Juno News - November 09, 2021


Where does O’Toole stand on vaccine mandates?


Episode Stats


Length

26 minutes

Words per minute

192.2611

Word count

5,025

Sentence count

262

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Does anyone know where Erin O'Toole stands on vaccine mandates? Is he for or against them? Candice tries to figure out where he stands on the issue, but it's hard to tell from all of his press conferences.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 Does anyone know where Erin O'Toole stands on vaccine mandates? Anyone? I'm Candice Malcolm and
00:00:05.240 this is The Candice Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the program.
00:00:13.940 I hope you are enjoying The Candice Malcolm Show. We are doing it every single day, so make sure
00:00:17.760 that you don't miss an episode. And today I want to talk about Erin O'Toole because it struck me
00:00:23.460 the other day that I don't know where Erin O'Toole stands on vaccine mandates. I can't tell from all
00:00:29.620 of his press conferences, all of his communication, everything I'm reading in the media, I have no
00:00:34.180 idea whether he is for or against vaccine mandates. And I'm not saying that facetiously. I am very
00:00:40.400 curious. I would like to know what his position is. The problem is he doesn't know how to communicate
00:00:45.220 it. And the few times where he has sort of been clear, he's gone ahead and flip-flopped and gone
00:00:51.200 back and forth on the issue. So we are seeing the same issue with Erin O'Toole that we saw during the
00:00:56.080 election, which is that we don't really know where he stands because he doesn't really stand anywhere.
00:01:00.920 He kind of changes his position every day, every time he's talking to the media, depending on the
00:01:05.640 way that they're asking the question or whatever is in the news that day, we get a slightly different,
00:01:11.320 slightly modified answer from Erin O'Toole. And because of that, it's incredibly difficult to tell
00:01:16.180 what he believes in, where he stands, where his convictions lie, and what he believes in. And so
00:01:21.060 today we're going to do a bit of a timetable to try to understand where Erin O'Toole stands when it 1.00
00:01:26.900 comes to, in this instance, forcing members of parliament, members of his own caucus, to be vaccinated
00:01:32.420 in order to go to the House of Commons, to participate in our democracy, to represent their
00:01:38.440 constituents, to do the job that they have been elected to do, which is to go to the House of
00:01:42.700 Commons, go to parliament, and represent us. And so we will start this timeline on October 20th,
00:01:49.060 2021, so just a couple of weeks ago. I'm not even going to go into his answers during the campaign
00:01:53.920 because we'd be here all day. Let's be frank. He's given so many different responses, oftentimes
00:01:59.740 contradicting whatever he had just said a day earlier. So we'll start on October 20th, 2021,
00:02:04.740 just a few weeks ago, when this is what we saw in the media. It said conservatives say they're
00:02:09.160 against the decision to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for MPs. So the conservatives say they don't
00:02:14.960 think it should be up to a committee of MPs to decide who can and cannot enter spaces on Parliament
00:02:20.340 Hill, though the committee has historically overseen the workings of the House of Commons.
00:02:24.720 And so Erin O'Toole sent out his whip, the conservative whip, Blake Richards, to say that
00:02:29.820 the conservatives opposed the new ruling. The ruling was led by liberals saying that they required
00:02:35.540 all MPs to be vaccinated in order to come to work, to come to parliament. So Blake Richards,
00:02:41.180 the MP, came out and said, nope. He said, while we encourage everyone who can be vaccinated to get
00:02:46.340 vaccinated, we cannot agree to seven MPs meeting in secret, deciding which of the 338 MPs just
00:02:52.320 elected by Canadians can enter the House of Commons to represent their constituents. So again, October
00:02:57.420 20th, conservatives came out and said, nope, we are opposed to this ruling. Well, lo and behold,
00:03:03.100 the very next day, October 21st, Erin O'Toole came out and said the opposite. So here is a Global
00:03:08.820 Mail report. It says, O'Toole says conservatives will respect rulings requiring MPs entering the
00:03:14.200 Commons to be vaccinated. Conservative leader Erin O'Toole says his party will respect the new ruling
00:03:19.460 requiring all MPs who enter the House of Commons precinct to be fully vaccinated, even though some
00:03:24.720 of his MPs have objected to the policy. So Erin O'Toole was over on TVO's The Agenda with Steve Pakin,
00:03:31.640 which is the publicly funded television station in Ontario. I love how having one publicly funded
00:03:38.020 television station isn't enough for Ontario. We have the CBC wasting $1.2 billion a year. And on top
00:03:44.300 of that, we also have TVO. So we have two public broadcasters in Ontario for some reason. Here is
00:03:49.980 Erin O'Toole speaking to Steve Pakin, saying the exact opposite of what Conservative whip Blake
00:03:55.020 Richards said the day before.
