The Candice Malcolm Show - Where is Erin O’Toole？

00:00:00.000 The Trudeau government is proposing the most authoritarian policy in the history of our

00:00:05.300 country and the leader of the opposition has said nothing about it. Where is Aaron O'Toole

00:00:10.420 and why isn't he doing his job? I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:18.760 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. Now here on The Candice Malcolm

00:00:23.300 Show all week we've sort of been laying out the various issues with Justin Trudeau and his sort

00:00:28.440 of recent troubling behavior. I think topping it off must be this policy that was sort of hinted

00:00:34.320 about in the CBC and the health minister came out last Friday in the afternoon saying that the

00:00:39.740 government was having conversations with the provinces and encouraging them to get ready to

00:00:44.480 roll out a forced vaccination campaign. We're not talking about vaccines available for people,

00:00:49.540 we're not talking about vaccine mandates in order to go to restaurants and maybe get into certain

00:00:53.960 areas of society, we're talking about forced vaccinations. We're talking about a campaign

00:00:57.620 where the government would by force impose a health mandate on people, inject something into

00:01:04.360 their body that they do not consent to. That is beyond the conversation in a free society. We have

00:01:10.060 never seen anything like that in this country. It's truly a radical and frightening idea and you

00:01:14.960 would think that Canadians in lockstep would join to denounce this policy and say no this is too far,

00:01:21.500 this is not something that happens in Canada. Instead we haven't heard a word from Aaron O'Toole,

00:01:26.120 we've heard something, some comments from some of his MPs but nothing from O'Toole himself.

00:01:32.080 Justin Trudeau continues to divide Canadians. We saw that clip resurface of him back in September

00:01:37.520 calling the unvaccinated, calling them extremists, calling them misogynists and racists. Again,

00:01:43.220 really, really intense rhetoric. We've seen him scapegoating and demonizing and vilifying the

00:01:48.860 unvaccinated for months and months and months. This clip really just reemphasizes

00:01:52.340 this sort of unhinged aspect and way that Trudeau is going about demonizing and trying to encourage

00:01:58.500 people to get vaccinated. The whole issue of dividing Canadians, Trudeau is getting worse. I

00:02:04.720 mean, just look at the example last week. A bunch of young Quebec influencers, teenagers and people in

00:02:10.080 their 20s, young adults, off on a private plane, on a private trip, doing their own thing, minding their

00:02:15.900 own business, having some fun. Justin Trudeau chimes in to say it's a slap in the face. Okay. He also

00:02:21.680 called them idiots and barbarians. Some way for the leader of a country, for the prime minister to

00:02:27.020 speak about people in his own country, to speak about his own citizens. That is completely unacceptable

00:02:31.940 for a prime minister to be labeling people in his country, his own citizens, as idiots and barbarians.

00:02:37.980 This just shows the low level of discourse with Trudeau and sort of the clear disdain that he has

00:02:43.780 for the Canadian public. We've also seen elements of Trudeau coming unhinged and coming undone when

00:02:49.120 he talks about the idea that kids must get vaccinated. That's a pretty nuanced conversation.

00:02:54.300 And what you'll hear from a lot of health experts at the provincial level, doctors and people in the

00:02:58.560 conversation, is that it's a choice. It's up to the parent if they want to vaccinate their child to

00:03:03.260 protect other people in their household and sort of protect people around them. That's their choice.

00:03:07.840 But it seems pretty clear from the science that kids don't need vaccines. Kids don't get sick from

00:03:12.540 COVID. 99.9% of kids who get COVID recover with very few symptoms. So COVID doesn't affect kids the

00:03:19.320 same way as it affects adults. So why would we have a medical intervention that's basically

00:03:24.040 unnecessary? Well, Trudeau has been really adamant that kids must get vaccinated. You've got to sign

00:03:28.500 up, you've got to vaccinate your kids. Again, all of this would present a great opportunity for the 0.97

00:03:33.440 opposition of the country, the leader of the opposition, Aaron O'Toole. You basically have Justin

00:03:38.740 Trudeau out there acting like a crazy person, coming undone, coming unhinged, really proposing

00:03:43.660 crazy, radical things. And it seems like he's sort of losing his grip on what's acceptable and

00:03:49.240 basically on reality. I think he's really, really out of line with the Canadian public on many of

