Erin O'Toole won the leadership, but Dr. Leslyn Lewis emerges as rising star (GUEST： William MacBeath)
Summary
William MacBeth, a long-time conservative activist and supporter of the Conservative Party of Canada, joins me to talk about Erin O'Toole's victory and what it means for the future of the party and what he must do next.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
00:00:05.920
My guest tonight is William Macbeth from Safe Calgary.
00:00:09.360
Now, you all know him as a municipal taxpayer advocate,
00:00:12.820
but he's also a long-time conservative activist,
00:00:16.760
and he has been involved in federal conservative politics for a very long time,
00:00:24.920
Erin O'Toole winning the conservative leadership.
00:00:27.160
Now, if you like listening to the show, then I think you're probably going to love watching it,
00:00:34.020
but in order to watch, you need to be a subscriber to Rebel News+.
00:00:37.080
That's what we call our premium, long-form, TV-style shows here on Rebel News.
00:00:42.720
Subscribers get access to my show, which I personally think is pretty great,
00:00:47.340
but you also get access to David Menzies' fun Friday night show, Rebel Roundup,
00:00:55.640
Just go to rebelnews.com slash subscribe to become a member of Rebel News+.
00:01:01.500
It's easy, and it's affordable. It's only $8 a month.
00:01:05.500
And just for our podcast listeners, you can save an extra 10% on a new Rebel News Plus membership
00:01:10.160
by using the coupon code PODCAST when you subscribe.
00:01:13.440
That's rebelnews.com slash subscribe to become a member.
00:01:18.340
And if you like the show, and you know what? I'm pretty confident that you do.
00:01:22.060
Why don't you leave a five-star review wherever you find us?
00:01:25.300
That's a great way to support the show without having to spend a dime,
00:01:28.340
but it also helps other people find the podcast too.
00:01:31.140
Now, please enjoy this free audio-only version of my show.
00:01:41.180
Aaron O'Toole is the new Conservative Party leader.
00:01:51.740
However, Leslie Lewis is the real breakout success story of the Conservative leadership campaign.
00:01:57.380
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
00:01:59.880
The long, unbearable, drawn-out goodbye of former Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer
00:02:22.860
is finally over, and the party has selected a new leader with Aaron O'Toole.
00:02:27.600
It wasn't the coronation of long-time establishment Tory insider
00:02:32.280
and former Cabinet Minister Peter McKay that everybody, including the party, thought it would be.
00:02:38.300
For many, Aaron O'Toole will seem to be a continuation of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's
00:02:43.480
slow and steady Conservative policies and big-tent fiscal conservatism.
00:02:48.560
But the real standout star of the leadership race was an outsider.
00:02:59.880
She's an accomplished, black, Jamaican immigrant woman based in Toronto
00:03:03.880
who drew the bulk of her support from the West.
00:03:07.920
And I think she's going to be a star in the party if the party will allow it.
00:03:12.260
So joining me tonight in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon
00:03:15.620
to discuss what the election of Aaron O'Toole will mean to the Conservative Party
00:03:21.200
and what Aaron O'Toole must do next is William Macbeth from Save Calgary.
00:03:26.540
Joining me now from his home in Calgary is my friend William Macbeth from Save Calgary.
00:03:47.360
William, we often talk about Calgary municipal issues and we definitely will.
00:03:52.140
But even before Save Calgary, even before you were doing work for taxpayers on the municipal side,
00:03:59.920
you've been a long-time Conservative activist, organiser,
00:04:05.660
really involved in Conservative politics, both on the party side and the nonpartisan side.
00:04:12.940
But let's talk about the leadership of the Conservative Party.
00:04:20.320
Aaron O'Toole won, which I think maybe surprised some people on the inside of the party.
00:04:31.520
Aaron O'Toole, who I don't think most people thought of Aaron as the frontrunner in this race.
00:04:37.840
I think most people very clearly thought that Peter McKay stood the best chance of winning the leadership.
00:04:44.820
But speaking from someone who's a Conservative in Alberta,
00:04:48.280
I can say that Peter McKay probably wasn't the first choice and ended up not being the first choice of a majority of Albertans.
00:04:55.320
And I think you saw that in a lot of key parts of the country.
00:05:00.160
Peter McKay, of course, did win Atlantic Canada, which is where he was an MP for many years, where his family's from.
