The Candice Malcolm Show - Erin O’Toole’s time as CPC leader is coming to an end

00:00:00.000 Is this the end of Aaron O'Toole's time as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada?

00:00:03.500 It's looking that way. I spoke to MPs who said that he needs to step down gracefully

00:00:07.240 to save the party. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:15.160 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. We have a lot to get to today.

00:00:20.060 You probably saw the story of 35 MPs who have signed a letter demanding a leadership review,

00:00:24.400 demanding a vote in the Conservative caucus meeting on Wednesday to determine the fate

00:00:28.400 of leader Aaron O'Toole and whether or not he will remain as leader. We're going to get to it all

00:00:32.820 today, but I want to start by just asking a simple question. Where has Aaron O'Toole been? Where was

00:00:38.920 he all of last week and all weekend during this trucker convoy? We saw this beautiful, amazing

00:00:44.320 moment in our country where so many people united behind these truckers, where the simple message

00:00:49.660 of just saying we want our country back, we want our freedom back, resonated with so many people.

00:00:54.820 We saw people coming out in droves on the side of freeways to cheer on these truckers.

00:00:59.600 We saw a huge rally in Ottawa, completely peaceful, no injuries, no arrests, a huge remarkable success

00:01:06.420 despite the very best efforts of the media, of the Liberal Party, of all of those out there trying to

00:01:12.400 smear these working class truckers and say that there's something that they're not. That all failed.

00:01:17.400 That all fell flat. We have this beautiful moment of unity. It really feels like the country is starting

00:01:21.980 to change, that we've come around a corner and that we can finally see light at the end of the

00:01:25.840 tunnel. This is all a great news story. And it was an opportunity for Aaron O'Toole. Remember that

00:01:31.240 when Aaron O'Toole became leader of the party, one of the messages that he had that I liked was that

00:01:35.920 he didn't shy away from comparisons with Donald Trump. He said, obviously, he's different than Trump

00:01:41.380 and he has different rhetoric and a different approach. However, the things that Trump did to capture

00:01:47.020 the imagination of the working class to woo voters who had previously voted for the Democrats in the

00:01:52.400 U.S., O'Toole wanted a similar strategy. He put out a plea to union workers, to people who worked in

00:01:58.880 steel mills, to people who worked in manufacturing, and he asked for their support. He wanted to court

00:02:04.320 blue-collar workers into the party. Well, what better opportunity for Aaron O'Toole when thousands of

00:02:10.160 them, tens of thousands of them show up on his doorstep, show up on the lawns of the House of Commons,

00:02:15.200 of Parliament, demanding their freedom. Freedom is supposed to be a core message for the Conservative

00:02:20.380 Party. That is core in their beliefs. So you have these workers that Aaron O'Toole has said that he

00:02:25.000 wants to court showing up on his lawn. We have their message being completely in sync and in unison with

00:02:30.900 the message of the Conservative Party. Less government, limited government, more individual

00:02:35.140 responsibility, more freedom. That is what they want. It was the perfect opportunity for Aaron O'Toole.

00:02:40.640 And yet O'Toole completely passed it up. He didn't know what position he wanted to take. He had that

00:02:45.980 pathetic exchange last week where he couldn't answer questions from the Parliamentary Press Gallery 0.85

00:02:50.380 about whether he was going to meet with the organizers, whether he was going to be part of 0.59

00:02:55.580 this rally. He just kind of stepped away from it. He had a very meek response. It was hard to say

00:03:00.280 whether he was in support of it or not. And so you have O'Toole sort of publicly faltering over this.

00:03:06.520 And meanwhile, we saw more and more MPs stepping up and saying that, no, no, we support the truckers.

00:03:11.980 These are our people and we support their message. We support the work that they do. And we agree

00:03:16.620 with freedom. We agree with ending the mandates. So you have this awkward situation where O'Toole is

00:03:21.360 not taking a very strong position. His own deputy leader, Candace Bergen, was taking a strong

00:03:25.940 position. You have Pierre Polyev, who's emerged as the star of the party. And he is out there

00:03:30.260 fearlessly and passionately defending these truckers. He's at the rally. He's meeting with people.

00:03:35.540 He's dispelling the awful rumors and lies and slurs that the media was putting out there,

00:03:41.180 showing how diverse and how united and how positive and how happy these protesters were.

