Jasmine Lane and Candice Malleolo discuss the results of a recount in Terrebonne, Quebec, and how one vote may have changed the outcome of the election. They also discuss the possibility that the vote could have been cast by mistake.
00:00:00.000I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show. We are back with Jasmine Lane and I wanted to get into a topic that we discussed on the show yesterday with Kian Bexie, but we have some more news to report on this one.
00:00:12.860So we're talking about the seat in Quebec that is a tie. It is really unbelievable in a democracy that you would have something this close, especially when there's 32,000 and change voting for each party.
00:00:25.080We're talking about the Liberals and the Bloc. And I want to just spend a bit more time talking about this seat and the sort of media discussion around it.
00:00:34.740So we saw and we covered this yesterday that there was a recount in this writing of Terrebonne Quebec where on election night, I believe it said that the Liberals had won and then they did a recount and then it was the Bloc and then it switched back to the Liberals by one vote only for a woman to come forth from the Bloc Quebec law saying,
00:00:52.640I voted for the Bloc, but my vote didn't count and I have it in my hand. It was mailed back to me because of an heir from Elections Canada.
00:00:59.960So this woman was caught up with by someone from the station Nouveau Info and interviewed this woman.
00:01:07.460Her name is Emmanuelle Beausse. And here she is. It's dubbed over because she's speaking in French, but dubbed into English explaining what happened.
00:01:17.380Emma, here is possibly the vote that could have made a difference in this election.
00:01:22.200Maybe. Yes, because that's it. I voted for the Bloc and now it's down to one vote. So maybe it matters more than we think, that little envelope.
00:01:32.260But why is this vote in your hands and not at the polling station?
00:01:36.400That's a good question. There is a mistake in the postal code. So I think that's why it was redirected to me.
00:01:45.380Because you were voting by mail. Did they give you that envelope at Elections Canada?
00:01:49.540I didn't write the address here. It's really Elections Canada that provides this envelope like this with the little sticker.
00:01:55.520I just had to write my return address here, fill out my vote, put it in the mail. The stamp is already paid.
00:02:01.360So it is really unbelievable. I just want to read this from the CBC story because this just shows how remarkable this story is.
00:02:07.200So on election night, Terrebonne initially went to Auguste by 35 votes. She's the Liberal challenger.
00:02:13.680So it was a Bloc-held seat. The Liberal challenger won by 35 votes.
00:02:17.660After the standard validation process, the result flipped to the incumbent Bloc Québécois MP by 44 votes.
00:02:24.540So that was a flip of some 79 votes, which triggered an automatic judicial recount.
00:02:31.540And then the judicial recount came back with the libs up by one vote, only again to find this one vote that this woman claims that she didn't get counted, not because of her own mistake, but because of something Elections Canada did.
00:02:44.000And so to me, Jasmine, when I look at this, I just think that something is up. Something is a little fishy.
00:02:50.420And I get that the Liberals are just salivating over this narrative.
00:02:53.460Like they really, really want Conservatives to lean into like election denial, anything that's like tangentially related to Donald Trump and what happened in the U.S. in 2020.
00:03:01.840They want it to happen, right? They're flanning the flames. They want the conspiracy theories.
00:03:05.400They want Conservatives to come out and say, oh, my goodness, this is just not right.
00:03:09.600Just so that they again, they did this during the campaign.
00:03:12.160We had Sam Cooper on talking about how it was partially a Chinese election interference scheme where the Communist Party had to put this idea out to try to paint Canadian Conservatives as Trumpy.
00:03:24.600And that was uncovered by CESAs. It was actually the Liberal government was warned about it.
00:03:28.300And to me, it's like they're playing this up because they want conspiracies.
00:03:33.900And the idea is that there is a problem here.
00:03:36.820There is an issue with our election integrity when votes can swing that much.
00:03:40.920We're going to get through a couple more of the details. But tell me your initial thoughts on the story.
00:03:45.360Well, I first have to say something kind of irrelevant to this story.
00:03:48.320But in terms of that memo from CSIS that has since been leaked, I do think it's awfully interesting that the Liberal Party was warned about that.
00:03:56.560And I believe it was 2021. And then instead of saying, oh, this is a really big problem, they said, oh, that's actually a really good idea.
00:04:05.100We should do that in our next election, too. And lo and behold.
