Juno News - Where is Erin O’Toole？

00:00:00.000 The Trudeau government is proposing the most authoritarian policy in the history of our

00:00:05.260 country and the leader of the opposition has said nothing about it. Where is Aaron O'Toole

00:00:10.380 and why isn't he doing his job? I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:18.720 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. Now here on The Candice Malcolm

00:00:23.260 Show all week we've sort of been laying out the various issues with Justin Trudeau and his sort

00:00:28.400 of recent troubling behavior. I think topping it off must be this policy that was sort of hinted

00:00:34.280 about in the CBC and the health minister came out last Friday in the afternoon saying that the

00:00:39.700 government was having conversations with the provinces and encouraging them to get ready to

00:00:44.440 roll out a forced vaccination campaign. We're not talking about vaccines available for people,

00:00:49.500 we're not talking about vaccine mandates in order to go to restaurants and maybe get into certain

00:00:53.920 areas of society, we're talking about forced vaccinations. We're talking about a campaign

00:00:57.600 where the government would by force impose a health mandate on people, inject something into

00:01:04.340 their body that they do not consent to. That is beyond the conversation in a free society. We have

00:01:10.020 never seen anything like that in this country. It's truly a radical and frightening idea and you

00:01:14.920 would think that Canadians in lockstep would join to denounce this policy and say no this is too far,

00:01:21.460 this is not something that happens in Canada. Instead we haven't heard a word from Aaron O'Toole,

00:01:26.060 we've heard something, some comments from some of his MPs but nothing from O'Toole himself.

00:01:32.040 Justin Trudeau continues to divide Canadians. We saw that clip resurface of him back in September

00:01:37.500 calling the unvaccinated, calling them extremists, calling them misogynists and racists. Again,

00:01:43.180 really, really intense rhetoric. We've seen him scapegoating and demonizing and vilifying the

00:01:48.800 unvaccinated for months and months and months. This clip really just reemphasizes the sort of

00:01:53.060 unhinged aspect and way that Trudeau is going about demonizing and trying to encourage people

00:01:58.780 to get vaccinated. The whole issue of dividing Canadians, Trudeau is getting worse. I mean,

00:02:04.920 just look at the example last week. A bunch of young Quebec influencers, teenagers and people in

00:02:10.060 their 20s, young adults, off on a private plane, on a private trip, doing their own thing, minding

00:02:15.760 their own business, having some fun. Justin Trudeau chimes in to say it's a slap in the face,

00:02:20.380 okay. He also called them idiots and barbarians. Some way for the leader of a country, for the

00:02:26.180 prime minister to speak about people in his own country, to speak about his own citizens. That

00:02:30.580 is completely unacceptable for a prime minister to be labeling people in his country, his own

00:02:35.720 citizens, as idiots and barbarians. This just shows the low level of discourse with Trudeau and sort of

00:02:41.680 the clear disdain that he has for the Canadian public. We've also seen elements of Trudeau coming

00:02:47.820 unhinged and coming undone when he talks about the idea that kids must get vaccinated. That's a pretty

00:02:52.900 nuanced conversation. And what you'll hear from a lot of health experts at the provincial level,

00:02:57.140 doctors and people in the conversation, is that it's a choice. It's up to the parent if they want

00:03:01.840 to vaccinate their child to protect other people in their household and sort of protect people around

00:03:06.020 them. That's their choice. But it seems pretty clear from the science that kids don't need vaccines.

00:03:11.520 Kids don't get sick from COVID. 99.9% of kids who get COVID recover with very few symptoms. So COVID

00:03:18.100 doesn't affect kids the same way as it affects adults. So why would we have a medical intervention

00:03:23.200 that's basically unnecessary? Well, Trudeau has been really adamant that kids must get vaccinated.