00:03:56.280 Your position may be very reasonable, but the Speaker, the Board of the Eternal Economy of Parliament
00:04:00.220 has still said, tough, the O'Toole formula isn't good enough, we need everybody vaccinated.
00:04:06.180 You can't say everybody in your caucus is vaccinated.
00:04:08.780 We can say that we will follow all public health guidance. So Steve, the BOIE and the Speaker have
00:04:14.640 ruled, and we will respect that, of course. We also think, though, that we have to look at
00:04:20.780 not dividing people on this issue. It is difficult to see places where we're seeing people terminated,
00:04:28.540 where in some cases, I think if we work smart and use all tools we have, we could probably
00:04:34.140 avoid these sort of confrontations with just not politicizing vaccinations.
00:04:38.460 So the Speaker has ruled, and we will respect that, of course. So interesting, I heard that
00:04:43.560 the caucus meeting, again, was very heated, that at that caucus meeting, that O'Toole sent
00:04:48.920 Richards out after he didn't want to come out and say it, so he sent his whip out. I'm told
00:04:53.320 that that caucus meeting was very heated, that there are a large number of MPs in the Conservative
00:04:57.500 Caucus who oppose this kind of thing, who don't think that it should be up to, again,
00:05:01.680 a small group of Liberal MPs or Liberal Majority MPs to make this kind of decision to say to
00:05:07.480 Canadians, hey, you just elected a Member of Parliament, but they don't get to actually
00:05:10.480 represent you because they don't, they haven't followed our rules and they haven't jumped
00:05:14.400 through our hoops. So again, that was on October 21st that O'Toole came out and contradicted
00:05:19.260 Blake Richards. Well, then the very next day, October 22nd, O'Toole came out and once again
00:05:24.600 brought more confusion to the issue by changing his position once again. So here we see in
00:05:28.780 the National Post. After saying Tories will respect decision on vaccine mandate for MPs,
00:05:33.860 O'Toole now says it infringes on their rights. So after first saying he will respect the House
00:05:38.860 of Commons Internal Management Committee ruling that MPs need to be fully vaccinated to enter
00:05:42.840 Parliament on Wednesday, Conservative leader Aaron O'Toole now insists the decision fringes
00:05:48.200 upon members' rights. So he says this, while we respect the Board of Internal Economy or BOIE
00:05:55.540 has the jurisdiction to manage the parliamentary precinct, we do not accept that the BOIE has a
00:06:01.320 jurisdiction to infringe on a member's right to take their seat in the House of Commons. That came
00:06:06.160 by way of Aaron O'Toole's spokesperson who said that in a statement on Friday. So on Wednesday,
00:06:12.640 Blake Richards came out and said, nope, we're not going to follow this. On Thursday, Aaron O'Toole
00:06:17.640 came out and said, yep, we are going to follow it. And then on Friday, O'Toole sent a spokesperson
00:06:22.320 out to say, actually, it infringes upon their rights. And so what does that even mean? Where does
00:06:29.440 he stand? Does anybody know? Well, the following week, October 27th, 2021, Conservative leader Aaron
00:06:36.080 O'Toole says MPs who enter the Commons will be vaccinated. This comes to us from the Global Mail.
