Rebel News Podcast - Erin O'Toole won the leadership, but Dr. Leslyn Lewis emerges as rising star (GUEST： William MacBeath)

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,

00:00:21.820 and tonight we're talking about, what else?

00:00:24.920 Erin O'Toole winning the conservative leadership.

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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.

00:02:52.880 Someone completely new to politics.

00:02:55.320 Leslyn Lewis.

00:02:56.060 She's not an MP.

00:02:57.760 She's not really a politician at all.

00:02:59.880 She's an accomplished, black, Jamaican immigrant woman based in Toronto 0.94

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. 0.96

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.

00:04:27.760 What do you think?

00:04:29.100 Yeah, no, it's very interesting.

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.

00:06:22.660 You know, that's a really excellent point.

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,

00:06:40.500 the Conservative Party was the place for you.

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,

00:06:57.120 the Conservative Party was the place for you.

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

00:07:44.960 about the issues that they care about.

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

00:08:29.220 out of the party.

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

00:09:01.120 started with Maxine Bernier.

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?

00:09:19.760 Or is he going to be the big uniter?

00:09:22.580 It's a really important question.

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

00:09:35.540 inside it.

00:09:36.800 You know, there is a very strong temptation to bow to groups like the mainstream media

00:09:43.700 who are demanding a course of action.

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

00:09:58.340 in their entire lives.

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.

00:10:30.160 You win.

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

00:11:04.420 things.

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,

00:11:42.020 on the CBC website.

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. 0.85

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

00:12:21.180 race against everybody else.

00:12:25.180 And yet, Leslyn Lewis took Saskatchewan, took backwards hillbilly Saskatchewan. 0.99

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

00:12:44.640 written about story.

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 0.99

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

00:13:19.800 the media.

00:13:20.580 I mean, Kamala Harris rightfully is a news story of the fact that it's a woman on the ticket 1.00

00:13:26.480 who's African-American, who, you know, could quite likely be the first female vice president. 1.00

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

00:13:49.980 Party moving forward.

00:13:51.640 You know, she will be a minister, a senior minister under Prime Minister O'Toole, if and

00:13:56.840 when that ever happens.

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.

00:14:09.640 I don't really know.

00:14:11.980 I guess I would say that Leslyn Lewis didn't fit conveniently in one of the boxes that a 0.99

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,

00:14:31.580 either suburban or from small towns.

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 1.00

00:15:12.880 credentialed person couldn't be a Conservative leadership candidate.

00:15:16.040 So I'm really excited.

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

00:15:54.660 politicians, even.

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

00:16:07.940 Harper had to mend with Peter McKay, actually.

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.

00:23:08.080 Thanks very much, Jill. I appreciate it.

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

00:23:45.800 tell you that you've had too much to think.

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Rebel News Podcast - August 27, 2020

Erin O'Toole won the leadership, but Dr. Leslyn Lewis emerges as rising star (GUEST： William MacBeath)

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