The Candice Malcolm Show - The Conservative Debate was a MESS

00:00:00.000 The Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidates faced off for a debate last night in Edmonton, and it was an absolute train wreck.

00:00:06.760 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:21.880 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast.

00:00:24.880 So you probably saw we did a live show last night covering the leadership race and the debate that they held in Edmonton.

00:00:32.280 This was the first official debate hosted by the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:00:36.020 It was hosted by former global journalist Tom Clark.

00:00:39.860 All anyone could talk about online last night was how horrible this debate was, how the format was just absolutely incoherent.

00:00:46.620 The host was very, very interruptive, wouldn't let the candidates speak.

00:00:50.600 The format was really off and a lot of criticism towards Tom Clark.

00:00:55.480 So if you watch the pre-debate show that we did last night, I said outright, look, I have a newfound respect for debate moderators.

00:01:03.660 I've moderated plenty of debates in my career and in my life, most of them more sort of like academic debates about ideas.

00:01:10.260 This was the first sort of big political debate that I had hosted.

00:01:13.840 I'm talking about the Canada Strong and Free Conference, the first debate that happened in Ottawa last Thursday, a week ago today.

00:01:21.780 And it's a difficult job. It's not an easy job.

00:01:24.560 And you face a lot of criticism as a moderator no matter what you do.

00:01:27.720 So I have a newfound respect for the journalists that go out and put themselves out there and moderate these debates.

00:01:34.360 And I don't think it's an easy job.

00:01:35.860 I said on air last night that I am rooting for Tom Clark.

00:01:38.300 I hope he does a good job.

00:01:39.580 I hope that he is able to facilitate a good debate.

00:01:42.880 Well, that unfortunately was not the case.

00:01:45.260 And it was very clear from the from the outset, from the very beginning, that this debate was going to be a disaster.

00:01:50.880 And I don't completely blame Tom Clark.

00:01:54.240 I think that he certainly didn't help the way that he sort of interjected himself.

00:01:59.960 It almost felt like we were watching six simultaneous interviews of the candidates as opposed to a debate where they have crosstalk and they exchange ideas and they push back against one another.

00:02:10.820 I say that I don't entirely blame Tom Clark because this was organized by the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:02:17.580 OK, Tom Clark was a person that they chose to sit in the chair and, you know, basically bear the heat and and and keep this thing on time and follow the rules that I believe were set up by the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:02:31.260 I don't think that they wanted a lively exchange.

00:02:33.340 I don't think they wanted the candidates to be able to get into the weeds about their ideas.

00:02:37.080 They didn't want the disputes, the crosstalk.

00:02:39.680 They didn't want the candidates yelling at each other because they were embarrassed by the reaction to the first debate, the one that was hosted by Canada Strong and Free and moderated by myself and Jamil Giovanni,

00:02:51.760 who is a lawyer, writer, former journalist, former radio host and the incoming president of that organization, Canada Strong and Free, which, as you know, was formerly known as the Manning Conference.

00:03:01.900 And I'm going to tell you why I thought I think this.

00:03:04.960 There was a piece in Politico this morning says Pierre Polyev vows to fire Canada's central banker.

00:03:11.480 And in it, there's a little there's a little tidbit here about the debate and about how the room felt.

00:03:17.520 So it says right here how the room felt sedate mostly.

00:03:21.400 Longtime Tory comms guy Corey Han warned the candidates against a repeat of the Ottawa debate where no holes were barred.

00:03:29.060 Civil War, Han said, could haunt the party when future liberal attack ads hit the airwaves.

00:03:34.700 Maybe they listened.

00:03:35.420 And then it went on to say the candidates weren't fired up like they were in Ottawa, where moderators Candace Malcolm and Jamil Giovanni egged on fiery exchanges.

00:03:43.880 The crowd didn't bring the energy largely because Clark forbade applause and threatened to take time away from any candidates who inspired hooting and hollering.

00:03:51.880 Crowd didn't always follow that rule.

00:03:54.380 And so then if you go to Corey Han and what he tweeted, he had a thread last week basically just saying, look, the debate that we just had in Ottawa, the one that Jamil and I hosted, basically there's an attack ad ready for the liberals no matter who wins.

00:04:10.020 All the candidates got shots in.

00:04:11.540 So this sort of Tory establishment insider guy is saying, hey, guys, the debate was too rough.

00:04:20.040 The candidates were given too much of a leash to say what they actually believe, to debate each other, which is, of course, the purpose of a debate, not only to be entertaining, but to learn about the candidates, to find out where they stand on the issues, to see their vulnerabilities, to see how they react on stage when being challenged by a formidable candidate.

