860And that's an important issue for this election.
01:46:51.200But yes, you're absolutely right about this country right now, the unity.
01:46:56.840And it's a little bit sad that I'm the only one that has a solution for the unity of our country.
01:47:03.480When 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.
01:47:15.860O'Toole and Trudeau, they won't speak about that.
01:47:19.540I'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.
01:47:28.160They didn't know that because nobody's speaking about that except ourselves.
01:47:33.060The 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.
01:47:57.740so often in in politics party leaders are forced to talk about whatever's in the
01:48:02.480news cycle and we never really get to hear their their grand vision for this
01:48:05.840country but I want to frame it in this context so what would you say to a
01:48:09.560Canadian that looks at this country and sees a country that is no longer what it
01:48:13.280once was that sees it standing on the world stage dropping precipitously that
01:48:17.620sees fewer economic opportunities available to them and and sees their
01:48:21.420freedoms are eroding what would you say to that Canadian to motivate them about
01:48:25.460the future. And what is your grand vision for Canada? What can Canada become?
01:48:30.240First of all, I believe that the problem in Canada is the government and more government
01:48:37.140intervention in our day-to-day life. And our position on that, we are putting Canada first
01:48:42.820and our country first. But that's not a slogan. That's a reality. By working on our own agenda,
01:48:50.140Not the UN agenda, the socialist agenda, our own agenda, keeping our sovereignty.
01:48:56.280I see that country in the near future, if we win that battle of ideas, and I believe we win.
01:49:01.900Because, you know, the truth always wins, and we will, but I don't know when.
01:49:08.080But that election is a big step toward that.
01:49:11.300So, you know, I believe in a smarter government in Ottawa that will respect individual rights,
01:49:16.620that will respect people, that will look at Canadians as responsible adults,
01:49:22.120a smaller government that won't interfere in provincial jurisdiction.
01:49:26.020Well, you will have constitutional peace in this country.
01:49:30.120And doing that, you'll have more autonomy for every province.
01:49:55.420And 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.
01:50:13.680So 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?
01:50:21.300I 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.
01:50:37.000But, you know, we were able to grow without them because of our using social media, podcasts,
01:50:43.640YouTube, and all these real, I say, you know, alternative media, but real independent media.
01:50:50.200So we will focus there. For me, just before the vote, I feel very good. I did everything that
01:50:57.640I had to do. I traveled across the country, we did rallies, I did my best. And we'll see what
01:51:03.000will happen but i'm pretty confident that this this election will be an historical one for the
01:51:08.840people's party and maybe for the country well thank you for the time mr bernier best of luck tonight
01:51:13.320you'll see thank you very much interview with uh harrison faulkner true north and maxine bernier
01:51:21.160that was an abridged version of a longer interview they sat down for about 20 minutes and we're going
01:51:26.440to play that entire interview and put it up online tomorrow. So you come back over to TNC
01:51:32.220to check that out. But really kind of touching on a lot of the points that we were having
01:51:38.080earlier in the show, Andrew, the idea that voting for Max St. Bernier isn't necessarily
01:51:43.800a split for the Conservatives, just given how he, in his own way, has managed to increase his own
01:51:49.600tent, build a big tent of the sort of alternative protest parties or just freedom-loving
01:51:55.540canadians so should be really interesting to watch and now hamish uh we have uh hamish marshall back
01:52:01.700with us our decision desk uh hosts tonight and so the polls have now been closed for 39 minutes
01:52:07.700uh what what can you tell us about what is happening uh out there well it's still very early
01:52:12.100days especially in in ontario and quebec uh there's not really strong patterns emerging um generally
01:52:19.300looks like uh as i said these are very very very early results a lot of writings don't have any
01:52:23.620results in yet and some uh some of them have maybe one or two polls so it's very very early
01:52:30.340generally looks like the liberal vote's holding up uh conservatives are doing well in some areas
01:52:34.660you expect them to but it's not looking you know the liberals are ahead but it's very very very
01:52:40.180very very very early um and the bloc is not doesn't look like it's making um uh big gains uh
01:52:48.580uh, either, um, they're sort of holding, you know,
01:52:52.500there was a lot of talk that the block was going to be able to pick up a bunch
01:52:54.660of seats. I think we're looking at more or less on the same pattern of where
01:52:58.820it's been, but this is very, very early days.
01:53:00.900We're looking at only a couple of polls in, uh, there's a few results, uh,
01:53:04.780from, uh, from out west. Um, again, no, nothing,
01:53:09.540no very big significant changes at this point. There's a, there's really,
01:53:13.620it's very, very quiet. Um, we'll see how it is.
01:53:16.260polls are now closed in bc uh so every riding in the country is now uh is now has now closed
01:53:22.020but one thing i will say is we spoke about fredericton earlier uh and since we've spoken
01:53:26.100about whatever it was 45 minutes ago i think fredericton's flipped the lead about four times
01:53:31.540we've gone from conservatives to liberals to conservatives again to liberals again then i
01:53:34.580think back to the conservatives are about 100 votes ahead right now i predict that's an elect
01:53:38.820that's a that whatever we end up with tonight it doesn't matter the mail-in ballots are going to
01:54:13.380still uh still sort of significant considering they would have gotten you know a couple percent
01:54:17.300there last time so ppc is certainly doing uh about as well as expected but we're not we haven't
01:54:24.260really seen any big patterns really evolve just on a technical note uh advanced polls where do
01:54:30.100they fit fit in or when do they get added to some of the totals that we see if they're not there
01:54:34.580already so they start they generally what happens is they start counting them right away so they
01:54:39.220when the polls close they'll they'll have all the advanced polls that they've brought in from the
01:54:42.660the days before they're sitting in the returning office and they start counting them right away
01:54:46.260but your average advanced poll has a lot more votes in it than your average normal election
01:54:50.820poll so they generally take longer to to count um and the further complication that i've heard
01:54:57.140that elections can is dealing with is usually in order to get these big advanced polls counted
01:55:00.660quickly they have row upon row of people they're counting but because of social distancing they
01:55:06.820just don't they don't have the room for it so they expect them to to uh to take longer so if you go
01:55:12.100and look at some of the you know like a riding in like the one in newfoundland that the conservatives
01:55:16.180are in the head and the conservatives are ahead by 750 votes there's three polls left to come
01:55:22.340you know it took a long time for the for the one more poll to come in those are almost certainly
01:55:26.660the advanced polls left to come in i'm sure they'll come in this evening um but uh uh they
01:55:33.140will they'll take a time and and could make the difference and i see 750 votes is probably a lot
01:55:37.460to overcome uh so it's probably going to be i mean that one will stay conservative but on the other
01:55:43.620hand so they'll come in but they're going to take their time but in some ridings you have a really
01:55:48.020organized returning officer and they get them done quickly so have have any vote have any ridings
01:55:53.700been determined like it says leading or elected has anyone been elected at this point hamish
01:55:59.300well you know elected is just whatever a decision desk person like me decides so yeah i i would say
01:56:04.340on the whole that you know the the results for atlantic canada pretty much every seat is is is
01:56:09.380in i think it was about i'd say three or four seats that haven't been decided in atlanta canada
01:56:14.580looks like uh at at best the conservatives won four seats in atlantic canada last time
01:56:20.180uh they're now uh best case winning um let's see four and nine so that would be an increase of five
01:56:30.740worst case uh was would probably be uh an increase uh up to six uh so that you know there's three
01:56:38.100seats in play that the conservatives can still win they're leading in them today but we'll see where
01:56:42.740they where we go there's a lot of counting left to come in in two of them at least so there's that uh
01:56:49.620the rest of the country i think it's too early to say if anyone's being elected but atlantic
01:56:53.060canada it looks like of the 32 seats uh all but uh four or five have been decided now and now are you
01:57:00.100prepared to call coast of bay central notre dame or do you still think those final three polls
01:57:05.220need to come in a little bit more before you could say that decisively i'd like to see one more
01:57:10.180if if one more of those polls comes in and the conservative margin goes up i think i'd be i
01:57:14.820think i'd be prepared to say that that's going to stay conservative uh but i've certainly seen uh
01:57:19.860you know margins of six or seven hundred votes overturned in advanced polls but those are often
01:57:24.260in bigger ridings in ontario or bc where they have larger population whereas in newfoundland
01:57:29.460the population is simply smaller so 750 votes is a bigger uh task to overcome um but you know uh
01:57:38.180it's looking like the conservatives will take that seat but that can still change in the advanced
01:57:41.300polls when they when they come in and then over the next half hour or 45 minutes great all right
01:57:46.740hamish we'll definitely keep you standing by so you can give us any updates as they come in but
01:57:51.540i want to bring in sun new toronto sun editor because sun news network toronto sun editor
01:57:58.180uh anthony fury who's going to be joining in on the conversation to talk a little bit about what's
01:58:03.460going on so anthony thank you so much for joining our program tonight hey candace great to be here
01:58:09.220yeah so you had a great video out i think it was yesterday talking about why haven't uh we
01:58:14.580increased hospital capacity and it just seems like we're in this like never-ending cycle of like
01:58:20.500you know covid cases lockdowns covid cases lockdown and it's like haven't we figured
01:58:25.540that we're really going into a fourth wave and the the solution is exactly the same as it has been
01:58:30.420for wave one two and three like how are we not making any progress in this country when it comes
01:58:35.700to covid this is one of the issues that has barely been talked about in the election and really thank
01:58:39.460you for bringing it up and then continuing the conversation but i mean what do you what do you
01:58:44.340make of the the state of covet at this point um and also the fact that we're barely talking about
01:58:49.380it even throughout the course of this election well yeah the things that government has been
01:58:53.780been deciding to do this past year and a half whether it's the federal government or your
01:58:57.520municipality is the most momentous things I've seen government enact upon its people in my entire
01:59:02.680lifetime whether or not you agree with these measures or you disagree with them so it's just
01:59:06.400bizarre that more people do not feel this shouldn't be sort of the primary issue of the election
01:59:12.260campaign right now clearly Maxime Bernier and his party and candidates and those supporters
01:59:16.120they certainly do but a lot of other people do not think this should really be much of a thing
01:59:21.220that is discussed to your point about you know the hospitalizations or hospital capacity issues
01:59:26.260uh when jason kenney announced recently okay we're actually going to what i would say sort
01:59:31.600of regress their response in all of this because they're they're unfortunately dealing with a lot
01:59:35.440of people in hospital with code 19 right now and they have hospital capacity issues i thought is
01:59:40.140this actually a live news clip are you replaying something that jason kenney said 12 months ago or
01:59:45.20014 months ago because that's exactly what they said back then and i remember writing columns
01:59:50.800giving commentary more about the ontario situation where i live saying okay well instead of saying we
01:59:56.800have to shut down you know children's outdoor sports is the solution why not surge hospital
02:00:01.760capacity said well yeah we're working on it but it's not that easy and we're getting a few more
02:00:05.120beds but staffing's an issue too and finding the right nurses and so forth okay interesting point
02:00:10.16014 months later wait you're you're saying it again and there are people who were paid impressive
02:00:15.440six-figure salaries 500k a year and so forth uh to be hospital administrators and to manage the
02:00:20.880hospital systems uh in our provinces and regional healthcare hubs i'm like what have they been doing
02:00:26.880the past 12 months okay fine first wave they were like what is this we don't know what's going on
02:00:31.360and then you get into the second wave and you're like okay guys that excuse is a little less
02:00:34.560justified and now when you get to right now it is just surreal i think that uh they have not
02:00:40.800actually done the things necessary uh to to prepare these arguments i mean one of the things
02:00:46.080we see in other jurisdictions around the world is they just have more beds per capita and better
02:00:49.760staffing resources so while there's a lot of discussion debate and drama and so forth they're
02:00:54.160just not feeling as compelled to shut things down that argument just doesn't carry as much so very
02:00:58.880frustrating to see jason kenney pull out a pretty old argument that highly paid people should have
02:01:03.920solved well it also feels like there's a huge elephant in the room that no one really wants
02:01:08.720to discuss i know aaron o'toole talked about it a little bit and then he instantly got attacked by
02:01:13.600the liberal war machine campaign machine and that is talking about hey maybe our very rigid
02:01:19.280government-run health care system isn't all it's cracked up to be right when there's a huge
02:01:23.120pandemic and all these people need to be administered and yet we can't really have
02:01:27.840an honest conversation about the possibility of increasing capacity through private means through
02:01:34.880through individual investments through you know people who want it not wanting to wait in queue
02:01:40.320would rather just pay money and not necessarily because they're wealthy but just because that's
02:01:44.080their priority and and they would rather spend the money there than elsewhere um why can't we
02:01:49.280have these kind of conversations anthony i mean you uh write about this stuff a lot in the toronto
02:01:53.920sun and you understand this issue really well uh is it that we're just so obsessed with this natural
02:02:00.320cultural identity that we have government health care that we can't even have conversations about
02:02:05.200ways to improve the capacity and improve our health care system or what is this yeah i mean
02:02:10.320we're one of the few advanced nations out there that doesn't have some form of two-tier health
02:02:14.240care and that phrase has become some sort of left-wing dog whistle or i don't know what the
02:02:18.560right term is where you hear the phrase two-tier health care and you're supposed to you know sort
02:02:22.480of hiss and howl and cringe and so forth i go i don't know that seems to be a pretty good term
02:02:27.040in terms of efficacious delivery of scarce healthcare resources.