00:03:55.660 these issues. It's a great opportunity for Aaron O'Toole. Aaron O'Toole could be out there striking a

00:04:00.700 different tone, showing a different path to Canadians, showing a moderate approach. He could be seen as a

00:04:05.820 sort of reasonable, moderate person in the conversation. But instead, Aaron O'Toole is

00:04:10.880 basically absent. You don't see him. You don't hear from him. He doesn't break through his comments

00:04:16.560 and his press releases. They don't break into the media. We don't see stories about him. We barely

00:04:22.100 hear anything. And when he finally does come out and give a press conference or make a statement,

00:04:28.360 his point is like so blurred and mushy. And you don't really know what he's saying. You don't really

00:04:33.040 know what he stands for. He's really failing in his role as the opposition leader to offer a

00:04:38.460 meaningful critique of Trudeau. Meanwhile, Trudeau is lashing out at Canadians. And so to talk about

00:04:44.900 this issue a little more and to get a little deeper into it, I want to bring on a True North

00:04:49.000 reporter, Cosmin Xerja. Cosmin is originally from Romania. He's a graduate of the University of

00:04:53.960 Waterloo, and he currently lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia with his wife and child. Cosmin is

00:04:59.460 a senior researcher here at True North. He's a great investigative journalist. He has published

00:05:04.020 some of the biggest and most important reports and stories in True North histories. He's been a big

00:05:09.200 part of our success. And to date, his work has been referenced by CBC News, Rebel News, CTV News,

00:05:15.540 Western Standard, and many other outlets, including outlets, international outlets and outlets all

00:05:20.340 over the world. So Cosmin, thank you so much for joining the Candace Malcolm Show. It's great to have you

00:05:23.820 on the program. Thanks for having me, Candace. Happy to be here. Great. Well, so this topic for

00:05:30.200 the show today sort of came from this funny tweet and news story that you had over on True North. So

00:05:35.940 back on January 4th last week, you tweeted, has anyone been more irrelevant than Aaron O'Toole in

00:05:41.540 the past few weeks? Your tweet went viral, and then you wrote a piece sort of talking about the reaction

00:05:47.060 to your viral tweet. So first, in your opinion, Cosmin, your estimation of, you know,

00:05:52.940 closely following the news. What is the problem with Aaron O'Toole? Where has he been for the last

00:05:57.760 few weeks? Well, I think that word, irrelevant, really strikes at the heart of the matter.

00:06:03.540 How many Canadians even know who Aaron O'Toole is, if you would ask them on the street, right?

00:06:08.960 He hasn't been very visible. He hasn't been very vocal. And as you mentioned, this is a perfect

00:06:14.280 opportunity for Aaron O'Toole to really stand out, to provide a vision to Canadians, an alternative

00:06:20.020 vision to the one, to the divisive one that Trudeau is currently plunging us into.

00:06:27.680 And so you put out this tweet because Trudeau, or sorry, O'Toole just wasn't really doing the job

00:06:32.640 that he should be doing. And tell us a little bit about the reaction and what prompted you to write

00:06:38.480 that news article about the sort of virality of the tweet and people commenting on O'Toole's absence.

00:06:45.720 For sure. I mean, the most common reaction was who? Aaron O'who? And I think that that's the case for

00:06:54.200 many people. They just don't have a sense of who he is. And if you just read the comments, that's the

00:07:01.160 sense I'm getting from the majority. And it's also related in the polls, because if you look at the

00:07:08.240 recent polls coming out, I think about half of his party doesn't approve of him. And he's the lowest

00:07:14.780 polling leader out of all of the federal main party leaders. So I think that tweet was a reflection

00:07:22.000 of just the general sentiment and attitude towards the leader of the opposition.

00:07:29.440 Well, you know, we can give him a little bit of a break and assume, okay, maybe he was just having a

00:07:33.380 slow start after Christmas. Maybe he was still, you know, out of his cottage or whatever he was doing

00:07:38.360 in family mode and hadn't quite kicked back into political mode yet. Yeah, I think your tweet and your

00:07:43.220 story, which was January 4, really kind of woke him up. Because after that came out, we did start to see

00:07:49.120 a little bit more of a reaction from him. However, you know, it doesn't really seem to break through.