00:06:41.680 Here it says, Conservative leader Aaron O'Toole said Wednesday that members of his party who
00:06:46.340 enter the House of Commons once Parliament resumes will be vaccinated against COVID-19, but he
00:06:51.360 declined to say how many Conservative MPs have not yet received their shots. Mr. O'Toole told reporters
00:06:56.480 that during a meeting earlier in the day with his caucus, he had put forward a plan for a return to
00:07:01.100 legislative business. Conservative MPs, he said, had agreed to respect and abide by new rules, which will
00:07:07.020 require parliamentarians attending the House of Commons to be vaccinated. However, Mr. O'Toole said
00:07:12.480 the Conservatives will formally challenge those rules. Is anyone else out there confused? A little
00:07:17.920 bit confusing, but I think he's saying that he will challenge the rules, but that the rules in place
00:07:24.000 will be followed so that he is requiring all of his caucus to be vaccinated in order to show up to work
00:07:30.420 on the House of Commons. So again, that came on October 27th. Well, on November 4th, we heard
00:07:36.800 from the rest of caucus, or at least some members of caucus, who simply are not happy with the way
00:07:41.500 that Aaron O'Toole is handling this issue, the way he's communicating with them. I don't blame him,
00:07:45.300 because like I said, it is very confusing. Not trying to be facetious here, but it is very hard
00:07:49.960 to understand where Aaron O'Toole stands. You have to sort of parse through his language. You have to
00:07:55.940 try to understand the spin, cut through the spin to get to the point when he's speaking on this issue.
00:08:01.940 And even then, there's so many mixed messages and so many contradictions and so many flip-flops
00:08:06.020 that at any given moment, it is hard to tell. Well, dozens of Conservative MPs decided to do
00:08:12.020 something on their own, and that is that they created a caucus. Caucus describes a couple of
00:08:16.560 things here. Caucus is the entire group of Conservative MPs. They form the Conservative Caucus,
00:08:21.900 but then within that group, there's often little smaller groups that focus on specific issues. So
00:08:27.440 there might be a pro-life caucus, or a pro-gun caucus, or a lower taxes caucus, or whatever.
00:08:34.700 There's many of them. And so in this instance, a couple of Conservative MPs, well, up to 30 Conservative
00:08:40.560 MPs banded together to form a caucus to defend the rights of unvaccinated Canadians. They were calling it
00:08:46.960 the Civil Liberties Caucus. So here we have from True North, up to 30 Conservative MPs have banded
00:08:53.920 together to form the Civil Liberties Caucus to speak up for unvaccinated Canadians who are losing
00:08:58.220 their jobs. According to MP Marilyn Gladue, the caucus was organized in October after the party had
00:09:03.720 its first caucus meeting since the election. Conservative MPs were concerned about constituents
00:09:07.780 who had lost their jobs after refusing to get a COVID-19 shot for various reasons. And so again,
00:09:12.500 this group banded together to speak for those constituents, speak for those Canadians who feel
00:09:17.260 morally opposed, or perhaps they have a medical reason why they don't want to get vaccinated and
00:09:21.560 they're being treated incredibly unfairly. We've seen this so much. It's actually sort of scary when
00:09:26.740 you look at it, the way that unvaccinated Canadians are spoken about, the way that they're scapegoated by
00:09:32.060 politicians. You often hear politicians like Justin Trudeau blaming the entire pandemic or blaming deaths
00:09:37.520 or blaming the reason that we're still stuck with all these various rules and lockdowns and mask mandates
00:09:43.260 and all this stuff. He'll blame, he'll just blame it on the unvaccinated, completely scapegoating them,
00:09:48.140 pinning Canadians against each other. It's really, really obscene. And we talked about this on the
00:09:53.180 show a couple of months ago, but there was that Toronto Star front page where it literally said,
00:09:59.240 I don't care if they die, those people can die. And just some of the most divisive, ugly things
00:10:04.660 that Canadians can say about their fellow Canadians highlighted and emphasized and sort of promoted
00:10:09.780 and celebrated on the front pages of the Toronto Star are really despicable. So it's good to see
00:10:14.060 Conservative MPs picking up this issue and understanding that just because you don't
00:10:19.100 want to get vaccinated doesn't mean that you're not human, doesn't mean that you're no longer a
00:10:21.840 person or a Canadian with rights and freedoms. And so good for them to speak out on this issue.
