Juno News - True North Report： Canadians are over Trudeau. Are you？

00:00:00.720 Good afternoon, Canada. Welcome to another True North Report. My name is Andrew Lotton, a fellow with True North, here to unpack the latest and greatest political news hitting the country since, well, yesterday.

00:00:13.520 Things are happening at a pretty quick pace. We'll talk about as much of this as we can in the next little while here.

00:00:19.120 I have to apologize in advance. So I used to host, as many of you know, a daily radio show.

00:00:24.380 And every now and then, the nature of being in radio is that you lose your voice. And when the job is pretty much to use your voice, this can be particularly damning.

00:00:33.640 Now, I don't host a daily show now, but for whatever reason, I've caught a little bit of a bug. I was traveling over the weekend and into this week as well.

00:00:42.660 So that may be where someone I met along the way in, like, one of the 27 airplanes I've been on in the last week has given me something.

00:00:50.540 But I've got, like, a very throaty cough. So I'm just apologizing in advance.

00:00:56.380 If I start, like, hacking up a storm and I start, you know, sounding more incoherent than Justin Trudeau trying to answer a question about SNC-Lavalin, that's why.

00:01:05.260 Actually, you know what? No matter how harsh my cough is, I'm pretty sure I couldn't sound that incoherent.

00:01:09.680 But if I, like, keel over to the ground and the screen goes blank and an alarm siren comes across your phone, that's why I'll pick myself up and it'll all be okay.

00:01:18.980 But for those of you who can make it through, I do thank you very, very much for your time today.

00:01:24.800 If you're just tuning in, Andrew Lawton here, fellow with True North.

00:01:29.060 And we've got some political news taking place at the federal level that I want to try to weave together because we've got a number of different stories here that I think are all part of the same overarching trend.

00:01:43.100 And truth be told, this is about Justin Trudeau and how much support or how little support he's commanding among Canadians headed into this year's election.

00:01:54.340 And I've said time and time again, when you are in election year, you have to really acknowledge that everything is an election issue.

00:02:01.980 We are at February 26th now, the election is less than eight months away, which means that anything that happens in Canadian politics can impact the perceptions and perspectives that Canadians have about the polls and about how they're going to vote.

00:02:18.400 So we've got a few things I want to cover here.

00:02:20.440 Number one is the trio of by-elections we had yesterday and the results that aren't particularly surprising but are still interesting.

00:02:28.140 So we'll talk about those. We've got Justin Trudeau finally, I say finally because we've been pushing for it for a couple of weeks now, agreeing to waive solicitor-client privilege in the SNC-Lavalin case.

00:02:40.920 And this is going to come to what is hopefully going to be a bit of a climax in this whole ordeal in Jody Wills and Raybould testifying tomorrow before the Justice Committee.

00:02:50.580 So we'll talk about that.

00:02:51.720 And then we also have the media coverage about the Yellow Vest protest and United We Roll convoy and the way that this is giving us a fairly good measure of what the Liberals, and I mean the Liberal media's, perspective and narrative is going to be headed into the election.

00:03:13.140 So that's what I'm going to be talking about today.

00:03:15.340 We're going to keep tabs.

00:03:16.640 I've got a few notifications that I'm waiting on just in case things are happening.

00:03:20.600 So if you see me looking down at my phone, I'm just playing Angry Birds.

00:03:23.660 No, I'm not playing Angry Birds.

00:03:24.780 I am doing, you know, important news.

00:03:26.960 And if something happens that is not related, I will try to bring my attention back to this.

00:03:32.120 But let's talk about the by-elections first because no real surprise here.

00:03:35.540 You can get the results.

00:03:36.820 But if you are not someone who enjoys reading the pages of Elections Canada's website, I don't blame you.

00:03:43.480 In York, Simcoe, which was a Conservative-held riding for years with Peter Van Loon resigning as MP, went Conservative.

00:03:51.560 Not even close.

00:03:53.180 Scott Davidson won with 53.9% of the vote.

00:03:58.040 Now, in a by-election that's not too many votes, that's 8,929.

00:04:01.660 Frankly, when I ran in the provincial election in Ontario, I wish that 8,929 votes gave you a win because I had 17,000.

00:04:11.080 So I still lost.

00:04:12.800 But, you know, I had double the votes Scott Davidson had.

00:04:15.060 So that's all percentages can kill you sometimes.

00:04:18.520 In Outre-Mont, which was Thomas Mulcair's riding, we'll give you the results in a moment.

00:04:23.780 And in Burnaby South, which was the riding that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was running in, Singh won, also with 8,800 votes.

00:04:33.860 But that only, in this riding, amounted to about 39% of the votes.

00:04:37.880 So still significantly above his competitors and still very much decisive.

00:04:43.900 But, and here's the big but that comes about in this story, it is going to cause more problems for the NDP down the road.

00:04:51.600 But Outre-Mont is really interesting one because this was the only case where we saw a riding swing.

00:04:57.180 It has been a long time NDP riding for Thomas Mulcair.

00:05:00.480 With Thomas Mulcair's departure, the Liberals picked it up, again, by a very decisive margin.

00:05:05.800 And that was about 40.4% of the vote for Rachel Bendayan or Bendayan. 0.91

00:05:12.780 So this is where we've got three ridings.

00:05:15.640 Two of them stay the same.