00:04:09.220But in terms of this writing, you know, I do think it's interesting that there's only one individual who has come forward saying, I got this sent back to me.
00:04:17.440You can bet your bottom there's probably many more who just wouldn't make it public or perhaps wouldn't know.
00:04:24.020And so, you know, obviously there's going to need to be a by-election there.
00:04:27.520I think even just the probability of the difference being by one single vote is so incredibly rare.
00:04:33.600One of the biggest things that's interesting, though, is that, you know, there were in that writing when they had done the recount, there were 74 ballots that were newly validated.
00:04:41.680And 63 of those were originally rejected, which is where my biggest question comes in being, OK, well, so if they were rejected because of some sort of an error on it, somebody writing something else on the paper or whatever, why are they suddenly now counting?
00:05:00.640And also there were 11 new ballots that came seemingly out of absolutely nowhere.
00:05:06.620And it is quite frustrating that we have no response to that.
00:05:10.600And I think just in general, you know, we saw a really big problem with spoiled ballots, rejected ballots this election.
00:05:17.240And there are always quite a few. But, you know, in my polling station, as an example, there were no signs.
00:05:22.460There was nobody telling me what would make a rejected or spoiled ballot.
00:05:25.720I'm aware that they do have details on electionscanada.ca, but let's be real.
00:05:30.020There's a lot of people who won't go and check that. Right.
00:05:32.800So I think in general, there's people who will send a message, certainly, and that can affect the vote.
00:05:38.360But there's also a lot of people who maybe just didn't know.
00:05:40.740And I think Elections Canada, if you want to have this integrity based system that you want to brag about so much, you should probably be spending a lot more money ensuring that people actually understand how the system works,
00:05:51.840understand what they're doing, whether or not they want to send a message and they're OK with that spoiled ballot.
00:05:57.680And this case, you know, as a whole, in terms of all of the rejections, I think it does open up a very big discussion towards that.
00:06:05.380And in terms of the integrity of this rioting, obviously, there's some very interesting things that are pretty hard to get out of your head once you start looking into them.
00:06:15.100But at the end of the day, you know, with how much the government funds the bureaucracy in order to operate the government, you know, Elections Canada hired roughly 200,000 people to help with this election.
00:06:27.960You would think with that many people, there would certainly be a lot more oversight to miss details like that, fix them.
00:06:35.800Sorry. And so to me, this really comes down to this isn't so much about some big conspiracy theory as it is to absolute competence.
00:06:43.700And I'm very curious how many more people we may or may not see coming forward with their returned ballot in the mail because something went wrong and it was just a massive error by Elections Canada.
00:06:55.300Right. Well, I mean, to that point, right, the person that we saw in that clip, she's obviously a fairly sophisticated political person, right?
00:07:01.540She understood what had happened. And as soon as the results came back tied, she said, well, wait a minute.
00:07:06.400And she knew how to get her message out. To your point, there could have been dozens or hundreds of more people that had happened to, but they simply didn't understand.
00:07:13.220Like maybe they thought, oh, OK, they counted my vote and then they mailed it back to me, I guess.
00:07:17.200Or like, or they just, oh, junk mail, throw it in the bin and never get to it.
00:07:21.960You said that there's a couple of facts about this writing that once you get in your head, you can't get out.
00:07:25.820I think this might be some of the things you're referring to. This was on X from an account called Election Watcher.
00:07:30.640So he tracked what the changes were in the votes, because, like I said, there was the validation where it flipped and then there was the recount where it flipped again.
00:07:38.120So this is the seats, the votes for each party and how they went.
00:07:42.860So first for the validation, the Liberals gained zero.
00:07:47.060The Bloc gained 79 votes at validation.
00:08:10.460How do you just gain and lose votes like this?
00:08:12.680And then, yeah, 63 votes were rejected at the recount.
00:08:18.080I would like to see a picture of all those ballots, please.
00:08:20.180I would like to see a scanned picture of each one and an explanation as to why 63, when you have a seat, a writing that was decided by just one vote and 63 were rejected after the fact on the third round of voting.
00:08:35.060Yeah, you're going to have to give me some more evidence from that.
00:08:38.100Next, we have Marty up north asking what is going on in Quebec.
00:08:42.120So let me just explain this graph to the audience here.