00:03:47.300 And yet the leader of the party himself was just nowhere to be found. My colleague Andrew

00:03:51.640 Lawton reported that the organizer of the convoy and the organizer of the GoFundMe account said that

00:03:56.820 she hadn't heard anything from Aaron O'Toole, that his office hadn't reached out to her at all. So there

00:04:01.460 was no attempt from O'Toole to reach out to the truckers, to try to connect with them, to try to

00:04:06.860 say, hey, I want blue-collar people in my party. Let me try to understand what your grievances are. 0.98

00:04:12.480 Let's have a conversation. Let me try to represent you. Instead, he was nowhere to be found, completely

00:04:18.480 disappeared. And this continued on Monday. So Monday was another opportunity. He missed the opportunity

00:04:23.280 last week to get on board with the convoy as it was picking up steam, as it was coming across the

00:04:28.440 country and more and more people, including really high, most high profile people in the world, Elon

00:04:32.740 Musk, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, all through there as support behind the trucker rally. Even Donald

00:04:37.920 Trump and Donald Trump Jr. both did as well. O'Toole missed that opportunity. He missed the opportunity

00:04:43.000 on the weekend to be seen at the rally, to go and talk to people as more and more and more of his MPs

00:04:47.640 were there. O'Toole was just simply not there. And then on Monday, he had another opportunity,

00:04:52.260 a third opportunity when it came to the trucker convoy to, again, just defend the truckers,

00:04:57.000 say that the things that the media are saying, the things that the liberals are saying about the

00:05:00.520 truckers are malicious lies, and that he will always be there to defend blue collar workers 0.97

00:05:05.600 and the working class. Instead, he didn't do that. He let his colleagues, Pierre Polyev and Candace

00:05:11.460 Bergen, they were the ones in the House of Commons passionately defending these truckers. Here is

00:05:15.920 Candace Bergen. Here's what that looked like. 1.00

00:05:17.520 We all condemn hateful and destructive acts by a few at any protest, whether it's beheading the

00:05:24.640 statue of Queen Victoria in Manitoba, tearing down the statue of Sir Johnny in Montreal,

00:05:30.340 or putting flags on Terry Fox, whether it's burning churches, whether it's wearing blackface,

00:05:36.000 whether it's Hezbollah flags, or Nazi flags. We all condemn it. But I'm not talking about that. 0.89

00:05:43.860 And here is Pierre Polyev, again, doing the things that the leader of the party should have been doing.

00:05:50.760 Well, the problem is they've shown no respect for the people. This country right now is like a raw

00:05:58.320 nerve, and the Prime Minister is jumping up and down on it again and again with his inflammatory

00:06:05.260 rhetoric. We're talking about people who have 14-year-old kids that are suicidal after two years

00:06:11.800 of lockdowns. I just spoke to a waitress whose business was wiped out by lockdowns. I'm talking to

00:06:17.800 truckers who've been serving food on our plates throughout this, and these are the very people,

00:06:24.020 honest, hard-working, shirt-off-your-back type of people that this Prime Minister keeps attacking.

00:06:29.700 Mr. Speaker, I was out on an overpass as the truckers went by, and what I saw were cheerful,

00:06:36.360 patriotic, optimistic Canadians who want their freedom back and want their livelihoods back.

00:06:42.600 And they're standing up for their fellow Canadians, the 60% of families who fear they can't feed

00:06:48.400 themselves. The 28-year-old kid living in mom's basement because he can't afford a home. The

00:06:54.520 small businessman wiped out by endless lockdowns by incompetent politicians. These are the people

00:07:00.440 that are standing up and fighting for their livelihoods and their freedom. Why won't the

00:07:04.500 government finally stand with them?

00:07:06.160 The worst thing that happened on Monday was not anything to do with Erin O'Toole. It was when

00:07:10.540 our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, came out and said that he was disgusted by the truckers,

00:07:16.560 repeated every single slur and lie that the media had been peddling about the truckers,

00:07:20.840 and basically just saying that he refused to talk to anybody that didn't have the same opinion of him. 0.98

00:07:26.380 So here is what our despicable, loathsome, angry, hateful, deranged Prime Minister had to say 0.96

00:07:34.240 about the good truckers of this country. Hate can never be the answer. Over the past few days, 0.98

00:07:43.520 Canadians were shocked and frankly disgusted by the behaviour displayed by some people protesting

00:07:50.780 in our nation's capital. And here is him saying that the people at the rally are wearing tinfoil hats.

