Juno News - Will Erin O’Toole survive this week？

00:00:00.000 Will Erin O'Toole survive this week in Ottawa? Let's break down the various camps fighting for 1.00

00:00:04.080 the heart and soul of the Conservative Party of Canada. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The

00:00:07.420 Candace Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the show. I hope you are

00:00:16.140 enjoying our new daily version of The Candace Malcolm Show. So if you've been watching the

00:00:20.900 show recently, you know that ever since the election on September 20th, here at The Candace

00:00:24.760 Malcolm Show, we have been doing a deep dive, doing a post-mortem, trying to really understand

00:00:29.860 what went wrong for the Conservatives. How did they end up losing this election that really they

00:00:34.140 should have won? Justin Trudeau is so unpopular. Canadians are so sick of him and he's such a

00:00:39.440 divisive figure. He won with the lowest share of the vote in Canadian history. So many Canadians

00:00:44.780 are just absolutely done with him and so many were completely surprised, flabbergasted to wake up on

00:00:50.640 the morning of September 21st and see the results, see that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is still the

00:00:55.860 Prime Minister because a lot of people who weren't really paying attention to politics but may have

00:01:00.400 just, you know, paid extra attention to this election campaign because of the pandemic, because

00:01:05.180 of the lockdowns, because of the insane attacks on our rights and freedoms that have happened in this

00:01:09.820 country, assumed that Justin Trudeau was done because he's so unpopular among people who are

00:01:15.100 concerned about our liberties and our rights and freedoms in Canada. And so in order to understand

00:01:20.380 how Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister, we have to, as Conservatives, hold up a mirror and look in

00:01:25.760 the mirror and see what went wrong, what did we do wrong. From my perspective, Aaron O'Toole, the

00:01:31.380 Conservative leader, did not run a strong campaign. He didn't put Conservative principles first. He ran

00:01:37.660 essentially as a Liberal and that wasn't very compelling to voters. If you're given the option

00:01:42.920 of two Liberal parties, you're going to go with the Liberal Party that you know is Liberal as opposed to the

00:01:47.800 other Liberal Party, which sometimes presents themselves as Conservatives, flip-flops on the

00:01:52.760 issues. You don't really know where they stand. And again, it was just not good on behalf of the

00:01:58.120 Conservatives. So the reason I say that all of this, this is a very big week for Aaron O'Toole, a very

00:02:03.400 big week for the Conservative Party. I wrote my Toronto Sun column on this topic because there's two really

00:02:08.400 big events that are happening this week. I'm going to walk you through what's going on and how we're

00:02:13.220 really going to have a better understanding of what's happening in the party, whether Aaron O'Toole

00:02:17.540 is the person that's going to remain on as leader to take the Conservatives into potentially four

00:02:22.320 years in opposition and then another election, or whether they're going to say, okay, this is a

00:02:26.720 totally failed strategy. This is not the guy. Let's cut bait before we invest too much time in a

00:02:32.520 leader who's not going to win. So we're going to find that out this week and I'll tell you about

00:02:36.620 those two events. So the first thing that's going on is Tuesday at noon. So tomorrow at noon,

00:02:41.160 there is a post-election debrief meeting happening in Toronto at one of those fancy members-only

00:02:47.640 private clubs. They're hosting a luncheon event. It's being hosted by Greg Lyle, who is a well-known

00:02:54.060 pollster, and he is having a panel discussion with the Conservative campaign insiders. So the people who

00:03:01.720 ran the campaign, the person who crafted the policy and the person who was the head of the war room,

00:03:08.100 the leader of the campaign. So those individuals will be meeting at a private club, a club for

00:03:13.480 Conservatives. So really an insider event for Conservative members, Conservative politicians and

00:03:20.000 Conservative insiders, lobbyists, Conservative activists, that kind of thing in Toronto. So I think

00:03:26.100 this is incredibly important to see because here we have a campaign where, you know, the strategy was

00:03:32.100 clearly to try to mirror Justin Trudeau as closely as possible so that none of those wedge issues that

00:03:37.480 Justin Trudeau set up as traps that Conservatives tend to fall into and not really know how to

00:03:42.480 explain and articulate, you know, the whole campaign was designed so that those wouldn't exist.