00:03:27.880 You've got to sign up, you've got to vaccinate your kids. Again, all of this would present a great 0.98

00:03:32.240 opportunity for the opposition of the country, the leader of the opposition, Aaron O'Toole. He basically

00:03:38.180 have Justin Trudeau out there acting like a crazy person, coming undone, coming unhinged,

00:03:42.520 really proposing crazy, radical things. And it seems like he's sort of losing his grip

00:03:47.040 on what's acceptable and basically on reality. I think he's really, really out of line with the

00:03:53.420 Canadian public on many of these issues. It's a great opportunity for Aaron O'Toole. Aaron O'Toole

00:03:59.200 could be out there striking a different tone, showing a different path to Canadians, showing a

00:04:04.000 moderate approach. He could be seen as a sort of reasonable, moderate person in the

00:04:07.700 conversation. But instead, Aaron O'Toole is basically absent. You don't see him. You don't

00:04:13.720 hear from him. He doesn't break through his comments and his press releases. They don't

00:04:18.440 break into the media. We don't see stories about him. We barely hear anything. And when he finally

00:04:24.180 does come out and give a press conference or make a statement, his point is like so blurred and

00:04:30.520 mushy. You don't really know what he's saying. You don't really know what he stands for. He's really

00:04:35.400 failing in his role as the opposition leader to offer a meaningful critique of Trudeau. Meanwhile,

00:04:41.320 Trudeau is lashing out at Canadians. And so to talk about this issue a little more and to get a

00:04:46.280 little deeper into it, I want to bring on a True North reporter, Cosmin Gjergia. Cosmin is originally

00:04:51.340 from Romania. He's a graduate of the University of Waterloo, and he currently lives in Abbotsford,

00:04:56.480 British Columbia with his wife and child. Cosmin is a senior researcher here at True North. He's a

00:05:01.700 great investigative journalist. He has published some of the biggest and most important reports

00:05:06.520 and stories in True North history. He's been a big part of our success. And to date, his work has

00:05:12.180 been referenced by CBC News, Rebel News, CTV News, Western Standard, and many other outlets, including

00:05:18.080 outlets, international outlets and outlets all over the world. So, Cosmin, thank you so much for

00:05:22.380 joining the Candace Malcolm Show. It's great to have you on the program.

00:05:24.920 Thanks for having me, Candace. Happy to be here.

00:05:26.620 Great. Well, so this topic for the show today sort of came from this funny tweet and news story that

00:05:34.180 you had over on True North. So back on January 4th last week, you tweeted, has anyone been more

00:05:40.320 irrelevant than Erin O'Toole in the past few weeks? Your tweet went viral, and then you wrote a piece

00:05:44.840 sort of talking about the reaction to your viral tweet. So first, in your opinion, Cosmin, your

00:05:51.760 estimation of, you know, closely following the news, what is the problem with Erin O'Toole? Where 0.87

00:05:56.680 has he been for the last few weeks? Well, I think that word, irrelevant, really strikes at the heart

00:06:02.500 of the matter. How many Canadians even know who Erin O'Toole is, if you would ask them on the street,

00:06:08.320 right? He hasn't been very visible. He hasn't been very vocal. And as you mentioned, this is a perfect

00:06:14.240 opportunity for Erin O'Toole to really stand out, to provide a vision to Canadians, an alternative vision

00:06:20.460 to the one, to the divisive one that Trudeau is currently plunging us into.

00:06:27.140 And so you put out this tweet because Trudeau, or sorry, O'Toole just wasn't really doing the job

00:06:32.600 that he should be doing. And tell us a little bit about the reaction and what prompted you to write

00:06:38.440 that news article about the sort of virality of the tweet and people commenting on O'Toole's absence.

00:06:45.680 For sure. I mean, the most common reaction was who? Erin O'Toole? And I think that that's the case for

00:06:54.160 many people. They just don't have a sense of who he is. And if you just read the comments,

00:06:59.420 that's the sense I'm getting from the majority. And it's also related in the polls, because if you

00:07:07.740 look at the recent polls coming out, I think about half of his party doesn't approve of him. And he's

00:07:14.140 the lowest polling leader out of all of the federal main party leaders. So I think that tweet

00:07:20.440 was a reflection of just the general sentiment and attitude towards the leader of the opposition.