00:07:56.380 The concerns expressed by a few people gathered in Ottawa right now are not new, not surprising,

00:08:06.220 are heard, but are a continuation of what we've unfortunately seen in disinformation and

00:08:15.260 misinformation online, conspiracy theorists about microchips, about God knows what else that go with

00:08:23.220 tinfoil hats. Speaking of tinfoil hats, I showed this on the podcast yesterday. One of Justin Trudeau's

00:08:28.860 state broadcast journalists, someone over at the CBC, actually asked a minister in Trudeau government

00:08:34.220 whether the Russians were the ones that were organising this whole trucker rally. Talk about 0.87

00:08:38.220 tinfoil hats, Justin Trudeau. It's so absurd the kinds of ad hominem attacks that he just throws out

00:08:44.480 at his enemies. And this is the one that really irked me. I think this really upset a lot of Canadians

00:08:49.260 because he was asked why he's not meeting with the trucker convoy after he met with other protests,

00:08:54.380 including protests that had very radical elements like Black Lives Matter. He was willing to go to

00:08:58.820 those rallies. He was willing to meet with the organisers of those rallies, even though they were

00:09:02.180 fringe in the demands, actually fringe. The trucker convoy was mainstream. It represents the mainstream

00:09:06.760 view of Canadians. That was established. 54% of Canadians said that they want the mandates gone,

00:09:11.740 that they want people to individually deal with COVID, that they want the COVID pandemic to be over.

00:09:16.400 So it's not fringe to be part of the trucker convoy. What is fringe is Black Lives Matter who wants to

00:09:21.240 defund the police. Justin Trudeau met with them and he said that the reason that he met with Black 0.88

00:09:26.040 Lives Matter but won't meet with the truckers is because he agrees with Black Lives Matter. Here's 0.93

00:09:29.940 what that looked like. I have attended protests and rallies in the past when I agreed with the goals,

00:09:36.860 when I supported the people expressing their concerns and their issues. Black Lives Matter is an 0.98

00:09:42.340 excellent example of that. But I have also chosen to not go anywhere near protests that have expressed

00:09:49.860 hateful rhetoric, violence towards fellow citizens, and a disrespect, not just of science, but of the

00:09:58.740 frontline health workers and, quite frankly, the 90% of truckers who have been doing the right thing

00:10:05.200 to keep Canadians safe.

00:10:06.620 So Justin Trudeau says he only meets with groups that he agrees with. Well, meanwhile,

00:10:11.020 he only received 32% of the popular vote in the last election. That is the slimmest share of the

00:10:16.220 overall election support in Canadian history, 32.2%, which means that 67.8% of Canadians who voted

00:10:25.000 did not vote for him. So if you're part of the two-thirds of the country who vote that didn't vote for

00:10:30.960 Trudeau, he won't even bother meeting with you because you don't share his radical,

00:10:35.360 woke, left-wing ideology. Again, all this does is set the stage for what Aaron O'Toole could have

00:10:42.040 done. Aaron O'Toole still had the opportunity to save everything, to step up and say,

00:10:47.160 Justin Trudeau, how dare you? How dare you malign these workers, these truckers, the backbone of our

00:10:52.420 economy, the ones who have sacrificed so much to make sure that Canadians continue to get the supply

00:10:57.120 chain, continue to get the food and the goods that they need. He could have come out so strong

00:11:01.540 and condemned Trudeau and stood up for the truckers and stood up for the working man and redeemed

00:11:07.280 himself in the eyes of so many conservatives. So what was O'Toole's response? Did he come out

00:11:11.500 swinging? Well, my colleague Andrew Lawton had some advice for him. This is what he tweeted.

00:11:15.540 Justin Trudeau has given Aaron O'Toole a gift. The convoy has motivated and inspired people all over

00:11:20.160 the country, far beyond conservative political circles. Yet Trudeau wants to demonize them all.

00:11:25.160 O'Toole needs to hold a press conference on the flatbed in front of center block. That's right.