02:02:31.760And it helps a number of countries that we're supposed to emulate.
02:02:34.620We're supposed to be more like those, I guess, somewhat more left-wing European countries
02:02:38.980that have models that are, I'd say, far more advanced than ours
02:02:42.400in terms of offering more options in the healthcare system.
02:02:45.200So you're right, Candice, it's just bizarre that we're told this is somehow like the third rail
02:02:50.880of talking about these issues and it's sort of political poison,
02:02:53.900but it kind of seems like it's a solution to some very serious problems, COVID and non-COVID.
02:03:00.120How many third rails do we have in Canadian politics? I mean, I can't even keep track because
02:03:04.260we're definitely not supposed to talk about immigration. We're not supposed to talk about
02:03:07.840health care. We're not supposed to talk about pensions. We're not supposed to talk about
02:03:11.080abortion. There's just so many issues that we're not supposed to talk about. And because of it,
02:03:16.020our elections are kind of boring. When you see the debate, when you think about what the major
02:03:21.300issues that were discussed it's like it's not a very exciting election it's not a very motivating
02:03:25.860election because the things that we are told that we're supposed to care about aren't really the
02:03:30.700things that canadians care about and things that the media spend the entire election droning on
02:03:36.040and on and on about uh canadians just totally disengage and zone out so that that's a problem
02:03:42.440for another day no it's a really good point i mean i have small kids at home and obviously they like
02:03:47.300to do a lot of coloring and as they get older they want more advanced coloring charts they want
02:03:51.740pictures and scenes and so forth where there's more different colors and so forth but it's like
02:03:56.000in Canada it's like no no no you got a color within the lines and we're just giving you a
02:03:59.600picture of a ball and you just have to color the one ball one color and you can't get any more
02:04:03.900elaborate pictures any more diagrams you can't you can't sort of have a more complex framework
02:04:09.960that you're dealing with here so it is frustrating when people do try to kind of evolve the
02:04:15.100conversation in more directions. They're always encouraged to say, no, you got to stay within
02:04:19.840these narrow confines. It's upsetting. And then we don't really see a lot of difference between
02:04:26.340the parties on these issues. And again, it's like we don't really hit on the major issues.
02:04:33.320Anthony, what are you seeing tonight? Is there anything so far that you've seen tonight that
02:04:36.820surprises you? Or what do you make of the sort of last week of the campaign? And here we are
02:04:41.580election night what do you think is going to happen yeah i mean the big question of course
02:04:45.240everyone had is will justin trudeau be remaining as prime minister will he have a diminished minority
02:04:50.000government and if the minority government is diminished even further there's going to be a
02:04:53.920lot of liberals pretty frustrated uh that they even went through this exercise of having this
02:04:58.540election right now because if they did not benefit well then why did they go through this process
02:05:02.820uh already some liberals are going to lose out they're going to have lost their jobs and they're
02:05:07.460they're going to not get their pensions not that that's a concern of mine but they'll be kind of
02:05:11.000frustrated about all of that and those sort of logistical details out there a lot of people
02:05:16.180watching that then again it's hard to say with the polls and the mail-in ballots so we shall see what
02:05:21.300what actually happens a lot of people regardless of their political perspective I think we're
02:05:26.160really interested I was really curious to see what happened with the People's Party of Canada
02:05:29.720because we have gone through such a momentous year and a half and the mainstream parties have
02:05:34.660not really touched on that that just big thing that's happening you're telling me I can't go out
02:05:40.280to live my life pretty much. You know, I'm a little upset about that, you would think. And
02:05:43.640while the majority of Canadians seem to be on board with most of those restrictions, it wasn't
02:05:48.620100% majority. It was, you know, two thirds or what have you. So how would the people who
02:05:52.900disagreed, how would they express themselves? And I think a lot of people are curious to see
02:05:56.620what the PPC vote is, certainly much stronger than it was in 2019. But right now, from what I'm
02:06:03.560seeing, not what, you know, Maxime Bernier would have wanted it to be, but it's still early. We'll
02:06:08.580see as the numbers come in so those are kind of the big questions because you and i talked about
02:06:12.020this previously candace at other uh on air for other discussions i mean it's it's kind of just
02:06:17.940interesting and exciting to see a new party out there and what's been a pretty stale political
02:06:22.180landscape landscape in canada for the past 20 years well and i just think it's a cautionary tale
02:06:27.060it's like you know we take for granted this idea that we have a united right in canada that that
02:06:33.700you know we used to have a divide there used to be the progressive conservatives and the alliance
02:06:38.180and you know we we found a way to unite these two factions and you know forever they will remain
02:06:45.140but but that's not necessarily the case and just because um the new i remember anthony and i think
02:06:50.420we probably had this conversation at the time but when uh harper stepped down and there was a new
02:06:55.540race to who's going to replace him um people people kind of guessed it would be peter mckay
02:07:01.540versus jason kenney so you'd have that old kind of pc versus alliance and then that didn't
02:07:06.580didn't come to be and it turned out to be in Andrew Scheer and Max St Bernier um you know two
02:07:12.580two different uh parts of the conservative party we didn't have that old divide but we had kind of
02:07:16.580a new a new splinter between the libertarian part of the party and the more social conservative
02:07:21.700part it's interesting now that we've kind of ditched the social conservative part too and
02:07:25.540found more of a centrist moderate um and and we're seeing this sort of breakaway libertarian movement
02:07:31.060So, 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.
02:07:54.880And 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.
02:08:17.760yeah certainly i mean i think one of the challenges always with the conservative
02:08:22.880party wanting to you know get into power of course and appeal to as many people as possible
02:08:26.920is they end up falling into the trap of wanting to do what uh uh more liberal and left-leaning
02:08:32.000media would like them to do and just want to be more liberal more liberal liberal light i mean
02:08:36.320i'm a big advocate of saying let's forget about this paris deal let's just withdraw from the
02:08:40.780paris deal or let's at least acknowledge that these are not real targets we actually have to
02:08:44.900hit we actually created them ourselves i think people maybe think everybody agreed to the same
02:08:49.360targets in the world no uh here in canada we we've devised these nationally determined contributions
02:08:54.540there's no penalty if we don't hit them and so forth so let's just acknowledge it as some
02:08:58.500aspirational stretch goal and let's just move on and and talk about other things you can talk about
02:09:02.780other you know green issues and so forth there's a lot of interesting stuff with uh r d going on
02:09:07.680with electric vehicle companies and various other products and so forth by all means you know that's
02:09:11.600a thing that's happening but this obsession with the Paris deal and remember the debate uh the
02:09:16.700other week Candace it was like half an hour talking about climate change but then really
02:09:20.800it was talking about the Paris deal and we're like good grief I mean we're just so fixated on all of
02:09:24.880this and I feel like if somebody stepped forward and said we're not going to participate in that
02:09:29.040I appreciate that is Maxine Bernier's PPC platform but I think if the conservatives just offered
02:09:33.180something a little different rather than oh here's how we're going to chase after Trudeau and say
02:09:37.840we're going to just do the Trudeau targets better than Trudeau's going to do them. I just don't know
02:09:41.960what the added value is there for voters. Well, it's so interesting to hear the media say, I know
02:09:49.200one of the questions in the debate was quite literally, you know, this is the climate change
02:09:53.980election. And it's like, no, it isn't. This is a COVID election. You can't just say it's the
02:09:59.200climate change election. The last election. They're always saying that. Every day is the
02:10:03.500climate change day for these people yeah if you're if you're an alarmist who is so obsessed with this
02:10:08.380topic then yes every every campaign is but for most canadians that's just not the main priority
02:10:13.100right now and it seems like so much of this campaign has just been recycled old campaigns
02:10:18.360that we that we see the liberals kind of throwing out their playbook we've seen all these attacks
02:10:22.440before we've seen it all before and i one of the things that the media is really starting to pick
02:10:27.200up on anthony is how divided the country is we were talking about a little earlier in the program how
02:10:32.020after the 2019 election, you had the surge of the bloc in Quebec. You had the Wexit movement
02:10:37.700emerge out of nowhere. It was dormant. It was out of nowhere, but it really came front of mind out
02:10:43.520in Alberta. And the country seemed really divided at that point. And now looking back, I mean,
02:10:48.100that didn't seem very divided at all because, you know, the basic assumptions were the same.