00:04:36.480 Right. This is what's going to happen in the general election.

00:04:39.260 This is what's going to happen. Whoever faces off against the liberals.

00:04:42.480 We might as well see it now. These Tory insiders don't want that, though.

00:04:45.920 They're paranoid and absolutely scared of any potential liberal attack ads.

00:04:51.240 So they want the candidates to be completely sanitized.

00:04:54.060 They want everyone to follow liberal talking points, essentially.

00:04:57.020 And they want a very unentertaining debate.

00:04:59.560 And that is what we had last night.

00:05:01.520 We had a debate where the candidates were strangled.

00:05:04.940 You couldn't you couldn't understand what they wanted to say because of the format.

00:05:09.380 So I'm going to go through some of the biggest criticisms of the format.

00:05:13.500 And there were a lot. And again, I don't blame Tom Clark, because I think he was given direct orders from the Conservative Party and that a lot of the restrictions were probably from them as opposed to, you know, his own ideas of what he wanted to do.

00:05:25.660 But that being said, the whole thing was just uncomfortable to watch.

00:05:29.200 And many, many people that I saw commenting on social media said that they just couldn't watch it.

00:05:33.680 They just it was just so, so bad they couldn't watch it.

00:05:36.560 So first, the first thing that happened was Tom Clark set out these ground rules that basically said that no one in the audience could say anything.

00:05:44.060 You're not allowed to react. You're not allowed to clap. You're not allowed to boo.

00:05:46.580 You're not allowed to show any emotion.

00:05:48.240 We had our own Andrew Lawton on the ground in Edmonton.

00:05:50.820 He reported that there were somewhere between 800 and a thousand people in the room in Edmonton.

00:05:54.900 So picture this. They have a debate in Edmonton, Alberta.

00:05:58.340 They fly all the candidates out there. They fly the moderator out there.

00:06:01.140 All of the campaign teams, all the insiders go to Edmonton.

00:06:04.960 They sell tickets to this thing. They fill up a room.

00:06:07.520 It's filled with conservative volunteers, activists, insiders, people who love politics, political junkies.

00:06:13.580 They all travel to Edmonton. You know, people drive from the suburbs.

00:06:16.740 People drive from rural Alberta to be there to see this thing.

00:06:20.180 They fill up a room with nearly a thousand people and then they order everybody to be completely silent.

00:06:27.480 They weren't allowed to talk. They weren't allowed to react.

00:06:30.160 What is the point of having all those people in a room?

00:06:32.660 The purpose of filming these things in front of a live audience is to capitalize on the energy, having people react, knowing where the base stands, you know, who has the loudest applause lines.

00:06:44.460 These are politicians. They react to applause, right?

00:06:48.300 You're giving a speech, a public speech in front of a thousand people and you don't know what's resonating because you can't, people aren't cheering.

00:06:54.780 People aren't allowed to cheer.

00:06:55.680 So this whole idea that Clark set up here that there was no, that there was silence, mandated silence of the audience was just terrible to me.

00:07:05.940 Like there's no point in doing a live debate if you are not going to allow the audience to be part of the debate and feed off of their energy.

00:07:14.680 So that was very brutal. And then worse off than that, when the crowd sort of ignored Tom Clark and continued to do what they're going to do, which is, hey, this is politics.

00:07:23.920 We want to cheer. We want to let the candidates know who, what, what ideas we like, what ideas we don't.

00:07:29.640 Well, Tom Clark, the moderator jumped in and penalized Pierre Polyev because someone booed Jean Charest.

00:07:36.220 So here's the first clip I'm going to show you. Jean Charest made a point. The audience booed him because he didn't agree.

00:07:42.000 And for some odd reason, Tom Clark, the moderator, penalized Pierre Polyev because some guy in the audience booed Jean Charest.

00:07:50.200 Unbelievable. You can't make this stuff up. Let's play that clip.

00:07:53.020 But on this issue, let's, can we be clear on one thing?

00:07:56.120 Every candidate in this race needs to tell the women of Canada where they stand, whether they're pro or against. 0.86

00:08:01.820 They, the women of Canada, deserve to know where they stand. And Mr. Polyev's answer, quite frankly, does not fit that test.

00:08:10.340 OK. We will be taking 10 seconds away from Mr. Polyev, but Mr. Acherson, get in.

00:08:18.940 I think that it's a nonsense.

00:08:21.940 Yeah. Mr. Acherson, please go ahead.