00:05:16.960 One of them switches from NDP to Liberal.

00:05:18.900 I wouldn't be jumping up and down cheering, if I'm the Liberals, though, on this, for two main reasons.

00:05:25.400 The first is that, well, quite frankly, by-elections don't matter.

00:05:30.040 And I don't mean that they aren't important in the makeup of the House of Commons.

00:05:34.500 But by-elections don't matter in the sense of having any broader narrative that we can extract because they are so odd.

00:05:42.980 By-elections have very weird things that happen in them.

00:05:47.880 And this is because you have very low voter turnout in them.

00:05:51.580 The fact, and Connie mentions this in the chat, I was joking about, you know, the number of votes for a win.

00:05:56.400 In by-elections, you're lucky to crack like 28, 29% of the vote a lot of the time.

00:06:00.540 Whereas in the bigger elections, sometimes you can get up to 50% of the vote.

00:06:06.260 So such a significant swing there.

00:06:09.120 And I think that this is because a lot of people can barely summon the necessary strength to vote in a normal election.

00:06:16.280 Any election that happens between that is like, I can't be bothered.

00:06:19.260 So that being said, I want to crunch some of these numbers here.

00:06:23.040 Because even if, even if we can't extrapolate a broader narrative from this, we still can look at some of the stories that come about within it.

00:06:32.780 And one of the big ones here, or actually small ones, I think, is the People's Party of Canada.

00:06:40.440 Now, I've been not a fan of the party itself.

00:06:44.080 Because like anything, I like to take these situations on a case-by-case basis.

00:06:48.240 But I've been a long-time fan of Maxime Bernier.

00:06:51.880 I think he has the necessary free market bona fides that Canada requires.

00:06:56.000 I also think that he himself has been a straight shooter on a lot of issues.

00:06:59.900 If you want to see what I think about the issues themselves, he and I talk about them in a 30-minute long interview he and I did a few months ago in Toronto.

00:07:08.880 So I would encourage you to look at that interview.

00:07:11.840 And we're really, he answers in not politician-speak very clearly what he thinks.

00:07:16.960 That being said, he is being cast as a renegade.

00:07:20.960 He's trying to split the conservative vote.

00:07:23.020 He's unabashedly anti-Shear, almost as much, if not the same, as he is anti-Trudeau.

00:07:29.620 Maybe even more, because there's a bit of a personal issue here.

00:07:32.260 But the thing is, he goes and attracts this opposition to conservatives.

00:07:41.620 And what we see here is a really, really poor showing in two of the three by-elections.

00:07:47.140 I'm going to give you some numbers here.

00:07:48.900 In the Burnaby, or sorry, I'll do Burnaby South, because that's the interesting one.

00:07:52.700 But in Outremont, he got 322 votes for his candidate, James Seal.

00:07:58.860 Now, to put that into context here, I'm looking at the Liberal getting 6,000 votes, the Bloc Québécois getting 1,600, the Green Party getting 1,800, and the conservatives getting 1,000.

00:08:12.820 So the Greens beat the conservatives in Outremont, and the conservatives, with their 7% of the vote, had more than three times as many votes as the People's Party did.

00:08:23.600 So the PPC got 322 votes, which is paltry.

00:08:29.200 I mean, independent candidates will get that few typically, sometimes even more.

00:08:33.100 In York Simcoe, the People's Party of Canada actually did get fewer votes than one of those independent-esque candidates.

00:08:44.240 The PPC candidate in York Simcoe got 314 votes.

00:08:49.880 The Green Party got 451.

00:08:52.260 The Progressive Canadian Party, which was like a lot, this is like a party that was built in the ashes of the Reform PC merger,

00:08:59.440 where a bunch of old disgruntled PCers didn't like the idea of them merging.

00:09:04.640 That party got 634 votes.

00:09:07.040 So there are more PC Party voters than there were PPC voters.

00:09:12.620 So this is in two of the three ridings.

00:09:15.040 But let's look at riding number three, because this is a fascinating one.

00:09:19.800 In Burnaby South, where there was no Green Party, you had 2,420 votes for Laura Lynn Thompson,

00:09:30.360 who was the very outspoken People's Party of Canada candidate.

00:09:33.380 That's 10.6% of the vote.

00:09:35.880 Now, 10.6% is far and above what the Green Party typically gets.

00:09:40.200 10.6% is majorly, majorly significant, not because it's going to give you a victory,

00:09:50.060 but because it will very much upset the balance of power.

00:09:55.420 Now, in this particular case, let's say that all of those 2,420 votes would have gone to the Conservatives,

00:10:02.940 which is not necessarily true, but it is a group that spun off the Conservatives.

00:10:06.400 But that would put Jay Shin at about, I'm just doing quick math in my head here, 7,500 votes.

00:10:13.720 Now, that still wouldn't have given him the victory, because the winner, Jagmeet Singh, had 8,800.

00:10:18.800 But if you take 10% of the vote, a lot of the times elections are decided on far less than that.

00:10:26.180 And elections are, especially in the greater Toronto area, in some key ridings in Quebec,

00:10:31.060 these things are decided with 2,000, 3,000 votes.

00:10:34.040 So, 10% could very much be the determining factor in who wins.

00:10:39.460 And I don't know, I mean, obviously, Maxine Bernier says he wants to be Prime Minister.