00:07:27.880 Well, you know, we can give him a little bit of a break and assume, okay, maybe he was just having

00:07:33.200 a slow start after Christmas. Maybe he was still, you know, out of his cottage or whatever he was

00:07:38.020 doing in family mode and hadn't quite kicked back into political mode yet. Yeah, I think your tweet and

00:07:43.040 your story, which was January 4, really kind of woke him up. Because after that came out, we did start to

00:07:48.780 see a little bit more of a reaction from him. However, you know, it doesn't really seem to break

00:07:55.540 through. So if you were, if you were, if you were the opposition leader, Cosmin, or if you were advising

00:08:00.700 him, or if you were, you know, part of that team, what would you what would you be saying? What could

00:08:06.200 Aaron O'Toole be saying differently to kind of penetrate the media and, you know, the media narrative

00:08:13.120 and and actually, you know, say something that Canadians might want to join on board and and follow

00:08:20.020 his party over? Personally, if I was advising him or in that position, I would be a little bit more

00:08:27.000 aggressive and going out into the media, you know, right now we're not in Parliament. But there are

00:08:32.920 plenty of opportunities to either take the message directly to voters using social media, or going out

00:08:39.240 on radio and television and really blasting back some of the messaging that Trudeau and other liberal

00:08:47.080 party members have been putting out and really putting it out there so that Canadians can hear

00:08:52.680 loud and clear what the government thinks about millions of Canadians in this country. And it's not

00:08:58.520 a nice message, right? Trudeau has called them racist extremist misogynists, while speaking about

00:09:05.320 people who have refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine. But that's not the beginning for Trudeau,

00:09:12.200 because he's been doing this for a while, you know, his minister of heritage, former minister of heritage,

00:09:19.080 heritage was calling people extremists for simply opposing an internet censorship bill. So I think

00:09:25.400 it's part of the brand for the liberals and O'Toole's team could really has a lot of material to work with

00:09:31.960 out there, if they wanted to push back and really, you know, take down Trudeau a level.

00:09:37.640 Absolutely. Well, I mean, there's so many opportunities, and I think no better an opportunity

00:09:43.400 than the announcement or the story and the press conference that we saw on Friday and the story that

00:09:49.000 came out afterwards, where the health minister is hinting and sort of encouraging provinces to bring

00:09:54.840 about a forced vaccination campaign, not a vaccine mandate where you need to show your papers to get

00:10:01.800 into certain press society, but forcing Canadians, like a mandatory forced vaccination campaign,

00:10:08.280 which is, again, above and beyond anything that we're seeing anywhere in the world right now.

00:10:12.360 It's truly authoritarian. We saw some reaction, Cosman, from a couple of MPs. So I'll read those

00:10:17.800 tweets. Michael Cooper, who's the MP up in St. Albert Edmonton. He says,

00:10:21.160 This is outrageous. Justin Trudeau's government is entering into truly dangerous authoritarian territory.

00:10:26.600 State-imposed involuntary medical interventions are un-Canadian and have new place in a free

00:10:31.400 and democratic society. That's absolutely right. I couldn't agree more. And it would have been nice

00:10:35.240 to hear that from Aaron O'Toole himself. Instead, you know, he's got his MPs out there who are probably

00:10:40.760 just saying this on their own. Garnet Janus, likewise, said, No, vax rates are very high in Canada.

00:10:46.120 Provinces are backing off vax requirements for essential workers because they need the workers.

00:10:50.680 Even if this were desirable in principle, which it's not, we have no capacity to enforce this.

00:10:56.280 And again, another MP, Jeremy Patser, an MP from Cypress Hill Grasslands in Saskatchewan,

00:11:02.920 says extremely ignorant and frankly shocking that the health minister of a democratic country would

00:11:07.080 say this. Vaccine mandates were wrong from the very beginning. It is increasingly clear that they

00:11:11.960 are a public policy failure. They are ruining livelihoods, clogging supply chains, stifling our economy,

00:11:17.960 eroding medical privacy, dividing society, all the while doing very little in the way of actually

00:11:23.480 combating COVID. So pretty strong words from three of his MPs. But I haven't heard anything from Aaron

00:11:30.520 O'Toole on this. Has he chimed in? Does he have any message about this potentially very, very scary

00:11:36.920 and dangerous policy? Absolutely not. The line he's been going with right now is Trudeau is normalizing