00:08:24.420 So that part of the debate was terrible.

00:08:26.900 Well, the other part was that the, so part of the problem with debates and with political candidates is oftentimes they're too scripted, right?

00:08:33.840 They prepare too much and you don't really get the off-the-cuff responses.

00:08:38.460 You don't get the reactions that you want.

00:08:39.980 It's just too, it's too scripted and it's too robotic.

00:08:44.120 And that's not what people want.

00:08:45.640 People want to know the authentic opinions of the people on stage.

00:08:49.100 But in this debate, it was the opposite because we heard from Tom Clark, the moderator, that the questions were given to the candidates in advance.

00:08:56.320 So he had an opening question and a closing question that were to do with the candidate's vision of the country, which they were given in advance.

00:09:04.520 So rather than hearing the sort of, again, authentic views of the candidates, we just got scripted basically reading of speeches, which is just, again,

00:09:13.000 this is something that the Conservative Party of Canada probably wants because they want a boring scripted debate where candidates don't go off message and that everyone is really disciplined.

00:09:22.300 But as a voter and as someone who's trying to determine who the best potential prime minister would be, again, it's not what you want.

00:09:28.600 So, again, just another unnecessary thing that made the debate even worse.

00:09:34.700 And then there's the gimmicks, right?

00:09:35.880 There were all of these weird gimmicks that we had.

00:09:38.180 So first off, we learned that the candidates weren't allowed to talk about Justin Trudeau.

00:09:42.900 They weren't allowed to talk about the prime minister and they weren't allowed to talk about each other.

00:09:46.340 And if they did mention the prime minister, they would get interrupted by a weird sound effect.

00:09:51.340 This is like a game show.

00:09:52.440 This is straight out of like talk radio or something.

00:09:54.440 This sad trombone would play, which means that the candidate was not allowed to talk anymore.

00:09:59.940 So fortunately, this only happened twice in the debate, but it was incredibly cringy. 0.98

00:10:03.560 So here is a clip of the stupid trombone interrupting Scott Aitchison, Scott Aitchison for the crime of mentioning the prime minister of Canada during a political debate. 0.99

00:10:15.820 You can't make this stuff up. 1.00

00:10:16.900 Here's that clip.

00:10:17.960 How do you take the politics of division out of the equation?

00:10:21.280 It's the divisive rhetoric that we need to take out of this, out of our discourse.

00:10:26.480 And all parties are guilty of it.

00:10:29.160 I'm going to give you the most obvious example, and I'm going to use the name of another party leader now, because I think I'm allowed to.

00:10:34.420 But if you look at the way the prime minister used vaccine mandates and actually divided Canadians by demonizing one group over another.

00:10:40.300 Sorry, Mr. Aitchison.

00:10:41.140 You know the rules.

00:10:42.140 You just broke them.

00:10:42.900 We're moving on.

00:10:43.640 Okay.

00:10:44.240 All right.

00:10:45.160 Again, what's the point of a debate if you can't mention another political candidate?

00:10:49.420 That's the point of a debate.

00:10:50.560 That's the point of politics to criticize the people in power to say the way that you would do things better.

00:10:55.360 I don't understand a format that would say that you can't mention other politicians. 1.00

00:11:01.020 It was so dumb. 0.97

00:11:02.540 So right off the bat, you know, we had these weird restrictions, these weird gimmicks. 0.98

00:11:06.720 We had a format that wasn't going to enable the sort of organic and authentic type of discussion.

00:11:14.000 The energy was sucked out of the room.

00:11:16.000 It was just sort of turned into this very insufferable, very serious, very quiet debate where there was no flow.

00:11:22.520 So it wasn't looking good.

00:11:24.340 And then things got even worse.

00:11:27.140 Things got even weirder because the moderator would continue to impose like very short time limits.

00:11:33.680 So they would be asked a very serious question like, what is the biggest problem facing Canada?

00:11:39.720 And then they were given 15 seconds to reply.

00:11:42.240 15 seconds to reply to that question.

00:11:43.920 What is the biggest threat facing Canada?

00:11:46.240 And then that's it.

00:11:47.500 You know, they had their 15 seconds.

00:11:48.800 Tom Clark cut each candidate off right when they were making interesting points.

00:11:51.920 They each had an opportunity, 15 seconds.