00:10:44.620 But for Bernier, a victory is blocking Scheer.

00:10:49.140 And if he can keep 10% of the vote in a few key ridings, doesn't need to be all of them,

00:10:54.900 that could be a game-changer. 1.00

00:10:56.740 Corey writes, LOL, Berncoat, you suck, Andrew. 0.99

00:11:00.880 Andrew, well, thank you, Angry Max split the vote in Burnaby to let the NDP win. 0.99

00:11:05.040 If that happens again federally, Trudeau gets in again. 0.84

00:11:07.800 Well, I don't know why I suck in this particular context.

00:11:11.260 I've said I've been a fan of Bernier on policy.

00:11:13.620 And frankly, any true conservative should be a fan of his on policy.

00:11:17.680 On strategy, on tactics, that is an entirely different story.

00:11:21.640 I've said quite candidly in the past and in this show and in my interview with Bernier

00:11:26.260 that I don't like the idea of the vote split.

00:11:28.920 I'm talking about these issues right now as an analyst, not as an endorser.

00:11:34.340 And in fact, I actually was asked individually, not through True North,

00:11:38.180 to endorse a conservative nomination candidate.

00:11:41.100 And I was happy to because I know that individual candidate is going to be a great representative

00:11:45.440 and a great conservative candidate should he be selected at the nomination.

00:11:50.120 So I'm not at all on the Bernier train, but I'm also not going to cast off

00:11:56.780 what is a significant player in Canadian conservative politics. 0.84

00:12:01.220 So if that means I suck, well, tough luck.

00:12:03.500 But I think that we need someone who's going to do this not from a place of anger 0.94

00:12:09.600 and not from a place of pettiness, but actually just look at the facts.

00:12:13.320 And the facts are we right now have a battle about math in the comments here.

00:12:17.620 Right now, just to remind, because Ron agreed with me on the numbers

00:12:22.580 and Corey is disputing the numbers.

00:12:24.900 The NDP would not have won no matter what in this riding

00:12:28.560 if every single PPC vote went to the Conservatives.

00:12:32.060 It wouldn't have, or sorry, the NDP wouldn't have lost

00:12:34.000 if every PPC vote went to the Conservatives.

00:12:36.700 But theoretically, in other elections that we have moving forward,

00:12:40.840 those numbers could have been game changers.

00:12:44.840 And that is the issue here, that those numbers could be game changers.

00:12:49.800 Dale writes, Scheer is staring defeat in the face and it will be his fault.

00:12:53.900 So let's talk about this here, because Andrew Scheer has been very quiet

00:12:58.500 on a lot of key issues for a while.

00:13:00.560 And there are two reasons for that.

00:13:02.040 Number one, you don't want to put yourself, when you're in the opposition,

00:13:05.440 out and say, this is what I think X, Y, Z, because you're going to get attacked.

00:13:09.680 That's one element of political strategy here.

00:13:13.600 Which is why I had a lot of respect for Andrew Scheer and Maxine Bernier,

00:13:17.660 for that matter, speaking at the United We Roll rally in Ottawa last week.

00:13:23.640 Because we've needed a leader of a Conservative, and I use a small c there,

00:13:29.020 of a Conservative party to step up and say to these Canadians,

00:13:32.800 yeah, we've got your back.

00:13:34.320 You're not fringe, you're not what the Liberals call you,

00:13:36.900 you're not what Ikra Khalid, did you see Ikra Khalid's tweet to the protesters? 0.94

00:13:41.500 She called them unabashedly just racist bigots.

00:13:44.820 And you may remember I had a video out last week exposing the CBC's narrative, 0.95

00:13:48.920 that this was a white supremacist rally.

00:13:50.840 That's all CBC seems to think here, that anyone who was in the Alberta convoy,

00:13:56.000 anyone that rallied on Parliament Hill, anyone that's standing up against a carbon tax, 0.99

00:14:00.220 that they're all just big, dirty, racist bigots. 0.99

00:14:02.560 And it's so disgusting that this attitude doesn't just exist in the fringe corners of Twitter, 1.00

00:14:09.200 but actual mainstream media coverage, 0.86

00:14:12.860 and elected officials are casting aside Canadians as just being all of the blankophobes,

00:14:19.000 and insert marginalized group of phobes here. 1.00

00:14:21.460 And the left in its entirety seems to be eating this up.

00:14:25.440 And I was glad that Andrew Scheer didn't kowtow.

00:14:27.660 So what happened was, Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier both went to the rally.

00:14:32.340 There were hundreds of people there,

00:14:34.340 which in a cold day in Ottawa is not a bad thing at all.

00:14:37.480 You had, more impressively, hundreds of trucks drive from Alberta to Ontario,

00:14:41.740 and some picked up along the way from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and whatnot.

00:14:46.600 And then they had this big, you know, confab in front of Parliament.

00:14:49.800 And Andrew Scheer was called on by the media to basically disavow it,

00:14:56.320 to say, like, you know, are you against or for the Yellow Vest protest?

00:15:01.180 And this is what he said outside the House of Commons yesterday.

00:15:04.680 And I'm quoting here from a Canadian press report.

00:15:07.100 The events of last week were organized by people who have lost their jobs,

00:15:10.960 who are facing tremendous anxiety about what the future will bring.