00:10:29.160 However, interesting because it does go against what their own leader has to say. So we are seeing
00:10:33.900 some fractions in the Tory caucus, in the broader caucus, and some problems for Aaron O'Toole with
00:10:39.940 his leadership, because clearly, you know, we don't know who these 30 MPs are, that they haven't
00:10:44.540 released a list. We don't know which MPs are part of this caucus, other than the fact that Marilyn
00:10:50.020 Gladue is sort of the organizer and the leader of this group. But up to 30, up to 30, that's a big deal
00:10:56.340 because as we know, the Conservative caucus can spark a leadership review of Aaron O'Toole with fewer
00:11:02.280 than 30 signatures. So O'Toole could be in pretty big trouble. So we learned about this new caucus on
00:11:08.620 November 4th. Then on November 5th, we hear from Aaron O'Toole, he asks MPs to keep quiet on hot
00:11:16.300 button political issues. This was over in Global News. Two MPs suggested the message from Aaron O'Toole's
00:11:21.360 office was the party's message comes from them, the OLO, which is the opposition leader's office,
00:11:27.240 which is Aaron O'Toole's office. The OLO keeps on putting out messages to caucus saying,
00:11:33.120 please don't respond to media inquiries on X, Y, and Z, and then complete silence. Please do not
00:11:38.100 respond and direct all media inquiries to the OLOs. One conservative MP who agreed to discuss the matter
00:11:43.520 on the condition of not being named. The MP said it was not the first time O'Toole's office has tried
00:11:48.660 to prevent the conservative caucus from commenting on political issues publicly. Caucus number one
00:11:53.900 doesn't know what OLO is going to say. Number two, OLO doesn't say anything. And we're all supposed to
00:11:59.280 play the game of no one moves, no one gets hurt. So I suppose I'm not the only one out there who is
00:12:04.020 a little confused by the communication from Aaron O'Toole's office because this conservative MP says
00:12:09.360 number one, we don't know what they're going to say. Every day seems to be a slightly different
00:12:13.540 message and you never know what you're going to say. And apparently they're running quite a sort of
00:12:17.900 centralized office over there. They don't want any conservative MPs talking to the media unless it
00:12:23.680 is Aaron O'Toole. So pretty interesting stuff. Again, we're seeing lots of hints of trouble and
00:12:29.860 fractions over in the Tory caucus under Aaron O'Toole's leadership. Now I want to move on to
00:12:36.560 Marilyn Gladue, focus a little bit more on what she said. She made some comments on CTV that have
00:12:42.880 become pretty controversial. I think they're completely blown out of proportion. I actually
00:12:47.640 think that what Marilyn Gladue said about polio is correct. There's a little bit of context missing
00:12:53.180 in her statement. So I'm going to go through that in a bit more details. But first, if you enjoy the
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00:13:50.440 show and please consider leaving us a five-star review. It really helps us out when it comes to
00:13:54.920 the discoverability of the show. So, okay. So getting back to Marilyn Gladue here. So she's becoming a 0.99
00:14:00.720 little bit of a thorn in the side of Erin O'Toole on November 5th after creating her new caucus, her 0.99
00:14:05.700 civil liberties caucus. Gladue said that she has the support of Erin O'Toole, that Erin O'Toole likes the idea
00:14:10.440 of having a caucus of MPs and senators to examine the issues around COVID-19. So this comes to us
00:14:16.420 from the Globe and Mail. It says a Sarnia Lampton MP said today, she has been in touch with the office
00:14:21.660 of conservative leader about her idea, which has come to involve about 30 MPs in which she says will
00:14:27.040 become the civil liberties caucus. So again, on November 5th, Gladue says that she has support of
00:14:33.320 Erin O'Toole, but then she goes on to CTV. She goes on with Evan Solomon and she has this interview,
00:14:40.220 which really will play the interview. And I'm going to walk through how this gets widely distorted and
00:14:46.400 turned into this whole idea that Marilyn Gladue is anti-science and that she's an anti-vaxxer. 0.97
00:14:51.940 That's not what she says. So this is a clip that's being used by the liberals, the liberal legacy media,
00:14:57.540 by the left, to claim that all conservatives are anti-science and to claim in particular
00:15:02.040 that Marilyn Gladue is an anti-vaxxer, anti-science, and that there's an anti-vaxxer 1.00
00:15:07.080 splinter group within the conservative party that she is leading. So let's play this clip because
00:15:11.420 I think that this clip is really getting taken out of context and that Marilyn Gladue is a smear
00:15:16.520 drop, a total smear drop against her. What she's saying in here is correct. Let's play this clip.