00:11:45.080 lockdowns, which in my eyes is totally milquetoast and off the mark, right? Trudeau is not putting

00:11:53.320 people into lockdowns, factually speaking. It's the premieres. And I just find normalizing lockdowns

00:12:00.360 doesn't really get at the heart of the matter. As those MPs, some of those MPs have mentioned,

00:12:05.480 right? This is an authoritarian move. I think if we go down this path, the Canada that comes out on

00:12:11.640 the other side will be completely different than the one that entered. And I'm not so sure we can

00:12:17.240 call it a liberal democracy anymore after we've given up the notion of bodily autonomy for our

00:12:23.320 citizens. So yeah, no clear messaging from O'Toole as expected. And he's a little late to the mark on

00:12:31.960 this one. Right. I mean, you know, normalizing lockdowns, look, we've been locked down on and off

00:12:37.960 for two years now. Like, like the normalization of lockdowns happened a very long time ago. And

00:12:43.080 if that's the best you have at this point in the game, it just you're absolutely right. It's it's so

00:12:48.120 weak. And even I mean, I've got the CBC story in front of me where they talk about how Trudeau accuses,

00:12:53.800 sorry, O'Toole accuses Trudeau of normalizing lockdowns by failing to provide rapid tests.

00:12:58.120 It's like, that's such a muddled criticism, because it's like, are you criticizing him for lockdowns,

00:13:04.200 which are of course, provincial jurisdictions, the provinces that are locking down not the not

00:13:08.600 the Prime Minister, he's bringing in his own slew of horrible policies, but but the lockdowns are

00:13:14.360 the provinces. So if O'Toole wanted to criticize lockdown, he should be criticizing Francois Legault,

00:13:20.840 Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, and the people who are actually doing the lockdowns. And then and then

00:13:26.520 saying that he's normalizing lockdowns by failing to provide enough rapid tests, what what does one have

00:13:31.800 to do with the other? I mean, it doesn't even seem like he has a coherent message here.

00:13:37.080 Right, it's very confusing. He needs something much stronger, much clearer that Canadians can get

00:13:43.960 behind. And you would think, you know, the Conservatives recently have been quite media savvy,

00:13:49.320 and you would think with a media team and his advisors behind him, he could pull something out that

00:13:54.680 was consistent. And, and people wanted to hear and and to see in their leaders. But I haven't seen that

00:14:04.040 yet. And you know, the clock is ticking. He's, you know, we're likely to head into another election in

00:14:10.760 the next year or two. He's heading towards a leadership review, which is on on unstable ground,

00:14:19.240 his leadership. So he he's got, it doesn't have that much time left. So I'd like to really see

00:14:26.040 what he has to offer and whether he's got some sort of secret weapon that we're all waiting for.

00:14:33.000 I think if he had a secret weapon, we would we would have seen it by now. I mean, look, if you go

00:14:37.720 back to the election campaign, it's like he did a pretty decent job of remaining discipline, he wouldn't

00:14:43.480 really get off of his message, he was really focused on the issues that matter to him. But as we saw

00:14:49.560 throughout the campaign, part of the issue was that he just wasn't really clear in his positions, he

00:14:53.960 often came across as condescending. And he he switched his position on major issues. And I feel

00:14:59.640 like he's running into that same problem now with mixed messaging. And you know, what is his position,

00:15:05.320 for instance, when it comes to vaccine mandates, even during the election, it was like, is he is he for

00:15:11.160 them? Is he against them? It was kind of this brilliant strategy that Trudeau announced that

00:15:15.560 he was going to call for mandatory vaccines in the civil service, thinking it would be this big

00:15:20.840 wedge issue of the election. And then O'Toole kind of agreed with him. And there was like, you know,

00:15:25.640 there was the gap between what they both believed, it was like a difference without a distinction or

00:15:29.720 distinction without a difference. And, you know, I see that still right now, I'm just going through

00:15:34.440 some of the headlines here. It's like, okay, first, Aaron O'Toole urges reasonable accommodation

00:15:40.360 for the unvaccinated. So he's kind of standing up for them saying that they shouldn't be fired from

00:15:45.160 jobs like truck drivers, because we can't have more problems in the supply chain. You know, we've

00:15:50.360 seen, we've seen lots and lots of healthcare workers fired from their jobs, especially nurses, 1.00

00:15:55.720 because they're unvaccinated, only to be brought on later because the healthcare system is so desperate

00:16:00.200 for workers. So, so, you know, here's Aaron O'Toole on January 6, calling for reasonable accommodation.