00:15:14.460 I know the Liberals would love to distract from their own failures

00:15:17.520 by pointing to other elements that tried to associate themselves with the event.

00:15:21.560 But my message was very clear.

00:15:24.080 I was there to support energy workers,

00:15:26.080 those who support our natural resource sector,

00:15:28.500 and promising hope for the future come October,

00:15:31.040 when a Conservative government would stand for our energy sector

00:15:35.240 and champion Canada's oil and gas across the world.

00:15:40.000 Now, this is a great line in the Toronto Star, by the way.

00:15:43.240 The protesters' trucks snarled traffic in downtown Ottawa.

00:15:48.020 You know, I don't see the Toronto Star blasting the traffic holdups

00:15:53.040 of, you know, of Idle No More protesters,

00:15:56.460 of anti-pipeline protesters.

00:15:58.160 But no, no, no.

00:15:58.700 When a bunch of pro-oil people go in,

00:16:00.640 and the story is about the political message,

00:16:02.640 it's how they snarled traffic in Ottawa.

00:16:05.240 Which, let me tell you, if you've lived in Ottawa at all,

00:16:07.540 you know that traffic has already snarled there

00:16:09.440 without the tractor-trailers.

00:16:11.160 So I don't think they added too much more

00:16:13.500 than was already the problem.

00:16:15.620 But again, the media coverage has been very much focused

00:16:19.000 on making this to be about racism.

00:16:22.480 They'll find the one or two people

00:16:24.000 that are not representative of the majority

00:16:26.400 and say, these people define the masses,

00:16:29.460 these people define the group.

00:16:31.180 And the fact is, with a grassroots movement,

00:16:33.940 anyone can be a part of it.

00:16:35.760 Anyone can join.

00:16:36.920 We don't vet people who go to rallies because you can't.

00:16:40.420 They're outdoor, they're a public event.

00:16:42.120 Anyone can go to Canadian Tire and buy a yellow vest.

00:16:44.620 Anyone can put it on.

00:16:45.900 And if one of them turns out to be a racist,

00:16:48.100 that does not mean that everyone who wears a yellow vest is racist.

00:16:51.600 You know, it's like when I took philosophy in school,

00:16:55.100 there was that syllogism, I think syllogism is the word.

00:16:58.440 I haven't taken philosophy in a while.

00:17:00.200 I think it was, yeah, syllogism that, you know,

00:17:02.420 you'd use where, you know, all balloons are red.

00:17:08.160 You know, this is a balloon, therefore this is red

00:17:10.380 or something like that.

00:17:11.440 And the one that they do to demonstrate logical fallacies

00:17:14.400 was Hitler is a vegetarian, John is a vegetarian,

00:17:18.340 and therefore John is Hitler. 0.53

00:17:20.460 And it doesn't work like that.

00:17:21.980 But the media will take the one person wearing a yellow vest

00:17:24.820 and either take them out of context

00:17:26.940 or find someone who genuinely may have reprehensible

00:17:29.820 or at the very least incoherent views.

00:17:34.300 And they will then hold that person up

00:17:36.820 as the poster boy for this entire movement.

00:17:40.420 And when you look at the thousands and thousands

00:17:42.520 and thousands of people who donated money,

00:17:45.000 supported United We Roll on social media, 0.98

00:17:47.140 these are not racist, white supremacist bigots.

00:17:50.060 No, they're people that genuinely want someone 0.99

00:17:52.560 to get Justin Trudeau's job-killing policies

00:17:56.380 out of government in Canada.

00:17:58.560 And I think for the most part,

00:18:00.600 Conservatives in Canada are going to unite

00:18:02.740 behind Andrew Scheer and the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:18:06.180 We saw lackluster by-election results in two ridings,

00:18:10.840 which have never been Conservative ridings.

00:18:13.080 Oudermont and Burnaby South have always been NDP

00:18:15.340 or Liberal ridings.

00:18:17.220 In this case, one went NDP, one went Liberal.

00:18:20.440 York Simcoe, though, we saw that the PPC message

00:18:24.620 is not really in Conservative ridings

00:18:27.180 peeling away strong support.

00:18:29.280 But I do think the Burnaby South example

00:18:31.840 is an interesting one.

00:18:33.880 Because when that candidate, Laura Lynn Thompson, 0.99

00:18:39.300 who I've never met, but she seems like a very spunky person,

00:18:42.360 got over 10% of the vote there, it's no surprise

00:18:45.980 that this is also the candidate who was making big waves

00:18:48.440 on social media.

00:18:49.720 She had a little bit of profile going into it. 0.96

00:18:52.540 She's been a TV personality.

00:18:54.220 She's written.

00:18:55.240 She worked very hard.

00:18:57.020 She had incredible debate performance. 1.00

00:19:00.040 I was watching Laura Lynn Thompson's clips

00:19:02.060 in the Burnaby South debates.

00:19:05.460 And my goodness, the woman did very well. 1.00

00:19:07.680 And the media tried to attack her.

00:19:09.160 They tried to slander her. 0.91

00:19:10.220 They tried to slam her. 1.00

00:19:11.580 And she stood her ground and said,

00:19:12.840 no, this is what I'm about.

00:19:13.940 I'm about these values.

00:19:15.320 This is what the PPC is about.

00:19:16.680 This is what Maxine Bernier is about.