00:15:22.140 You say, where does it stop? Like, did you have a problem when the school system is asking if our
00:15:26.500 kids have got their polio vaccination?
00:15:29.740 Well, I think, you know, in terms of the risk, people that got polio, many of them died and many
00:15:37.580 of them were crippled. And that is not the same frequency of risk that we see with COVID-19,
00:15:43.260 although COVID-19 has killed people, as you rightly pointed out.
00:15:46.300 And so what I think we need to do is make sure we have...
00:15:49.900 I just have to be clear. You're saying that COVID is not as bad as polio? Like, COVID has killed
00:15:54.380 significantly more people in a shorter time than polio did in Canada. I'm not trying to compare
00:15:58.520 tragedies, but the medical... I'm just trying... I know you're an engineer, but...
00:16:02.700 I'm just receiving the information from medical experts that talk about the relative risk. I'm
00:16:06.740 not a doctor myself, so...
00:16:08.140 But they're saying, the president of the Canadian Medical Association has said mandatory
00:16:12.640 vaccinations work. Every medical association and the Public Health Agency of Canada are saying
00:16:18.340 these mandatory vaccinations are working. Like, if you're listening to the data, wouldn't you support
00:16:24.960 making sure everybody's vaccinated?
00:16:26.920 Well, I think there's multiple sources of data out there, and that's part of the work of this
00:16:31.920 caucus, is to take a look at all of the different data, sort through it, and come to what the
00:16:37.600 reasonable solutions are to ensure that everyone is safe and everyone's freedoms are protected.
00:16:42.720 Let's just walk through this clip because, again, I feel like Marilyn Gladue is being victim
00:16:46.760 of a smear job here and that everyone is taking this clip out of context. The context of this
00:16:51.100 conversation, the conversation that we are having in the country right now, where we're at with
00:16:54.900 vaccines, is we're talking about little kids getting vaccinated, age 5 to 12. Everybody older
00:16:59.740 than that has already been available to get vaccinated. It's already been available to them,
00:17:03.840 and they've made the choice whether they're getting vaccinated or not. The newest wave that
00:17:07.440 we're hearing is about children age 5 to 12. So that's what the conversation is about. That's what
00:17:12.040 Evan's talking about. He says, you're okay with kids getting vaccinated against polio. Why aren't you
00:17:17.720 okay with them getting vaccinated against COVID? Then she says that polio kills and cripples people.
00:17:23.960 What I think that she meant or what she should have said is that polio affects kids because,
00:17:30.880 again, the conversation is about kids. But she didn't say kids. She said people. And then Evan
00:17:34.640 picked up on that and said, wait a minute, COVID has killed way more people than polio, which is
00:17:38.760 correct. Obviously, COVID has killed many, many scores more time than polio. However, the conversation
00:17:44.180 is about little kids. And when it comes to little kids, when it comes to little kids,
00:17:48.640 the risk of polio is much, much greater than the risk of COVID. So at the height of polio,
00:17:55.540 sure, it killed a couple thousand people in Canada. But the case mortality rate among children,
00:17:59.760 which again, we're talking about children here, the case mortality rate with children for polio is
00:18:04.580 somewhere between two and five percent. Between two and five percent of kids who get polio die from it.
00:18:09.500 About one in 200 cases of polio, the child gets permanently paralyzed from. Okay, so we're talking
00:18:15.900 about a case mortality rate of two to five percent. Whereas when it comes to COVID, we talked about
00:18:20.900 this on the program many times, two weeks ago, last week, as well, that the case mortality rate when
00:18:26.000 it comes to kids and COVID, remember that kids, little kids are the most likely group to get COVID.