00:16:06.360 But then, you know, on the same day, he's saying that, you know, everyone must get vaccinated,

00:16:10.840 it's your responsibility, you know, you can get your questions answered. You know, it's just not

00:16:16.280 clear what he's saying. And then, and then, and then the same day, he defends the vaccine mandate

00:16:21.800 for Canadian Armed Forces. So he's saying that making sure as many people are vaccinated as possible

00:16:27.720 needs to be the first priority of the Canadian Armed Forces. So it's like, even now, you know,

00:16:32.920 he ran into that problem during the election, it's now four months later, in January 2020,

00:16:37.560 and he's still providing a totally bland mixed messaging. What do you make of it? Where do you

00:16:42.680 think Aaron O'Toole stands on vaccine mandates?

00:16:45.320 Well, that's a difficult question, because I mean, there's a difference between where one

00:16:52.040 personally stands on an issue and where one officially stands on an issue. I think Aaron O'Toole,

00:16:57.640 from what we've seen, he's playing some sort of middle flip flopping game, I'm not sure what the

00:17:05.560 strategy is behind it, it goes all the way back to the election, you know, painting himself as a true

00:17:11.560 blue conservative, but then going red, once things started to get tough, you know, he flip flopped on

00:17:18.360 guns, he flip flopped on the CBC. And as you mentioned, even on the mandates, when they introduced

00:17:26.120 the mandate for parliamentarians, he was flip flopping back then as well. So if Aaron O'Toole,

00:17:34.520 the flip flopper, that's, that's where he stands in my eyes.

00:17:37.480 That's too bad. The other thing I find kind of interesting is that sometimes on social media,

00:17:44.040 I'll see like a very strong message from the conservatives, I know, if you get their emails,

00:17:47.640 it's like their emails read, like, you really have a different view and a different worldview and

00:17:52.680 different perspective from the liberals, like, you know, a tweet that came out on January 10th,

00:17:56.840 Canadian conservatives want to see an end to lockdowns, restrictions on your liberty,

00:18:01.640 and the ongoing impact of mental wellness in our society. That's a much stronger message than

00:18:07.160 what Aaron O'Toole himself says. So why do you think there's this gap between the sort of,

00:18:13.000 you know, general messages of the party, some of the stronger points put out by members of parliament,

00:18:18.120 and then and then when it comes to itself, it's like, you can't muster the courage to say these

00:18:22.200 kind of things in plain language. I think that's reflective of a general sort of division within

00:18:29.480 the party, you know, people who want to stick to conservative values, versus people who want to bring

00:18:36.440 the party closer to the center, closer to the liberals, to the point where they're indistinguishable.

00:18:43.240 So I think we're seeing it spill out into their very messaging. But it is an issue of division and

00:18:51.320 where this party goes from here on out, because it really is a matter of the very identity of the

00:18:58.680 conservative party. And I don't think Aaron O'Toole is a positive version of that identity for the

00:19:05.640 future. It's too bad because they have such a good opportunity with this prime minister and with

00:19:11.480 the direction they're going. So many Canadians would want to have an alternative, but it's like,

00:19:16.120 they don't really see an alternative with O'Toole because his messaging isn't very strong. And,

00:19:22.360 you know, it's like, it's like Aaron O'Toole doesn't want to go offside with like the legacy media

00:19:27.400 and the sort of fancy people. So he wants to stay very much in the center. And it's too bad because

00:19:33.720 there's a huge missed opportunity. Well, Cosmin, I really appreciate the work that you do here at True

00:19:38.440 North, your great reporter. And yeah, thank you so much for joining the show. We'll have to have you

00:19:42.600 on again at some later point. Thanks, Candice. Anytime. Would love to. All right. That's Cosmin

00:19:49.640 Georgia with True North. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

Juno News - January 12, 2022

Where is Erin O’Toole？

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