00:19:18.560 And obviously, it didn't work.

00:19:19.920 She capped out at 10.6% of the vote.

00:19:23.240 But like I said, that 10.6%, if it came from Conservatives,

00:19:27.960 and I don't know if it did,

00:19:29.260 but if it came from Conservatives,

00:19:30.600 that 10.6%, if applied to other ridings,

00:19:33.760 could be the difference between Trudeau getting in

00:19:35.880 or Andrew Scheer getting in.

00:19:38.800 And the NDP factor is interesting here

00:19:41.240 because Jagmeet Singh is not a popular NDP leader.

00:19:45.100 And I think that may have been part of the reason

00:19:47.020 that the NDP had such a terrible showing in Outramont,

00:19:50.680 the riding once held by Thomas Mulcair.

00:19:53.180 And I say once.

00:19:53.860 I mean, not that long ago.

00:19:56.520 So now that the NDP has a leader,

00:19:59.480 people are going to start seeing a lot more of Singh.

00:20:02.000 We're going to see him in question period.

00:20:03.760 And I think we're going to see

00:20:05.320 that he's not at all how exciting

00:20:07.700 the media has tried to make him out to be

00:20:10.740 and how exciting the NDP thinks he should be.

00:20:13.200 And my goodness, there is a lot of buyer's remorse.

00:20:20.140 There's a lot of buyer's remorse about Jagmeet Singh.

00:20:23.960 And had he lost the by-election,

00:20:26.280 there would have been a much bigger ability

00:20:28.760 for the NDP to get rid of him

00:20:30.420 and put someone else new in.

00:20:32.000 And I don't think that's going to happen now.

00:20:33.380 So the NDP is stuck with Jagmeet Singh for the most part.

00:20:36.560 I don't think he's going anywhere.

00:20:38.200 But what I do think is that there are a lot of people

00:20:40.220 in that party that don't want him there.

00:20:42.240 And we've seen a couple of them,

00:20:43.980 specifically from the Quebec caucus,

00:20:46.180 get out of it and say,

00:20:48.540 you know, I don't think I'm going to run.

00:20:50.380 And I don't think I'm going to run again.

00:20:52.920 So that's going to be, I think, an interesting thing here.

00:20:56.400 Someone is asking in the chat,

00:20:58.860 one word, couches.

00:21:00.400 I don't understand why we're talking about couches,

00:21:02.620 but if someone wants to put a giant couch

00:21:05.280 in front of Parliament Hill,

00:21:06.220 then have fun at it.

00:21:08.260 But I will point out that Jagmeet Singh being bad

00:21:12.460 may be great for the memes.

00:21:14.140 It may be funny.

00:21:15.520 It may be great when he implodes,

00:21:17.560 just to watch with a level of giddiness or schadenfreude.

00:21:20.540 But it's going to be very difficult for Conservatives

00:21:22.940 because a dissatisfied NDPer

00:21:25.900 is more likely to go to a fringe party

00:21:28.440 or go to the Liberals

00:21:29.740 than they are to go to the Conservatives.

00:21:32.960 And it's not to say people won't jump

00:21:34.440 from the NDP to Conservatives.

00:21:36.360 You know, if the Conservatives are putting

00:21:37.640 a moderate alternative to Trudeau

00:21:39.480 and NDP voters are just,

00:21:42.020 they're not all socialists.

00:21:43.620 I mean, people tend to forget

00:21:44.840 that a lot of them are just regular old blue-collar people

00:21:47.740 that think the NDP is offering solutions.

00:21:49.860 That's why we saw the NDP do so well in Ontario in June.

00:21:54.000 But it's less likely for an NDP voter to jump blue

00:21:57.620 than it is for them to jump red.

00:22:00.380 So if you have a really radical NDP leader,

00:22:03.720 which I think most people believe Singh is,

00:22:06.480 that will be dangerous for the right.

00:22:10.480 It will be.

00:22:11.320 And especially if you put in a Bernier factor,

00:22:13.500 which is someone peeling votes away from the right.

00:22:15.600 Like I said, in these three by-elections,

00:22:17.720 the People's Party of Canada was not enough of a factor

00:22:20.900 to block any Conservative win,

00:22:23.000 but it could be in other ridings.

00:22:25.660 And we've got to talk about those possibilities here.

00:22:28.220 Now, Dale writes,

00:22:29.500 the Conservative parties need to merge.

00:22:31.040 I like Bernier's policies way better,

00:22:32.720 but we need to win.

00:22:33.900 There's a lot of that going around.

00:22:35.580 You are not alone in that, Dale.

00:22:37.060 And I think that that frustration is understood

00:22:39.440 by a lot of people on the right.

00:22:42.280 And what else do we have here?

00:22:43.400 Michelle saying,

00:22:44.700 if NDP Feds get in power, 0.99

00:22:46.220 there goes millions from the India crap 1.00

00:22:50.600 the turd got us in. 0.99

00:22:53.120 I feel like I'm reading a haiku here.

00:22:55.080 Thankfully, I don't believe the federal NDP

00:22:56.820 is headed towards victory.

00:22:58.540 I don't even see a way they get official opposition.

00:23:02.140 Anything can happen,

00:23:03.220 but I would put a fair bit down on that

00:23:06.220 to say that the NDP,

00:23:07.000 in its current situation,

00:23:08.940 is not going to be headed towards

00:23:11.240 a victory anytime soon.

