Erin O’Toole alienates the Conservative base
Episode Stats
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Summary
Erin O'Toole kicks Sen. Denise Batters out of the Conservative caucus over her leadership review petition, and her supporters call it a sign of strength. But to me, it looks more like weakness.
Transcript
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Erin O'Toole is trying to quash dissent and silence his critics.
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Now, his sycophants are telling us this is a sign of strength.
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But from where I'm sitting, this looks a lot more like weakness.
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I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
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Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the show.
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on the infighting within the Conservative Party of Canada today.
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The latest news is that Erin O'Toole has ejected Senator batters
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from caucus over the leadership review petition.
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who is the Senator, Conservative Senator from Saskatchewan,
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and she called for a review of the leadership of Erin O'Toole,
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So typically, there would be a leadership review following an unsuccessful election.
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She points out she was on the Andrew Lawton Show yesterday,
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and she pointed out that typically it would happen six months after a Conservative election loss.
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So it happened with Stephen Harper, and it would have happened with Andrew Scheer
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had Andrew Scheer not decided to resign before then.
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So she's sort of just saying this is a typical process.
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She's not calling for Erin O'Toole to be replaced.
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She's only calling for him to be reviewed by the members.
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but as it's scheduled, it won't happen until 2023,
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So if you think about Justin Trudeau and his ability to call an election when he wants,
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now hopefully Justin Trudeau will have learned his lesson and not do that again.
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But theoretically, he could prompt another election.
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During the last election, he said that it could happen anywhere within 18 months to two years.
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And so if you think about that timeline, by 2023,
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say that there is a leadership review at that time,
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no, we don't like Erin O'Toole, we don't want him as our leader anymore.
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And all of a sudden, that sparks another leadership review.
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It's possible that Trudeau will wait until the exact moment
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where the Conservative Party has a brand new leader that no one's ever heard of
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or hasn't been out in the public, hasn't had the opportunity to sort of hone their skills
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Trudeau launches another election campaign, and we could be stuck in the same situation.
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So, you know, this is all just sort of a process.
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Why not let the members have their say right now?
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That is, again, is eminently reasonable in this point.
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And instead of sort of engaging with her or allowing this petition to go and see what happens,
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Erin O'Toole basically, you know, within 24 hours of the senator launching this petition,
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he said enough is enough and booted her out of the Conservative caucus.
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So Senator Batters is no longer part of the Conservative caucus.
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as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada,
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I will not tolerate an individual discrediting and showing a clear lack of respect
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towards the efforts of the entire Conservative caucus.
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Who are holding the corrupt and disastrous Trudeau government to account.
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Just eight weeks ago, Canadians elected Conservatives to hold Justin Trudeau accountable
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for his economic management and fight the cost of living crisis,
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skyrocketing inflation and supply chain issues that are crippling businesses.
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So supposedly, again, you know, you see a lot of people on social media,
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most of the people who are part of his payroll,
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that's basically Erin O'Toole's base right now,
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But those people are all celebrating this as a sign of strength,
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saying that Erin O'Toole will not tolerate any dissent from his party.
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And that's supposed to make us like him even more.
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because she wants the members to be able to have a say.
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And she wrote this on Twitter, pretty, pretty shocking stuff.
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She says tonight, Erin O'Toole tried to silence me
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I will not be silenced by a leader so weak that he fired me via voicemail.
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Most importantly, he cannot suppress the will of our conservative party members sign the petition.
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Erin O'Toole let her know that he that he was firing her,
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telling her that she was not part of the conservative caucus anymore.
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So rather than trying to schedule a meeting with her to let her know face to face
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rather than making sure that he got her on the phone,
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you know, talking to her assistant, making sure that she picked up the phone,
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was part of her schedule that they could actually have a conversation.
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which, again, is the most passive, weak thing to do.
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It's like you can't even face someone who is criticizing you.
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and you don't even have the courage to do it to their face.
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So you leave it in a voicemail, which is a one-way form of communication.
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So you don't give Denise Batters any opportunity to speak back to you.
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But again, the people around Erin O'Toole, the sycophants,
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saying that somehow this is a sign of strength.
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So here are the people who are defending Erin O'Toole.
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He writes this, do not underestimate Erin O'Toole.
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What, like, so again, this is supposed to be some kind of huge,
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Again, the criticisms from Denise Batters were more on the process side.
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Again, she was talking about how members deserve to have a say
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sooner rather than later, because if we wait for later,
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and it turns out that the members don't like Erin O'Toole,
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don't like the direction that he's taking the party,
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it leaves us really vulnerable to having a brand new leader
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right when Justin Trudeau could trigger an election.
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So saying, let's do it sooner rather than later.
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And then, of course, she does have some substantive, valid criticisms,
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the same kind of stuff we've been talking about here on the Candace Malcolm Show,
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about how Erin O'Toole presented himself one way during the leadership.
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He claimed to be a common sense, authentic, true blue conservative.
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And then, of course, during the election campaign,
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And tried to mimic Justin Trudeau as much as possible
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in terms of his policies and in terms of where he stood on issues.