00:18:30.640 They're the largest group that have gotten COVID in Canada, some 350,000 cases reported already of kids
00:18:36.640 with COVID. Whereas the number of kids who have died from COVID, and this isn't even in the five
00:18:41.080 to 12 range, this is anyone under the age of 20, so 19 and under, there have been 17 deaths in Canada,
00:18:47.700 not 1700 deaths, 17 deaths, which from my calculation, the case mortality rate for little
00:18:53.740 kids with COVID is 0.002%. So again, orders of magnitude of difference between a two to five
00:19:01.660 percent death rate, which is the case with polio versus a 0.002% with COVID. So if Marilyn Gladue is
00:19:09.760 specifically talking about little kids with COVID, then she is 100% correct. And the entire argument
00:19:15.860 in the media that she's anti-science, anti-vax for saying this is completely wrong. And they're taking
00:19:20.960 her out of context. Now, if she was simply talking about the entire population, and she thinks that
00:19:27.640 COVID is not as steadily than polio, then she is mistaken. However, I believe that they were talking
00:19:32.720 about children here. And I think that, again, everyone out there calling her an anti-vaxxer
00:19:36.680 and anti-science is just mean-spirited and taking what she is saying out of context. And that is what 0.99
00:19:41.780 we're seeing. So now everyone is using this interview against Erin O'Toole to sort of say,
00:19:46.960 look at these crazy people in your caucus. And so here we have the next day, November 8th,
00:19:52.900 Erin O'Toole criticizes the comments by the Tory MP on COVID-19 vaccines saying not appropriate.
00:19:59.400 So of course, Erin O'Toole is getting slammed. He held a press conference on Monday in Ottawa,
00:20:04.380 and the media, being the media, hounded him over and over and over again with questions about
00:20:09.660 Marilyn Gladue. You can see in some of these questions, it's just so ridiculous. The group
00:20:13.980 think mentality in the media, their cancel culture at its finest. This is their mentality. They go out,
00:20:19.660 they call her anti-science. They say that she should be kicked out of caucus. They're questioning
00:20:24.900 Erin O'Toole, peppering him with questions. So here we have a little montage of the PAC mentality,
00:20:29.280 the PAC creatures over in the parliamentary press gallery, asking Erin O'Toole the same question
00:20:33.880 over and over and over again, which is basically accusing MP Marilyn Gladue of being anti-science,
00:20:39.800 saying that she should be kicked out of caucus, saying that she's spreading misinformation,
00:20:43.800 and just doing the whole woke cancel culture thing. Of course, the problem is that Erin O'Toole 1.00
00:20:49.200 gives mushy answers. He doesn't have a strong answer. Instead of trying to defend Marilyn Gladue
00:20:55.200 and maybe saying, look, she was talking about kids, she wasn't talking about everything,
00:20:58.240 he just completely throws her under the bus, says that her comments were not appropriate,
00:21:01.520 doesn't try to clarify the situation, doesn't come to her aid at all, just throws her under the bus,
00:21:06.940 says that she's wrong, but then can't really answer the question, can't really provide a straight
00:21:11.260 answer. So here is what that looks like.
00:21:13.180 In talking about the, is there not a risk though, if you have a mini caucus that is going to be
00:21:21.040 advocating against vaccine mandates, that there will be discussion in that group where there could
00:21:26.860 be anti-science sentiments, there could be messages that run contrary to public health messaging.
00:21:32.400 Just yesterday, it seems that Ms. Gladue was calling into question the severity of COVID-19 versus
00:21:37.700 polio. So why are you allowing your MPs to form this caucus when there seems to be a risk it could
00:21:45.100 create added confusion to your message of go get vaccinated?
00:21:49.700 Well, as I just said, it's important for members of parliament to advocate for their
00:21:54.740 constituents who may be losing a job or may need reasonable accommodation. We do that all the time
00:22:01.740 on a range of issues, but it's very different to cause confusion with respect to the health and
00:22:07.800 well-being of Canadians. Ms. Gladue's interview did that yesterday and it's not appropriate at a time
00:22:12.960 we should be answering questions about vaccine hesitancy, not creating new questions.