00:11:29.760 That's correct. That's what he should have done. He should have wrapped himself up in the Canadian 1.00

00:11:32.920 flag, stood shoulder to shoulder with these truckers and said to Justin Trudeau, we demand

00:11:37.740 something different. But instead, I tweeted back to Andrew just in jest, but he won't, right? He won't.

00:11:44.220 He won't do that. O'Toole will not show solidarity. He will not stand with the truckers. Instead,

00:11:49.480 he, what did he do? He put out a seven minute Facebook video where he just didn't really say

00:11:54.880 anything. In typical fashion, he just sort of repeated his own lines that he's comfortable with.

00:12:00.060 He didn't make a passionate defense. He didn't call out Justin Trudeau for the despicableness of

00:12:04.680 the statement that he put out. And again, he just showed that he doesn't really have it in him

00:12:09.200 to defend conservative principles and values. He doesn't really have it in him to fight against

00:12:14.080 Justin Trudeau. And so I think at this point, to me and to many people out there, the writing was

00:12:18.260 sort of on the wall. Like, this guy is just falling flat in every single way possible. I wasn't

00:12:23.140 surprised. I didn't know this was coming. I wasn't surprised, though, when I saw the news on Monday

00:12:28.520 evening. This came out after dinner around 7.30 p.m. This news dropped from the Globe and Mail. O'Toole

00:12:34.000 faces a caucus revolt as 35 MPs sign a letter calling for leadership review vote. The letter was sent to

00:12:40.560 caucus chair Scott Reid on Monday. It's based on the Reform Act that the conservative MPs adopted a few

00:12:47.020 months ago. And this means that it requires a leadership review by conservative MPs as early

00:12:53.080 as Wednesday's regular caucus meeting. And at that meeting, if more than 50 percent of caucus votes

00:12:58.280 against Aaron O'Toole, he will have to step down immediately. It is a secret ballot vote. So anything

00:13:04.320 could happen. And there is a lot of speculation already. I heard from a conservative source that

00:13:08.680 there are 63 MPs who are planning to vote against Aaron O'Toole. 63. There are only 119 caucus members.

00:13:15.720 So that's more than half of caucus. If that's the case, if that's accurate, then O'Toole is finished and he

00:13:20.840 will be he will be removed as leader of the party on Wednesday. That's speculation at this point, because of

00:13:26.140 course, we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what each individual MP will choose to do on

00:13:31.220 Wednesday if that's when the vote happens, which I'm hearing from MPs. It is. We won't know till Wednesday, but that

00:13:35.880 is the direction that things are going. And so at the same time as this Globe and Mail piece came out, Alberta

00:13:42.160 conservative MP Bob Benzin issued his own statement openly calling for a caucus review of Aaron O'Toole.

00:13:48.320 And he admits that he was one of the 35 MPs who signed a letter. The 35 MPs, by the way, it's not

00:13:54.200 public. We don't know who those MPs are unless those MPs themselves choose to come forward. And for best I

00:14:00.280 can tell, we have two MPs who have publicly stepped forward saying that they are on that list. And those

00:14:04.600 MPs are Bob Benzin and Garnett Jenis, who's an MP up near Edmonton. Okay, so back to Benzin's letter.

00:14:10.980 He writes this as one of only seven sitting MPs to endorse Mr. O'Toole in both the 2017 and 2020

00:14:18.400 leadership contest. This decision did not come lightly. Mr. O'Toole campaigned in the leadership

00:14:23.300 as a principled conservative voice that would unite the party. However, since Mr. O'Toole assumed the

00:14:28.400 position of leader, there have been numerous instances of flip-flops and questionable judgment

00:14:32.560 on Mr. O'Toole's part, including, and then he names a bunch of examples, including the de facto

00:14:37.360 carbon tax policy, pressuring MPs to support the entirety of the 2021 election platform,

00:14:43.940 his failure to stand up against Bill 96 in Quebec to protest the rights of English-speaking

00:14:48.320 minority in Quebec, and finally, a failure to clearly stand up for the chart of rights and

00:14:53.220 freedoms for Canadians during the pandemic. So pretty devastating stuff there from someone

00:14:58.780 who publicly supported Aaron O'Toole twice. That's got to hurt. And so what we saw online

00:15:03.880 very, very quickly after this came out was spin. The spin, the pushing of information from Aaron

00:15:10.160 O'Toole's office, you can tell that they are getting desperate at this point because the stuff

00:15:14.220 that they're putting out is truly damaging to the conservative party. They're basically taking a

00:15:19.660 scorched earth approach. Like if you're going to take Aaron O'Toole down, we are going to destroy

00:15:23.360 the party on the way out. This is what I'm talking about. So Alex Boudelier over at Global News

00:15:28.360 tweeted the following senior conservative source just now. This is the conversion crew at work.