00:11:54.800 And then you just moved on to a totally different question. 1.00

00:11:57.300 And you had serious questions intermixed with the stupidest questions that you have ever heard. 0.99

00:12:02.860 So if you watched Monday's show where I reacted to media criticism of the debate that I moderated, 0.99

00:12:08.320 one of the things I mentioned was that Tom Clark sort of became infamous for this interview that he did with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

00:12:15.880 Back when Justin Trudeau first became leader of the Liberal Party in 2014, I said that Tom Clark asked Justin Trudeau this really, 0.98

00:12:22.840 really stupid question about what kind of shampoo he used. 0.98

00:12:25.860 We couldn't find the clip online. 0.99

00:12:28.120 Luckily, our friend Ezra Levant had the clip and he shared it on Twitter.

00:12:31.260 So I'm going to share it with you now just so that you get the idea of the sort of the sort of journalist that Tom Clark is not not necessarily known as like a hard hitting guy.

00:12:41.420 He's more of a conversationalist. And you can see from this question, which many conservatives took to be sort of like, again, just the cringiest thing.

00:12:49.060 Like the Prime Minister of Canada doesn't wield serious questions. 0.84

00:12:52.080 He wields ridiculous softball questions from a fanning media.

00:12:55.840 So here is that old clip from 2014 of last night's moderator, Tom Clark, asking Justin Trudeau, yes, about his hair.

00:13:03.280 So I guess the first thing I should ask you is, are you feeling lucky?

00:13:07.020 The entire country wants to know.

00:13:09.740 What shampoo do you use?

00:13:11.420 What a disappointing answer this is going to be.

00:13:15.400 Whatever happens to be hanging around at the time.

00:13:18.960 I just I love that clip because Justin Trudeau laughs.

00:13:22.200 Right. So so the stupid question comes out of Tom Clark's mouth. 1.00

00:13:24.980 Justin Trudeau laughs and you kind of expect Trudeau to say, come on, Tom, that's that's that's such a silly question. 1.00

00:13:30.080 But instead, Trudeau takes him completely seriously and says, oh, everyone's going to be super disappointed to learn that I don't use some fancy shampoo.

00:13:37.520 As if anybody cares, as if anybody in the entire world cares one iota about Justin Trudeau and his hair products.

00:13:44.980 So so again, just just Justin Trudeau's ego being fed to an extreme there.

00:13:50.160 But I show that clip just to show you the type of mindset of the moderator, Tom Clark.

00:13:56.780 And he brought that mindset to the debate last night. 0.72

00:14:00.160 So we had a whole slew of just absolutely ridiculous questions that were being thrown at these candidates. 0.95

00:14:07.240 It was demeaning. It was demoralizing. 0.95

00:14:10.020 It was insulting to the intelligence of the people who bother to watch this thing.

00:14:13.380 I don't think very many Canadians bother to watch this kind of stuff, mostly because it's so in the weeds and it's not entertaining.

00:14:19.520 But this just made it even worse. Right.

00:14:21.240 These are the kind of questions that you might be interested to hear.

00:14:24.520 You know, if you if if it was a longtime politician who was retiring and you were doing like a farewell interview,

00:14:31.240 or if you had one of these people over to your house for a dinner party and you're trying to get to know them in a different kind of way.

00:14:37.400 These are not the questions that you ask a leadership candidate who is trying to lead the country,

00:14:42.720 especially when you cut you cut them off when they want to talk about the important issues like what is the biggest threat facing Canada? 0.99

00:14:48.460 You cut them off after 15 seconds and then you spend all of this time asking the stupidest questions I have ever heard. 0.99

00:14:55.040 It was almost like it was designed to embarrass these candidates. 1.00

00:14:58.260 It really, really was bad.

00:14:59.620 We heard a question. What book are you reading?

00:15:03.160 Look, these guys aren't reading books.

00:15:05.120 And it was pretty obvious and that was pretty embarrassing for everybody.

00:15:07.740 None of these candidates are reading books.

00:15:09.360 And that's fair enough because they are campaigning.

00:15:11.760 They are in the midst of a fight for their political careers.

00:15:14.960 The biggest opportunity that they will ever have in their lives, likely to lead the Conservative Party and face off against Justin Trudeau in the next election.

00:15:22.100 They are working their tails off.

00:15:23.400 They are campaigning.

00:15:24.360 They're going from event to event to event.

00:15:26.020 When they have any downtime, they're probably making phone calls to donors and trying to, again, just work on their strategy, work on their speeches.

00:15:33.800 They don't have time to read.

00:15:35.280 So the question of what book are you reading was almost like it was just designed to embarrass them because obviously none of them are reading books right now. 0.99

00:15:41.960 And we also heard just stupid questions that nobody cares about.

