The Candice Malcolm Show - The Conservative strategy failed. There needs to be a reckoning.

00:00:00.160 Everyone lost in last night's election, but the biggest losers of all were the conservatives.

00:00:04.080 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:10.820 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in today.

00:00:13.180 I hope you enjoyed our coverage and our show that we did last night.

00:00:16.880 We had a live election show.

00:00:18.200 We were live for about five hours up until around one o'clock in the morning,

00:00:22.020 and we had a great time.

00:00:23.020 It was a great show.

00:00:23.440 It was hosted by myself, True North senior correspondent Andrew Lawton,

00:00:26.820 as well as True North in-house pollster Hamish Marshall.

00:00:30.240 We were there for the entire night.

00:00:32.580 We had our sort of raw reaction to the news as it came in.

00:00:35.500 We were calling the seats.

00:00:36.680 We talked about every part of the country, every writing,

00:00:39.700 really looked in depth at the Trudeau campaign, at the Erin O'Toole campaign,

00:00:44.240 and sort of broke it all down.

00:00:46.220 We had Sue Ann Levy in Oshawa and our own Harrison Faulkner out in Saskatoon.

00:00:50.440 We also were joined by some wonderful, spectacular guests.

00:00:53.020 So we had Andrew Scheer, former leader of the Conservative Party from the 2019 election.

00:00:57.960 We're joined by Danielle Smith, former leader of the Wild Rose Party out in Alberta,

00:01:02.620 and someone who's still very much involved in the political scene.

00:01:05.780 Out there, we had J.J. McCullough, the popular YouTuber and columnist with the Washington Post,

00:01:11.620 come and join us.

00:01:12.400 We had a lot of fun.

00:01:13.480 It was a great broadcast and just really enjoyed it.

00:01:16.060 We had a new format that we're trying out using,

00:01:19.080 so I could actually see all of the comments as we're coming in on social media,

00:01:22.460 on Facebook and YouTube.

00:01:24.380 So it was just, it was really fun.

00:01:26.140 It was great to connect with our audience that way.

00:01:28.860 And we really appreciate everyone who tuned in.

00:01:31.000 If you want to go check that out, you can find it over on YouTube or on Facebook.

00:01:35.500 But like I said in the intro, look, 0.56

00:01:37.800 I think that the obvious loser in last night's election was Justin Trudeau. 1.00

00:01:41.640 Justin Trudeau made an absolute mockery and fool of himself. 0.99

00:01:45.180 The entire purpose of this election was one reason and one reason alone, 0.99

00:01:49.740 and that was so that Justin Trudeau could try to get a bigger share of the pie.

00:01:53.780 He wanted a bigger share of the pie.

00:01:55.200 He wanted his majority government.

00:01:56.540 He wanted unmitigated power to do exactly what he wants to do.

00:02:00.520 He didn't want to have to bother with the hassle of working with the NDP and the Bloc,

00:02:04.740 even though the NDP and the Bloc were incredibly supportive of his left-wing agenda.

00:02:09.720 So Trudeau didn't have a very good reason to call the election in the first place,

00:02:13.220 other than the fact that he wanted more power.

00:02:15.260 He lost.

00:02:15.960 He did not get that power.

00:02:17.320 He didn't get the outcome that he wanted, which was the majority government.

00:02:21.200 If he were an honorable person, if he had any decency, he would resign.

00:02:25.160 He would look in the mirror.

00:02:26.160 He would look at his party.

00:02:27.340 He would look at Canadians and say,

00:02:29.060 I forced this unnecessary $600 million election.

00:02:32.260 I created all this division in the country.

00:02:34.860 I pushed on these wedge issues.

00:02:36.500 I bribed the media with more money, more taxpayer money.

00:02:40.900 I demonized people who protest against lockdowns and vaccines.

00:02:45.860 I divided the country.

00:02:48.280 Trudeau is to blame. 0.99

00:02:49.920 Trudeau is terrible. 0.65

00:02:51.240 And again, if he had any sense of decency, he would resign and he would not be prime minister. 0.72

00:02:55.780 But of course, that's not true.

00:02:57.320 Of course, Justin Trudeau doesn't have any decency.

00:02:59.300 He doesn't have any honor.

00:03:00.340 And therefore, he twisted it and spun it in his victory speech last night,

00:03:05.420 saying that he was given a mandate, saying that it's clear, saying that he won,

00:03:10.000 and basically acting as though he had just won a majority government, even though he hadn't.