00:15:34.920 They got all ignited after the vote in December on conversion therapy. The far right of the party

00:15:40.160 is not happy with the leader over it. So again, trying to very simplify this and say that this

00:15:44.720 all stems back to this idiotic vote on conversion therapy, that the conversion therapy idea, the 0.99

00:15:50.480 liberals being the liberals, they created this wedge issue. They named their bill, the conversion 1.00

00:15:54.520 therapy bill, the act to end conversion therapy. But this wasn't about conversion therapy. This wasn't

00:15:59.860 about the idea of sending gay people to therapy to try to convert them to being straight. That doesn't

00:16:06.060 really happen in Canada. And in the small cases where it does happen, all the parties agree that that

00:16:10.900 should be banned, that that shouldn't be something that we do in Canada. I had Dr. Deborah So on my

00:16:15.120 podcast in December, and she talked about how the idea of conversion therapy is cruel because being gay

00:16:21.020 is something that you're born with, it's not something that you have any choice on. However, the conversion

00:16:25.120 therapy wasn't just about that, right? It was about gender identity as well. So somebody who's struggling

00:16:30.180 from gender dysphoria, someone who is not sure whether they are a woman or a man, whether their gender is

00:16:36.560 male or female. Dr. Deborah So said it's incredibly dangerous to ban therapy for those people because they

00:16:42.560 need therapy, they're confused, and they need to have support before they make a life altering

00:16:46.980 decision like having surgery or trying to change their gender. And so this bill basically just has

00:16:53.660 like a chilling effect on free speech. This is all a digression. The point is that the media and the

00:16:58.620 liberals tried to lie about what the conversion therapy bill did. Some conservatives tried to stand

00:17:03.940 up against it. Ultimately, Aaron O'Toole just said, no, we want this issue to go away, so we're going to

00:17:08.100 kill it. Now Aaron O'Toole and his office are trying to resurrect it, to try to paint the 35 MPs who

00:17:14.080 are opposing him as supporting this movement. This is so bad for the party. This is so toxic

00:17:18.720 because you're conceding to a liberal lie about the conservative party, which is never a good idea.

00:17:24.160 And you're using the liberal lie to paint half of the conservative party as being extreme and fringe

00:17:30.660 and anti-gay, anti-rights, and part of the far right. This is just not going to end well at all.

00:17:36.620 And if this is the approach that Aaron O'Toole wants to take, he does not deserve to be leader of

00:17:40.800 this party. And if he remains leader of the party, I think that he's going to have just a huge free

00:17:45.600 fall in support even more because so many people are going to be rightly angry about this. It wasn't

00:17:50.480 just Global News that was receiving this spin. Travis Danraj of the CBC also tweeted the following. He

00:17:56.060 said, senior conservative party source close to Aaron O'Toole camp says, move to oust leader stems from

00:18:01.680 the conversion therapy vote. And the far right of the party is angry with the leader because he stood up

00:18:07.240 for LGBTQ plus rights, Canadian politics. He goes on to say, source claims MP Garnet Genis is

00:18:14.560 spearheading the coup because he was in Latvia when we gave unanimous consent to make conversion

00:18:19.420 therapy illegal. So this was all started by the group that are internally referred to as the

00:18:24.700 conversion crew. They're driving this. Again, no good can come from this kind of mudslinging within 0.99

00:18:30.540 the party. And the fact that it is being initiated by the so-called leader just shows a total lack of

00:18:35.820 leadership. Garnet Genis rightly pushes back. And I think Garnet is a very diplomatic person. He is

00:18:42.180 very, very polite. He's definitely not one to publicly air his grievances in a typical way,

00:18:47.720 but I think he's reached his limit and you can see that. So he posted the following in response to

00:18:52.420 these media allegations. He said, very sad to see Aaron O'Toole launching more false personal attacks