00:15:44.400 What kind of music do you like? 0.99

00:15:45.880 What kind of television shows do you watch?

00:15:47.600 Who do you want to have dinner? 0.99

00:15:48.620 What historical figure would you want to have dinner with?

00:15:51.200 Who's your political hero?

00:15:52.620 Like these are not questions that people care about.

00:15:55.440 They're not.

00:15:55.940 I know maybe in the world of sort of liberal puff media, they want to know, oh, Justin Trudeau, what's your favorite virtue?

00:16:03.180 Or what country do you admire most?

00:16:05.820 For most people, those are not the questions that we care about.

00:16:08.980 We do not care about what kind of music Pierre Polyev listens to.

00:16:12.200 I'm sorry, I don't, and I don't even believe the answers that they gave were genuine.

00:16:15.760 I mean, it was just so bad.

00:16:17.400 I really, really wanted one of the candidates to just stand up to the moderator at some point during this ridiculous trade and say, listen, Tom, these are not the important issues facing our country.

00:16:27.300 Our country is at a crisis right now, and it is not appropriate to be wasting time on the stage with frivolous questions about what kind of movies we watch.

00:16:36.260 Canadians want to know how we're going to deal with these crises, and let's talk about that.

00:16:40.700 Let's have more time to talk about, again, the biggest crises facing Canada or our positions on a variety of issues.

00:16:46.920 They didn't even talk about housing prices.

00:16:49.040 They didn't talk about the media.

00:16:50.300 There are so many things that they didn't talk about.

00:16:51.740 They barely talked about health care.

00:16:53.460 And instead, we wasted this time at what?

00:16:55.960 Trying to get to know them.

00:16:56.780 Again, just a huge, a huge fail on behalf of the organizers and whosever idea it was to include this ridiculous slew of superficial questions.

00:17:06.800 So here are some of the worst questions that were asked at the debate last night.

00:17:10.840 With Mr. Charest, and Mr. Charest, the very first question I have for you is, what book are you reading now?

00:17:16.640 What book are you reading now?

00:17:19.660 Oh, I'm...

00:17:20.560 Mr. Acheson, I wanted to ask you and give everybody a chance.

00:17:24.500 There's a question and there's a twist to the answer.

00:17:27.580 I want to know who your political hero is, and you cannot say Winston Churchill.

00:17:32.220 Thank you all very much.

00:17:35.900 That was actually really interesting to hear all that.

00:17:39.920 Dr. Lewis, I'm going to start with you, and then, of course, everybody else gets a chance.

00:17:43.320 I know you're all busy.

00:17:44.380 I know that you've got stuff that you're doing right now.

00:17:47.300 But when you have the opportunity to sit down and listen to some music, what do you listen to?

00:17:54.040 I would say...

00:17:54.880 I want to go to a question, maybe a little more lighthearted, getting to know you a little bit more.

00:17:59.800 And there are a lot of people who want to know this.

00:18:04.140 It's not just me, trust me.

00:18:06.280 But, Mr. Baber, what was the last thing that you binge-watched on TV?

00:18:15.860 What historical figure, from any time, anywhere, would you most like to have dinner with me?

00:18:22.560 Okay, one final quibble that I have with the format, which, again, just ruined any chance of a good debate, last night.

00:18:28.640 And things did sort of get interesting here, where they moved on to the actual debate part of the debate.

00:18:34.980 There was no debate whatsoever in the first hour.

00:18:36.960 It was really just Q&A, and it could have been one-on-one personalized interviews with Tom Clark and these six candidates.

00:18:43.300 The debate really started in the second hour.

00:18:46.000 And so each of the candidates were given a paddle.

00:18:48.360 We were told that they had five opportunities to interject.

00:18:51.280 They each got to have a topic.

00:18:53.040 They would get to choose who they would face off against.

00:18:54.840 So to those of us who actually wanted a debate, this is presumably when it was starting.

00:19:00.340 I sort of, you know, I was falling asleep during the first part of the debate, and I didn't care.

00:19:05.400 I didn't even want to watch it.

00:19:06.580 And this is where things started to get more interesting.

00:19:09.480 And, you know, everyone sort of perked up and said, okay, here we go.

00:19:12.600 So the only problem was that the way that this thing ended up unfolding was that everybody wanted to take a shot at Pierre Polyev.

00:19:19.380 Pierre Polyev is the frontrunner.

00:19:20.880 He is the favorite.

00:19:21.800 He has the most support.

00:19:22.980 He's the most articulate.

00:19:23.960 He's the most established.

