The Candice Malcolm Show - October 25, 2021


O’Toole caves on vaccine mandates for MPs


Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

195.59058

Word count

3,797

Sentence count

223

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Every major political party in Canada is the exact same. Vaccine mandates are the latest policy they all agree on. In this episode, Candice talks about why the lack of diversity in Canada's political parties is making them uninspiring.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.400 Every major political party in Canada is the exact same.
00:00:04.440 Vaccine mandates are the latest policy that they all agree on.
00:00:07.440 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:14.720 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the program.
00:00:17.120 Thank you for your support of The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:19.500 I hope everyone out there had a wonderful weekend.
00:00:21.620 Hope you got to spend some time with your families out there.
00:00:24.860 Today I want to talk about the uninspiring sameness of Canada's political parties,
00:00:29.600 the uninspiring sameness.
00:00:30.900 I had a column over in the Toronto Sun over the weekend with the same title,
00:00:34.460 put it up on True North, and I want to go through my argument on that.
00:00:39.520 But first, if you enjoy The Candice Malcolm Show, if you like what we do here at True North,
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00:01:59.260 Okay, so back to our topic today.
00:02:02.040 The political parties are all the same.
00:02:03.820 There's sometimes little differences here and there,
00:02:06.380 and those differences we see are quickly dissolving.
00:02:09.780 The parties are converging.
00:02:11.160 They basically have the same opinion on every single important issue.
00:02:14.780 So this was something that really stood out to me during the federal election.
00:02:17.880 I thought that the most striking feature of the recent federal election
00:02:21.300 was just the pure amount of overlap between the political parties
00:02:24.820 when it came to all of the details in their platforms,
00:02:27.800 but also their overall governing philosophies.
00:02:30.700 We're at the point where we have the liberals, the conservatives,
00:02:34.420 the new Democrats who aren't that new anymore.
00:02:36.220 They're kind of just like U.S. Democrats who are very similar to the liberals here in Canada.
00:02:41.300 The Bloc Quebecois who at least have their own sort of mandate,
00:02:44.760 but when it comes to policies, they agree with everyone else and the Greens.
00:02:49.220 They all have the same opinion on virtually every political issue that matters in Canada.
00:02:53.620 We're at a point where every party thinks that there is a climate catastrophe,
00:02:58.120 that there is a climate crisis, that they're so steeped in climate alarmism.
00:03:02.340 The whole idea of a Green Party seems redundant.
00:03:05.060 The Liberal Party is the Green Party.
00:03:06.820 The NDP Party is the Green Party.
00:03:08.680 And at this point, the Conservative Party is the Green Party,
00:03:11.460 and the Bloc Party is the Green Party.
00:03:12.580 So we saw a huge dip in support for the Green Party,
00:03:16.200 partially because their party is in such turmoil.
00:03:19.040 Their leader was so uninspiring and new to politics,
00:03:22.140 but also just because they're all Green Parties now.
00:03:25.020 So we don't really need this single-issue niche party anymore.
00:03:28.720 The Green Party has succeeded in many ways.
00:03:30.520 Their job is done.
00:03:31.620 Everybody has bought in to this alarmist, over-the-top,
00:03:35.440 the world is ending, the sky is falling, chicken little worldview.
00:03:38.380 When it comes to climate, that we don't even need the Green Party anymore
00:03:41.840 because they're all Green Party.
00:03:43.220 So in some ways, that is a win for Elizabeth May 0.81
00:03:46.560 and the people who really built up that Green Party.
00:03:49.380 And when you take a step back and you look at the broader policies in this country,
00:03:52.860 on health care, on fiscal federalism,
00:03:54.900 on the idea of official bilingualism,
00:03:56.840 on the basic governing concept of having high taxes,
00:04:00.880 big budgets, budget deficits,
00:04:02.840 a large civil service, the size of the public service,
00:04:05.200 they all agree on it.
00:04:06.180 They also all agree on the ideas behind government child care,
00:04:09.760 affordable housing, reconciliation,
00:04:11.880 truth and reconciliation with First Nations Canadians.
00:04:14.220 Again, the environment.
