O'Toole was weak and dishonest to run as a progressive
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Summary
In this episode, Candice talks about why True North has been much more critical of the Conservative Party of Canada and its leadership candidate, Erin O'Toole, since he became the party's new leader, and how he got there.
Transcript
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Aaron O'Toole misrepresented who he was to Conservative members.
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He promised that he was true blue, and then he ran a campaign as a weak-willed red Tory
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who refused to stand his ground or defend Canada.
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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 podcast today.
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Now, you've probably noticed that we here at True North and here at The Candace Malcolm Show
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have been much more critical than usual of the Conservatives and of Aaron O'Toole.
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Now, I know that much of the reason why people like this program, like this channel,
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the reason that you tune in to True North is because we don't typically take an overly critical view of Conservatives.
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The legacy media is there day in, day out to criticize Conservatives,
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to show their double standard, to push Liberal talking points,
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push the Liberal worldview, push Liberal wedge issues,
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We're different. We give Conservatives a fair shot.
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We try to remain open-minded, and we don't innately have a bias or a bigotry against Conservatives.
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So much of the legacy media, deep down, those journalists hate Conservatives.
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They don't like Conservative values. They don't like Conservative people.
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They don't want those values represented in their Parliament, in their government, in their society.
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And that is why they're so unfair to Conservatives.
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Here at True North, we disagree. We like Conservative values.
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We think that Conservative values are Canadian values, and that is incredibly important to show both sides.
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So yes, so to people who like True North because we're typically more fair to Conservatives,
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and they wonder this week, why is Candace, why is True North being so unfair to Conservatives?
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We want to see a Conservative party that is strong, a Conservative party that is Conservative.
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There's no point in having two Liberal parties.
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And so the reason that we are being critical of Erin O'Toole and of the Conservative party
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is because we hope that they will listen, and we hope that they will learn
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that the way that you win an election in Canada is not to apologize for Conservatives.
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It's not to back away from your Conservative values.
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It's not to flip-flop and change your mind and look indecisive and look weak.
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The way to win as a Conservative is to own it, is to be proud of it,
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to push common sense, to push your values, and to not appear like you're unsure,
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or that you're afraid, or that you're embarrassed, or that you're trying to hide something.
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And that is the reason why we are being critical in this week after the election.
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So I want to go back in time a little bit on the program today,
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and I want to talk about how Erin O'Toole became leader of this party,
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how he became the leader, and what he did in order to get there.
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So recall that after Andrew Scheer stepped down from leader in 2019,
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there was a leadership race to replace him as leader of the Conservative Party.
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There were four main candidates that emerged sort of as a frontrunner.
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So we had Peter McKay, who is a very high-profile politician from Nova Scotia.
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He was a cabinet minister in the Harper government,
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and he was sort of known as one of the leaders of the Progressive Conservative Party
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that merged with the Canadian Alliance to create the new iteration,
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So he comes from the PC side of the party, the Progressive Conservative side.
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Other candidates, we had Erin O'Toole, and we'll get into him in a moment.
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Next, we had Leslie Lewis, who's a tremendous candidate.
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She's very well-educated, very articulate, social conservative.
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She's from an immigrant family and community, and she was great.
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But the problem with Leslie Lewis is that she was unknown to Conservatives.
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She didn't have a deep history in the party, a little bit inexperienced,
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and that kind of came out a little bit during the campaign.
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And no one really knew if she had what it would take to win.
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And finally, we had Derek Sloan, who is a social conservative.
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He was really seen as being strong on some of the issues.
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However, it became very apparent through his campaign that he was irresponsible,
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he ended up leaving the Conservative caucus and moving to Alberta,
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running a bizarre independent campaign, and basically got no support whatsoever.
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So he shot himself in the foot, and he is out of the picture.
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So we had these two social conservative candidates that each had their own flaws.
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And then we had these two sort of more experienced candidates,
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former cabinet ministers, both of them, both Erin O'Toole and Peter McKay.
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Both their dads were politicians and Conservative politicians, representatives.
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So for Conservative voters, they didn't really have a very strong option.
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There wasn't an obvious apparent leader out of the bunch.
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It was sort of a given that probably Peter McKay would win
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and he had this sort of well-known political pedigree.
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It was sort of like the Conservative version of Justin Trudeau.