00:19:25.260 He has, you know, such a reach on social media.

00:19:28.300 Our reporter, Andrew Lawton, who was in the room, was interviewing people.

00:19:31.020 He said that the overwhelming majority of people that he spoke to supported Pierre Polyev and that Pierre is clearly the frontrunner.

00:19:37.560 So because of that, all of the candidates were taking shots at Pierre, Pierre, if he ever wanted to actually respond and have his own rebuke, he had to use up one of his paddles.

00:19:47.740 And so because of that, Pierre used up all of his paddles.

00:19:50.140 He had five paddles, according to our researchers here at True North, at the one hour and eight minute mark of a two hour debate, Pierre was silenced.

00:19:58.040 Pierre's last paddle was used in a reply that he wanted to make to Patrick Brown, and then he was done.

00:20:03.380 And that was it.

00:20:03.880 And he wasn't allowed to talk again for the rest of the debate, except for his closing remarks.

00:20:08.540 So you had a two hour debate in which the main frontrunner candidate, the guy who has the most support out of everyone, is effectively silenced an hour and eight minutes into a two hour debate, which left almost 45 minutes at the end where Pierre was absent.

00:20:24.360 He was just standing there and he couldn't talk and people were attacking him.

00:20:28.620 The other candidates were attacking him and he didn't even have the opportunity to defend him. 0.98

00:20:32.160 I cannot think of a stupider way to organize a debate. 0.97

00:20:36.780 And I can't help but blame, again, the Conservative Party of Canada for letting this charade carry out. 0.99

00:20:42.320 And so, OK, it isn't just me.

00:20:44.060 It isn't just independent journalists that were complaining about the debate, the format and how bad it was.

00:20:49.900 The legacy media jumped in as well.

00:20:52.220 And we saw a lot of legacy media journalists also noting how bad and cringey this debate was.

00:20:59.040 So Rosemary Barton, who I'm no fan of and I don't usually quote her in any form of agreement, but she on Twitter was right.

00:21:06.580 She said, and now the format is going to lose me, she tweeted.

00:21:09.900 She also said, this said, Trabone is apparently part of the debate, oh dear.

00:21:14.160 Althea Raj of the Toronto Star and the CBC likewise said, having been involved in three debates as a moderator, federal election 2019, federal NDP leadership and Ontario PC leadership, this one is a bit more like a game show.

00:21:27.160 So that's her very polite way of saying this thing is not a very serious debate.

00:21:31.240 Evan Solomon of CTV, who has also moderated many, many debates, and, you know, he's good at it.

00:21:37.340 He's fair, he's tough, he is someone who is very credible on these issues.

00:21:42.820 He said, why would the conservative candidates agree to not mention Justin Trudeau's name in opening statements or get cut off by a weird buzzer?

00:21:49.580 You'd think this would be welcome.

00:21:51.880 Now, a question on Ukraine that demands a yes or no.

00:21:54.340 I wish these were not overly simplified.

00:21:56.380 He said, gotta say, I could not stop watching the first unofficial debate.

00:22:01.060 Even all the nastiness, at least the debate was about the candidates.

00:22:04.560 Tonight, the format is getting in the way of the flow of any debate, and it's bogged down.

00:22:09.160 The refs aren't the game, the players are. 1.00

00:22:11.980 He continued, he said, I think this debate will have little impact on the campaign and makes the organization and the campaigns more important.

00:22:18.580 This helps Pierre Polyev and maybe Patrick Brown, but it's Jean Charest, who needed the debate to make a punch through.

00:22:25.060 So it is kind of interesting to see that I think it was pretty clear that the format of the debate was designed to hurt Pierre, to take away his momentum, to not allow the room to cheer him on, and then to cut him off arbitrarily at the one hour and eight minute mark of a two hour debate so that the other candidates could have more of a chance.

00:22:41.540 And then here you have Evan Solomon saying the exact opposite, because the debate was such a mess, such a gong show, such a train wreck, that it won't actually have the impact that the organizers would have wanted, other than maybe the fact that there's no attack ads being cut, which is apparently the only priority of the conservative debate of the conservative party.

00:23:00.040 They don't want attack ads, and there was more criticism.

00:23:02.900 Don Martin from CTV said, far from giving candidates the latitude to compare and contrast their positions, they were shoehorned into soundbites with fairly strictly enforced time limits.

00:23:13.540 You simply can't beat a clock, which divides one minute into multiple answers from competing candidates and expects a vote swaying answer from anyone.