00:07:55.940 So if you were the opposition leader, Cosmin, or if you were advising him, or if you were,

00:08:02.120 you know, part of that team, what would you be saying? What could Aaron O'Toole be saying differently

00:08:07.720 to kind of penetrate the media and, you know, the media narrative and actually say something that

00:08:16.620 Canadians might want to join on board and follow his party over?

00:08:20.760 Personally, if I was advising him or in that position, I would be a little bit more aggressive

00:08:27.480 and going out into the media, you know, right now we're not in parliament. But there are plenty

00:08:33.420 of opportunities to either take the message directly to voters using social media, or going out on radio

00:08:40.060 and television and really blasting back some of the messaging that Trudeau and other Liberal Party

00:08:47.480 members have been putting out and really putting it out there, so that Canadians can hear loud and

00:08:53.200 clear what the government thinks about millions of Canadians in this country. And it's not a nice

00:08:58.960 message, right? Trudeau has called them racist, extremist, misogynist, while speaking about people

00:09:05.680 who have refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine. But that's not the beginning for Trudeau, because he's

00:09:12.800 been doing this for a while, you know, his minister of, former minister of heritage was calling people

00:09:21.140 extremists for simply opposing an internet censorship bill. So I think it's part of the brand for the

00:09:26.760 Liberals and O'Toole's team could really, has a lot of material to work with out there, if they wanted

00:09:33.580 to push back and really, you know, take down Trudeau a level.

00:09:37.720 Absolutely. Well, I mean, there's so many opportunities, and I think no better an opportunity

00:09:43.040 than the announcement or the story and the press conference that we saw on Friday and the story

00:09:49.020 that came out afterwards, where the health minister is hinting and sort of encouraging provinces to bring

00:09:54.960 about a forced vaccination campaign, not a vaccine mandate where you need to show your papers to get

00:10:01.980 into certain press society, but forcing Canadians, like a mandatory forced vaccination campaign,

00:10:08.480 which is, again, above and beyond anything that we're seeing anywhere in the world right now.

00:10:12.380 It's truly authoritarian. We saw some reaction, Cosman, from a couple of MPs. So I'll read those

00:10:17.960 tweets. Michael Cooper, who's the MP up in St. Albert, Edmonton. He says, this is outrageous.

00:10:22.300 Justin Trudeau's government is entering into truly dangerous authoritarian territory. State imposed

00:10:27.520 involuntary medical interventions are un-Canadian and have new place in a free and democratic society.

00:10:32.520 That's absolutely right. I couldn't agree more. And it would have been nice to hear that from Aaron

00:10:36.100 O'Toole himself. Instead, you know, he's got his MPs out there who are probably just saying this on

00:10:41.560 their own. Garnett Janis, likewise, said, no, vax rates are very high in Canada. Provinces are backing

00:10:47.240 off vax requirements for essential workers because they need the workers. Even if this were desirable in

00:10:52.660 principle, which it's not, we have no capacity to enforce this. And again, another MP, Jeremy Patser,

00:10:59.440 an MP from Cypress Hill Grasslands in Saskatchewan, says, extremely ignorant and frankly shocking that

00:11:05.500 the health minister of a democratic country would say this. Vaccine mandates were wrong from the very

00:11:09.540 beginning. It is increasingly clear that they are a public policy failure. They are ruining livelihoods,

00:11:15.500 clogging supply chains, stifling our economy, eroding medical privacy, dividing society, all the while

00:11:21.400 doing very little in the way of actually combating COVID. So pretty strong words from three of his

00:11:27.960 MPs. But I haven't heard anything from Aaron O'Toole on this. Has he chimed in? Does he have any

00:11:33.920 message about this potentially very, very scary and dangerous policy?

00:11:39.180 Absolutely not. The line he's been going with right now is Trudeau is normalizing lockdowns,

00:11:45.920 which in my eyes is totally milquetoast and off the mark, right? Trudeau is not putting people into

00:11:54.020 lockdowns, factually speaking. It's the premiers. And I just find normalizing lockdowns doesn't really

00:12:01.160 get at the heart of the matter. As those MPs, some of those MPs have mentioned, right? This is an

00:12:06.860 authoritarian move. I think if we go down this path, the Canada that comes out on the other side will be

00:12:12.820 completely different than the one that entered. And I'm not so sure we can call it a liberal

00:12:18.100 democracy anymore after we've given up the notion of bodily autonomy for our citizens. So yeah, no,

00:12:26.460 no clear messaging from O'Toole as expected. And he's a little late to the mark on this one.