00:03:47.860 But because the Conservative Party so closely followed the Liberal Party, there wasn't really a

00:03:51.940 compelling difference. There wasn't really a compelling reason to vote for Erin O'Toole. So the reason I say

00:03:56.340 that this is a very important event is because here we have, you know, the people around the campaign,

00:04:00.840 people who, a lot of other insiders, especially people who are more on the true blue Conservative

00:04:06.060 side, the people who have Conservative values and want a real Conservative Party, they see these

00:04:11.360 individuals, not Craig Lyon, not the pollster, he's just hosting an event, but the campaign insiders who

00:04:15.860 are speaking on the panel, they see these individuals as the reason why Erin O'Toole lost. Because if you

00:04:21.200 remember, when Erin O'Toole was running as leader of the party, he had a different team and he was

00:04:27.120 presenting himself more as a true blue Tory. He was going to fight against the radical left. He was

00:04:32.540 not going to water the party down. He was not going to be a Liberalite. He was not going to go back to

00:04:36.160 the mushy middle. And then, and then, of course, that's exactly what he did when he was running

00:04:40.600 the campaign. So a lot of people see the fault of the individuals running the campaign. I see it even

00:04:45.740 deeper because at the end of the day, you know, it's Erin O'Toole who did that. It's him that didn't

00:04:49.420 present himself in a consistent way, who flip-flopped on all these core issues, including carbon taxes

00:04:55.320 and repealing Trudeau's arbitrary gun ban. But still, it's going to be really important to just

00:05:02.780 see the tone that's struck at this meeting. Will these campaign leaders show some remorse,

00:05:09.680 show contrition, admit that the strategy didn't work, right? The whole strategy of going to the

00:05:15.360 mushy middle and running as a Liberal was to win in places like Toronto, places like Vancouver and

00:05:21.220 in Quebec. And we know that the Conservatives didn't pick up any seats in those areas. In fact,

00:05:25.380 they lost seats in Vancouver. They lost two seats in the GTA and they did not win any new seats in

00:05:31.100 Quebec. The only place in Canada they did pick up seats was in Atlantic Canada. And there was sort of

00:05:35.660 a trend towards that anyway. We saw how the Nova Scotia election went to the Progressive Conservatives.

00:05:41.000 So you could say that there was already an appetite to get rid of the Liberals, or at

00:05:45.280 least in some places, change from Liberal to Conservative, as is typically the history in

00:05:51.200 Atlantic Canada. And that wasn't necessarily because of Aaron O'Toole's. So the idea that

00:05:55.460 they sold out the heart and soul of the Conservative Party in order to pick up seats in these places,

00:06:00.820 and they didn't do that, they failed. Will they show contrition? Or alternatively, will they strike

00:06:06.320 up the same tone that Aaron O'Toole did on election night and in his post-election scrum with his media

00:06:12.580 appearance, his press conference, the day after the election, both times, his tone was sort of

00:06:17.580 victorious. He was speaking as though he had won. He didn't seem to acknowledge in any way, shape,

00:06:23.400 or form that he had run a poor campaign, that his strategy had failed, that he was inconsistent to

00:06:29.040 voters. None of that was really acknowledged. And a lot of people picked up on that and were

00:06:33.040 critical of O'Toole for not showing more self-awareness and recognizing that, no, he did lose the election,

00:06:39.300 and he lost it worse than Andrew Scheer lost in 2019. So a lot of Tory insiders will be looking

00:06:44.720 at that to see how that goes. So at the same time as this event is taking place in Toronto,

00:06:50.240 this private swanky club with the insiders and the guys behind the scenes running the campaign,

00:06:55.880 over in Ottawa, we're going to have a much more public brawl for the heart and soul of the Conservative

00:07:02.020 Party. Not public because it's not televised, but public just in terms of that's where Aaron O'Toole is

00:07:06.960 going to be. And that is where every MP, every Conservative MP, both the outgoing ones, the ones

00:07:12.160 who lost in the election, there was nine MPs who lost, as well as the incoming ones, so the individuals

00:07:17.000 who won new seats, they're all going to be in Ottawa, they're all at a caucus meeting. And so for my

00:07:21.960 Toronto Sun column, I spoke to a couple of Conservative MPs to really get a read and an understanding of what

00:07:27.120 this caucus event is going to look like. And so there's a couple big takeaways that are going to happen

00:07:32.540 at this caucus event. First, it's worth noting that the Dean of Caucus, an MP named Cheryl Gallant,

00:07:38.280 she called this meeting, she called this caucus meeting. This is the first time that caucus, so all

00:07:43.200 of the Conservative MPs, first time that they're meeting since the election. And this is the first

00:07:47.060 time in history that the Dean of the caucus has actually called a meeting like this. That's not

00:07:50.740 how the precedent usually works, but presumably she saw the need to do this post-bordem, to get everyone 0.86

00:07:55.960 together into a room to discuss what went wrong and to figure out the path forward. So all of caucus

00:08:02.740 is going to be there. And from what was described to me, this is an opportunity to do basically like

00:08:08.500 an airing of the grievances. This is an opportunity for all the MPs to get in a room, they line up at

00:08:13.980 the microphone, and they just, you know, speak their piece, give their two cents about what went wrong in

00:08:19.620 the campaign, what the flaws were, what the faults were, maybe make the case for a new leader or make

00:08:25.380 the case why Aaron O'Toole should stay. And from what I'm told, caucus is pretty split. So the way

00:08:30.280 that it's been described to me is that there are basically three factions in the party right now,

00:08:33.920 three different groups of MPs who fall into different camps. So I'm going to go through

00:08:38.800 the three right now. So the first group are the people who are the staunch Aaron O'Toole supporters.