00:23:13.280 What else do we have here?

00:23:15.920 Alex writes,

00:23:17.580 we need Trump 2.0.

00:23:19.820 Well, I don't think that Trump

00:23:21.980 should be the benchmark

00:23:23.140 for a Canadian politician,

00:23:25.720 but I do think that someone,

00:23:28.000 I do think there is a desire

00:23:29.420 for someone who's going to not kowtow

00:23:31.800 to political correctness.

00:23:34.380 And obviously,

00:23:35.200 if you want to find who the Trump-like figure is,

00:23:38.400 if there is a Trump-like figure

00:23:39.840 in Canadian politics,

00:23:41.080 it's going to be Maxime Bernier.

00:23:43.240 But I don't think the comparison

00:23:45.120 is really all that accurate.

00:23:47.420 And to be fair,

00:23:48.140 I don't think that Trump is good

00:23:50.180 because he's Trump.

00:23:51.520 I think that Trump fits the mold

00:23:53.820 of something that politics needed

00:23:55.560 in the United States,

00:23:56.620 which is first off,

00:23:57.680 someone who's not Hillary Clinton. 0.98

00:23:59.920 Secondly, really,

00:24:01.280 someone who's not like Hillary Clinton.

00:24:02.980 And thirdly,

00:24:03.660 someone who's not like everyone

00:24:04.940 that Hillary Clinton is like.

00:24:06.460 And that was a lot

00:24:07.360 of the Republican field

00:24:08.640 of presidential candidates.

00:24:10.560 So I think that

00:24:11.440 if that frustration

00:24:12.720 carries over to Canada,

00:24:14.240 it's not going to be

00:24:15.500 in the same numbers.

00:24:16.960 It's not going to be

00:24:18.080 in the sense that

00:24:18.880 50% of the country

00:24:20.140 is ready to say,

00:24:22.120 to heck with the establishment.

00:24:23.720 The sad reality is

00:24:25.060 that a lot of Canadians

00:24:25.960 are fairly comfortable

00:24:27.380 with the establishment.

00:24:28.840 And that's something

00:24:30.140 that we see.

00:24:31.000 And there's a lot

00:24:31.460 of frustration in it,

00:24:32.400 but it's something

00:24:32.820 we see time and time again.

00:24:34.720 Canadians are not as...

00:24:37.500 And by the way,

00:24:37.940 I'm not talking about

00:24:38.440 you individually.

00:24:39.680 I'm just saying,

00:24:40.640 when we look at

00:24:41.120 the grand scheme of things,

00:24:42.480 Canadians are fairly comfortable

00:24:44.580 with people

00:24:45.720 that fit that mold.

00:24:46.780 Even if a small number aren't,

00:24:48.440 the majority tends to be.

00:24:50.200 And that may well

00:24:51.100 be very frustrating.

00:24:52.200 And that may well change

00:24:53.320 in five, ten years.

00:24:54.300 But I don't think

00:24:54.900 it's going to change

00:24:55.620 in the eight months

00:24:56.660 between now

00:24:57.440 and the federal election.

00:24:59.480 So Bernier is the closest

00:25:00.880 thing Canada has

00:25:01.820 to a Trump-like figure

00:25:02.880 because he's a disruptor.

00:25:04.460 He's launched a new party.

00:25:06.040 It's not out of the realm

00:25:07.200 of precedent in Canada

00:25:08.720 because Reform Party leader

00:25:10.680 Preston Manning did that.

00:25:13.400 And he had success.

00:25:14.760 But remember,

00:25:15.440 Preston Manning did not have success

00:25:17.060 in becoming Prime Minister of Canada.

00:25:19.360 Preston Manning had success

00:25:20.960 in moving the goalposts

00:25:22.960 of the Progressive Conservative Party

00:25:24.680 of Canada

00:25:25.220 to become

00:25:26.240 the Conservative Party

00:25:27.200 of Canada.

00:25:28.280 And people need to remember

00:25:29.520 it took 20 years

00:25:31.560 for that process

00:25:33.360 to complete itself.

00:25:35.160 I guess 18 years.

00:25:36.340 It took 18 years

00:25:37.700 for the reform

00:25:38.480 to become the CPC

00:25:40.860 with the alliance

00:25:41.840 along the way.

00:25:43.680 And this is very important

00:25:45.180 because in that time

00:25:46.140 we didn't have

00:25:46.820 the conservative leadership

00:25:48.040 with a small c

00:25:48.960 that Preston Manning sought.

00:25:50.880 We had machinations

00:25:51.980 that were moving the party

00:25:53.380 to that point.

00:25:54.700 And if this is

00:25:56.040 what Canadians desire

00:25:57.260 and if this is

00:25:58.260 what the People's Party

00:25:59.080 of Canada

00:25:59.560 is moving us towards

00:26:00.880 that is not going

00:26:02.220 to be an eight-month process.

00:26:03.520 I don't even think

00:26:04.560 it's going to be

00:26:04.920 an eight-year-long process.

00:26:07.220 And right now

00:26:07.900 I haven't yet seen

00:26:09.480 evidence

00:26:10.580 that Maxime Bernier

00:26:11.620 has succeeded

00:26:12.340 in creating

00:26:13.100 what Preston Manning created.