00:08:44.380This is the percentage of rejected ballots by writing, and it goes across the country from west to east.
00:08:52.800And so you can just imagine, you know, the provinces on the west, western side of the country, British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba, Saskatchewan over here, Ontario.
00:09:01.700And then all of a sudden, this bit right here, that would be Quebec.
00:09:05.560And you can see how many more ballots were rejected.
00:09:09.760So why are they rejecting way more ballots in Quebec than the rest of the country?
00:09:14.480I mean, these are the kinds of things that really do, you know, I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but when you look at the data and the facts, and it just doesn't make sense, there has to be an explanation.
00:09:24.600Well, I think at the end of the day as well, you know, Elections Canada, let's say that there are, let's say that there actually were that many rejected ballots.
00:09:34.080You would think in a democracy of which you want to have transparency and openness to your people, that a situation like that, and this happens every election, this election is quite significant, though, in terms of the numbers of rejected ballots, the numbers of ridings being flipped.
00:09:52.920I mean, typically, on average, I would say there's maybe one to two ridings that get flipped in recounts, because recounts happen.
00:10:00.320And this election has been very interesting in that regard.
00:10:03.500And of course, sure, it was a very tight race in some areas.
00:10:06.920But you would think that Elections Canada would say to themselves, oof, for lack of better words, we have a lot of dumb people voting, like, you know, or we have a lot of people who really want to send a message, and they could actually be hurting the party that they want to be supporting.
00:10:21.740You would think that there would be something of that, and they would say, okay, guys, clearly, you don't remember how to vote, because, you know, it's been since what I remember doing a little practice voting session when I was in grade six.
00:10:34.180Like, you know, it's been a while, and we don't have elections very often.
00:10:37.880So here, we're going to, on top of all of these other campaigns and ads that we're running, we are going to also include in there, this is what it looks like.
00:10:45.740And I do think, as well, you know, when it comes to voting and you're a registered voter, I'm not totally opposed.
00:10:53.760In theory, if we could do this without Elections Canada having your personal information, I would love it if there was a way where they could be like, here was your vote, it got rejected, and here's why.
00:11:04.460And you get a little slip in the mail.
00:11:05.880But, of course, I don't want them to have the information of everybody and what party they voted for.
00:11:10.020But it'd be nice, in theory, to have something like that, because I do think that this comes down much more to something seems weird.
00:11:18.060And if somebody has to explain to you why it's not weird and has to shame you because you think it's weird, that's probably because you might be in the right direction, I find.
00:11:27.260And I'm not saying that there's anything conspiratorial about this.
00:11:37.620It's your democratic right to question that, to criticize the system.
00:11:42.260And I wish that there was more focus on this and more focus from people who were a part of the committees that were going through ballots that were rejected, and suddenly now they counted, and suddenly now they're rejected.
00:11:56.900We do need to have a lot more transparency and communication on that front.
00:12:00.320But I highly doubt that's going to happen, because instead it ends up being another pawn in the liberal game where they can just shame everybody who wants to question something that's perfectly open to being questioned.
00:12:12.080Because, as you've said, it's very odd.
00:12:15.880I mean, and we didn't even get to the fact that they found over 800 special ballots that were not counted out in British Columbia, Port Moody, because the guy forgot to mail them in or whatever the explanation was.
00:12:26.240I mean, when there's this many data points and proof points that something wasn't right, yes, Canadians have every right to demand answers.
00:12:34.980And let me remind you, because, I mean, this is a while ago now.
00:12:37.280I had to explain this story to my producers because they were quite young and they weren't paying attention.
00:12:40.640But back in 2011, when Stephen Harper won his majority, the legacy media promoted a years-long conspiracy theory that the election had been stolen and cheated away because of the so-called robocall scandal.
00:12:55.640They imagined that there was a national campaign to call people up and tell them that their polling station had changed and that untold numbers of Canadians went to the wrong place and couldn't vote because of this.
00:13:09.420There were hundreds and hundreds of articles that were written accusing the Conservatives of stealing the election, election denial before Trump even did it, right?
00:13:18.660And this was being peddled by the Ottawa Citizen and mainstream media journalists, including the CBC, who promoted this conspiracy over and over and over again to the point where they did a national inquiry into it.
00:13:30.520And lo and behold, there was no evidence and no wrongdoing.