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And the fact that Erin O'Toole just didn't want any of it kicked him out.
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and maybe a warning sign to other conservatives,
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More people defending Erin O'Toole, Senator Don Plett,
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who is the leader of the conservatives in the Senate,
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to remove Senator Denise Batters from the National Caucus.
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As always, I continue to support Erin O'Toole's
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Again, strange take because I don't know how this unites people.
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Presumably, Denise Batters is not on her own here.
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She has a large base of people who support her.
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We are told that there are other MPs and caucus members
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who are going to come out in support of this caucus.
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And, you know, just as someone who observes federal politics,
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as someone who follows this stuff pretty closely,
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Denise Batters is one of the more active Conservative senators.
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She seems to be very well-liked among her colleagues.
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She's sort of part of the in-crowd of Conservative MPs and senators.
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somehow unites the Conservative Party of Canada,
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I don't really understand how kicking out a critic unites people.
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again, it looks more like you're alienating more people.
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over whether or not Aaron O'Toole should continue to leave this party.
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who's just voicing the feelings and the sentiment
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that exists among a large part of the Conservative base,
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the national councillor who launched his own position.
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who are trying to speak out and blow the whistle,
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This is showing how out of control the party is
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and how incapable Aaron O'Toole is at managing it.
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I've never heard of this guy before in my life,
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or Eric Duncan's holding the Liberals accountable
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Look, I'm probably one of the most critical people
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the fact that no one's covering Aaron O'Toole's BC tour
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He met with the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce.
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And he tweeted about the flooding in British Columbia.
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Like, look at how Aaron O'Toole is saving the country.
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As far as Pierre Polyev's fight against inflation,
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Pierre does a very good job addressing this issue
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it really isn't that much different than Justin Trudeau.
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to carry out Justin Trudeau's COVID relief spending.
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for reigning in spending or how he would do it.
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would be like totally different than Justin Trudeau
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about the Conservatives' own fiscal perspective
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And then the media wanted to cover the infighting instead.
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But again, the Liberals have been in power for five years.
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During those five years, the West, Western Canada,
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have been a punching bag for the Trudeau Liberals.
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what the Conservatives are doing to change that
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It's not like they've assembled some huge coalition
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of Western Canadian leaders and oil sands leaders
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They're just, again, kind of out there glad-handing
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and giving speeches and lots and lots of rhetoric,
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And when it comes to the actual policy of Aaron O'Toole,
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even when it comes to the oil sector in Western Canada,
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holding the Liberals accountable to end the bloodbath,
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I don't know how, you know, naming the top four priorities
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The only people I know who put their pronouns in their bios
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are like the most extreme social justice left-wing people.
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So I don't really know who this guy is trying to appeal to.
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I don't really understand why this is one of the priorities
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And I wanted to show you this one response again.
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This is David Akin, the bureau chief over at Global News.
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No one in the opposition leader's office comm shop
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and we've been talking lots about both of them.
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So sick burn from David Akin over at Global News,
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And lots of people rightfully critiquing Aaron O'Toole
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the Conservative Party of Canada only really has one job,
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My colleague Andrew Lawton makes a great point as well.
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Andrew Scheer appointed almost every one of his leadership opponents
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So again, we're told that this is all a great sign of strength
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but he's really alienating a lot of people around him.
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And so all of this just sort of makes me wonder about Aaron O'Toole.
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Okay, when you think of the base of the Conservative Party,
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you sort of have the social and moral conservatives.
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They live across the country, more in the suburbs.
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You have the fiscal conservatives and the libertarians.
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and they want more autonomy for places like Alberta and Saskatchewan.
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And then you have this sort of downtown urban type Tories,
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What is Aaron O'Toole trying to do to appease social conservatives?
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The thing that he seemed most excited about during the election,
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the thing he was most passionate about at times,
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how he was a pro-choice liberal, just like Justin Trudeau.
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When it comes to libertarians and fiscal conservatives,
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as I said, Aaron O'Toole was planning to run deficits
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And when it comes to civil liberties and the libertarians,
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that he didn't want anything to do with people who opposed vaccines.
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And he was more than pushing them over to Maxime Bernier's camp.
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and the more traditional progressive conservative voters,
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well, first of all, he pushed Peter McKay basically out of the party
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and said that he didn't want anything to do with them.
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They had a weird petty squabble during the leadership race
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She was a progressive conservative before the parties aligned
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and she supported Peter McKay in the last election.
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So it's not like Denise Batters is some far-right kook.
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She's actually part of the progressive wing of the party.
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And so again, it's just so weird for them to be pushing her out,
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And so we're kind of left looking at the party and wondering,
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It's hard to tell because he's flip-flops so much,
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what part of the party is there to support him.
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because he probably doesn't have their support,
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And I think that is the reason why he's so afraid
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because he's alienated so many different parts of the party.
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It's hard to imagine that he still has the support
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after the way that he has treated so many different people.
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for Erin O'Toole as leader of the Conservative Party.
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I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.