00:23:21.460 Perhaps if the goal was to discourage discussion from the constant quest for a knockout blow for campaign ads, all that's left to make a show of it are game show questions.

00:23:32.160 That's exactly right.

00:23:33.000 And so I don't necessarily blame Tom Clark, although I do definitely feel for him because he is getting a lot of heat online there.

00:23:40.120 Again, lots and lots of criticism about him.

00:23:42.000 Okay, so I know I spent the majority of the show talking about how much I hated the format and how it really, really got in the way of a good debate.

00:23:47.960 I'll spend the last few minutes of the show here just talking about the substance of the debate because it was honestly equally as bad.

00:23:55.720 The substance of the debate wasn't very good, especially from a conservative perspective.

00:23:59.460 What we basically had here was all of the candidates or most of the candidates most of the time doubling down and mirroring and mimicking liberal talking points.

00:24:07.700 So we heard that the conservatives, mostly aside from Lesley Lewis, all agree that abortion is great and that there would be no limits on abortion right up until the point of the baby being born.

00:24:18.580 So in Canada, none of the front runners in the conservative party are willing to even say that they oppose things like late term abortion, things like sex selective abortion, a real, real lack of courage, lack of interest in talking about this stuff.

00:24:31.520 It was almost like they were all competing and trying to outcompete one another as to who is the most in favor of abortion, which is, again, so far off from where the base is on this issue and where most Canadians and most conservatives stand.

00:24:44.240 When it came to immigration, we heard that they all wanted record high immigration.

00:24:49.200 They were all enthusiastically in favor of Justin Trudeau's record high immigration numbers.

00:24:55.460 If anything, Patrick Brown said that they should be even higher.

00:24:58.460 The only person who had a ounce of common sense on the immigration question was Jean Charest, who mentioned that, hey, there's no point in having large immigration unless you're going to focus on integration,

00:25:10.000 which is making sure that the people who come to Canada settle into Canada, acclimatize to our culture, to our values, and that we have jobs and opportunities for them.

00:25:19.340 So at least it was a little bit, what Jean Charest said was a little bit helpful and constructive.

00:25:23.940 But basically, these guys are all in favor of Justin Trudeau's reckless immigration policies.

00:25:28.960 When it comes to supply management, most of the candidates are in favor of our centralized government planned, government orchestrated.

00:25:37.300 Dairy cartels are all A-OK, according to this crop of conservatives.

00:25:41.900 And there was a question, one of the very first policy questions of the whole debate was about Ukraine, which to me is sort of a moot point,

00:25:49.980 because none of these people on the stage are going to be leader during this conflict.

00:25:53.860 This conflict presumably will end, and so the whole idea of whether you want a no-fly zone or not is completely irrelevant.

00:26:01.140 And yet that was the first policy question that was put to them.

00:26:03.380 It was sort of cringy to hear all these politicians answer that question.

00:26:07.280 The absolute worst answer was Patrick Brown, who enthusiastically said, yes, he would be in favor of a no-fly zone,

00:26:14.700 which essentially means that he's in favor of American jets shooting down Russian jets,

00:26:19.280 which would turn a conflict into a hot World War III between two nuclear powers,

00:26:24.780 an insanely reckless position for a politician to take.

00:26:27.940 Totally, totally out of touch as well, because it doesn't matter if Canada wants a no-fly zone or not.

00:26:33.880 That's the United States' call.

00:26:35.340 Canada is pretty irrelevant when it comes to leading the charge on this war, leading the charge of NATO and a no-fly zone.

00:26:42.200 So an irrelevant question, an incredibly reckless response by Patrick Brown.

00:26:46.520 But again, because of the format, they didn't have the actual opportunity to have a reply.

00:26:51.620 Again, there wasn't really a lot of opportunity for explosive moments.

00:26:54.940 I think this is as close as we came.

00:26:57.120 Here is a clip of Pierre Polyev really putting it to, sticking it to Jean Charest over his record as Premier of Quebec.

00:27:05.440 Here's that clip.

00:27:05.920 Mr. Charest, Mr. Charest, why didn't you take a moment to acknowledge that you're the only one on this stage

00:27:09.860 who actually voted for a law that would recriminalize abortion when you were part of the Mulroney government?

00:27:14.700 You did. You did.

00:27:16.160 And you can take a moment now to renounce your earlier vote if you've changed your mind.

00:27:20.100 But that was your position.

00:27:21.540 You seem to have forgotten it.

00:27:22.720 You've forgotten a lot of things about your record.

00:27:25.120 You forgot that you brought in a carbon tax.