00:08:44.740 These are the people who believe in the direction that he's taking the party, perhaps are Red Tories,

00:08:50.200 perhaps they just really like Aaron as a person, I think he's a good guy, a good leader,

00:08:54.300 and, you know, they weren't, obviously they were disappointed in the outcome, but they think

00:08:58.380 that the party is heading on the right path, and they just stand behind their guy, they stand behind

00:09:02.840 Aaron O'Toole no matter what. It's people who sort of ideologically align with him, but also people

00:09:08.220 who are just in positions of power, people who have, you know, lots of responsibilities in the

00:09:13.380 party or good titles, and, you know, they've formed good relationships with Aaron O'Toole, and they don't

00:09:17.800 want to jeopardize that. They're loyal to their guy, and they don't want a party review where they could lose

00:09:22.020 their position power, or they could find themselves on the outside. So a small group of MPs fit into that

00:09:28.800 category. The polar opposite of that are the people who are absolutely angry, they're enraged, they think

00:09:35.940 that Aaron O'Toole needs to go, that he should have resigned on election night, not happy with the positions

00:09:42.040 that he took, not happy about the carbon taxes, resentful about the way that Andrew Scheer, the conservative

00:09:48.720 leader who ran in 2019, and then was quickly axed. As soon as he lost the campaign, he said he wasn't

00:09:55.020 going to step down, and all of a sudden, you know, all these bad stories came tumbling into the media,

00:09:59.340 leak, leak, leak. Andrew Scheer was basically, his name was dragged through the mud to the point where

00:10:04.060 he just chose that he was going to resign, that he didn't have a future in the conservative party.

00:10:08.500 So people who are loyal to Andrew Scheer were still bitter and resentful about the way that he was

00:10:13.360 treated, the way that he basically had a knife in his back after the campaign. And they see it only

00:10:18.340 fair that Aaron O'Toole be subject to the same treatment, given that he didn't even do as well

00:10:23.380 actorally as Andrew Scheer. So again, sort of a combination of MPs who ideologically really

00:10:29.360 deeply oppose what Aaron O'Toole is doing in the direction he's taking the party in, as well as those

00:10:35.320 who are just sort of more loyal to Andrew Scheer and feel like there's a double standard here that

00:10:40.020 that Aaron O'Toole is avoiding the scrutiny and the criticism that Andrew got, and they don't think

00:10:45.700 that's fair. And finally, the third group of MPs are, this is where I'm told, most of caucuses. So

00:10:53.400 the majority of MPs who are just sort of in the middle, they haven't really made up their mind,

00:10:57.980 they don't know yet what they're going to do, they don't really want to rock the boat,

00:11:01.000 they don't really like the idea of a leadership race that could again divide the party even further,

00:11:06.040 they're not really happy with Aaron O'Toole and how he ran the campaign, but they're not angry enough

00:11:11.380 to make him go. So obviously, these are the most important people in caucus, because how this meeting

00:11:17.080 goes on Tuesday will determine whether they join camp A, the Aaron O'Toole supporters camp, or camp B,

00:11:24.420 the Aaron O'Toole must go camp. So these are, you know, these are the people who they're fighting

00:11:28.500 over. These are the people who will determine the future of the party. So I'm told that in 2019,

00:11:33.920 when they had their first caucus meeting, after the election, it was a total brawl. It was a seven

00:11:39.400 hour debate. One MP told me that it was horrible, that people were just lashing out every frustration,

00:11:47.760 every bit of anger, they were letting Andrew Scheer hear it, it was really uncomfortable. And again,

00:11:52.440 it just showed how fractious the Conservative coalition is. And as we all know, the Conservative

00:11:57.560 Party of Canada is a big tent party, meaning it's a coalition of a lot of different types of

00:12:01.420 Conservatives. And we all have a lot in common. But really, there are fundamental differences in

00:12:06.340 the worldviews between, say, Red Tories or downtown Toronto Tories, who just sort of want to get along

00:12:11.100 with the modern progressive social values of the popular culture, compared to staunch social