00:05:05.540
And he did win a narrow lead in Ontario, but he did very poorly in Quebec and he did poorly in the West.
00:05:16.360
And ultimately, I think Aaron's campaign did a better job of convincing people who were supporting Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan as their first choice
00:05:26.660
to make Aaron O'Toole their second choice and not Peter McKay.
00:05:30.460
And if I could pinpoint one thing that I think a lot of people look at, it was Peter McKay's comments immediately following the 2019 federal election,
00:05:41.040
where when he was asked about social conservatism within the Conservative Party,
00:05:45.740
he called it a, quote unquote, stinking albatross around the neck of the party.
00:05:50.300
And, you know, for someone who should understand that the Conservative Party is a very big party.
00:05:57.200
It welcomes lots of different people into the tent, you know, fiscal conservatives, libertarians, social conservatives,
00:06:04.760
democratic reformers who want to change, you know, things like referendums and more direct democracy.
00:06:10.600
All of these people have to feel at home in the Conservative tent or at least not feel like they're not welcome.
00:06:16.860
And I think that's the biggest issue Peter McKay had going into the final days of this campaign.
00:06:26.300
It really, the Conservative Party, at least under Stephen Harper, and maybe Aaron O'Toole will be a continuation of this.
00:06:34.800
It was a place where if you just wanted to be left alone by the government and your fellow Canadians,
00:06:42.940
Whether you were a libertarian or a social conservative or, you know, a socially progressive person,
00:06:49.600
if you just wanted to be left alone to live your life and be a little more free and pay a few less taxes,
00:06:59.740
And then I think there was this push for the party to be openly socially progressive
00:07:07.400
when that's never really been necessary in a party of leave me alone.
00:07:14.060
Certainly, I think that for social conservatives, they understand that as a big tent,
00:07:20.680
they're not going to get 100% of what they want on every one of their issues.
00:07:26.280
But what they do expect, I think, is to be treated with respect,
00:07:31.060
to have their ideas and policies treated with respect.
00:07:34.580
And it was something that I think Aaron O'Toole did quite smartly over the course of the campaign
00:07:39.920
was speak to people, social conservatives, libertarians, different groups within the party
00:07:47.220
And he did so respectfully, which is why people like, I think, Dr. Lewis and Derek Sloan
00:07:53.380
told their people to have Aaron O'Toole higher as a second choice on the ballot than Peter McKay.
00:08:00.520
And I think ultimately, it was smart politics, smart strategy.
00:08:05.300
And I hope it's something that Aaron O'Toole carries forward with now that he's leader
00:08:09.120
and he's looking to put together a plan to win the next election.
00:08:13.240
You know, it's funny because I was watching Aaron O'Toole's press conference today.
00:08:19.060
We're recording this on Tuesday. It'll go to air on Wednesday.
00:08:21.220
But, you know, there's this insistence from the mainstream media about kicking Derek Sloan
00:08:30.920
And it's funny to me as someone who is often a critic of the mainstream media to see Aaron
00:08:37.380
O'Toole really his next job should be uniting the party.
00:08:40.820
And I think he's already started to do that just based on the fact that so many of Lewis's votes,
00:08:50.560
Lewis as an outsider, her second choice was Aaron O'Toole.
00:08:55.440
But it seems to me like the mainstream media wants to continue this fracturing off of the party
00:09:03.160
And now they're suggesting, oh, well, now you need to kick Derek Sloan out of the party.
00:09:07.460
I think the true test will be, will Aaron O'Toole give in to that push from the left
00:09:17.480
and from the mainstream media to do those things?
00:09:24.520
And I think and I'm hopeful that based on how he's behaved so far,
00:09:29.220
his attitude will be to build as big and broad a tent as possible to welcome a diversity of views
00:09:36.800
You know, there is a very strong temptation to bow to groups like the mainstream media
00:09:46.040
But what I think people have to remember is it's not about winning the votes of journalists
00:09:51.820
or about winning the votes of people who have never voted or and will never vote conservative
00:09:59.440
It's about making sure that the base of the Conservative Party is united and supports the
00:10:06.240
leadership of the party and that people who switch between, say, the Liberal Party and
00:10:11.000
the Conservative Party, depending on the election, find things that they like about the Conservative
00:10:16.480
Party so that they put their ex next to the Conservative candidate next time.