00:18:58.660 against members of his own team. Statement below. And then his statement says, efforts by Aaron O'Toole's

00:19:03.940 communication team to personally smear me by misstating my position on conversion therapy

00:19:08.980 are beyond the pale. This is the kind of division that is tearing our party and it must come to an

00:19:13.640 end. We need leadership that unites instead of divides. I did sign the letter, but I was not the

00:19:18.240 organizer of the letter. Mr. O'Toole should recognize that his position is untenable rather

00:19:22.720 than using lies to publicly attack members of his own team. Those are fighting words. Those are fighting

00:19:27.520 words. Calling the leader of your party a liar and publicly accusing him of lying about you.

00:19:32.160 It's really, really hard to see how Aaron O'Toole could possibly come back from this. This is this

00:19:36.780 kind of infighting, this kind of open infighting in the conservative party. It's, it's, it's hard to

00:19:42.280 come back from as a leader. It's disappointing to see, but I think it is necessary for the conservative

00:19:47.500 party to work through the issues that they're having and hopefully resolve them. So Aaron O'Toole

00:19:52.500 himself releases a statement Monday night, letting us know that he is not going anywhere. So this is how he

00:19:58.540 tries to paint the situation. This is, this is pretty remarkable. So he says this,

00:20:03.060 there are two roads open to the conservative party of Canada. One is the road of Randy Hillier

00:20:08.200 and Derek Sloan. It is angry, negative, and extreme. It's a dead end. One that would see the

00:20:14.240 party of confederation become the NDP of the right. I'm just going to pause right here because a couple

00:20:18.920 of quick points. First of all, Randy Hillier and Derek Sloan are not part of the conservative

00:20:23.160 party of Canada. Randy Hillier is a provincial politician who used to be part of the PCs and

00:20:28.000 now he's out on his own. Derek Sloan is not part of the conservative party. Aaron O'Toole kicked him

00:20:33.120 out and he's off on his own. He's no longer a member of parliament. So it's sort of weird to

00:20:38.380 paint this dichotomy saying that these two individuals who are not part of the party are

00:20:42.500 one part of the party. That's just not the case. Second here, here he says that that part of the party

00:20:47.540 is angry, negative, and extreme. That is the exact stereotype that the legacy media and Justin Trudeau

00:20:52.820 and the liberals want you to believe about the conservatives. That's what they want you to

00:20:56.060 believe about the working class people of this country and about the conservative base. So why

00:21:00.660 would Aaron O'Toole buy into that? Why would he repeat that? Why would he give that credence? It's

00:21:04.160 not true. And having the leader of the party say it is true is really, really damaging. Okay, here,

00:21:09.140 I'll continue from a statement. He says, the other road is to better reflect the Canada of 2022,

00:21:14.480 to recognize that conservatism is organic, not static, and that a winning message is one of inclusion,

00:21:20.080 optimism, ideas, and hope. No, no, no disagreement from me there. I would just argue that that is

00:21:25.760 not what Aaron O'Toole is doing here. I'll continue. There was a report tonight of members

00:21:30.200 of the conservative caucus who are unsure of what road to take. They are, it said, bringing a letter

00:21:34.520 to caucus to trigger a vote on my leadership of the party. Good. I'm not going anywhere and I'm not

00:21:39.640 turning back. Canada needs us to be united and serious. It's time for reckoning. Time to settle this

00:21:45.140 and caucus right here, right now, once and for all, anger versus optimism. That is a choice in

00:21:50.540 simple terms. So he's really simplifying this and saying, if you're with me, it's because you're

00:21:54.660 optimistic. If you're with them, it's because you're angry. That is so divisive. Again, this is

00:21:59.160 so Justin Trudeau. It's really interesting, this strategy that he's taking. Finally, he says,

00:22:04.420 I will accept the results of the vote. The signers of this letter must accept it too. They brought it.

00:22:09.380 They'll have to live with it. Rebecca and I, Rebecca is his wife. Rebecca and I are committed

00:22:13.320 to our party and conservatism in Canada. We look forward to continuing that journey.