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And that is when Erin O'Toole sort of emerged as a realistic option.
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He seemed like he was really strong on law and order,
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He made it very clear from the beginning that he was not pro-life,
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that he would not put any restrictions whatsoever on abortion.
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However, he did claim that he would respect the beliefs of social conservatives,
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that there would be room for them in the party,
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Peter McKay kind of came out there and said that the reason that Andrew Scheer lost the election
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was because of his conservative values, his social conservative values.
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whereas Erin O'Toole proposed the other side and said,
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no, there's room, there's a big tent, there's room for these people in my party.
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This is what Erin O'Toole looked like back in 2020 when he was running for leader of this party.
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Who's going to defend our history, our institutions against attacks from cancel culture and the radical left?
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I've fought on a range of issues from military and veterans to foreign affairs, public safety, and certainly the economy.
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I'm Erin O'Toole, and I'm running to unite conservatives on the path to victory.
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He doesn't get intimidated by the left or the media.
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I do respect human rights and the decisions of our courts.
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A plan to get serious on public safety, support the rule of law, and end the unfair demonization of law-abiding firearms owners.
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So that was Erin O'Toole 18 months ago, and the Erin O'Toole that emerged on the campaign trail in the past six weeks was a different person.
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He was a different, he had a different set of priorities.
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He was talking about different things, and that is a problem that so many conservatives are having right now with Erin O'Toole.
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Look, there's room for red Tories in the party.
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And when I say red Tory, it's not even really clear what this term means anymore,
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because it used to mean someone who came from the progressive conservative wing of the party, the old party, that was sort of more big government.
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They were sort of more socialist on the economic front.
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And then, you know, they were conservative because of just party loyalty.
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You know, perhaps they believed in law and order, these kind of things.
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And then it really kind of changed to mean that a red Tory was someone who was liberal on social issues and moral issues.
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They were pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion, all the same kind of things that the liberals on the left were,
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but then maybe they were fiscally conservative.
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Today, it's not even really clear what it means.
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It seems like the whole party is in support of gay marriage now, and that abortion issue is not going away.
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There's people who really morally oppose to abortion.
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And then other people who just really don't care about the issue and they don't want to talk about it,
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they don't want it to be central in the campaign, they just want it to go away.
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And because of that, they'll just sort of mirror the liberal talking points on that issue.
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So this term, red Tory, it's not even really clear in today's landscape.
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Do they believe that little kids should be getting hormone treatments to change their gender?
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Like, these are questions that haven't really been addressed.
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The problem with him in this campaign was the fact that he had presented himself as the real deal,
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And then as soon as the writs were drawn up and he started speaking,
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it became really clear that his strategy was to basically hug the liberals,
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show the Canadian public that he was very much a liberal,
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and that the main difference between him and Trudeau was that he was just more competent,
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And so he would continue to promote Justin Trudeau's vision for the country.
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He would just be a better manager of that government.
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That's why he lost the election, because he really just didn't provide a clear enough distinction
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And no, nobody wants a conservative party that promotes liberalism.
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They want a conservative party that promotes conservatism.
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So over at TNC, we compile a list of the five biggest flip-flops that Erin O'Toole did on the campaign.
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So I think the first and the worst was that he proposed a carbon tax,
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which was the exact opposite of what he had said earlier.
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So during his conservative leadership campaign,
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O'Toole was adamant that he would repeal the liberal government's federal carbon tax.
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This is a picture of him with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation signing a pledge,
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I, Erin O'Toole, promise that if elected prime minister of Canada,
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I will immediately repeal the Trudeau carbon tax and reject any future carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme.
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And here it is, signed, Erin O'Toole, dated June 18th, 2020.
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A few months later, in April 2021, Erin O'Toole released his party's climate change policy,
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and it included this whole complicated scheme where they put a price on carbon,
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and then they played this, like, weird semantics game where they tried to say,
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no, it wasn't a carbon tax, it was a carbon savings account,
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even though Justin Trudeau also claims that his carbon tax is not a carbon tax, it's a carbon price.
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A lot of people were really mad about that when that came out.
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And, you know, by the time the campaign rolled around,
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Erin O'Toole was just basically spouting the same things that we heard from the liberals non-stop.
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How the Conservatives came around to supporting a carbon tax.