00:10:20.560
So if you can fall into the trap of trying to please people who don't want your party to win,
00:10:27.460
and that's not how you win an election as a Conservative.
00:10:31.240
I mean, look at our last provincial election here in Alberta, where the media coverage was
00:10:36.100
basically an extension in some ways of the GDP campaign.
00:10:40.820
And a million Albertans showed up to vote for Jason Kenney in the United Conservative Party.
00:10:45.720
So to me, if you listen to the media, you can often be led astray.
00:10:49.560
You should listen to the base and you should listen to people who are open to voting for
00:10:54.140
your party if certain conditions are met, if certain policies meet their needs, if you
00:10:59.300
speak to what they're concerned about, families, jobs, economy, taxes, all of those sorts of
00:11:05.480
You know, that's such a great point, because I think there's no greater example of the disconnect
00:11:12.020
between the mainstream media, and that's so often Toronto and Ottawa-centric, between what
00:11:19.420
they think the Conservative base cares about and what the Conservative base cares about.
00:11:24.520
I think the greatest example of that is Leslyn Lewis and the coverage of Leslyn Lewis.
00:11:29.180
You and I were talking yesterday, and I pulled the numbers yesterday.
00:11:34.160
If you go on the CBC website, as of yesterday, there was 1,436 unique hits for Kamala Harris,
00:11:43.160
So that's the state broadcaster that gets $1.6 billion a year from Canadian taxpayers who
00:11:49.140
talk about Canadian things, versus 265 hits for Leslyn Lewis.
00:11:56.720
So Leslyn Lewis doing something quite historic.
00:12:00.880
She's a Black, accomplished woman, immigrant from Jamaica, from Toronto.
00:12:08.140
You would think that she would be somebody that the CBC and the mainstream media would
00:12:11.800
champion, and yet they hardly talked about her.
00:12:15.400
And many of the mentions of her were just indicating that she was also running in the
00:12:25.180
And yet, Leslyn Lewis took Saskatchewan, took backwards hillbilly Saskatchewan.
00:12:32.180
Oh, there are a bunch of bigots out there because they're so conservative.
00:12:34.500
She won in Saskatchewan, and she came in second here in Alberta.
00:12:39.780
You know, I think, obviously, Erin O'Toole winning the leadership race will be the most
00:12:46.180
But in my mind, the most interesting story of the leadership race is Leslyn Lewis.
00:12:50.600
And the fact that someone who wasn't a career politician didn't have a political background
00:12:57.500
came within a hair's breadth of being leader of the Conservative Party.
00:13:01.980
I mean, if you look at that second ballot result, had a few more points gone her way, and she
00:13:08.320
had been pushed up into second place, it's quite possible she would have won that leadership.
00:13:14.120
And you're absolutely right that she did not get a lot of fair and detailed coverage in
00:13:20.580
I mean, Kamala Harris rightfully is a news story of the fact that it's a woman on the ticket
00:13:26.480
who's African-American, who, you know, could quite likely be the first female vice president.
00:13:32.820
I'm not saying that that's not a news story, absolutely.
00:13:35.900
But it's even more remarkable to think that someone like Leslyn Lewis came inches away from
00:13:41.280
leading, you know, one of Canada's two main political parties.
00:13:44.680
And regardless of the fact that she didn't win, she will play a key role in the Conservative
00:13:51.640
You know, she will be a minister, a senior minister under Prime Minister O'Toole, if and
00:13:59.020
Now, I guess the question is, why do you think they didn't cover her then?
00:14:04.640
Well, you know, I can't really comment on how the CBC makes decisions.
00:14:11.980
I guess I would say that Leslyn Lewis didn't fit conveniently in one of the boxes that a
00:14:20.360
lot of media like to have when it comes to Conservatives.
00:14:25.140
So they are used to Conservatives sort of being middle-aged white guys who are, you know,
00:14:34.500
And I don't think they really knew what to make of Leslyn Lewis.
00:14:38.160
She didn't fit neatly into a stereotype or a mold for a lot of the media.
00:14:44.400
And so they were flummoxed, I think, by her candidacy.
00:14:48.120
I mean, not to not to derive all reporters who cover politics, but I'm sure quite a lot
00:14:53.880
of them looked at Leslyn Lewis and thought, what are you doing in this party?