00:22:18.720 So that sounds like a pretty confident Aaron O'Toole to me. It sounds like he believes that

00:22:22.260 he has support of his caucus, that he has the numbers, that this is just a bump along the road

00:22:26.340 and that he is going to continue down the path that he is going to continue down. It's interesting

00:22:30.720 because the most passionate that Aaron O'Toole ever becomes is about the direction that he wants to

00:22:35.760 take the conservative party. He doesn't really get passionate about individual issues. He doesn't

00:22:39.300 really get passionate about defending conservative principles and values or about the future

00:22:43.300 of Canada. The thing that he gets the most passionate about is his own leadership, is his own

00:22:48.480 willingness to fight to defend his job, basically, to remain leader of the party. That's the thing

00:22:54.600 that you see him really get passionate and worked up about. Now, I want to talk about an exclusive

00:22:59.100 report I have over at TNC. I basically spent the entire morning on Tuesday talking to as many

00:23:04.580 conservatives who would talk to me, talking to conservative MPs, insiders, people who work for MPs,

00:23:09.120 people who used to work in the Harper government, trying to really get my finger on the pulse

00:23:13.300 what is happening with the party, why this letter came out. And I was successfully able to talk to

00:23:18.480 nine high-level sources, including three current members of parliament. And I put together this

00:23:23.140 exclusive report over at True North. I want you to go check that out. It says,

00:23:26.720 we need to remove him to save our party. That's a quote from a conservative MP.

00:23:30.020 They say he needs to step down gracefully. So I have a lot of really interesting quotes in here,

00:23:34.520 really passionate stuff about why this came to fruition, why the letter came out now,

00:23:38.840 what led to it, what the complaints are, who's behind it, and who isn't debunking some of the

00:23:43.380 myths that are already being put out by the media. So I encourage you to head on over to

00:23:47.220 TNC.news and check that out. I'm not going to go through and read my entire report on the show,

00:23:53.280 because I think it's better if you go and check it out and read it yourself. I will say that this

00:23:57.260 initiative, the 35 MPs that came together to sign the letter, I spoke to the person who spearheaded it,

00:24:01.940 the organizer of this letter. Well, he says that he was one of several, but he's sort of the main

00:24:06.460 person who was driving this. And he said that this came together really quickly, that there was

00:24:10.620 some kind of a rumor that Aaron O'Toole was going to demand that MPs stand publicly and show their

00:24:16.180 loyalty to him. And they were concerned about that. And so they worked over the weekend, like within

00:24:20.780 one weekend, they found 30% of caucus, 35 MPs who were willing to sign this letter. And people are

00:24:26.440 just saying enough is enough. This isn't necessarily about the direction that O'Toole is taking the party

00:24:30.860 in. It's about trust. It's about integrity. It's about the fact that he flip-flops, that he's not

00:24:34.740 consistent, that we don't really know where he stands. And from what I'm told, the 35 MPs come

00:24:40.140 from a broad range of the party. It's not just the so-cons. It's not just the hardcore conservative

00:24:44.740 guys, that it's people who used to support Aaron O'Toole, people who supported him, like Bob Benzin,

00:24:49.520 who were behind him in both 2017 and 2020, people who just don't like his leadership style, don't like

00:24:55.440 the way, for instance, he treated Shannon Stubbs or Senator Denise Batters, people who were just

00:25:00.700 opposed to his style and his lack of conviction. And so again, worthwhile. Go check that out over

00:25:06.960 at TNC.news. Look, it's clear at this point that the Conservative Party of Canada needs to be led by

00:25:12.260 somebody who has the courage and the conviction to articulate and defend conservative values and

00:25:17.900 conservative principles. We saw that so much this weekend, how much leadership is missing in Canada

00:25:23.220 and how much we need a voice to defend common sense and basic principles and values like freedom in

00:25:29.020 this country. Aaron O'Toole is clearly not up to the task, and it appears that he wants to burn his

00:25:34.860 party to the ground rather than facing the facts and facing the consequences of the way that he has

00:25:40.220 run the party over the past two years. This is going to be an ugly week for Conservatives, but hopefully

00:25:45.260 by the end of the week, they will emerge stronger and more united and hopefully soon with a leader who

00:25:51.360 actually likes the party, likes the base, and believes in conservative principles and values.

00:25:56.720 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:25:59.020 Thank you.

The Candice Malcolm Show - February 02, 2022

Erin O’Toole’s time as CPC leader is coming to an end

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