02:10:53.620Whereas in this election, I mean, if you look at Trudeau's negative numbers, they're really,
02:10:57.840really high a lot of Canadians really don't like the prime minister and you know if if the polls
02:11:02.920are correct and if the things play out tonight as as it appears they will and the liberals win and
02:11:07.780Trudeau's the prime minister again you know he's going to have a really different landscape than
02:11:12.620he did five weeks ago and he called an unnecessary election wasted all of our time you know really
02:11:18.480pushed on these wedge issues to divide the country even further scapegoated all of the sort of PPC
02:11:24.120protesters, people who are just pretty much sick and tired of being told to stay inside
02:11:29.340and stepping outside, protesting for their freedom, anti-lockdown people, sort of unfairly
02:11:35.220maligned as being anti-vaxxer, racist, misogynistic, Trudeau threw every name at the book at them.
02:11:41.400And then you have groups like the Anti-Hate Network jump in to say, oh, these are actually
02:11:45.300far-right, radical conservatives over there.
02:11:49.000And, you know, you really have just a divided country.
02:11:51.840So, you know, what do you think is going to happen to Trudeau at the end of this all?
02:11:57.300Well, you know, I think he's going to be in a weakened position, regardless of really what happens other than getting a majority.
02:12:04.160Like it's a it's a status quo minority. It's a slightly downgraded minority, whatever it is.
02:12:09.040I mean, people are going to go, why did you do all of this? This was hubris on your part.
02:12:12.860There's going to be a handful of liberals who who lost their seats that we're seeing, you know, across the board already.
02:12:18.900they're pretty upset at him uh people who are saying i would rather be liberal leader christy
02:12:24.520freeland or whoever they are people who say i want a shot at being prime minister i mean
02:12:27.900that pressure is going uh to materialize for sure i mean one wonders who is a hundred percent
02:12:34.320in his camp right now i mean a lot of people used to talk about the pmo and the liberal party under
02:12:38.800trudeau as this sort of cult of personality and i i think that was definitely true for the longest
02:12:44.520time I mean particularly in 2015 I mean the Liberal Party was just Trudeau because it was decimated
02:12:49.760after the Michael Ignatieff election there were no power brokers who really wanted much to do with
02:12:54.400it they were like I don't know we're just kind of tired of this party right now we're going to sit
02:12:57.160this one out and then Trudeau took it over and made it a party of him and he banished the senators
02:13:01.340which was sort of the old guard and the people who had the institutional memory so it was the
02:13:06.100the cult of personality behind Trudeau well that personality is is gone now I mean even even if
02:13:11.760he's managing to govern he's managing to pull through this election i mean he's just this kind
02:13:16.420of workaday politician that certainly has more enemies than he has friends and fans right now
02:13:21.660and how does he navigate that it's not going to be pretty and yet we've also seen uh from the past
02:13:27.080years that trudeau does not despite the fact that he talked about sunny ways and unity and the book
02:13:32.320he put out common ground or we're going to unite each other he doesn't do that to your point when
02:13:36.620he sees a crowd there he doesn't go and say how can i neutralize this person i'll embrace them on
02:13:40.360the camera it'll be a feel-good moment no he starts yelling at them and pointing a finger at
02:13:43.720them and getting that animosity going and I think that can backfire Candace I think he's kind of
02:13:48.800backed himself into a corner well it's interesting I mean even just the comment that he made you know
02:13:53.680here he has uh he was apparently so outraged over the idea that people were protesting outside of
02:13:59.180hospitals so that was beyond the pale for him and he decided to introduce a new law mid-election
02:14:05.220a law that was already on the books by the way but he said okay if you block critical infrastructure
02:14:09.300you block a hospital it's against the law uh okay so you had networks like ctv and other
02:14:14.980legacy media outlets jumping in saying oh trudeau's gonna ban this thing and it's like okay that's
02:14:19.940already against the law then trudeau had a heckler outside of one of his events and he turned and said
02:14:24.740to the guy uh isn't there a hospital somewhere you could be protesting almost like kind of encouraging
02:14:29.140that behavior it's like what an immature divisive man i just i couldn't get over that comment and
02:14:34.100it barely gets picked up it barely gets covered in the legacy media but to me well like the first
02:14:38.820nation's lady who protested at that event and he that snide sort of thank you for your donation
02:14:43.940comment i mean good heavens and that's the the constituency that he's supposed to
02:14:48.180have the most sort of uh you know emotional uh commitment to and yet you know when he thinks
02:14:54.020the cameras aren't on he really he really flips the bird to them absolutely it's pretty pretty
02:14:59.300shocking so uh i'm gonna go to hamish marshall bring hamish in to give us a quick update about
02:15:04.740what is going on with these polls anthony thanks so much you can uh stay on if you want that and
02:15:10.100hear hear this update from hamish so uh so far uh right now about um a million and a half last
02:15:17.540time i checked about a million and a half votes have been uh counted yeah about 1.5 million votes
02:15:22.740being counted across the country the popular vote sitting about 38 for the liberals 32 for the
02:15:27.700conservatives but not a lot of votes being counted out west so those numbers are going to change that
02:15:31.620liberal number is going to come down a bit as well um what we're seeing in terms of seats is it looks
02:15:37.860like the uh there's a bit of a realignment going on it's hard to say how it's going to shake out
02:15:44.180it doesn't look like the blocks making the gains people talked about the liberals you know there's
02:15:47.860a seat like uh gasp z that the liberals won uh by uh by 1.7 last time they're hanging on by uh you
02:15:57.300know five percent with with with four with half of votes in so there's seats like that in quebec
02:16:02.500where the bloc is not making the gains are expected the interesting thing in quebec is that in uh
02:16:07.940bertie masculino gonnay ruth ellen brosseau who was the uh the the bartender who was elected in
02:16:15.060the orange crush in 2011 who'd never been to the riding and didn't speak french it looks like she's
02:16:20.820back she's leading as it for the ndp by 650 votes only about 20 23 percent of the polls are in but
02:16:27.460i don't think anybody expected she would perform like that it's it's it's quite the quite the
02:16:31.380comeback story she ends up pulling that off um and then in ontario uh it looks like there's there
02:16:37.300there's a bit of horse trading going on um and again it's still fairly early days you know right
02:16:42.900now with about 10 of the polls in uh marion moncef is about 108 votes behind in peterborough
02:16:48.740Kawartha, so that'd be a Liberal cabinet minister going down. But on the flip side, a long-time
02:16:54.820Conservative MP, Bob Soroya, and a Conservative MP who crossed over from the Liberals, Eliana
02:17:01.260Alislev, in two York Region seats close to Toronto, both of them are now behind the Liberals.
02:17:07.780The Conservatives are also behind in Niagara Falls, a seat they've held since 2004, but
02:17:12.180they look like they're taking back Kitchener, Conestoga, where they're ahead very slightly
02:17:16.740at the moment. So what we're seeing is a bit of horse trading. It's not looking like the absolute
02:17:20.740number of seats is going to change an awful lot in Ontario, but which seat is held, it looks like
02:17:26.440it's going to change. You know, even a seat like Sault Ste. Marie, which I don't think it was on
02:17:30.980anybody's conservative target lists, the conservatives were leading, they're now behind
02:17:35.220by about 70 votes, but it was certainly looking quite close there. If we move on to the prairies
02:17:41.700In 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.
02:17:53.960The Conservatives had won that seat, picked it up last time, and now the Liberals are back.
02:17:59.940And we'll see if they'll be able to hold it for the rest of the night.
02:18:02.120In 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.
02:18:12.000There's a lot of votes left to come, and it's quite close in the northern riding as well.
02:18:17.420In Alberta, it's looking pretty solid for the Conservatives.
02:18:21.220In Calgary, Calgary Skyview, there was some concern that the Conservatives are ahead.
02:18:26.600they thought they might lose uh and then but in edmonton it looks like right now the conservatives
02:18:32.260are uh well it's just actually just changing as we go uh edmonton center is flipping back and forth
02:18:37.980as i as i see it um but the ndp is currently leading at edmonton greasebox so the conservatives
02:18:43.860could be down one or two seats in alberta um and then in bc we're still waiting for a lot of
02:18:48.820meaningful results to come in uh northwest territories looks like it's going to stay for
02:18:52.880Liberals and Nunavut it looks like the NDP is going to hang on although that's a very regional
02:18:58.640sort of riding or territory so it's hard to say exactly so right now it looks like you know
02:19:06.400Conservatives had gains in Atlantic Canada Ontario it looks like they might be net down one or two
02:19:12.400but again it's still very early days the prairies net down one or two I think we could end up more
02:19:18.000or less the same number of seats that the Conservatives won in the last election
02:19:20.960the NDP seems to be rising. We'll see where the Liberals end up. Right now, in terms of the seats
02:19:27.840that people are ahead in, the Liberals are ahead in 148 seats, the Conservatives in 110,
02:19:35.600but some of those are only a couple of polls, so we shouldn't take too much for that. But
02:19:40.160generally, it's looking like the Conservatives are on track for more or less where they ended
02:19:45.120up last time great thank you for that hamish marshall we will check back in with you very
02:19:50.560shortly i want to move to one of the candidates who has just been re-elected right now sitting at
02:19:56.16062 of the vote and that is the mp elect of regina capell and also the former conservative party of
02:20:03.920canada leader andrew shear andrew it is good to have you on the show tonight what's been the
02:20:09.280feeling out west in saskatchewan specifically for the campaign and certainly today yeah
02:20:15.040You 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.
02:20:25.680And 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.
02:20:34.220And I'm feeling optimistic about tonight because people realize just how bad Justin Trudeau has been for our province and for Western Canada.