00:14:57.640
You are a Conservative, just, you know, and I'll make that judgment just on superficial and
00:15:03.300
personal characteristics, that a woman couldn't be a Conservative leadership candidate, that
00:15:08.000
a minority or an immigrant couldn't be a Conservative leadership candidate, that a highly
00:15:12.880
credentialed person couldn't be a Conservative leadership candidate.
00:15:18.120
You know, you saw Leslyn today put out a great graphic showing her support for Erin O'Toole
00:15:22.540
and saying, I'm going to be with you as we win the next election together.
00:15:26.820
And I think that's actually the attitude we need, that we're all in this together and
00:15:31.380
that we need everybody from the Erin O'Toole's, to the Leslyn Lewis's, to the Derek Sloan's.
00:15:36.400
We need every single person who's a Conservative voting Conservative to win the next election.
00:15:41.120
Yeah, it's going to be interesting where the diehard Peter McKay supporters fit into all
00:15:49.100
of this, because there are a lot of them, and a lot of them were pretty prominent Western
00:15:57.460
I think Erin O'Toole has a big job ahead of him, sort of mending that.
00:16:02.000
I mean, that's a really big ideological crack in the party, but I think it's the same one that
00:16:11.120
Yeah, it's not something that I think a lot of people think about when they think of Stephen
00:16:16.300
Harper, but, you know, I worked on his leadership campaign back in 2003 and 2004, and the moment
00:16:23.980
he became then leader of the Canadian Alliance, he reached out to heel.
00:16:29.000
You may remember that a group of MPs had broken away to form this new caucus.
00:16:34.780
Well, the first thing he did was bring almost all of them back into the fold.
00:16:37.880
And then when he pursued the merger with Peter McKay and the PC party to form the new Conservative
00:16:45.880
Party, after he became the leader of that party, he invited people from the PC side, from different
00:16:52.360
leadership campaigns to not only be, you know, in caucus and to have prominent caucus roles,
00:16:58.220
but also key staffers, key political employees who had not been on his campaign team, but who
00:17:03.380
he recognized talent and ability in. So I think for Aaron O'Toole, he does have a big job.
00:17:09.980
Of course, Peter McKay received the most caucus support, the most MPs indicated their support
00:17:15.220
for him. I suspect, though, that based on how hard he worked in the campaign, Aaron O'Toole
00:17:19.980
will be rolling up his sleeves, making phone calls, having meetings, and he'll be making sure
00:17:24.740
that everybody, every caucus member, Peter McKay's campaign staff, the whole group, he will try and
00:17:30.840
make them feel at home in an Aaron O'Toole-led Conservative Party.
00:17:34.920
Yeah, I mean, I hope one of those phone calls he makes is to Jason Kenney, to ask Jason Kenney
00:17:39.860
how you did it, because Jason Kenney did much the same thing, sort of taking two parties,
00:17:46.000
smushing them together, and making sure that there's a place for everybody within it. So it can be done
00:17:50.720
in one of the most Conservative places in the entire country. I want to now talk about some
00:17:58.080
municipal issues. So at Safe Calgary, you guys have been on the case of Councillor Joe
00:18:06.000
Magliocca, I think Magliocca. Am I saying that right? Yes. Yes. Okay, perfect.
00:18:12.100
I thought he was a Conservative. The way he spends taxpayer money, I guess he's not. So there was
00:18:21.880
an investigation into his expenses, which is great. However, Nenshi is passing the buck on to
00:18:27.760
the provincial government saying, well, why didn't you do anything about this guy, who's on my city
00:18:32.380
council? Yeah, as a Conservative, I'm disappointed. Joe Magliocca was one of a handful of Conservative
00:18:41.760
councillors who we could reliably count on 90% of the time to vote for lower taxes, to vote for
00:18:48.620
spending cuts. And it's painful when someone who ideologically has been aligned with you
00:18:54.820
doesn't demonstrate the kind of behavior and principles that we would expect from our elected
00:19:00.720
officials. And yep, there's no doubt he made some bad choices when it came to his expenses.