00:12:18.060 Conservatives who want to uphold tradition, and, you know, guard the family. And the distinctions

00:12:24.300 between ardent Libertarians who want a very, very minimal government role, versus other kinds of

00:12:30.440 Conservatives who see a bigger role for government. So there's obviously disagreements, there's some

00:12:33.920 core agreements as well. And so obviously, it's the job of any Conservative leader to keep these

00:12:38.840 people together. And whether or not Aaron O'Toole did a good job is sort of yet to be seen. Many

00:12:43.740 people adamantly say he didn't, others did. Now, another important thing that will happen at this

00:12:47.900 caucus meeting on Tuesday, is that Conservative MPs will vote on something called the Reform Act.

00:12:52.820 The Reform Act was introduced by MP Michael Chong, he introduced it a couple of years ago,

00:12:57.580 they voted on it before it didn't all get through, they're going to vote on it again,

00:13:00.700 there are sort of four components of it. And one of the key things that this Reform Act will do

00:13:05.580 is enable members of Parliament to call a leadership review. So within the caucus, the MPs will be able

00:13:11.980 to determine whether or not there will be a leadership review. So this could potentially pave the

00:13:17.420 path down the road for a leadership review for caucus to determine whether or not they want to oust

00:13:23.500 Aaron O'Toole in a legal way. And so from one of the MPs that I spoke to, he told me that at this

00:13:28.780 point, there is no will to oust Aaron O'Toole that basically there are three reasons why. So the first

00:13:35.500 reason is that the election was essentially a draw. The map going into the election looks eerily similar

00:13:41.200 to the map coming out, there was only really a small handful of places where it changed. There was

00:13:46.120 no big winner, there's no big loser. The biggest loser, of course, were the taxpayers who had to pay

00:13:51.100 $610 million for the campaign. Of course, Justin Trudeau lost as well because he was after his

00:13:55.500 majority government, but he's still prime minister. So in some ways he still won. So the first one,

00:14:01.420 again, that there's no clear winner and that basically it was a draw. The second reason is

00:14:06.300 that the Conservative Party has been switching leaders so frequently. So, you know, you had Stephen

00:14:10.300 Harper going into the election in 2015, then he resigned. You had interim leader Ronna Ambrose.

00:14:16.060 Andrew Scheer was elected leader in 2017. 2019, he stepped down. And then Aaron O'Toole

00:14:21.020 was named leader. So we've had four leaders in the last couple of years, and that's not a good way

00:14:25.340 to build up your brand as a party. You need some kind of name recognition. Aaron O'Toole has been

00:14:30.380 leader for just a year now, so he hasn't had a lot of time. And that year was a pandemic year,

00:14:35.180 so it wasn't a regular time where he could have been out campaigning, out making a name for himself.

00:14:39.020 He was really in a tough position and a lot of MPs recognize that. And because of that,

00:14:43.100 they want to give him another opportunity to go. And the third one is, I think,

00:14:47.260 probably the most important one, is that Aaron O'Toole, I'm told, is a very nice guy. He's very

00:14:52.620 personable. He has really good connections. He works really hard on his connections with members

00:14:57.980 of parliament, with senators, with people who run local constituencies, people who run the electoral

00:15:04.060 districts. He's just the kind of guy that when he sees you, he remembers your name, or he'll ask about

00:15:10.700 your kids, or if something happens, he'll write a personal note. He's really big, I'm told, on

00:15:16.860 writing handwritten letters. He's sort of an old-school kind of guy in that way. He's very

00:15:20.540 personable, very nice, very sweet, and that he's likable. And so that's what I'm told. Of course,

00:15:25.820 we don't know what will happen. Tuesday will be a big day for the Conservative Party and for Aaron O'Toole,

00:15:30.860 and how he presents himself, how he handles things, and really how the MPs organize themselves, and really

00:15:37.340 what happens at that caucus event on Tuesday will be very telling. So we at the Candace Malcolm Show

00:15:42.540 and at True North will watch that event very closely and carefully, and we will keep you updated. So

00:15:47.740 even if Aaron O'Toole survives this week, even if he survives his private meeting in Toronto with his

00:15:51.740 top advisors, as well as the caucus meeting with all Conservative members of parliament, that doesn't

00:15:57.180 mean he's out of the clear. Aaron O'Toole still has a long way to go to prove it to Canadians, as well

00:16:02.940 as to Conservatives and the Conservative base, who he is, what he believes in, why he abandoned

00:16:08.220 Conservative principles in the last campaign, and whether or not he's going to do that again.

00:16:12.700 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - October 04, 2021

Will Erin O’Toole survive this week？

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