00:22:18.220 Glenn McGregor, CTV News. Mr. O'Toole, you just said that comments by Ms. Gladue and Ms. Lewis create
00:22:24.060 confusion and so hesitancy. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to take any action against
00:22:28.900 them? Are they still welcome to stay in your caucus? Are you going to talk to them or are you
00:22:31.680 going to kick them out? Well, as you know, Glenn, we have conversations as a caucus as we had before
00:22:38.380 the return of parliament to confirm that all of our MPs and senators that participate on the 22nd and
00:22:45.740 come here to do their job on behalf of Canadians will be vaccinated. We will continue as we have to
00:22:51.520 support all public health measures and to encourage Canadians to learn more if they have any hesitation.
00:22:57.620 Our team will address instances where people are causing more questions and perhaps adding to
00:23:04.960 hesitancy as opposed to advocating for their constituents and concerns about the border and
00:23:10.800 other things. Althea Raj, the Toronto Star. Are you still opposed to vaccine mandates?
00:23:18.740 As you know, I think vaccines are critical and I encourage as many people to get vaccinated as
00:23:23.560 possible. In fact, what I suggested with respect to the federal government approach for federal
00:23:30.660 employees, Mr. Trudeau has misled people about, including transportation. If you look and see
00:23:37.200 what's happening in terms of some accommodations, you're seeing that happening in the federal service
00:23:42.940 exactly as how I predicted. But Mr. Trudeau, including today, will continue to mislead people
00:23:50.080 and divide rather than try and say, let's get hesitancy down as much as possible. And we're going
00:23:55.800 to be proposing some ideas on that. And let's, where we can, have some reasonable accommodations.
00:24:02.600 And look, Aaron O'Toole hasn't been clear. It's not clear what he believes in. It's not clear where his
00:24:07.400 position is. He sort of just gives lots and lots of mushy answers. And of course, the problem with
00:24:12.400 giving mushy answers, with being inconsistent, with flip-flopping, with, with sort of just no one
00:24:16.920 knows where you stand. The problem with all that is that it gives your opposition the opportunity
00:24:21.720 to blast you, to point it out, to jump on this and just say your position is unclear. And of course,
00:24:27.540 when it comes to the liberals, of course, they're going to mock conservatives. Of course,
00:24:30.760 they're going to accuse them of being anti-science, of being anti-vaccine and anti-vaccine mandates.
00:24:34.740 So now you have Justin Trudeau sort of doing a victory lap. So instead of Justin Trudeau being
00:24:39.760 asked tough questions about his own record, about his total recklessness when it comes to
00:24:43.520 spending and managing and the total economic mess that we're in right now, instead of talking about
00:24:50.280 that, this gives Justin Trudeau the opportunity to pivot, turn it back to say, look at those scary
00:24:54.860 conservatives, look at how bad they are. So here is Justin Trudeau mocking Aaron O'Toole for being so
00:25:00.820 weak on this issue. And to my mind, I mean, I look at this crew here. I look at all of you
00:25:07.800 dedicated to your communities, dedicated to serving, dedicated to keeping people safe.
00:25:14.520 I can't imagine any of you putting up your hand and saying, well, I deserve special treatment
00:25:20.620 because I'm an MP. I deserve that not to need to get vaccinated because I'm an MP and you should
00:25:28.160 be making exceptions for us. I can't imagine any of you ever even occurring to you to say that,
00:25:35.800 but that's exactly what conservatives are saying.
00:25:39.360 So there you go. Justin Trudeau wins today. He gets to dunk on Aaron O'Toole. Instead of Justin Trudeau
00:25:44.200 being held accountable by the media and the opposition, here we have the leader of the
00:25:48.700 opposition being held accountable by the prime minister and the media. It's a sick joke. As a
00:25:53.480 conservative, you can never give the legacy media and Justin Trudeau the opportunity to turn the
00:25:57.300 tables because they always will. They'll do it every time. They never want to talk about liberal
00:26:00.580 flaws. They only ever want to talk about conservative flaws and Aaron O'Toole is making
00:26:04.560 things very easy for them. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.