00:04:15.400 When it comes to immigration,
00:04:16.720 when it comes to foreign policy,
00:04:18.260 gun control, abortion, speech censorship,
00:04:21.240 COVID-19 restrictions,
00:04:22.500 COVID-19 lockdowns,
00:04:23.920 COVID-19 vaccines,
00:04:25.220 and some variation of the idea of universal basic income,
00:04:28.980 which we saw throughout the pandemic,
00:04:30.420 when it comes to all of these policies and more,
00:04:32.500 they all agree.
00:04:33.520 Every single party agrees.
00:04:34.960 They all have the same ideas.
00:04:37.200 So sure, each party has a slightly different way of framing the issues.
00:04:41.640 They tinker with the various rates and rebates.
00:04:43.980 They use slightly different language here and there.
00:04:46.360 But overall, it would be nearly impossible
00:04:48.800 for the average Canadian voter
00:04:50.460 to name the party behind the various big ticket items
00:04:54.180 that we saw in the platforms in the last elections.
00:04:56.860 Let's just go through this.
00:04:58.020 We'll do a little pop quiz here on the Candace Malcolm Show.
00:05:00.740 And you can guess which party was behind various policies
00:05:04.280 that were sort of the big ticket policies for each party.
00:05:07.300 So the first one up.
00:05:08.880 Which party proposed doubling the Canada workers' benefit
00:05:12.420 to give low-wage workers a rebate on their federal income tax?
00:05:16.160 Which party believes that Canadians earning in the lowest income brackets
00:05:20.420 shouldn't pay federal taxes on that,
00:05:22.240 shouldn't pay income taxes,
00:05:23.100 and should get a rebate on tax time?
00:05:24.920 Who knows?
00:05:25.520 I mean, it could be a policy from any of the parties.
00:05:28.380 That one specifically came from the Conservatives, though.
00:05:31.240 So keep track if you got that one right.
00:05:34.580 Question number two.
00:05:35.980 Which party proposed a tax-free savings account
00:05:38.920 for first-time homeowners under the age of 40?
00:05:41.880 So first-time homeowners under the age of 40,
00:05:44.180 you want to save up for down payment.
00:05:45.840 This party proposed creating a special new tax-free savings account
00:05:49.640 so you could put money in there tax-free.
00:05:52.460 Which party was it?
00:05:54.060 Believe it or not, was the Liberals.
00:05:55.620 I know it sounds a bit like a Conservative policy.
00:05:57.820 That's the kind of policy that Stephen Harper used to come up with.
00:06:00.420 Remember, he was the one that came up with the tax-free savings account.
00:06:03.460 Well, the Liberals sort of took a page from the Conservative book in that regard
00:06:06.760 and created this nifty little tax loophole for young first-time homebuyers.
00:06:11.340 Again, that could have been a policy from the Conservatives,
00:06:13.840 could have been a policy from any of the parties, frankly.
00:06:17.000 Finally, question number three.
00:06:18.280 Which of the parties proposed a two-year ban on foreign home ownership,
00:06:23.760 foreign ownership of homes in Canada?
00:06:26.780 Okay, to be fair, that's a bit of a trick question
00:06:28.660 because they basically all agree on that one.
00:06:30.880 Yes, that's right.
00:06:31.680 The Liberals, Conservatives, and the NDP all had some variation
00:06:34.560 of a ban on home ownership for foreign owners.
00:06:38.620 So trick question.
00:06:39.420 Again, they all agree on virtually everything.
00:06:41.660 So let me know what your score was out of three there.
00:06:44.840 But I imagine that, you know, the people who are watching this show,
00:06:48.040 first of all, are pretty tuned in.
00:06:49.380 So you're the political junkies out there.
00:06:51.480 You might score better.
00:06:52.580 My guess is the average Canadian voter probably got a zero out of three,
00:06:57.400 maybe one out of three on that little quiz I came up with.
00:07:00.060 And another example right here, one of the biggest ticket items
00:07:03.360 from the Conservative campaign during the election was this idea
00:07:06.620 that mothers who had just given birth just had babies
00:07:09.540 and were off work on maternity leave, which new mothers collect EI in Canada.
00:07:14.520 So this idea that women who begin working part-time
00:07:18.020 would still be able to collect the EI maternity leave while working part-time. 0.99
00:07:22.780 And so this was sort of billed as this really great pro-family policy
00:07:26.960 by the Conservatives.
00:07:28.060 And a lot of people on social media were saying that it was a great idea.
00:07:30.940 But here's the kicker.
00:07:32.180 The Liberal government apparently already allows this.