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It says here, O'Toole now admits the most efficient way to reduce emissions is through putting a price on carbon.
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And then here we go, in the last week of the campaign,
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again, the Conservatives go to the Toronto Star.
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This is a Toronto Star exclusive, the most left-wing newspaper in the country who hate Conservatives,
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are getting exclusives from the Conservative Party.
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that the liberals' carbon price won't automatically get scrapped if he's Prime Minister.
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So he went from adamantly opposing carbon taxes so much that he was willing to sign a pledge and stand by it
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when he wanted to run the Conservative Party to sort of being squishy about it,
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saying, here's my plan, it's not a tax, it's a carbon price,
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and it's going to go into a carbon savings account.
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And then by the time the campaign rolled around, it was like,
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no, Justin Trudeau's carbon taxes are here to stay.
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Of course, that wasn't the only walk back that we saw during his campaign to become Conservative leader.
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O'Toole was unequivocal that he would defund and privatize CBC's English properties.
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He also said that he respects independent journalists
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and that he would fully recognize the Independent Press Gallery of Canada,
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that is the press gallery that I am the president of,
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and that he said that he would give our press gallery equal standing to the PPG in Ottawa.
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Then fast forward a few months in the Conservative platform,
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O'Toole only pledged that he would review the mandate of the CBC.
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And throughout the campaign, he failed to grant interviews with independent journalists,
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failed to let independent journalists into his campaign.
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Next, this is something that really upset Social Conservatives
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and people who believe that the purpose of the Conservative Party
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O'Toole had previously claimed that under his leadership,
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Conservative caucus members would be able to vote freely,
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vote according to their morals and according to their conscience.
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he said that MPs who do not fully support his platform
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which his platform was very socially left-wing.
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Next, he flip-flopped when it came to protecting the conscience rights
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when he was running for leadership of the Conservative Party,
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he stated that he would protect the conscience rights
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He said that health care workers would have the right
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that that would be up to the doctor and their moral rights.
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It said that Aaron O'Toole would defend the conscience rights
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prevent them from carrying out or referring patients
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Then, in the party platform that came out during the election,
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It says that we will protect the conscience rights
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The challenges of dealing with COVID-19 have reminded us
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of the vital importance of health care professionals.
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The last thing Canada can afford is to drive away
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any of these professionals out of their profession.
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But then, surprise, surprise, halfway through the campaign,
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He said they will have to refer because the rights to access
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So, the exact opposite of what he had said all along.
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So, as you can see, there's a trend going on here.
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even though it was really clear in his platform
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that he was going to reverse the liberal gun grab,
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the liberals came out and banned 1,500 firearms,
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and understand it, go over and check out Assaulted,
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which is Andrew Lawton's four-part series on this.
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But regardless, Aaron O'Toole completely reversed his position.
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So, Aaron O'Toole is supposed to be a law and order guy.
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And so, you would expect that if Justin Trudeau
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tried to create an election wedge issue over guns,
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You want to make this election about law and order
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Let's talk about the number of illegal firearms in Canada.
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Let's talk about the way that you have loosened sentences
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How, let's talk about revolving door prison systems
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what you should be going after is dangerous criminals.
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Instead of allowing the liberals to create the narrative
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and then just sort of weak-willed stepping back
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and saying, oh, okay, well, we'll just change our position
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And again, Justin Trudeau is weak on this issue.
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So why not go after Trudeau on an issue that he is weak?
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This, in a nutshell, is why Aaron O'Toole lost the election.
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What they do care about is seeing someone who has conviction,
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seeing someone who is confident and sure of themselves,
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who has convictions, and who stands their grounds.
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That's not what Aaron O'Toole did in this campaign.
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Instead, he was sounding a lot like Justin Trudeau,
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They're talking about how Canada is this great,
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and we like everyone, and everyone's a part of it.
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Yeah, that kind of stuff is just common knowledge at this point.
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You don't really need to create a whole political speech
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And so, again, it's not like there's anything wrong with this message.
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It's more like we're being lectured about how we have to like each other.
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Instead of really presenting this vision for the country,
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is basically trying to convince you that he is just like the liberals.
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still denied to Indigenous children born today.
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and the dark days we have come through together,
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They don't want another version of the Liberal Party.
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That's why Erin O'Toole is not Prime Minister today.
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And if the Conservatives ever want to win in this country,