00:12:34.020 Right. I mean, you know, normalizing lockdowns, look, we've been locked down on and off for two years

00:12:38.800 now. Like the normalization of lockdowns happened a very long time ago. And if that's the best you

00:12:44.100 have at this point in the game, it's just, you're absolutely right. It's so weak. And even, I mean,

00:12:49.400 I've got the CBC story in front of me where they talk about how Trudeau accuses, sorry, O'Toole

00:12:54.600 accuses Trudeau of normalizing lockdowns by failing to provide rapid tests. It's like, that's such a

00:13:00.060 muddled criticism because it's like, are you criticizing him for lockdowns, which are of course,

00:13:05.060 provincial jurisdictions, the provinces that are locking down, not the, not the prime minister.

00:13:09.440 He's bringing in his own slew of horrible policies, but, but the lockdowns are the provinces. So if

00:13:15.360 O'Toole wanted to criticize lockdown, he should be criticizing Francois Legault, Doug Ford, Jason

00:13:22.160 Kenney, and the people who are actually doing the lockdowns. And, and, and, and then, and then saying

00:13:26.900 that he's normalizing lockdowns by failing to provide enough rapid tests. What, what does one have

00:13:31.900 to do with the other? I mean, it doesn't even seem like he has a coherent message here.

00:13:37.020 Right. It's very confusing. He needs something much stronger, much clearer that, that Canadians can get

00:13:44.060 behind. And you would think, you know, the conservatives recently have been quite media savvy,

00:13:49.420 and you would think with a media team and his advisors behind him, he could pull something out

00:13:54.620 that was consistent. And, and, and people wanted to hear and, and, and to see in their leaders.

00:14:02.620 But I, I haven't seen that yet. And, you know, the clock is ticking. He's, you know, we're likely to

00:14:09.480 head into another election in the next year or two. He's heading towards a leadership review, which

00:14:15.780 is on, on, uh, unstable ground, his leadership. So he, he's got, uh, it doesn't have that much time

00:14:23.420 left. So I'd, I'd like to really see, uh, what he has to offer and whether he's got some sort of

00:14:29.160 secret weapon, uh, that we're all waiting for. I think if he had a secret weapon, we would, we

00:14:35.400 would have seen it by now. I mean, look, if you, if you go back to the election campaign, it's like

00:14:39.920 he, he did a pretty decent job of remaining discipline. He, he, he wouldn't really get off of his

00:14:44.460 message. He was really focused on the issues that mattered to him. But as we saw throughout the

00:14:50.060 campaign, part of the issue was that he just wasn't really clear in his positions. He often

00:14:54.320 came across as condescending and he, he switched his position on major issues. And I, and I feel

00:14:59.780 like he's running into that same problem now with mixed messaging and, you know, what is his position?

00:15:05.540 For instance, when it comes to vaccine mandates, even during the election, it was like, is he, is he

00:15:11.000 for them? Is he against them? It was kind of this brilliant strategy that Trudeau announced

00:15:15.200 that he was going to, uh, call for mandatory vaccines in the civil service, thinking it would

00:15:20.540 be this big wedge issue of the election. And then O'Toole kind of agreed with him. And there was like,

00:15:25.100 you know, the, the, there was the gap between what they both believed. It was like a, a difference

00:15:28.920 without a distinction or distinction without a difference. And it, you know, I see that still right

00:15:33.700 now. I'm just going through some of the headlines here. It's like, okay, uh, first Aaron O'Toole,

00:15:38.440 urges reasonable accommodation for the unvaccinated. So he's kind of, uh, standing up for them saying

00:15:44.200 that they shouldn't be fired from jobs like truck drivers because we can't have more problems in the

00:15:49.020 supply chain. Uh, you know, we've seen, we've seen lots and lots of healthcare workers, uh, fired from

00:15:54.540 their jobs, especially nurses because they're unvaccinated only to be brought on later because 1.00

00:15:58.300 the healthcare system is so desperate for workers. So, so, you know, here's Aaron O'Toole on January 6th

00:16:03.520 calling for reasonable accommodation. Uh, but then, you know, on the same day, he's saying that,