00:07:35.160 And so we saw an expert in employment law come out on social media
00:07:39.760 and really demonstrate the point that this great new Conservative policy idea
00:07:44.540 was actually already a policy in Canada under the Liberal government.
00:07:48.340 So it is this uninspiring sameness of the major parties
00:07:53.580 that led us to this status quo election outcome.
00:07:56.940 The outcome of the election was remarkably similar to the result in 2019.
00:08:01.840 So here we had an election two years later.
00:08:04.200 If you follow the campaign closely like we did here at the Candace Malcolm Show,
00:08:07.800 you know that there was a lot of twists and turns.
00:08:09.880 The Trudeau campaign made so many unforced errors on this campaign.
00:08:13.940 Trudeau started very high in the polls.
00:08:15.980 The whole idea of launching this election and triggering it
00:08:18.660 was that Trudeau wanted a majority government.
00:08:20.420 He thought that his handling of the pandemic was going to easily deliver him that.
00:08:25.200 What we saw was that the Canadians, according to polls, if you believe the polls,
00:08:29.460 but what we saw from the polls was that Trudeau was really popular at the beginning.
00:08:33.620 And then as the campaign went on, his support plummeted.
00:08:37.440 And it looked like Aaron O'Toole was going to win the election.
00:08:39.920 And then Aaron O'Toole kind of faltered in the final two weeks.
00:08:42.440 I posit that is because he just wouldn't hold his ground.
00:08:45.420 He didn't hold his ground.
00:08:46.360 He flip-flopped on every issue.
00:08:48.020 And Canadians saw that as weakness.
00:08:49.660 But at the end of the day, the outcome of the 2021 election was remarkably similar to the 2019 election.
00:08:56.700 And that clearly was because Canadians are just indifferent to the various pitches.
00:09:02.160 And thus, at the end of the day, they just retreated to their old habits.
00:09:05.960 They cast their ballot in the exact same way as they did in the previous election.
00:09:10.060 They're tuned out.
00:09:11.580 They're uninspired.
00:09:12.720 And this is because everything is the same.
00:09:15.420 The political parties have the same views.
00:09:17.580 Now, let me just make one small note here, because I know a lot of people in the comment sections are probably making this point already.
00:09:23.580 There is, of course, one exception, one major exception to this rule where every single party has the same view.
00:09:29.220 And that, of course, came by way of Maxime Bernier and the People's Party of Canada.
00:09:33.700 They, to give them credit, ran on a very different set of ideas.
00:09:37.380 So here we had this political system with five mainstream parties, the five parties that are always there, that always get invited to the debates, that are always sort of featured on the legacy media, the liberals, the conservatives, the Democrats, the bloc, and the greens.
00:09:51.200 And then now we have this new party, the People's Party, who comes from more of the political right, although they do attract voters from across the spectrum, the sort of protest voters.
00:10:00.080 They created a very different set of issues that they campaigned on.
00:10:03.700 Bernier's ideas were outside the box.
00:10:05.300 And because of this, the media, who also suffer from the exact same toxic groupthink and rigid, boring sameness as the political parties, well, they didn't know what to make of Maxime Bernier.
00:10:16.640 They didn't know what to make of his large followers.
00:10:19.080 And so they demonized Bernier.
00:10:20.860 They slandered Bernier.
00:10:22.160 They called him and his supporters every name in the book.
00:10:25.740 Regardless of all that, because Bernier and the People's Party were different, they managed to nearly triple their vote count in this election.
00:10:33.100 So Bernier and the People's Party did get rewarded in terms of the number of vote casts, but because of our first pass-to-post system, they didn't make any real gains in terms of winning any seats.
00:10:42.960 So I will note that that was the one exception.
00:10:45.780 Thank goodness for Maxime Bernier saying something different.
00:10:48.340 At least it makes it a little more interesting for us tuning in and watching.
00:10:52.380 But, you know, this is sort of the sad point.
00:10:54.520 This is the point of my show today, the point of my article over in the Toronto Sun, is that it was the Conservative Party, the Conservative Party of Canada, that once offered the occasional spark of originality.
00:11:06.120 They were the ones who would occasionally push back against the painful dullness of Canada's political party system.
00:11:12.820 They sometimes resisted the media-induced conformity.
00:11:16.180 And they would say no to the left's latest insistence that we all have the exact same opinion on every single issue.