02:20:44.100certainly in the you know there's been a lot of issues that have kind of come up throughout the
02:20:48.760campaign but generally speaking the the way Justin Trudeau has ignored Western Canada
02:20:53.600or when he's not ignoring us he's outright attacking us certainly was a big part of it
02:20:58.600and and the conservative message of championing our oil and gas sector believing that we need
02:21:03.260more Canadian energy both in Canada around the world has always resonated so I'm feeling pretty
02:21:09.120good about uh about this evening uh still still a couple close races but uh feeling pretty good
02:21:14.000yeah that western alienation is a very real problem i think it certainly ballooned in 2019
02:21:20.140when justin trudeau was re-elected and since then it has as well you look at a lot of developments
02:21:25.800such as the cancellation by the incoming u.s administration of keystone xl and so on what are
02:21:32.660the big issues and we were talking about this a little bit earlier with danielle smith but it
02:21:36.220really does go beyond pipelines I know and I'm curious in your view what the things are that
02:21:41.660people in the rest west really want to see coming out of this well you're absolutely right it's not
02:21:46.620just about energy policy you know it's not just like like there was one grievance it's a whole
02:21:50.780host of issues we had a terrible drought this summer and uh and and when uh livestock producers
02:21:57.340are having cattle die because there's no water for them to drink on their farms and when feed
02:22:02.780prices start going to the roof there's hurt in real time and there was a real sense that the
02:22:08.060trudeau government was dragging its feet not there are federal programs in place that are designed
02:22:12.940to kick in when there's a natural disaster beyond farmers control and and and he was very slow to
02:22:19.820to react you know not addressing that he started off the campaign remember he started off the
02:22:25.260campaign threatening to claw back saskatchewan's health care transfers for the crime of allowing
02:22:32.700some private delivery of diagnostic services. Now, there are private clinics in Justin Trudeau's
02:22:38.260own riding. There are private clinics all over Quebec and in Ontario. I've never once heard
02:22:43.620Justin Trudeau threaten Ontario or Quebec with their health care transfers. But when he comes
02:22:48.600to Saskatchewan and makes that threat, there's this real sense that there's a double standard,
02:22:55.200that he's going to do things to our province, to our region, that he would never dream of doing
02:22:59.900in other provinces, and there's a real sense that under the Trudeau Liberals, Confederation isn't
02:23:05.480working for Western Canada, and that was there in the last election, 2019. It's certainly
02:23:10.920continuing, and I'm hopeful for tonight. We can, you know, we'll see some good news. It's still
02:23:15.580early hours here, but there's just a lot of, and it's not just anger, Andrew, you know, there's a
02:23:21.920real sense of, and it's not even frustration. It's like out here, we just can't understand
02:23:28.560why Canadians in eastern Canada would continue supporting a government that treats western
02:23:33.200Canada like that and and there's a there's just a real puzzlement that you know we feel like we're
02:23:37.840there for the rest of Canada when other regions are in trouble and and we've been hurting for the
02:23:41.920last few years directly as a result of government policies and so there's a real sense of frustration
02:23:47.760alienation and a lack of understanding about why other provinces wouldn't understand what's going
02:23:52.480on here and it seems just like andrew like that issue is is just hardly covered i mean we're
02:23:58.240talking about tonight we had danielle smith on earlier and she was echoing a lot of the same
02:24:02.240concerns and it's interesting andrew because you know this is sort of the first time i'm hearing
02:24:06.400about this in the campaign and i know i went out to calgary a couple years ago and we did a
02:24:10.240documentary about the oil and gas sector collapsing there but it just seems like the issues that
02:24:15.760dominated this election were not the same ones that i i know are the ones that canadians are
02:24:20.880sitting around the dinner table talking about the ones that are of concern to sort of working
02:24:25.280canadians and i can't help but feel that so much of that is because of the media landscape in this
02:24:30.640country because the cbc really leads the charge that you know that that instance that you were
02:24:35.120talking about where justin trudeau said that uh you're gonna punish uh saskatchewan for for doing
02:24:39.920something that every province does especially quebec and british columbia but the media is
02:24:44.080right there uh to cheerlead to push liberal wedge issues to repeat their talking points
02:24:48.800it just seems like we really need a change in this country and i i wish this was something that was
02:24:54.320more top of mind but the idea that all of these journalists are getting money from the government
02:24:59.760and then those journalists are turning around and they're the ones that are supposed to be
02:25:03.040holding the government to account when it's specifically one party the liberal party uh
02:25:07.280that are pushing these narratives so what do you what do you make of the media landscape
02:25:11.360and the way that the important issues especially in western canada are just
02:25:14.880ignored by the rest of the country and the media. You're absolutely right. If you only listen to
02:25:22.400the media, you would believe that there are a certain number of issues that every single
02:25:26.940Canadian cares about and it's top of mind. And then in every opinion poll, when you ask people
02:25:32.060to rank their issues, the issues that the CBC spends like 80% of their time talking about don't
02:25:38.360even show up. They don't even show up. I've knocked doors all over my riding for the past
02:25:42.80035 days in 2019. I was all across the country. It was always, it was like there are two different
02:25:48.440worlds. There's a media world. And when I was standing there and the media were asking their
02:25:52.140questions, they were asking questions about all kinds of issues, mostly amplifying liberal talking
02:25:57.240points, mostly taking the liberal attack from the war room and, you know, turning it into a question
02:26:02.300that I had to deal with during the leadership, during the election race. Same thing they did
02:26:07.280to Aaron O'Toole, this campaign. And then when I talked to my candidates, you know, and I had my
02:26:11.260candidates on the bus, I'd say, okay, well, you know, what are you hearing at the doors?
02:26:14.800Nothing, nothing like what the media were pushing. Certainly, rarely was there any
02:26:20.220correspondence between what my candidates were telling me they were hearing. So there's a huge
02:26:23.720disconnect that, you know, there's a very thin aspect of our geography where a whole bunch of
02:26:30.540people live in ivory towers and breathe the rarefied air and they pontificate down to us.
02:26:37.560And I was listening to what you were chatting about before about the divisiveness that Justin Trudeau's brought about in this country.
02:26:44.440And a lot of it also has to do with the media, the way they cover stories, you know, the way they, you know,
02:26:48.500there are legitimate concerns in this country about whether or not the government should be able to mandate medical decisions.
02:26:55.780And when the media and Justin Trudeau together are saying, well, you know, those types of people, it's not just that they're wrong.
02:27:02.740like it seems like when I was younger you know you follow politics and you know you have people
02:27:07.140who disagree and I might think you're wrong and I might think I'm right but what's happened
02:27:10.820recently with with the mainstream media and with the true liberals is it's not just that you might
02:27:14.980be wrong it's that you're a bad person for disagreeing with that and that really has brought
02:27:19.540about a much more negative aspect to our politics so we need a big change in this country and and
02:27:24.500and I absolutely agree that the the traditional mainstream media you know they just continue to
02:29:54.080Well, 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.
02:30:21.600and you know watching some of these uh results come in it's it's a little uh disheartening so i i
02:30:26.800appreciate your uh your optimism and uh certainly keep uh keep fighting the good fight out there
02:30:32.080andrew yeah thank you you know i really appreciate that we we had a real you know we had a different
02:30:38.720dynamic in 2019 but uh you know we did win the popular vote we did gain seats in uh in just about
02:30:44.560every region of the country um fell short in some areas for sure and and you know i i think back and
02:30:49.920And I say, OK, I can see now that we could have done that better, done that differently and improved upon it.
02:30:54.820But, you know, it was a first term majority liberal government with an economy that was doing well.
02:31:04.460Canadians made their decision. But I like to I like to believe that, you know, we laid a nice foundation to build upon.
02:31:12.240And 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.
02:31:28.460Because what you talked about, about the divisiveness, it's really tough here in Western Canada right now.
02:31:34.780You 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.
02:31:46.740I was there. I went to a GM plant that was being closed and, you know, the media were all there.
02:31:53.720They had all the different traditional media outlets were there covering it.
02:31:57.700Well, in my own riding at Evraz Steel, it's a steel company that makes pipelines.
02:32:04.140They actually made the Keystone Pipeline.
02:32:06.580They laid off around 500 people this past Christmas.
02:32:11.340It's not because the world's using less oil and gas.
02:32:13.780It's not because the U.S. isn't using as much oil and gas.
02:32:17.580It's that Canada's been shut out of those markets, and it's directly a result of government policies.
02:32:23.620People in Western Canada, we understand downturns.
02:32:25.720you know, we are very much a commodity based province
02:32:50.480It just, to call it a kick in the teeth,
02:32:53.320To call it a kick in the teeth doesn't convey the sentiment that people are hearing.
02:32:57.420It's really, really tough here right now.
02:32:58.980And 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.
02:33:06.460We're going to figure out how to do that in this parliament.
02:33:09.200But, yeah, I'm glad to hear you address it because certainly the CBC and CTV and the mainline traditional media,
02:33:17.260they don't give that issue the coverage that it deserves to tell that story to the rest of Canada.
02:33:23.320Well, speaking of the mainstream media, I always remember your farewell speech as Conservative
02:33:27.700Leader when you gave a very generous shout out to independent media specifying True North. So we
02:33:33.060appreciated that support then. And we appreciate you coming on tonight. And congrats on your
02:33:38.340re-election in Regina Capel. Thanks so much, Andrew.
02:33:41.660Thank you very much, Andrew. Good to see you, Candice.
02:49:17.680But 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.
02:49:40.820it's like no you know they have different issues they have different values they have
02:49:44.820different priorities and Bernier has done a tremendous job at really pulling that together
02:49:50.660and it's interesting I sometimes see this with with different political parties it's like
02:49:57.200when you're in a situation where your votes where your seats don't match your votes all of a sudden
02:50:04.160you're a proponent of proportional representation it's not a matter of principle it's really a matter
02:50:08.520of, you know, practical politics. So you'd have someone who, like Justin Trudeau, remember in
02:50:14.1402015, part of his campaign, part of his platform was moving away from first pass and post and
02:50:19.680moving to proportional representation. And his whole perspective on that was basically a country
02:50:25.640that can elect, a system that can elect Stephen Harper to lead and become prime minister is
02:50:30.520clearly a system that is broken according to liberals and according to Justin Trudeau at the
02:50:34.200time. And then as soon as he won, it was like, okay, well, maybe the system isn't so bad,
02:50:39.140because here I am, Prime Minister, and it was the, you know, the system that gave me the majority
02:50:44.220government. And so it was interesting to hear Maximilian, I don't think I've ever heard him
02:50:47.900talk about proportional representation. I don't know if that is an issue that he has ever cared
02:50:52.940about or mentioned in the past. But, you know, he raises a hell of a good point when he says that,
02:50:59.100you know, that the media and the country will be taking him a lot more seriously,
02:59:17.760They have significantly increased their national vote share.
02:59:20.940I think the next election is going to be very, very interesting if the PPC remain on this trajectory.
02:59:28.460Well, I mean, it's certainly not a victory when you have Justin Trudeau regaining his minority position and not winning any seats.
02:59:38.140But certainly, you know, caused a big stir in this campaign.
02:59:42.240Interesting, I saw over your shoulder that they have the rebels live stream up there.
02:59:46.140So they're not just showing CBC and CTV, which is kind of nice.
02:59:52.480But 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?
03:00:02.580We have Maxime Bernier, a leader from Vos, Quebec.
03:00:05.320And, you know, you kind of think of the stronghold for the PPC is maybe in southern Alberta.
03:00:09.580So why are you in Saskatoon right now?
03:00:11.880Well, 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.
03:00:27.000So the decision was really all about coming to Saskatchewan to get away from the mask mandate.
03:00:33.700And 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.
03:00:42.780And it turns out that most people wanted to file in here.
03:01:23.820Thanks. 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.
03:01:37.660And Mariam Monsef is being handily defeated by the conservative candidate there.
03:01:44.160Michelle Ferreri is at 40% of the votes.
03:01:48.360And Mariam Monsef is about 2,100 votes behind with about 37%.
03:01:53.780And that's with 170 out of 289 polls reporting.
03:01:58.600And I was really confused for a moment because Lawton is getting 5% of the votes.
03:02:03.400I am not running against Mariam Monsef.