00:19:06.160
The mayor, though, in my opinion, is shedding crocodile tears. The mayor just doesn't like
00:19:11.420
UCP Minister for Municipalities, Casey Maddu. He's not a Casey Maddu fan. And I understand why,
00:19:18.760
you know, the mayor has asked for more taxing powers. And Casey has said no. The mayor has asked for,
00:19:25.580
you know, buckets of cash just dropped to be dropped into Calgary for whatever priority,
00:19:31.500
you know, they want that week. And Minister Maddu has said, no, there isn't a lot of extra money
00:19:36.160
lying around. You're going to have to prioritize and make better use of your existing resources.
00:19:40.660
But now, having expressed nothing but displeasure by and large with Minister Maddu, the mayor wants
00:19:47.200
the minister to do the dirty work of punishing a city councillor who made questionable spending
00:19:53.340
decisions, who made inappropriate spending decisions. And the minister said, no, look,
00:19:56.600
you take care of this. These are your councillors. You are supposed to be the chair and leader of
00:20:02.880
this council. You have to act like it. And a better question, I think, is this is not the first time
00:20:08.420
we've had questionable expenses on the part of city councillors. How was how were decisions like
00:20:14.200
this allowed to go on for so long with a broken process for reviewing and approving city council
00:20:20.680
expenses until finally it resulted in this one incident getting caught? And I think the mayor,
00:20:27.380
who's been there since 2010, has to take some responsibility for not improving this system,
00:20:34.100
for not instilling a better regime and more rules and safeguards for expenses,
00:20:39.000
and instead allowed this to happen on his watch.
00:20:41.840
Yeah, I think it's interesting that the mayor suddenly has a problem and needs to see a change in the
00:20:48.900
system now when a conservative has his hand caught in the cookie jar. When it was coming from the other
00:20:54.860
side of the aisle, like you say, the mayor had 10 years to fix this and never actually did. And thank
00:21:02.200
goodness for you folks at Save Calgary for always shining a light on these issues and for standing up for
00:21:07.660
taxpayers. William, tell people how they can support the work that you do with Save Calgary and where they
00:21:14.200
can find more information about your next projects.
00:21:20.160
So, we mostly live online. We're a small and plucky little group of activists who just want to see
00:21:26.940
better government down at City Hall. You can find out more about who we are and what we do at
00:21:32.060
savecalgary.com. I would encourage you to go on Facebook, to go on Twitter, to check out
00:21:37.220
at Save Calgary, where we post, you know, content every day, where we release information that we've
00:21:43.420
gleaned from paying attention to the shenanigans down at City Hall. Please sign up to our email list
00:21:49.860
where we put out a weekly newsletter. We just did one quite recently about the fact that they want to
00:21:55.160
once again make collecting your garbage more expensive and happen less frequently. So, only in
00:22:01.220
Calgary could you say, we're going to pick it up less often and charge you more for that less service.
00:22:07.200
And we did one last week. You know, we've been arguing for spending cuts. City Council likes to
00:22:11.480
come back and say, well, we can't cut spending except for police and fire. It's the only place
00:22:16.260
we can find savings. And Save Calgary said, well, here are 14 places you could cut that are police and
00:22:22.320
fire. It's just that you're not trying hard enough. So, savecalgary.com, our website. Check us out on
00:22:27.540
social media. Sign up to our email list. And if you have the ability and the means, consider making
00:22:32.060
a financial donation because unlike a lot of other groups, we get no taxpayer funding. We rely on the
00:22:37.480
support of individual Calgarians and Albertans for our support. And folks at home, let me tell you,
00:22:43.900
they can sure stretch a buck. They saved you from the Olympics on a shoestring budget when the city had
00:22:51.840
endless money, deep pockets, and an entire corporation working to make sure that Calgary
00:22:57.900
got that Olympic bid and Save Calgary was so instrumental in saving taxpayers from Calgary.
00:23:04.200
William, thank you so much for coming on the show. We'll have you back on again real soon.
00:23:09.360
I hope the success of Leslyn Lewis, in spite of the lack of mainstream media coverage, and
00:23:20.880
even though she's an outsider to politics, sends a strong message to the Federal Conservative Party
00:23:25.840
that the base wants something different than what they've been offered lately. Will the party listen?
00:23:32.100
Well, as usual, I'm ready to be disappointed by the Conservative establishment in Canada.
00:23:37.080
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see everybody
00:23:41.200
back here in the same time, in the same place next week. And remember, don't let the government