00:11:22.720 And that is the crux of this whole thing.
00:11:24.420 The left wants absolute ideological conformity.
00:11:27.580 They want everyone to agree on every single thing.
00:11:30.400 And the Conservatives used to say, no, we're okay with having a different view.
00:11:34.200 We don't agree with you on this.
00:11:35.700 But it seems like these Conservatives today, the Conservative Party of Canada today, doesn't do that anymore.
00:11:41.260 They no longer resist the left's conformity push.
00:11:45.560 And now they're just more than happy to conform with the left's ideology on almost everything.
00:11:50.500 So the Conservatives used to push back, even though it was ever so slightly.
00:11:54.200 Oftentimes they would just go along.
00:11:55.880 But sometimes, sometimes we would see them push back.
00:11:59.040 They'd say no to the latest leftist fad, whether that be the fanatical climate alarmism,
00:12:03.860 whether it be the open borders immigration ideas, or recently the idea that Canada has committed the worst forms of crimes against humanity, including genocide.
00:12:15.220 Conservatives would stand up and say, let's bring some common sense to this scenario.
00:12:19.380 And no, we don't agree with these statements.
00:12:22.300 But it appears that those days are behind us.
00:12:24.940 Under Erin O'Toole, the party seems committed to whitewashing itself and becoming a true Big L Liberal Party.
00:12:32.120 Big L Liberal Party.
00:12:34.020 And last week was the latest example of this.
00:12:36.120 So I'm told that there was a very heated meeting, caucus meeting, on the topic of vaccine mandates.
00:12:42.080 The caucus meetings are when all of the elected Conservative MPs get together.
00:12:45.760 They have a meeting.
00:12:46.480 And I'm told that the meeting basically consisted of Erin O'Toole and some of his sort of close allies in the party
00:12:53.240 presenting on this idea that the Conservatives should just go along and get along on vaccine mandates.
00:12:58.640 They should force their MPs to get double vaccinated.
00:13:01.500 And they should just kind of align with what the Liberals believe on that.
00:13:05.220 I'm told there was a lot of pushback that the MPs in caucus vehemently opposed this idea.
00:13:12.660 And they let it be known to Erin O'Toole that he was not going to be allowed to have this vaccine mandate for caucus. 0.90
00:13:20.400 And so as a result of that, we had Blake Richards, who is the Conservative Party whip, come out following the meeting and basically just state that, say that the Conservative Party is not in favor of this idea of forced vaccinations for all MPs.
00:13:34.500 Obviously, there's broader repercussions for this.
00:13:36.780 It's not just about MPs, but once they allow it in Parliament, once they force all the MPs to get vaccinated, it's only a matter of time before every aspect of our society will have this kind of double vax rule. 0.89
00:13:47.260 So the Conservatives were the only holdout, even though it sort of is a distinction without a difference.
00:13:51.720 But here is Blake Richards on CTV explaining the Conservative position.
00:13:56.680 And you can see, I'll play a bit longer of the clip, but you can see how the host is sort of outraged about this idea that the Conservatives are not forcing their MPs to get vaccinated.
00:14:07.080 And they refuse to reveal the vaccine status of members of Parliament in the Conservative caucus.
00:14:12.200 So here's that clip.
00:14:12.880 Well, we've said all along that we believe workplace safety, including in Parliament, can be assured by either vaccination or producing a negative rapid test.
00:14:23.240 So we think that all members of Parliament can safely perform their duties in the House of Commons and in our committee rooms with either a vaccination or a rapid test.
00:14:32.260 I think it's critically important that all members of Parliament are able to participate in in person in those sessions and bring forward the really important issues that we need to be dealing with on behalf of our constituents.
00:14:45.760 But but but OK, every single person that works in the House of Commons, all the staff, they have to be double vaccinated to get on a plane.
00:14:52.700 You have to be double vaccinated to get on a bus train.
00:14:54.860 You've got to be double vaccinated.
00:14:56.400 Can you can you tell us how many of the Conservative MPs exactly are double vaccinated and how many this is going to be a problem for?
00:15:06.560 Well, I think it's really up to each individual Canadian, including members of Parliament, to decide for themselves whether they want to disclose their personal health information.
00:15:14.720 But, you know, there are other legislatures, for example, in Canada.
00:15:18.880 Ontario is doing this.
00:15:20.340 Saskatchewan is doing this or maybe others as well.