03:02:05.380There is a PPC candidate there named Paul Lawton, which is not Andrew Lawton, no relation at all.
03:02:11.140But I was I was your middle name or something like that.
03:02:14.600Yeah, no, no. And there's a picture of him and he does not look like me, thankfully.
03:02:17.860But I was concerned I may have been signing nomination papers in my sleep or something again.
03:02:22.500But that that's a big win for conservatives unseating a cabinet minister in Miriam Monsef.
03:02:27.680Yeah, 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,
03:02:54.660while speaking in her capacity as a Canadian government official
03:04:46.780Now, 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.
03:05:01.080And 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.
03:05:21.080And 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.
03:05:47.860Yeah, 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.
03:05:56.620She 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.
03:06:05.880And she had these glowing profiles. And then, of course, we learned that none of that was true. And she actually wasn't from Afghanistan.
03:06:11.360and she was from Iran and most of her story was completely made up and untrue. And in fact,
03:06:17.680there were interviews that she had done where she talked about moving back to the Middle East,
03:06:22.160going back to Afghanistan or Iran because she wasn't happy in Canada. So that was pre-politics.
03:06:28.560Maybe she'll choose to go back there post-politics. Who knows? But certainly that could be billed as
1.00
03:06:34.960a moral victory to conservatives who want to see someone like that leave. And I say someone like
03:06:40.320that someone who Trudeau based you know everything with Trudeau is based on appearances and based on
03:06:46.640quotas and based on making you feel good so this idea of a gender neutral or gender balanced cabinet
0.75
03:06:52.800where we had half women and half men and then it turned out a lot of the women had no business
0.54
03:06:57.120being there just because they didn't have any experience that would make them good at their
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03:07:00.560jobs and she was certainly one of those token appointees who turned out to be terrible at her
03:07:05.760job so much so that she got demoted because she couldn't handle her original file which was
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03:07:09.760democratic reform and so she got sort of just moved over to a status of women which is a
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03:07:14.960cabinet position that doesn't really do anything it's a insult to women that they even have that
03:07:19.360kind of uh a cabinet position anyway i digress uh we're gonna head over to sue ann levy who is at
03:07:25.920the conservative uh headquarter party tonight out in oshawa so sue ann let's uh hear your report on
03:07:32.640what's going on out in Oshawa well it's become kind of sad here there's no more frenetic pacing
03:07:42.080very slow pacing and I think they're trying to rally the troops up there in the boxes I hear
03:07:47.920noises I hear cheers being led you know to get people because I presume that Aaron O'Toole is
03:07:55.760going to come out very shortly and and give his concession speech but it's very eerily quiet here
03:08:03.200at the other than the cheerleading brigade up top uh i guess getting people ready um
03:08:11.760i said before that a lot would depend on toronto and the gta and they didn't prove me wrong uh
03:08:18.800liberonto as i call it toronto uh is once again liberonto and uh you know outside in the gta
03:08:27.840very few seats uh acquired and you know you talked about uh erin otoo possibly staying on i think
03:08:36.480that there's going to have to be another leadership review you know uh it's sad to think after two
03:08:44.080years and it has to happen again but i thought he read a good campaign but in my view he veered too
03:08:52.240far to the center uh and and tried very very hard to to win over voters that probably um really had
03:09:03.120conservative that that wouldn't vote for conservatives and and and instead of sticking
03:09:08.240to Conservatives' values. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I felt that, you know,
03:09:15.840and that there was probably too much pandering to the middle vote. However, we'll have to hear
03:09:23.760what he has to say when he comes on stage and what he says about the future, his future.
03:09:31.760No, I don't think you're wrong at all, Sue-Ann. I think that that's sort of the consensus that,
03:09:36.000sure he ran a great campaign he didn't make any major errors there were no major gaffes he didn't
03:09:40.400embarrass himself there is no uh there's no blackface picture of him that that emerged on
03:09:45.520social media um you know he he didn't soil his own reputation however he basically spent the
03:09:51.920entire campaign apologizing for the conservatives in his party and i think that that kind of thing
03:09:57.360will really come back uh to hurt him with the base when when you're when you're looking at
03:10:01.680these results and you're saying wait a minute you didn't even win in toronto you didn't even
03:10:06.080win the 905 that i thought that was what the whole campaign was geared towards um so and
03:10:13.360and with the broad tent the whole idea of the broad tent well i mean it's 2021 do we have to
03:10:20.880keep explaining who we are and who conservatives are i mean let's just stick to the knitting
03:10:27.280A term I learned way back in MBA school, let's stick to those conservative values.
03:22:12.800And you would actually criticize that slightly.
03:22:14.560But at the same time, that was the only party to put forward a plan to balance the budget.
03:22:18.600So I was curious what it was that you were looking for in platforms.
03:22:22.320Well, you know, I guess give the Conservatives just a little bit of credit for at least talking about balancing the budget.
03:22:29.160But the reason we criticized it is because it was not a credible plan.
03:22:32.700The Conservatives under O'Toole were essentially just paying lip service to balancing the budget.
03:22:36.580Now, first of all, O'Toole was essentially betting the farm that the economy would balance the books.
03:22:41.820Well, I mean, the first question is, well, what if reality isn't as rosy, right?
03:22:45.540Would O'Toole finally find some savings or would he let the debt continue to balloon?
03:22:49.580But here's really the bigger issue that we had with the Conservative plan.
03:22:53.300So 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.
03:23:01.520And 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.
03:23:10.940So essentially, O'Toole wanted to spend billions of dollars more, but somehow thought that he could balance the budget decades sooner.
03:23:18.120So, I mean, the math just doesn't add up there.
03:23:20.560Yeah, it's almost like Justin Trudeau's the budget will balance itself.
03:23:24.980I don't know if that was a gaffe or if he meant it or if he understood it.
03:23:29.180So, 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.
03:23:38.700One 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.
03:23:47.780It 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.
03:23:58.640Where does the CTF stand or what do you guys advocate for in terms of bringing in more revenue?
03:24:04.340I mean, obviously, we have a spending problem and we have to curb that.
03:24:07.840But I'm just talking about paying back COVID.
03:24:10.140Like, how are we ever going to pay off this mountain of debt?
03:24:13.520Do you advocate a specific kind of tax increases or are you for tax increases at any kind?
03:24:54.380So 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.
03:25:03.620But 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.
03:25:13.540So was it was there any anything about any of the party platforms that you saw, Franco?
03:25:18.180what did you think of the PPC and Maxine Bernier? Was there anything out there that you liked in
03:25:23.420terms of their tax policy, their spending policy, or their paying down the debt policy?
03:25:28.220Well, in terms of the PPC, they said that they would work to balance the budget within
03:25:33.300the political terms. So within four years, presumably. Now, the one thing that I think
03:25:38.440we need to highlight from the PPC, which we didn't see from other parties, other main parties,
03:25:42.800is that they wanted to cut corporate welfare, right?
03:25:46.680Which essentially means taking tax dollars
03:27:56.340The first is that we're looking for broad-based tax relief, but we didn't see that from the parties.
03:28:01.340We saw the Liberals, the NDP, proposing a bunch of new tax increases.
03:28:06.860The Conservatives, their tax plan was a bit of a mixed bag.
03:28:10.080They did propose some niche tax credits, a one-month GST holiday,
03:28:14.920but even the Conservatives didn't propose broad-based income tax,
03:28:19.060broad-based business tax, or broad-based sales tax relief.
03:28:21.840We didn't see that from the Conservatives.
03:28:23.220So 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.
03:28:48.240Well, I mean, that's what happens when you have the printing press on overdrive, which we have seen during the pandemic since February 2020.
03:28:56.880We've seen the Bank of Canada's assets increase by about 300 percent.
03:29:01.660We've seen the printing of about three hundred and seventy billion dollars from the Bank of Canada.
03:29:06.160So these higher prices are showing Canadians that there is no free lunch when it comes to government spending.
03:29:11.840and all of that money that politicians spend it has to be paid back one way or another whether
03:29:16.480that's through taxes today taxes plus interest tomorrow or through the inflation tax well frank
03:29:22.640final question for you we saw those bank of canada numbers we saw inflation is up up to
03:29:27.520two months in a row that it doubled what the projections were supposed to be in around four
03:29:31.440percent and then we also see the issue on the campaign trail of cost of living that things
03:29:36.560are just getting so expensive so hard to buy a house uh you know cost of groceries gasoline
03:29:41.040everything is going up up up and yet that didn't really seem to translate again uh to circle back
03:29:46.240to the idea that the the election wasn't really about the top issues uh that are facing the
03:29:51.600country i mean you you work at the canadian taxpayers federation you you live this day in
03:29:55.600and day out trying to talk to canadians and remind them that how important these issues are and what
03:30:00.800they connect to so you know if we're living this situation where inflation is is soaring things
03:30:06.800are expensive affordability is an issue and it doesn't really seem to translate uh on election
03:30:11.920day what do you think we could do to to try to get canadians to to really understand these issues
03:30:19.200and to tie them together and get them to pay attention uh to these sort of fiscal issues
03:30:24.080yeah that's that's the question that we grapple with every day especially the canadian taxpayers
03:30:27.920federation you know i wish i had a silver bullet i wish i had a a switch that i could flick uh to
03:30:33.360to to to make it all better but i mean the truth of the matter is it's going to take concerted
03:30:38.240effort from everyday canadians everyday taxpayers pushing our politicians day in day out month in
03:30:43.760month out to get a control of the spending um i mean it's really unfortunate that we didn't
03:30:48.480see the affordability issue really raised to prominence during this election i mean especially
03:30:54.240when you consider the fact that even during the pandemic the average canadian family paid about
03:30:58.72036 percent of its budget to taxes which is more than what the average canadian family paid for
03:31:04.800food housing and clothing combined right um but look even the conservatives they really didn't
03:31:11.280have a leg to stand on here because they flip-flopped on the carbon tax it's very it can be
03:31:16.400very tough for a politician to really drive home the affordability message when you're going to
03:31:20.480turn around and hammer families with a carbon tax of your own 100 yeah that was that was shocking
03:31:26.160and I think that O'Toole needs to answer for that.
03:31:28.900Well, Franco Terzano, I don't want to get your name wrong again,
03:31:32.260I got it right the first time, Terzano,
03:31:34.180from the Canadian Tax Force Federation.
03:31:35.700Thank you so much for joining us, Franco.
03:46:18.140just for sort of self-serving cynical reasons. I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.
03:46:22.620But 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.
03:46:36.600So 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.
03:46:47.820Well, it's absolutely remarkable that he's not getting punished whatsoever for this entire
0.80
03:46:52.780gabbit, which hasn't paid off at all. And from a conservative perspective, it's like,
0.94
03:46:57.180you plunge us into an election that nobody wanted, and we don't want to pay for it. And here we have
03:47:02.300you. And then on the liberal perspective, it's like they're paranoid about COVID. And they're
03:47:06.540the ones that are worried about, you know, fourth wave or the Delta variant, or what have you.