00:03:14.600 It was absolutely despicable. 1.00

00:03:16.260 Justin Trudeau is a big, big loser of the night. 1.00

00:03:19.720 And Canadians are worse off this morning because of it. 1.00

00:03:22.700 But as I said in my intro, I think that the Conservatives are the big losers. 1.00

00:03:26.740 The Conservatives are the big losers. 0.99

00:03:28.480 And I will spend this show explaining why. 0.99

00:03:31.500 Look, when it comes to Aaron O'Toole, I'll just be completely frank.

00:03:34.680 He comes from the opposite side of the Conservative movement and party than me.

00:03:39.340 I like to see a Conservative who is strong in their principles, strong on their values,

00:03:42.880 unapologetic, willing to defend Conservatives and willing to live their values

00:03:46.740 and have a distinct difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives.

00:03:51.980 That's just the kind of Conservative that I am.

00:03:54.480 I think that typically in the party, those people, people like me, are described as true blue,

00:03:59.400 people who really believe in Conservatism, really believe in things like a smaller government,

00:04:04.820 a traditional role for families, strong families, and a strong economy.

00:04:09.500 And those things come first.

00:04:10.580 And when it comes to the culture wars, yes, they're willing to defend, defend Canada,

00:04:14.680 defend the West, defend our pipelines and our energy industry, and defend Canada.

00:04:19.040 Not be apologetic, not pretend to be something that you're not, not buy into the sort of woke

00:04:24.220 media landscape and the narrative that is pushed that you have to repeat these woke lines that

00:04:30.380 are being shoved down our throat by a radical fringe left.

00:04:33.520 I believe that a Conservative should stand up against those things, that they should be strong

00:04:37.380 and firm.

00:04:38.480 So look, Aaron O'Toole is not exactly my cup of tea, but here at True North, I try to give

00:04:43.240 him the benefit of the doubt and to cover him with an open mind.

00:04:46.900 So I wasn't overly critical of him during the campaign, even though there were a lot

00:04:50.540 of things that he did that I severely disagreed with.

00:04:53.580 And that's because, look, he has a different, he comes from a different side of the movement

00:04:57.920 than me, and he had a different strategy.

00:04:59.840 The whole idea was that he was going to run as a moderate, run as a centrist, sort of try

00:05:06.000 to court people in the middle.

00:05:07.660 So he basically ditched the entire social conservative wing of the party.

00:05:11.880 He wasn't really willing to take on any of the cultural war, cultural battles that are

00:05:17.220 happening in our country right now.

00:05:18.400 He pretty much stayed silent on all of them.

00:05:20.620 At one point, he did say that he would raise the flag to full staff.

00:05:24.140 That should be obvious that that's, yes, that's good.

00:05:27.020 And it was good to see him do that.

00:05:28.520 I would have liked to see a lot more of that from him.

00:05:32.540 But regardless, he cut the social conservatives out of the party.

00:05:36.860 He didn't let someone like Pierre Lemieux even run in the first place.

00:05:40.180 When it came to the vaccine passports, the same kind of thing.

00:05:43.560 A conservative should stand strongly against that kind of huge overreach and growth in

00:05:48.860 government.

00:05:49.240 The government should not be given that kind of responsibility over our lives.

00:05:52.540 We shouldn't entrust the government to oversee something like that.

00:05:56.300 A conservative needs to stand against that kind of thing.

00:05:59.000 O'Toole didn't.

00:05:59.700 OK, fine.

00:06:00.260 It was his strategy.

00:06:01.100 His strategy was that he was going to sort of mirror Trudeau on that wedge issue so he didn't

00:06:05.540 lose the campaign over.

00:06:07.140 Fair enough.

00:06:07.540 When it came to the sort of, again, more libertarian issues, he didn't make any effort

00:06:11.780 whatsoever to appeal to the anti-lockdown crowd.

00:06:15.720 He sort of just let those people go to Maxime Bernier, let Maxime Bernier really own that

00:06:20.720 issue.

00:06:21.620 And by the end of the campaign, we had sort of conservatives angrily saying a vote for

00:06:25.700 Maxime Bernier is a vote for Justin Trudeau as if that was going to make the difference and

00:06:29.920 as if they owned those votes, that it was mandatory that if you're a libertarian, you must vote for

00:06:34.600 the conservative party, even though the conservatives weren't offering anything to try to appeal to

00:06:39.660 libertarians, appeal to even conservative sensibilities on limited government and putting

00:06:44.260 freedom first.