00:15:22.340 We're, you know, in order to participate in the chamber and the legislative chamber, you know, either showing a vaccination status or a negative rapid test.
00:15:32.620 So we believe that it's it's worked in other jurisdictions.
00:15:35.780 Why can't it be done for our Parliament?
00:15:38.640 I mean, this what we're talking about here is the it's the House of Commons.
00:15:42.300 It's the very seat of democracy.
00:15:43.920 People, thousands of Canadians have elected each of these members of Parliament to serve them, to represent them in the House of Commons.
00:15:50.120 And we need we believe that it needs to be something that all members can do safely in in in person in the House of Commons and that through rapid testing or vaccination.
00:16:00.480 You could do it.
00:16:00.960 Now, it's just interesting to walk away from this to see that Aaron O'Toole, I'm told, is the one that wants vaccine mandates.
00:16:07.660 He wants that he has the same view as Justin Trudeau on this, but it is his caucus, the conservative caucus who hold out.
00:16:13.360 So they have a different view on this and I assume a different view on most issues than Aaron O'Toole's.
00:16:18.640 Aaron O'Toole that's pushing towards liberal light.
00:16:21.140 But the caucus, the Tory MPs that are elected from across the country are still connected to the conservative grassroots and they're not for this kind of policy.
00:16:30.260 But here's the thing.
00:16:31.400 It used to be the case that the party leader would just sort of steamroll any opposition and determine exactly what the party was going to say.
00:16:38.640 But right now, Aaron O'Toole is incredibly weak within the party.
00:16:41.500 As I covered on the show a couple of weeks ago, the conservative MPs voted in favor of something called a reform act, which allows for a leadership review among a party leader with just a signature of 24 conservative MPs.
00:16:54.420 So all it takes is 24 MPs to say, no, we don't want this guy anymore.
00:16:58.320 And it will spur a leadership review, which could potentially oast Aaron O'Toole.
00:17:03.140 So right now he's weak from the election loss and he's worried about this leadership review.
00:17:07.180 And so rather than just telling all of the MPs to believe what he believes, it's now basically the exact opposite of that, where the MPs get to tell the leader what to do, which is much more democratic and probably much better for the conservative party in my mind, especially with a guy like Aaron O'Toole in charge.
00:17:25.280 So O'Toole allowed the caucus to win the day.
00:17:28.280 He allowed Blake Richards to go out and say that the conservatives do oppose mandatory vaccines.
00:17:32.900 But then get this, a mere 24 hours later, Aaron O'Toole himself was a guest on TVO, which is the public television station in Ontario.
00:17:40.720 He was speaking with Steve Pakin, host of The Agenda, and O'Toole just basically changed his mind, contradicted caucus, contradicted Blake Richards.
00:17:49.000 And he said that the conservatives will respect the Liberal Party's rule, which means that they will conform, which means that they now also believe in forced mandatory vaccines for all members of parliament.
00:18:00.960 Your position may be very reasonable, but the Speaker, the Board of the Eternal Economy of Parliament has still said, tough, the O'Toole formula isn't good enough, we need everybody vaccinated. 0.77
00:18:10.680 You can't say everybody in your caucus is vaccinated.
00:18:13.280 We can say that we will follow all public health guidance.
00:18:17.180 So, Steve, the BOIE and the Speaker have ruled, and we will respect that, of course.
00:18:21.520 We also think, though, that we have to look at not dividing people on this issue.
00:18:27.540 It is difficult to see places where we're seeing people terminated, where in some cases, I think if we work smart and use all tools we have, we could probably avoid these sort of confrontations with just not politicizing vaccinations.
00:18:42.740 So, for 24 hours, we had a hint of daylight between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party.
00:18:48.820 There was a hint of a distinction, a hint of a difference between these two major parties, but that apparently was just too much for Aaron O'Toole.
00:18:56.060 Aaron O'Toole prefers to take the Liberal position on every issue.
00:18:59.520 He prefers not to have any kind of media scrutiny.
00:19:01.880 He doesn't want to have those moderately tough questions.
00:19:04.680 Like we saw the CTV host, Evan Solomon, asking Blake Richards there, under Aaron O'Toole's leadership, with Aaron O'Toole as leader, he would much prefer the parties be so similar that you can't even tell them apart, the exact same, the rigid sameness, and that is the biggest plague on our political system right now.
00:19:22.900 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.