03:47:11.660And yet, you know, again, there's no punishment. We were talking about this earlier on the show
03:47:17.660about how you know if it's a minority government we might be back in two years
03:47:22.700but like you said you know we're not we're not going to see Trudeau punch into the next election
03:47:28.060do you think what do you think of the NDP you know the fact that they were sort of
03:47:33.660Justin Trudeau was in a comfortable minority position where he could rely on the NDP to
03:47:39.260promote sort of progressive agenda and they were willing to prop him up do you think that they will
03:47:43.900be willing to prop them up again just given that we went through this whole election exercise like
03:47:49.100i guess the question i really want to ask jj is will there be any consequences to justin trudeau
03:47:53.660for making us have this election that nobody wanted and that the results is basically the
03:47:58.060exact same as uh what it was going into the campaign no i don't and and i don't think there
03:48:04.540will be any negative consequences and sort of just to repeat what i just kind of said i think
03:48:08.380that in some ways trudeau has won a kind of de facto majority government he doesn't have a
03:48:13.500a majority government in terms of the seat count, but in terms of his security of grip on the
03:48:19.020prime ministership, I think the next four years could very easily function as if he had a majority
03:48:23.340government. When this election was called, Jagmeet Singh, one of his, I think even in his letter to
03:48:30.040the governor general, if we remember how he did this little stunt, he actually made it very explicit
03:48:34.340that his party had supported the liberal government in every confidence vote that they had put before
03:48:40.680the house right uh jagmeet singh had sort of held himself up as a guy that was willing to be a loyal
03:48:46.360partner of the liberal minority government and i don't think there would be any reason why he would
03:48:52.140change course now particularly since as i said the whole concept of an early election has been
03:48:57.620so stigmatized when justin trudeau made his comment in the french debate that uh you know if
03:49:03.320he gives them another minority we're just going to be back to the polls and you know another 18
03:49:06.920months you know trudeau got tremendous backlash for saying that comment and so i think as a result
03:49:12.680trudeau as much as anyone else is now going to be able to constantly sort of dangle this
03:49:17.240in over the heads of the opposition parties uh whenever he there seems to be any threat of him
03:49:23.160not getting his own way he will be able to say well you people said you didn't want an early
03:49:27.560election you people said you wanted to make this parliament work for the next four years
03:49:31.560well here i am i'm willing to do it if you're willing to play ball so i think trudeau is is
03:49:36.360really sort of perversely in a sort of stronger position he will not only not have really sort
03:49:41.880of suffered for this election call but in some ways he is now going to be able to use his
03:49:46.280critics criticism of his own cynicism against them if that makes sense so it is really a very
03:49:52.440bizarre sort of state of affairs that we're going to find ourselves in over the next four years
03:49:56.840no it's pretty wild and i sort of cringed the idea of the ndp having to support a government that they
03:50:03.640you know use the support and then after this whole election gambit we'll have to go back
03:50:08.280and supporting again but i want to get your thoughts uh jj you're sort of tuned into the
03:50:12.520internet culture um much more than the rest of us and you know you're a youtube guy
03:50:17.400um what what do you think of the ppc because i hear from my perspective i see they got some
03:50:22.200really sort of high profile um endorsements from the sort of internet people when you think of
03:50:28.520uh you know jordan peterson michaela peterson you had uh viva fry run as a candidate uh people
03:50:34.120like lauren southern you know you had a lot of sort of well-known well-watched the the people
03:50:41.160with the high um subscriber counts really on board with that but it didn't translate into anything in
03:50:47.240the real world so so you have this guy that's got like a big sort of internet army and we we did see
03:50:52.520some big you know rallies and and marches and stuff in montreal and toronto but didn't translate
03:50:58.360to anything tonight nothing uh no seats nothing maybe maybe they're going to play the spoiler
03:51:03.080for a couple of conservative seats but i don't think it would have made the difference in terms
03:51:06.440of trudeau winning a minority so uh what's your perspective on the ppc uh in this campaign and
03:51:11.880going forward yeah i mean certainly anybody that spends a great deal of time online or anybody that
03:51:18.200sort of talks about canadian politics online as i do before an online audience is very familiar with
03:51:23.080the sort of the army supposedly of sort of ppc supporters who inevitably fill the comments
03:51:28.440sections of any social media post or youtube video or what have you talking about how you
03:51:32.920know the cpc is or the the ppc is going to shock everybody it's going to have a tremendous showing
03:51:37.720you know the polls are underestimating you know the ppc army and all this kind of stuff and you
03:51:41.640know much as as was the case in 2019 i think they have very clearly underperformed in in this
03:51:47.560this election as well. I think that this is a bit of an online phenomenon that doesn't really have
03:51:52.640a real world manifestation. And if you spend a lot of time in sort of an online bubble in which
03:51:57.440you only sort of talk to like-minded people, you can very easily come away with an impression that
03:52:02.440this party is much more popular than it is. And that the sort of the flavor of politics that
03:52:07.280Maxime Bernier and his sort of folks, you know, sort of champion has, I think, much more sort of
03:52:14.320broad buy-in than it really does. I mean, that being said, I wrote a column about this recently
03:52:20.760in the Washington Post. You know, the PPC, even though I think it has underperformed based on what
03:52:25.740some of its supporters had hoped for in this election, it has passed the precedent set by
03:52:31.400the Green Party in 2014 or in 2004. In 2004, the Green Party got 4% of the popular vote.
03:52:39.380And 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.
03:52:47.700You know, I was tweeting about this earlier.
03:52:49.960You 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.
03:52:58.360But 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.
03:53:10.560That'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.
03:53:18.620If the media is not hypocritical, they're going to have to now do that for the People's Party.
03:53:23.860They're going to have to sort of treat it as an official or not an official party, but a major party.
03:53:28.520And, you know, I think that that puts Bernier in, I suppose, a strong place to at least stay relevant in the political conversation,
03:53:35.880even 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,
03:53:41.980lot of noise around them, a lot of even media attention that is not really ultimately fulfilled
03:53:46.380by them upholding their end of the bargain and actually sort of achieving even a modest
03:53:54.300parliamentary delegation. Well, I mean Maxi Bernier was at one point in his life a cabinet
03:53:59.420minister, so it's hard to argue that he's like this weird fringe outsider character when he was
03:54:04.460literally a cabinet, one of the highest positions that you can get in an inner circle of a Canadian
03:54:09.820government. And I know you've been very critical, JJ, of the sort of cult of personality that
03:54:15.580happened around the Green Party and Elizabeth May. And I see something kind of similar happening
03:54:20.280around Max and Bernier. Hamish Marshall, I'm going to bring you into the conversation because you've
03:54:25.940been looking at the numbers and seeing sort of how perhaps the PPC may have played a spoiler
03:54:31.500in some of the writing. So pull you into it. Yeah. And I also wanted to get a perspective
03:54:36.820of of jj's on uh jagmeet singh we we've you know we talked a lot there was a lot of speculation
03:54:42.340in the media that the the ndp was going to surge they're going to get 20 they were going to get
03:54:46.90038 39 42 seats something like that right now they're at 31 but it's been as 29 28 there there
03:54:56.180there looks like they're at about 17 of the vote which is up about one and a half percent from last
03:55:01.780time so do you think jagmeet sings can hang on as leader like you know after two elections of
03:55:07.140disappointing i mean last time he sort of won by by losing but you know this time when expectations
03:55:12.020were higher you know it could be not just anime i think it's obvious anime paul is going to be
03:55:15.300gone as leader but will jagmeet be gone as well that's an interesting question because i think
03:55:20.100the ndp sort of plays by a sort of different expectations game than the the real parties do
03:55:26.340you know I think improving the seat count at all I mean I think in some ways is an accomplishment
03:55:32.500for the party right I mean they've had how many elections was it previously that the seat count
03:55:36.900declined you know it declined from from Leighton to Mulcair and then declined from Mulcair to Singh
03:55:42.260and so Singh has now sort of reversed that course for the first time in you know several election
03:55:46.340cycles that might be enough to sort of save his skin just because NDP people are sort of used to
03:55:50.820to having such you know low expectations of what their party is capable of I mean I think that you
03:55:56.940know if we're going to be completely honest I think that Jagmeet Singh's background probably
03:56:00.720protects him to some extent as well I think that you know he has you know he's made a lot about how
03:56:05.740people have sort of underestimated him or treated him by different standards because of you know
03:56:09.760who he is and I think that you know he would be in I'm not in a terribly dishonest place to make
03:56:15.860that argument to sort of say hey you know uh you know i led the party to a better showing than the
03:56:21.980previous uh you know leader did and why am i sort of getting turfed out when you know i like it's
03:56:27.920not it's not illegitimate i suppose for him to make that that argument but at the same time i
03:56:31.800think you're absolutely right that uh you know he had a very specific style of campaign that was
03:56:36.980based on a premise of of canadian politics and i think politics in general that is just manifestly
03:56:42.140not true that if you just spend a lot of time on social media and follow a lot of trendy you know
03:56:47.820you know fads on tick tock and play video games and all this kind of stuff that somehow you're
03:56:53.100going to activate this sort of groundswell of disaffected young people who previously
03:56:57.100don't vote and they're going to sort of carry you to new heights in the same way the ppc you
03:57:01.260know failed to live up to its own online hype i think that uh the ndp did the same yeah i i almost
03:57:07.020think that that's it's not even about connecting to voters it's not about like appealing to young
03:57:11.660people it's about impressing the media it's about like the journalists thinking that you're cool and
03:57:15.740it's like wow guys jagmeet singh is on tick tock like he's so cool because he does these weird
03:57:21.820videos that we don't understand but we'll just pretend we understand so that we seem cool too
03:57:25.500it's like jagmeet singh is just he's trendy he's he's hip he's not that young but he he acts like
03:57:31.900he's young and and that's like enough uh for the media which shows you sort of again how out of
03:57:37.740touch they are uh with the people one of the questions i have just to circle back to you hamish
03:57:42.700is did the polls seem like they're right at all because for me what i was looking at it seemed
03:57:48.620like the conservatives and the tories sorry the conservatives liberals were neck and neck
03:57:52.380the ndp had swelled up to like 22 23 percent it doesn't really seem like the the the polls the
03:57:58.940last week of the campaign what we saw over there is really matching up with the with the vote count
03:58:03.660today yeah i mean just like the last election i believe i certainly know in 2019 the highest
03:58:09.980final poll previously for the conservatives was 33 i believe that's the same in this election
03:58:14.780and right now the conservatives are at 34.1 which is exactly the same percentage of the vote the
03:58:20.140conservatives got in the last election um so but the liberals are down even further the liberals
03:58:25.660got 33.0 last time and they're down to 31.9 um so they've dropped another percent uh so it doesn't
03:58:33.580doesn't look like the polls were particularly accurate. We saw pollsters as recently as a
03:58:38.940couple of days ago having the NDP at 22. They're at 17 and a half. I think Nanos had them at 17
03:58:44.180and a half. They did a one day poll just yesterday, which I think they had the NDP at 17 and a half,
03:58:48.760which is going to look prophetic. But, you know, on the whole, the, you know, this, I think this
03:58:57.220election more than anything else, it continued, not that I'm a particular fan of electoral reform,
03:59:01.660But, 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.