00:27:27.060 You forgot that you raised the fuel tax, the sales tax, the health tax.

00:27:30.620 You forgot that you banned natural gas development in your own province.

00:27:34.660 You forgot you brought in a long gun registry.

00:27:36.540 You seem a little bit forgetful about your record, Mr. Charest, but Canadians now remember.

00:27:40.420 I am very proud of my record as a Conservative that stands on its own merits, on fiscal conservatism,

00:27:59.600 on reducing the size of government, reducing taxes, which I did when I was Premier, by the way.

00:28:05.820 Quebecers had a billion dollars less taxes paid and higher disposable income after I finished in government, ladies and gentlemen.

00:28:14.820 And by the way, Mr. Poliev, thank you for at least now telling us that you are pro-choice.

00:28:20.320 We understand that's what you're saying tonight.

00:28:22.560 Please, confirm that for us.

00:28:24.140 And Mr. Poliev, you have 30 seconds.

00:28:25.640 I did confirm my position that I will not introduce any law on abortion as Prime Minister.

00:28:30.260 I made that very clear.

00:28:31.260 But, Mr. Charest, you're wrong about your tax record.

00:28:33.800 You raised the sales tax, the carbon tax, the fuel tax.

00:28:36.560 Just like Patrick Brown, you're trying to flip-flop on it and say one thing on the stage different than what you said before.

00:28:42.540 And the overall tax burden in Quebec went from 19% of the economy to 25% of the economy under your government.

00:28:50.080 That is your record.

00:28:51.100 You can't run away from it.

00:28:52.200 I have a clear, solid record as a tax cutter that leaves more money in people's pockets.

00:28:56.900 Thank you.

00:28:57.220 And so that's basically the best that we got out of this thing.

00:29:00.760 It was an incredibly disappointing debate.

00:29:02.640 Not worth your time.

00:29:03.800 Don't bother going back and watching it.

00:29:05.900 Hopefully, we'll have better debates.

00:29:08.000 It makes me more excited about the Independent Press Gallery's debate.

00:29:11.160 We are hosting a debate on May 30th.

00:29:13.380 It is being hosted by my colleague, Andrew Lawton.

00:29:16.020 There will be questions put in from several independent and legacy media journalists.

00:29:19.700 We have Sheila Gunn-Reed from The Rebel involved, Derek Fildebrandt from The Western Standard, and Rupa Subramaya from The National Post.

00:29:27.360 They'll all be involved.

00:29:28.440 That event is on May 30th.

00:29:30.120 It's 7 p.m.

00:29:31.520 And it's in Toronto.

00:29:32.560 It's at the Chinese Cultural Center.

00:29:33.860 So if you're in the GTA, you're in Toronto, you're interested in seeing a debate that will be nothing like the debate in Edmonton last night, where there will be, I promise you will be entertaining.

00:29:43.060 There will not be the restraints and the restrictions on the candidates.

00:29:46.340 Consider going and checking out that event.

00:29:48.460 You can watch it live.

00:29:49.640 They're selling tickets.

00:29:50.460 Head on over to independentpressgallery.ca.

00:29:54.260 You can get your tickets there, or you will be able to stream it online if you're not in the GTA.

00:29:58.800 I think all of this, again, just underscores the importance of the sort of independent side of the equation.

00:30:03.900 The legacy media proves over and over and over again that they are incapable of organizing things, of asking politicians tough questions, of getting to the heart of the issues that matter to Canadians, that matter in our country.

00:30:16.020 They would much rather put on a game show-like festival like we saw last night than allow a real exchange of ideas.

00:30:23.100 It makes me incredibly grateful for the growth of independent media, for the opportunities that we are having, like the opportunity I had last week to moderate the conservative debate in Ottawa.

00:30:32.480 It was a huge, huge honor for me.

00:30:34.360 And the fact that we have this independent press gallery, one coming up at the end of May, I really encourage you to check that out.

00:30:40.840 All right, thank you so much for your continued support of True North and of independent media.

00:30:45.480 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:31:04.360 Two and one.

00:31:05.180 Thanks.

00:31:05.560 Thanks.

00:31:05.840 Thanks.

00:31:09.520 Bye.

00:31:11.780 Bye.

00:31:28.220 Bye.

00:31:28.380 Bye.

00:31:29.040 Bye.

00:31:30.600 Bye.

00:31:31.280 Bye.

00:31:32.760 Bye.

00:31:33.740 Bye.

00:31:34.000 Bye.

The Candice Malcolm Show - May 12, 2022

The Conservative Debate was a MESS

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