00:26:15.440 It's still early.

00:26:16.960 Bernier has proven himself

00:26:18.100 to be a powerful force

00:26:19.260 in fundraising.

00:26:20.560 Clearly he can mobilize.

00:26:22.020 I mean the party

00:26:22.520 has 338 riding associations

00:26:24.560 across Canada.

00:26:25.600 That will make it eligible

00:26:27.400 to be in the leader debates

00:26:29.880 which is going to be fascinating.

00:26:31.660 So Maxime Bernier

00:26:32.520 and actually under the new rules

00:26:33.920 True North Centre

00:26:34.900 had an article about this

00:26:36.280 just yesterday I believe.

00:26:38.100 Under the new rules

00:26:38.960 debates are going to be organized

00:26:40.300 by a government bureaucracy

00:26:42.240 led by David Johnston

00:26:43.980 the former governor general.

00:26:45.700 But here's the thing

00:26:46.860 the criteria they lay out

00:26:48.260 for who's eligible

00:26:49.140 seems to exclude

00:26:50.980 the Gloc Québécois

00:26:52.340 but include

00:26:53.580 the People's Party of Canada.

00:26:55.820 Because there are

00:26:56.400 three criteria parties

00:26:57.480 must meet.

00:26:58.360 One of them is fielding candidates

00:26:59.840 in more than 90%

00:27:01.060 of the ridings

00:27:02.180 in the country

00:27:03.120 which Bernier will do

00:27:04.160 because he's got

00:27:05.500 riding associations.

00:27:06.760 One of them is having

00:27:07.580 at least one MP

00:27:08.660 in Parliament

00:27:09.200 which Bernier is.

00:27:11.260 Bernier is a PPC MP.

00:27:13.180 So is the Green Party.

00:27:14.040 And the third category

00:27:16.120 is to have

00:27:16.960 a conceivable chance

00:27:18.440 of forming government

00:27:19.280 based on polls

00:27:20.860 and past precedent.

00:27:22.560 So by those measures

00:27:24.100 two of the three

00:27:25.520 is all you need.

00:27:26.260 That would suit

00:27:26.940 the Green Party.

00:27:27.800 That would suit the PPC.

00:27:29.420 Would not suit the BQ.

00:27:32.240 They can't form government

00:27:33.220 when they only field candidates

00:27:34.320 in Quebec

00:27:34.720 and they don't have 90%.

00:27:37.360 So 90% of ridings

00:27:39.900 in the country.

00:27:40.520 So it's just not possible.

00:27:42.380 So I'm going to look

00:27:43.960 to see some other comments

00:27:45.140 we have here.

00:27:46.480 A lot of people

00:27:47.520 arguing about

00:27:48.800 what they think

00:27:50.940 of Andrew Scheer.

00:27:52.820 And I will say

00:27:53.640 I know Andrew Scheer

00:27:54.580 not as a friend

00:27:55.480 but I've met him

00:27:56.300 a number of times

00:27:57.440 and I think he's a very decent guy

00:27:58.880 on a personal level.

00:28:00.080 I think he is a solid conservative.

00:28:02.100 I also think

00:28:02.960 that he's cut from that cloth

00:28:04.400 of all the politicians

00:28:05.600 that have come before him

00:28:06.660 and that he wants

00:28:07.720 to be likable.

00:28:08.500 He wants to appeal

00:28:09.560 not to the fire-breathing conservatives

00:28:11.340 but appeal to

00:28:12.880 the middle-of-the-road

00:28:14.000 Marcus and Fiona families

00:28:17.280 or Stephen Heather families.

00:28:19.020 If you've read

00:28:19.700 Tom Flanagan's book

00:28:20.820 you'll get the reference

00:28:21.580 of just those average

00:28:23.360 ordinary people

00:28:24.200 that aren't particularly partisan.

00:28:26.640 And I mean

00:28:27.220 that's the winning strategy

00:28:28.220 for Stephen Harper.

00:28:29.780 In many respects

00:28:30.780 it's the winning strategy

00:28:31.600 for Justin Trudeau.

00:28:33.020 It may well work

00:28:34.400 if he's the guy

00:28:35.160 that can sell the message

00:28:36.200 but he's not a fire-breather.

00:28:39.120 And to be fair

00:28:39.560 he's never pretended to be.

00:28:41.200 He's never marketed himself

00:28:42.760 as a fire-breather.

00:28:44.760 It's just important to note

00:28:46.320 that there has to be

00:28:48.320 a level of honesty.

00:28:49.740 So he may win

00:28:51.320 and I don't think

00:28:52.200 that he's going to be

00:28:53.140 just an extension

00:28:53.980 of Justin Trudeau

00:28:54.980 like Maxime Bernier says

00:28:56.680 but I also don't think

00:28:57.800 he's going to necessarily

00:28:58.880 be a red meat conservative

00:29:00.740 because he's not yet.

00:29:02.400 He's not yet

00:29:03.000 and he could be.

00:29:03.600 I want him to be.

00:29:04.960 I've said time and time again

00:29:06.140 I would love nothing more

00:29:07.300 than for Maxime Bernier

00:29:08.780 to pull Andrew Scheer

00:29:09.840 to the right

00:29:10.420 and everyone gets

00:29:12.100 what they want

00:29:12.580 which is a solid

00:29:13.380 and consistent

00:29:14.420 small-c conservative party.