03:59:19.080And the disconnect between the number of votes you get and the number of seats you get is becoming even more out of whack.
03:59:56.200there's some advantages to that so of course we never would have had there never would have been
04:00:00.080a Stephen Harper government on the other hand so you know it's it's difficult to say but I think
04:00:04.320it's something that that needs to be considered going forward yeah no it's certainly an opportunistic
04:00:09.000I mean not opportunistic but it's like it works in this scenario and then other scenarios can go
04:00:12.800terribly wrong uh we're standing by because Aaron O'Toole might be coming live at any point so if
04:00:17.900if that does happen we'll we'll break away but I want to circle back to you JJ you did a great
04:00:22.520YouTube video where you basically declared that Canada had failed and you kind of broke it down
04:00:27.260on these three metrics that this is the point of Canada and you know we don't do this thing so it
04:00:32.980was you know keeping the Americans out uh keeping the um um the French in and um somehow making the
04:00:41.240First Nations people disappear um and that none of those things have come to fruition so I I wanted
04:00:47.740to just sort of ask you, I mean, you're a big thinker. You obviously know very much the history
04:00:55.980of Canada. You studied it. You spent a lot of time thinking about it. Were you happy with this
04:01:00.440election? Do you feel like the issues that matter to you were talked about? And if not, what can
04:01:06.820you do to change that? Because it seems like, you know, we're just in this sort of, it's like a
04:01:12.560hamster wheel. We just keep hashing over the same dumb issues that no one cares about. The
04:01:17.200elections are not really consequential, the issues that really matter to us don't really
04:01:22.640get brought up and talked about, you know, how can we change that?
04:01:26.140How can we make Canada something that we're all really proud and excited to be a part
04:01:31.200of? How can we make our elections matter?
04:01:33.320I know it's a huge question, but it is a big it is a big question.
04:01:39.260I mean, Canada is a is a complicated country, right?
04:01:42.080Like, 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.
04:01:54.880I 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.
04:02:06.340I 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.
04:02:26.560I think that Stephen Harper was a similar sort of man. I think you can go back and you can read
04:02:30.800some of the speeches that Stephen Harper gave in his Reform Party days. And it was very clear
04:02:35.260that he was a man that had thought deeply about Canada and its institutions and its economy and
04:02:39.700its history and all of these other sorts of things, what we would today call sort of like
04:02:43.480systemic dimensions of Canada. And I think that by contrast, when you look at somebody like Aaron
04:02:49.900O'Toole, it was not clear to me that he was a man that really sort of had a vision for this country.
04:02:54.500I 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.
04:03:05.080I have little doubt that he probably would.
04:03:07.580But that said, I do think that it's not wrong to want a higher caliber of leader.
04:03:16.600I 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.
04:03:34.480I 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.
04:03:47.240But 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.
04:04:15.540Like 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.
04:04:44.160And I'm going to somehow be a more authentic champion of the rhetoric that Trudeau spouts,
04:04:49.440even though I think that a lot of conservative people don't even like the rhetoric that Trudeau
04:04:53.360spouts. They have a sense that the problems that Trudeau is sort of articulating require deeper,
04:04:58.800more thoughtful solutions than the ones that he is offering. But I just don't think that
04:05:02.880there is that kind of leader even waiting in the wings in this country, like somebody who
04:05:08.240is the equivalent of a pure Elliott Trudeau or a Stephen Harper for the new generation.
04:05:12.400maybe it's naive to expect that caliber of of person in in the 21st century but that's the
04:05:18.320kind of person that i'm waiting for but you know maybe i'm not even doing so well just to get past
04:05:23.440the sort of personality and and and get more towards the the root of it i mean you're talking
04:05:28.400about a philosopher king so your video is about how canada doesn't have a core project anymore
04:05:33.680or like we don't know what canada stands for that the canadian identity was sort of uh used to be
04:05:39.040very rooted in the sort of british empire and were part of the the the crown were part of this big
04:05:45.520mighty empire and then obviously post-world war ii that changed and it became the sort of
04:05:51.280liberal identity that canadians uh identify themselves basically as being not americans
04:05:56.080so we're kind of like more progressive more more liberal americans and you know that that that
04:06:03.200seems to have fallen flat especially with the latest sort of media um moral panic over residential
04:06:08.480schools and how horrible that all was so to you jj i mean what do you see canada what do you see
04:06:14.240the canadian project and what what what could canada be um in in in an ideal world and jj's
04:06:20.960sort of vision for a future of canada well you know like i would just sort of say that
04:06:26.480we shouldn't perhaps on some level be too hard on the left right like the left i think accurately
04:06:32.960perceived that you know the old understanding of what Canada was that sort of British Empire sort
04:06:39.020of first kind of understanding of Canada that was an identity that had ceased to become relevant for
04:06:43.500the vast majority of Canadians by the time that say somebody like Pierre Elliott Trudeau came on
04:06:47.420the scene he offered a different sort of sense of what Canada was and then you know I think you could
04:11:02.860thank you thank you well it was after one in the morning when i first addressed the nation
04:11:11.260as leader of canada's conservatives so it's fitting i address you late again at the start
04:11:17.960this pandemic i called for a team canada approach to combat covet 19. 18 months later our nation
04:11:26.760needs that more than ever the canadiens have spent too many sleepless nights about worrying about the
04:11:35.400health of the people close to them the loss of jobs and the future of their children the
04:11:41.000pandemic has increased to the small differences between us and it has also aggravated the division
04:11:49.000amongst canadians unfortunately this election has only made unworkable but tonight canadians
04:11:56.440did not give mr trudeau the majority mandate he wanted in fact canadians sent him back with
04:12:07.960another minority at the cost of 600 million dollars and deeper divisions in
04:12:13.600our great country just days ago he said he would hold yet another election within
04:12:19.42018 months if he didn't get his way a few days ago mr. Trudeau was saying that he
04:12:27.040would hold another election in 18 months if he didn't get to what he wants
04:12:32.980Mr. Trudeau was hoping for a quick power grab. Instead, he has thrust us into what he has
04:12:39.860promised will be 18 months of perpetual campaigning. Our country is facing the most
04:12:46.740serious economic challenge since the Great Depression. Even before the pandemic led to
04:12:53.140record debt and deficits, investment and jobs were leaving Canada.
04:12:58.100The prices are creeping from clothes to gas and everything.
04:13:08.100Inflation is its highest level in 20 years, and it is continuing to climb every day.
04:13:14.100Families have difficulty in making ends meet.
04:13:19.100But to face up to this challenge, we have to work together. We have to continue the fight.
04:13:26.100For too long, we have been divided. For too long, we have seen politicians pit region against region, neighbour against neighbour.
04:13:37.580But when we are divided, Canadians get left behind.
04:13:42.660Mr Trudeau thinks Canadians should endure 18 more months of divisive campaigning so he can try once again to get the election result he wants.
04:13:50.920We need to heal the divides in Canada, not risk worsening them for selfish gains.
04:14:02.260A few months ago, I told Conservatives that our party needed the courage to change because Canada has changed.
04:14:12.100Over the past 36 days, we have demonstrated to Canadians that we have set out on a path
04:14:19.240to engage more Canadians in our Conservative movement.
04:14:23.920One that addresses is the challenges of today while advancing the dreams of tomorrow.
04:14:30.060Ours is a Conservatism that dwells not in the past, but learns from it to secure the
04:21:11.760all right peter van dusen are watching along with you as we listen to conservative leader
04:21:19.820i'm getting flashbacks when i hear that song that was the song that was at every single one
04:21:25.140of his campaign stops only on a 20 second loop well here it is back on again we've got no no
04:21:31.460it wasn't even like the actual song it was like just like a 20 second loop it was like the world's
04:21:37.160most tedious ringtone. But in any case, here we are back after that. We have Sue Ann Levy in Oshawa
04:21:44.920where Aaron O'Toole has just conceded, but it sounds very much like he's planning to stay on.
04:21:50.680He was throwing that line of Trudeau's that if we had another minority government, we'd be back at
04:21:55.740the election in another 18 months. We'll go to Sue Ann in just a moment here. Candace, what were
04:22:02.020your thoughts on that? Well, it didn't sound like he thought that he lost. It sounds like he thought
04:22:07.380that he had done quite well and won. And I mean, if you're looking from day one of the campaign,
04:22:12.900when it looked like, you know, no one had ever heard of him, and he wasn't really known at all,
04:22:18.220sure, he's gone up. But you look at the campaign, and it's like, at one point, he was pulling five,
04:22:23.120six points ahead of the liberals. And he's just, you know, had it all handed to him on a platter.
04:22:28.440So I think that there needs to be some reckoning in the Conservative Party.
04:22:32.740Aaron 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.
04:22:39.520The fact that 5% went over to Maxime Bernier, that needs to be discussed and there needs to be some reckoning.
04:22:46.520It didn't really sound like a very self-aware speech, but I'll hand it over to you, Sue Ann.
04:22:51.700You're in the room. So what do you make of it?
04:22:53.680Well, there was a lot of phony excitement in the room, sort of, you know, manufactured excitement.
04:23:01.120And I think that Aaron O'Toole has some explaining to do, Candace and Andrew.
04:23:07.120He talked about the new conservatism, and then he talked about all the groups, LGBT, Indigenous, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
04:23:16.060and this is just what we were talking about before getting away from the true conservative values
04:23:23.760and and being liberal light did not work for him and I think there's going to be
04:23:29.060some real reckoning within the party you know
04:23:32.960defeats by the conservatives federally and I always shake my head and say what will it take
04:23:42.640to win Canada, win over a Trudeau, for example.
04:23:47.500I think my hair stood on end in 2015, and it's about to stand on end again.
04:23:54.260Why can't we find a leader who can appeal to the base, as you say?
04:23:59.220Why we keep trying to pander to groups that will never vote for the Conservatives?
04:24:05.020And I think that there's going to have to be some inner awareness within the party.
04:24:10.100Well, talking about groups that will never appeal to conservatives,
04:24:14.060it almost seemed like Aaron O'Toole's speech was aimed entirely at the media
04:24:18.100to prove to the media that he's not as bad as the media thinks that he is.
04:24:24.220And it's like, dude, the media are never going to like you, no matter what.
04:24:27.700Look, you just ran a campaign that was super liberal and super moderate,
04:24:30.960and you did all the things and said all the things that they wanted you to say,
04:24:34.240and they still didn't treat you fairly, and you didn't win.
04:24:36.780So at what point are you going to change your strategy?