00:06:45.320 So, again, disappointing to see those two things happen.

00:06:49.220 But the reason I was willing to entertain it is the idea that perhaps Aaron O'Toole had tapped

00:06:53.940 into this strategy, that he was going to run as a red Tory, he was going to run as a centrist, he was going to

00:06:58.680 appeal to all of these people in the middle who vote liberal, but maybe they were disaffected with

00:07:03.820 Justin Trudeau and they had nowhere else to go because all of the other parties are fringe and

00:07:08.420 far left.

00:07:09.160 So that was a strategy, kept an open mind, and I think that the results last night speak for

00:07:14.780 themselves.

00:07:15.500 Aaron O'Toole's strategy did not work.

00:07:18.240 It did not work.

00:07:19.360 He did not make any inroads in Toronto.

00:07:21.240 In fact, he lost several seats in the 905 that the conservatives had won under Andrew Scheer.

00:07:26.760 So Andrew Scheer, open, socially conservative, Catholic guy, family guy, didn't apologize for his

00:07:31.480 conservative values.

00:07:32.560 Andrew Scheer stood strongly against UN overreach.

00:07:35.400 He maintained his conservative principles, and yes, I wish there were some areas where he was even more

00:07:40.120 strong and would push back even more, like the Paris Declaration.

00:07:43.560 But regardless, in comparison, Andrew Scheer seems like a much, much more conservative

00:07:48.480 candidate than Aaron O'Toole.

00:07:50.940 So the idea that Aaron O'Toole didn't even gain seats in Toronto, he didn't even win the 905,

00:07:56.760 the suburban belt around Toronto, that it seemed like his entire campaign was geared toward.

00:08:01.540 But not just that, the conservatives got decimated in the lower mainland, in British Columbia.

00:08:06.120 They basically, from our analysis and what Hamish Marshall was saying last night, they lost the

00:08:10.880 Chinese vote.

00:08:11.480 The ethnic inroads that had been made under Harper are continuing to fade away.

00:08:16.680 So you're losing the vote of new Canadians.

00:08:19.260 And so at this point, you have to stop and say, wait a minute, what was it all for?

00:08:23.660 Aaron O'Toole ran a campaign where he basically threw the conservatives in his party under the

00:08:28.160 bus.

00:08:28.680 He shunned social conservatives.

00:08:30.180 He shunned freedom-loving libertarians.

00:08:32.460 He ran as a centrist.

00:08:33.640 He ran basically as a liberal-like candidate.

00:08:37.320 And he didn't even make the inroads that he needed.

00:08:40.220 It seemed like his entire campaign was geared towards appeasing the media and trying to appeal

00:08:45.360 to people who, let me be frank, are never going to vote for conservatives.

00:08:48.840 You're never going to win over these people, no matter how much you try to act like Justin

00:08:52.680 Trudeau.

00:08:53.120 You cannot out-Trudeau Justin Trudeau.

00:08:56.000 And this is an incredible failure of judgment and failure of strategy.

00:09:00.540 And I think there needs to be a reckoning with Aaron O'Toole as the leader of the Conservative

00:09:04.900 Party within the Conservative movement, because his strategy didn't pan out.

00:09:08.600 It didn't work.

00:09:09.420 He didn't win.

00:09:10.280 Instead, he alienated the entire Conservative base, including people who trusted him that he

00:09:16.280 was going to run.

00:09:17.100 Remember, he ran as a true blue.

00:09:18.520 He said that throughout his leadership campaign, that the options for leadership of the party

00:09:23.740 were Peter McKay, who was a known red Tory, and Aaron O'Toole.

00:09:27.120 And the idea of why so many people threw their support behind Aaron O'Toole was because they

00:09:31.900 believed that he was the more Conservative option.

00:09:34.800 It turned out that that wasn't the case.

00:09:36.600 And this became evident throughout the campaign.

00:09:38.800 I want to read a post that Aaron O'Toole put on his Facebook in the final days of the

00:09:43.860 campaign, because I think it's just incredibly telling of the kind of strategy that

00:09:48.500 he had, the kind of campaign he led, and the kind of man that he is.

00:09:51.260 So let me read this right here.

00:09:52.660 I want to talk to the many Canadians who are tuning into this election, and maybe, hopefully,

00:09:57.800 looking at the Conservatives for the first time.