00:13:36.280So when the Conservatives win, the legacy media is more than happy to push the conspiracies and to accuse the Conservatives of stealing the election.
00:13:44.540And yet here we are where there's just a whole bunch of really mysterious things that have happened.
00:13:49.520And if anyone talks about it, they will point to you and call you an election denier.
00:13:54.120I'm talking, of course, about the CBC.
00:13:55.380So the CBC, Rice's hit piece, here it is, Conservatives' fundraising email suggests that the Liberals are trying to tip the scales in the recount.
00:14:03.400So Elections Canada Act sets out when recounts happen and how they can proceed.
00:14:07.740And they are very mad at the Conservative Party for sending an email to their followers saying that something is not right here.
00:14:14.700So let me just read a bit from the story for you, Jasmine.
00:14:16.380A Conservative Party fundraising email alleges the Liberals are trying to tip the scales in writing recounts, language political watchers say is concerning.
00:14:24.980Some Canadians say they don't trust the results of last week's election.
00:14:28.500The email sent to the Conservatives' mailing list on Wednesday solicits donations to help us hold the line.
00:14:33.840As recounts play out, the Liberals are working to flip just enough seats to edge closer to majority.
00:14:38.900We can't let that happen, reads the email.
00:14:41.080If we don't act fast, we risk losing the gains we made on election night.
00:14:44.540It concludes by saying the Liberals are fighting hard to tip the scales.
00:14:48.940And then the CBC goes into total defense mode and just starts talking about how there's nothing to see here.
00:15:12.280On election night, there's thousands of volunteers across the country that go and they're scrutineers and they watch the vote counts happen.
00:15:17.900But then after that, they go back to their lives, right?
00:15:20.160They go back to the real world and they don't have time to just volunteer for a political party.
00:15:23.820And so when all of these recounts are happening, there isn't necessarily conservative volunteers in every single riding watching it.
00:15:30.660So if the Conservatives want to say, hey, help us raise some money so that we can get people into these places, we can get lawyers to oversee it and whatever else, that's their prerogative.
00:15:38.140And for the CBC to sort of jump in and say, you know, how dare these people fundraise off of this and it's spreading misinformation and all their favorite buzzwords.
00:15:48.260I mean, again, we could talk about the CBC on every episode of The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:15:51.820But this is just, again, the example of how the CBC just hates the Conservatives, hates everything they stand for, and will find any excuse to write a hit piece about them.
00:16:00.900Some say the bubbles in an aero truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth.
00:16:05.380Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light.
00:16:18.640It's again, you actually pointed it out so brilliantly there, where if you just flipped who we were talking about, the rhetoric would be so very different.
00:17:05.980That's one of the big problems with the NDP right now and why they want to be party status again so bad.
00:17:10.380So I just I just think it's very frustrating.
00:17:14.980And also, you know, perhaps this is just a little bit of a nuance.
00:17:18.220But in terms of the language there being that the liberals are trying to tip the scales, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're accusing the liberals of trying to to meddle in anything or manipulate anything.
00:17:30.220That could very well mean that, you know, the liberals are running a campaign to make everybody feel against us and we don't like that.
00:17:38.700Whereas I feel like CBC, the way that they discussed this and in the article as well, was very much more like they were trying to insinuate that the Conservatives were calling it a rigged election, which they didn't.
00:17:50.980You know, to accuse somebody of trying to tip the scales, that could mean a large, a large number of different things.
00:17:57.000And I would say as well, again, that there is a lot of there's a lot of weird stuff with this one that seems very odd.
00:18:04.780And and it is our right as Canadians to hold officials and to hold our government accountable, because when we don't, like, gosh, who knows what could happen if we suddenly just stop doing that?
00:18:16.500And so I think for me, when it comes to the CBC and the way that they the way that they omit certain details and highlight other details, I'm just very tired of what seems to just be this mass psychosis or this attempt at creating mass psychosis.
00:18:30.760And to make people feel shamed and feel weird for having very normal thoughts when you go through the details.
00:18:36.820There's nothing radical about thinking that it's just that's you're seeing things that are striking you and you're thinking about them.
00:18:44.600And I think that that's a wonderful thing to do.
00:19:08.080So they are fighting back and using the CBC story to fundraise even more.