04:24:38.860away from trying to appeal to the centrist or left-wing media and trying to actually get
04:24:43.900conservatives excited about you and go and vote for you. And you're not playing to the media. As
04:24:48.920you said, they're going to still rip you to shreds, and they did. They did. The legacy media still
04:24:54.900gave him a hard time, still just tolerated him, found every excuse to beat up on him. So let's
04:25:04.180start concentrating on the people that matter, the people who vote, the people who went into the
04:25:08.640polls today not the media because people are frankly are tuning out the legacy media they
04:25:15.920know that they're biased we saw it during the election and that was the big mistake in this
04:25:20.560election absolutely well sue ann thank you so much for your coverage tonight thank you for being live
04:25:26.720on the ground in oshawa we've really appreciated uh your commentary your coverage your interviews
04:25:32.560your reports so uh thank you for being with us you've really helped add some color and add some
04:25:37.120perspective uh from that uh campaign and at that uh conservative uh headquarters with us we
04:25:43.360appreciate having you on and uh we appreciate you being part of the turn our team thank you
04:33:11.800she was sort of true North's, I don't know, librarian.
04:33:15.680She'd keep all of the letters that I got
04:33:17.900she put them into a beautiful sort of scrapbook of all the nice letters that we got. So people
04:33:23.060who send us, you know, handwritten letters of support, they mail us checks. My mom would sort
04:33:29.320of keep that all in a nice book that we keep. And it really means a lot to us, you know, as a
04:33:34.260journalist and as anyone who's online, anyone who's involved in politics, you know, you get a lot of
04:33:38.620love, you get a lot of hate. And sometimes the hate is really, you know, a lot. And then, you
04:33:44.200know, you have something to turn back and you realize that there are so many people out there
04:33:47.480who really appreciate what you do and support it and so like i was saying my mom put together
04:33:52.200a really nice little scrapbook of all the uh true north support uh letters we've gotten so
04:33:57.480appreciate that mom again happy birthday and uh if you are so inclined to uh chip in and help
04:34:03.720support true north going forward we really do appreciate that so i think we have uh hamish
04:34:08.600marshall our in-house pollster at true north and our decision desk guy who has been calling it all
04:34:15.960tonight hamish are there any other final numbers that you want to uh let us know about or is it
04:34:20.840sort of a done deal at this point well i mean nothing substantial has changed uh the liberals
04:34:25.960look like on the whole as of right now they're down to 156 seats which is one less than the last
04:34:31.080election the conservatives are at 121 exactly the same the block is at 32 exactly the same
04:34:38.920the ndp is at 27 up three the greens down one uh to two seats so very few top line changes the ppc
04:34:47.160is at 5.2 um the conservatives are at 34.1 same as they got in the last election not an awful lot
04:34:54.760change at the top line but there's actually quite a lot of seats moving around beneath the service
04:34:58.680so while the overall numbers in parliament aren't going to be that different there's quite a lot of
04:35:01.880change i think one of the big stories of this campaign is going to be there's two really one
04:35:06.440One is the failure of the NDP, despite there seem to be punching above their weight in the polls the last few weeks.
04:35:12.460Failure of the NDP to substantially grow, although the mail-in ballots might change that slightly.
04:35:18.120And the fact that the Conservatives lost gains, lost the gains they had in urban areas.
04:35:23.660They lost seats in the GTA. They lost seats in the greater Vancouver area.
04:35:26.940They lost seats in Edmonton. Might lose a seat in Calgary.
04:35:29.720Looks like the seat they won in Winnipeg, they're now ahead by a couple hundred votes.
04:35:34.020So maybe that'll come back. We'll see how it goes.
04:35:36.440But 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.
04:35:52.360That'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.
04:36:06.100Do 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.
04:36:16.680I know China came back saying that if a conservative government was elected, that it would be sort of bad for China.
04:36:23.960Do 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?
04:36:30.260No, you know, I think it's honestly a little more devious than that.
0.96
04:36:33.900know the the chinese government and through their foreign propaganda arms has a lot of has a lot of
0.86
04:36:39.100influence in chinese media uh kenny chu the conservative mp for richmond steves richmond
04:36:44.300stevesman um who lost tonight uh is a born in hong kong uh he was targeted by a whole bunch
04:36:51.580of allegations from people in the from media associated with the chinese government or chinese
04:36:57.740organizations um and there's been a concerted push by the efforts of the chinese government to
04:37:04.460uh influence uh the votes of overseas canadian overseas chinese chinese chinese canadians here
04:37:10.700uh and it's it's something that wasn't happening five or six years ago in the same way
04:37:15.420uh and i think that it has to be taken seriously and and has to be pushed back on extremely serious
04:37:21.820extremely aggressively uh frankly by all parties i mean i i don't think we should we should
04:37:26.380uh you know uh approve of any foreign interference in our elections uh and it's it's a it's a big
04:37:31.580big big concern um uh and it seems to have paid off uh because both as i said both uh kenny chu
04:37:38.300lost and uh uh looks like alice wong has lost as well uh both two strong supporters of democracy
04:37:44.780in hong kong great chinese canadians who uh who uh are it looks like they're going to be defeated
04:37:50.700well that's pretty uh disconcerting uh any any allegations and again this is one of those issues
04:37:56.940that wasn't really brought up i know there was sort of murmurings about it before the campaign
04:38:01.500began that oh for an election uh interference and we hear about it a bit more in the u.s context
04:38:06.780i really wasn't brought up but you know just the idea of uh that uh sort of propaganda arm
04:38:13.660of the chinese government being able to reach into canada is pretty pretty disturbing well
04:38:18.860Well, Hamish, we really appreciate you manning the decision desk tonight.
04:38:22.060We appreciate all your insight and analysis.
04:38:24.000It's been great to have you part of the Trenorth team over the last few weeks,
04:38:27.520and we hope to continue the relationship and have you on to provide your analysis and opinion in the future.
04:38:34.300So thanks for joining us tonight, and thank you for joining us throughout the campaign.
04:38:45.680I 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.
04:38:55.000So it was a little earlier tonight, but we still haven't heard from Trudeau or Jagmeet Singh.
04:39:00.020But 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.
04:39:13.780So any final thoughts for this evening?
04:39:16.340What are you thinking of as you wrap this up tonight?
04:40:09.140but I do think that's going to be the thing to watch
04:40:11.540is how much more are the NDP and bloc going to be able to play hardball to get something out of
04:40:18.040this liberal minority? And I wouldn't be surprised. And again, I'm not making a prediction,
04:40:22.380but I wouldn't be surprised if Justin Trudeau is not the prime minister for the entirety
04:40:27.280of the next session of parliament. I could see him still having to step aside, but whether that
04:40:33.400happens in a month or whether it happens in a year and a half still stands to be seen.
04:40:37.960Interesting. 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?
04:41:01.680well simply put the NDP or block will depend it will depend how the numbers shake out but they
04:41:07.860will have to support them and and they could very easily say yeah we'll back a liberal government
04:41:11.880but not with Justin Trudeau at the helm of it and and he does have baggage he we talked earlier
04:41:17.320about yet another blackface photo uh the popularity that he had the personal popularity in 2015 and
04:41:24.1602019 wasn't there this election and I know a lot of our audience not fans of Trudeau I'm not trying
04:41:30.040to give you false hope here. I'm not making any guarantee, but I could see the liberal leadership
04:41:34.680becoming a very big question that the liberal party has to contend with. Certainly in the
04:41:39.540campaign, when Justin Trudeau is asked, he can't say anything but I'm here for the long haul. But
04:41:44.540remember, that was also what Andrew Scheer said two years ago, and in a matter of weeks, he was
04:41:48.580gone. I just think that the liberals have become such a cult of personality, and it's so Trudeau
04:41:54.820I mean, think about, Andrew, what the Liberal Party looked like before Trudeau came in.
04:42:00.440I mean, Michael Ignatieff as leader absolutely decimated, like not even the opposition party in 2011.
04:42:07.000It was so embarrassing for the liberals that they're almost becoming obscure.
04:42:10.860Like 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.
04:42:20.020it it is hard for me to imagine um trudeau having the humility uh to to be that self-aware it seems
04:42:27.160like he's the kind of guy that wants to stick around and and prove that he could be just as
04:42:32.140you know influential and powerful as his father was yeah it'll be screaming if he goes out
04:42:38.040yeah no it's it's an interesting uh potential situation there but uh yeah well uh well i guess
04:42:48.680It should be interesting just to see how the media reacts to this and how they interpret it all.
04:42:53.560Because basically, based on what Trudeau wanted, he's lost.
04:42:57.440I mean, there's no winners tonight, right?
04:42:59.020It's like Trudeau is still the prime minister, but he didn't really win.
04:43:02.020And O'Toole didn't win because he's pretty much worse off than he was before.
04:43:05.900And 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,
04:43:15.680Doesn't really feel like there's a lot of winners out there tonight.
0.95
04:43:20.100Nope, but every party tends to try to find a way to spin its malaise-inducing performance as a win.
04:43:27.560So 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
04:43:34.820Well, thank you so much to viewers out there for tuning in.
04:43:37.920I think we're in hour five now of this broadcast, almost five hours.
04:43:41.520It's one o'clock here in the Eastern Time Zone.
04:43:44.460So 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.
04:44:13.540and also a lot of trolling going on over there i'll just uh mention that sometimes the comments
04:44:17.780are like wait what uh yeah you're just doing that to get a rise out of us but anyway amusing all the
04:44:22.500same so uh we've really appreciated the uh people tuning in the format's been fun i know we had some
04:44:28.260audio issues with our previous broadcast and i think uh tonight was a lot better the way that
04:44:32.740we did it so i'm gonna give a quick shout out to our entire uh production uh team back there
04:44:38.180i won't name everyone by name but um just a quick shout out to to phil who's sort of our
04:44:43.140um head uh quarterback uh behind the scenes doing a lot of work and putting this all together so
04:44:48.740thank you phil thank you to the others who i won't name but you know who you are and uh it's been
04:44:54.660really fun to come to you live great uh to provide an alternative to the legacy media we don't have
04:44:59.220the budget that they do but i think we did a pretty decent job uh putting something together
04:45:03.060on a shoestring here so thank you uh to everyone watching the everyone who's made a contribution
04:45:07.780and who supports true north we really really appreciate we wouldn't be here uh without you
04:45:12.100and we'll be back again tomorrow every day day in and day out you can find news and opinion
04:45:17.860over at tnc.news subscribe to our youtube channel like our facebook page get our notifications sign
04:45:24.180up for our email list there's lots of ways that you can consume and enjoy true north so we really
04:45:28.660appreciate everyone out there who's on team true north uh andrew lawton thank you so much for uh
04:45:34.020joining us have been great throughout the entire campaign and a great co-host tonight
04:45:38.420and i'm candace malcolm and thank you so much everyone for joining us we're gonna
04:45:42.820end it here and we'll be back again with more more analysis and opinion tomorrow okay goodnight guys