00:10:00.060 I know some of you are hesitant because of things you may have heard or impressions that

00:10:04.120 are a little out of date.

00:10:05.480 I know that you may not hear all that much from Conservative politicians.

00:10:08.780 I understand that for years you've been let down by the Liberals.

00:10:11.540 Okay, so far, so good.

00:10:13.260 I guess he's trying to talk to people who don't typically vote for Conservatives.

00:10:17.220 So let's see what he has to say here.

00:10:19.280 He says,

00:10:19.840 So basically what he's saying here is he's apologizing for the Conservatives in his party.

00:10:48.420 He's apologizing for the Conservative positions his party has taken in the past, and he wants

00:10:52.880 you to know that under his watch, the Conservatives are different.

00:10:56.400 Okay, so let's continue reading.

00:10:59.180 From the first day of my leadership, my priority has been to build a Conservative movement where

00:11:04.820 every Canadian feels at home, inclusive, diverse, forward-looking, socially progressive, and

00:11:12.600 worker-friendly.

00:11:13.760 As you look ahead to voting this election, I ask for your support.

00:11:18.720 Okay, so we have all the left-wing buzzwords that he's included there.

00:11:22.000 He wants you to know that the Conservative Party is now diverse and focused on diversity

00:11:27.680 and inclusion, which we know is sort of left-wing academic buzzword.

00:11:31.340 Look, the Conservative Party has always been diverse.

00:11:33.580 Ever since I first went to a Conservative Party event, which was probably about 15 years ago

00:11:39.260 in Vancouver, the first thing you notice about the room is that it's diverse.

00:11:43.740 There's people of all backgrounds, all walks of life, all ethnicities.

00:11:47.340 We were talking about this last night, that the whole idea that Conservatives are innately

00:11:53.000 homophobic or anti-gay is just obviously untrue.

00:11:56.660 If you work in Conservative politics or you're around Conservative politics, you recognize

00:12:01.620 very quickly that there are a lot of people who are gay in the Conservative movement, a lot 0.95

00:12:05.800 of people who identify as LGBTQ, a lot of people from different walks of life, again.

00:12:11.540 So the idea that Conservatives oppose that has always been nonsense, always been a media lie.

00:12:16.780 But again, here, Aaron O'Toole is repeating it and basically cementing those negative left-wing

00:12:22.360 media stereotypes about Conservatives, admitting that they're true and promising and pledging

00:12:27.180 to be better.

00:12:28.900 So here he says he wants to be forward-looking, socially progressive and left-wing.

00:12:33.560 So again, he's applying that he wants to be forward-looking, which implies that the

00:12:38.240 former Conservative Party was, what, backwards-looking?

00:12:40.860 He wants to be socially progressive, which means socially left-wing.

00:12:43.780 It means woke.

00:12:44.500 So why is Aaron O'Toole pledging to be woke in the final week of the campaign?

00:12:49.020 If you're a Conservative in this party who has long-voted Conservative, who has been loyal

00:12:53.160 to the party, and you see something like that, you read something like that, that was the

00:12:56.780 focus of his campaign in the final week.

00:12:58.760 He was giving speeches to that end.

00:13:01.280 That was what he was talking about, apologizing for the Conservative Party, saying that the past,

00:13:05.920 they were wrong, and he wants to move it in a more left-wing direction.

00:13:09.400 Well, I've got news for you, Aaron O'Toole.

00:13:11.200 When you talk like that, when you campaign like that, when you say those kind of things,

00:13:15.180 when you run on a campaign trying to please the media, trying to please the left, and to

00:13:19.020 get those people to win over, what you're really doing is you're throwing your own base under

00:13:23.180 the bus.

00:13:23.640 You're making Conservatives who have long supported and voted for your party feel like

00:13:27.660 you don't want them, and that you're ashamed of them, and that you are basically apologizing

00:13:31.780 for them.

00:13:32.460 So look, Aaron O'Toole didn't do what he said he was going to do.

00:13:35.740 He didn't make the inroads that he was hoping to.

00:13:38.000 He didn't make the progress that he wanted.

00:13:40.160 Instead, he alienated his base.

00:13:42.360 He didn't pick up seats and make the ground by picking up those moderate or those liberal

00:13:46.380 voters, and instead, he let the entire Conservative movement down.

00:13:50.720 There needs to be a reckoning.

00:13:51.900 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - September 21, 2021

The Conservative strategy failed. There needs to be a reckoning.

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