00:19:11.220Good for them. They say right now we're under attack by the media.
00:19:13.520They write last week, we asked for your help to get our top political operatives on the ground to oversee vote recounts in key writings across the country.
00:19:20.700Every party can have people on the ground to ensure the recounts are done right and to make sure the process is fair and transparent.
00:19:26.100And let's be clear, we're not questioning the results, but we want the recounts to be fair and accurate.
00:19:32.680But now the media is attacking us or twisting our words and trying to get us to back off simply for covering this.
00:19:40.200The CBC was quick to put out this article accusing us of nefarious activities.
00:21:20.860But, you know, one of the reasons why Donald Trump was so successful, why he was so good in his campaigning, despite everything, everything against him in that regard.
00:21:30.120And you don't have to like Donald Trump in order to acknowledge this.
00:21:33.880But the American people voted for him en masse in ways that nobody predicted that everybody was saying wouldn't happen.
00:21:52.680But in general, he just said what was on his mind.
00:21:55.760And I think that we need to get back to that.
00:21:57.740And if there's any advice that I can give to the conservative party, and I have given this to many people who I'm aware of and friends with, or not necessarily friends, but acquaintances with who are involved, it's that conservatives really need to stop being on defense.
00:22:12.220And we need to start playing offense again.
00:22:14.940Let's stop letting everybody else create the narratives.
00:22:36.140It doesn't matter what you say to defend yourself.
00:22:38.380They're still running on things that are clearly false that they use to manipulate the masses to win in this election.
00:22:44.900So you need to stop defending those things, and you need to start playing offensive.
00:22:48.720That is my best advice to everybody, really, who is in this space.
00:22:53.320And we're not in this space because we're evil, hateful people who are just crazy, fringe minority conspiracy theorists.
00:22:59.320We're in this space because we live real lives, and we know the damage that has been caused.
00:23:05.720And unfortunately, like people such as David Cochran or Rosemary Barton, whose salaries are upwards of $500,000 a year plus bonuses on your taxpayer dollar, we don't have the luxury of being able to witness our economy dwindling.
00:23:19.500We don't have the luxury of being able to witness the division that has been so articulate, I'm going to use that word even though it doesn't make sense, but so articulately put in place by media, by the parties, while they go and accuse everybody else of doing exactly what it is that they're doing.
00:23:37.200Like, we don't have the luxury to not care about the future of our country because we are actually just the average citizen.
00:23:47.880We are people who are struggling, you know, like that's why we land in this way, because we are so sick of being lied to and manipulated and taken advantage of.
00:23:56.620And so we need to stop being defensive about how we feel.
00:24:01.380And we need to just say what we think and not be afraid of the ripple effect.
00:24:06.440And I think that that advice, as long as you do so kindly, of course, it's not nice to be mean to anybody.
00:24:10.680But if you can manage to do that and be wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove in the way that you do it, I really do think that there's a lot of hope still for the direction that this country goes in, despite everything else trying to be against you, as we clearly see with the CBC on a daily basis.
00:24:40.040I was basically a stay at home mom with my four little kids having a great time.
00:24:43.480And I I was almost reluctant to get back into journalism.
00:24:47.320And it wasn't until Justin Trudeau resigned that I just felt this like duty, basically, to come back in and start working again and start to see my podcast.
00:24:55.980And when I was merging with the Counter Signal and we were launching Trudeau News, Kian Bexte asked me, he's like, you know, like, you have a pretty good life.
00:25:02.800Like, you know, why are you doing this?
00:25:04.200Why don't you just stay and be a stay at home mom with your kids?
00:25:07.520And I really do feel like I have a duty.
00:25:14.780People people ask me, like, oh, well, why do you do this?
00:25:17.280Because, you know, you're never going to get through to them.
00:25:19.240And I'm like, I don't care if I ever get through to them.
00:25:21.100It is my moral obligation to be true and to follow where my heart is guiding me and to take my time and do my research and make sure that I'm that I have a very high aim and I'm on the right track.
00:25:32.480Or at least I'm trying to be better, you know, and I and I think that that's kind of how a lot of this works.
00:25:38.420It's like if you if you don't if you sit back and you don't do anything about it, it's not going to be a prosperous future.
00:25:46.360That's just, you know, we have 10 years to show the downward trend of this particular government and these particular ministers.