00:16:09.200 you know, everyone must get vaccinated. It's your responsibility. You know, you can get your

00:16:13.460 questions answered. Uh, you know, it's, it's, it's just not clear what he's saying. And then,

00:16:17.480 and then, and then the same day he defends the vaccine mandate for Canadian armed forces. So he's

00:16:23.500 saying that making sure as many people are vaccinated as possible, um, needs to be the first 0.99

00:16:28.580 priority of the Canadian armed forces. So it's like, even now, you know, that he ran into that

00:16:33.820 problem during the election. It's now four months later in January, 2020, and he's still providing a

00:16:38.840 totally bland mixed messaging. What do you make of it? Where do you think Aaron O'Toole stands on

00:16:44.580 vaccine mandates? Well, that's a difficult question because, um, I mean, there's a difference between

00:16:51.480 where one personally stands on an issue and where one officially stands on an issue. I think Aaron O'Toole,

00:16:57.560 from what we've seen, he's playing some sort of middle flip-flopping game. I'm not sure what the

00:17:05.660 strategy is behind it. It goes all the way back to the election, you know, painting himself as a true

00:17:11.600 blue conservative, but then, uh, going red in, uh, once things started to get tough, uh, you know,

00:17:17.560 he flip-flopped on guns, he flip-flopped on, um, the CBC, uh, and as you mentioned, even on the

00:17:24.740 mandates, when they introduced, um, uh, the mandate for parliamentarians, he was flip-flopping back then

00:17:31.280 as well. So if Aaron O'Toole, the flip-flopper, that's, that's where he stands in my eyes.

00:17:38.460 That's too bad. The other thing I find kind of interesting is that sometimes on social media,

00:17:43.960 I'll see like a very strong message from the conservatives. I know if you get their emails,

00:17:47.760 it's like their emails read, like you, they really have a different view and a different worldview and

00:17:52.800 different perspective from the liberals. Like, uh, you know, a tweet that came out on January 10th,

00:17:57.000 Canadian conservatives want to see an end to lockdowns, restrictions on your liberty,

00:18:01.460 and the ongoing impact of mental wellness in our society. That's a, that's a much stronger message

00:18:06.480 than what Aaron O'Toole himself says. So why do you think there's this gap between the sort of,

00:18:13.060 you know, general messages of the party, some of the stronger points put out by members of parliament,

00:18:18.280 and then, and then when it comes to O'Toole itself, it's like, you can't muster the, uh,

00:18:21.540 courage to say these kinds of things in, in plain language.

00:18:24.480 I think that's a reflective of a general sort of division within the party, you know, uh, people

00:18:31.240 who want to stick to conservative values, uh, versus people who want to bring the party, uh, closer to

00:18:38.240 the center, uh, closer to the liberals, uh, to the point where they're indistinguishable. So I think

00:18:43.980 we're seeing it, uh, spill out into their very messaging, uh, but it is a, an issue of, of division.

00:18:50.540 And what, where this party goes, uh, from here on out, because it really is a matter of, of the very

00:18:57.680 identity of the conservative party. Uh, and I don't think, uh, Aaron O'Toole is a positive version of

00:19:04.440 that identity for the future.

00:19:06.100 It's too bad because they have such a good opportunity with this prime minister and with

00:19:11.580 the direction they're going. So many Canadians would want to have an alternative, but it's like,

00:19:16.080 they don't really see an alternative with O'Toole because his messaging isn't very strong. And,

00:19:21.480 you know, it's like, it's like Aaron O'Toole doesn't want to go offside with like the legacy

00:19:26.820 media and the sort of fancy people. So, so he wants to stay very much in the center and, and, and it's

00:19:33.080 too bad because there's, there's a huge missed opportunity. Well, Cosmin, I really, uh, appreciate

00:19:37.460 the work that you do here at True North. You're a great reporter. And, uh, yeah, thank you so much

00:19:41.620 for joining the show. We'll have to have you on again, uh, at some later point.

00:19:45.740 Thanks, Candice. Anytime. Would love to.

00:19:48.700 All right. That was Cosmin Giorgio with True North. I'm Candice Malcolm,

00:19:51.340 and this is the Candice Malcolm show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - January 12, 2022

Where is Erin O’Toole？

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