00:29:16.800 That's the goal.

00:29:18.020 I mean that absolutely

00:29:18.980 is the goal here.

00:29:20.640 So let's talk about

00:29:22.180 projections on this.

00:29:24.240 I don't think

00:29:24.900 Justin Trudeau

00:29:25.700 is a lock

00:29:26.620 for Prime Minister.

00:29:27.880 I don't think

00:29:28.440 Andrew Scheer

00:29:29.000 or Maxime Bernier

00:29:29.900 or anyone else

00:29:30.560 is a lock.

00:29:31.340 I think that this election

00:29:32.720 has a lot of variables.

00:29:35.500 The SNC-Lavalin case

00:29:36.860 I mean I haven't had time

00:29:37.920 to talk about it too much

00:29:38.960 but Jody Wilson-Raybould

00:29:40.600 is going to be testifying

00:29:41.680 before the Justice Committee

00:29:43.020 tomorrow.

00:29:43.780 That may well

00:29:44.820 set a chain of events

00:29:46.400 that changes the narrative

00:29:47.820 but eight months

00:29:48.460 is still a very long time.

00:29:51.100 So if you paid attention

00:29:52.740 to the by-elections

00:29:53.620 don't think that there is

00:29:54.880 a narrative from this

00:29:56.460 that will carry you

00:29:57.340 to October.

00:29:58.120 There just isn't.

00:29:59.360 Trudeau is not guaranteed

00:30:00.440 to win because he picked

00:30:01.440 up a seat.

00:30:02.000 Maxime Bernier

00:30:02.620 is not guaranteed

00:30:03.320 to be irrelevant

00:30:04.400 because he failed to.

00:30:05.820 No, it just means

00:30:06.800 that we have a benchmark

00:30:08.560 of what some things

00:30:10.600 could end up as

00:30:11.640 but it doesn't tell us

00:30:14.420 with any certainty

00:30:15.160 what's going to happen.

00:30:16.500 So still be careful.

00:30:18.000 Keep your powder dry

00:30:19.000 and more importantly

00:30:20.380 have a level of openness

00:30:23.020 about it.

00:30:23.620 I mean if you have questions

00:30:24.820 about Andrew Scheer

00:30:25.580 and you're a potential

00:30:26.660 Conservative voter

00:30:27.420 ask them.

00:30:28.560 Carla says in the chat here

00:30:29.980 she's listening to Andrew

00:30:30.880 speak tomorrow.

00:30:31.780 She doesn't mean me 0.96

00:30:32.460 unfortunately.

00:30:33.000 I'm not speaking in Kitchener

00:30:34.180 tomorrow but Andrew Scheer

00:30:35.080 speak in Kitchener.

00:30:36.460 Go.

00:30:36.920 Go to events like those.

00:30:38.060 Listen to what he has to say.

00:30:39.480 Maxime Bernier as well.

00:30:40.580 This is a guy who probably

00:30:41.560 would pick up the phone

00:30:42.520 if you wanted to call him

00:30:44.080 and ask him something

00:30:44.900 so do it.

00:30:46.040 I mean ask these people.

00:30:47.080 I think as Conservatives

00:30:48.360 if that's where you identify

00:30:52.000 you have an obligation

00:30:54.640 I'd say at the very least

00:30:56.780 you have a right

00:30:57.420 to make sure

00:30:58.380 that you're getting

00:30:58.900 the best of the leaders

00:30:59.840 that claim to speak to you.

00:31:01.000 So take advantage of that

00:31:02.300 and make sure

00:31:03.280 that you're listening

00:31:04.000 to that inner voice.

00:31:04.960 I mean conscience voting,

00:31:06.380 strategic voting

00:31:07.140 that's your choice

00:31:08.060 but more importantly

00:31:09.100 know what the stakes are.

00:31:11.140 And I think that

00:31:11.660 for the rallyers

00:31:12.480 and protesters

00:31:13.860 on Parliament Hill

00:31:15.040 they figured

00:31:15.900 we can't afford

00:31:16.740 four more years of Trudeau.

00:31:18.040 And you know what?

00:31:18.820 A poll shows

00:31:19.660 that many Canadians

00:31:20.600 are in agreement there.

00:31:21.880 We're going to keep 0.99

00:31:22.440 this narrative going.

00:31:23.340 We'd love to have your support.

00:31:24.900 We need it

00:31:25.700 to keep the lights on

00:31:26.800 because we're not getting

00:31:27.500 a piece of that

00:31:28.260 $600 million media bailout fund.

00:31:31.000 So if you want to support

00:31:31.860 what we're doing at True North

00:31:33.000 head on over to

00:31:33.960 truenorthinitiative.com

00:31:35.920 click on donate

00:31:36.880 and from there

00:31:38.080 look for the

00:31:38.720 Andrew Lawton Heritage Club.

00:31:40.960 And certainly

00:31:41.320 that keeps my lights on here.

00:31:42.820 Thanks very much

00:31:43.500 for your support everyone.

00:31:44.760 Thank you.

00:31:45.180 God bless

00:31:45.620 and good day Canada.

Juno News - February 27, 2019

True North Report： Canadians are over Trudeau. Are you？

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