Boris Johnson’s 364-seat UK majority and Andrew Scheer’s resignation expose stark contrasts: Johnson’s Brexit clarity vs. Scheer’s policy vacuums, including $250K+ annual earnings while secretly diverting party funds for his children’s private school. Manny Montenegrino urges Canada’s Conservatives to pick a leader with substance—Ronna Ambrose’s Trudeau-appointed NAFTA role shields her from attacks, while Pierre Poilievre’s media risks may outweigh his strengths. With Trudeau’s Liberals teetering, the party must unite fast behind principled, decisive leadership or risk irrelevance in a collapsing minority government. [Automatically generated summary]
Well yesterday was quite a day for conservatives in the Anglosphere.
Canada's Conservatives got rid of a dud named Andrew Scheer and the UK's Conservatives had a huge win gaining dozens of seats even though they've been in office for 10 years already because they had a leader who actually stood for something.
Brexit, for all his quirks, you knew he meant something.
I don't know if we can say the same about Andrew Scheer.
Here I'll take you through my thinking on both men in my podcast today.
Before I do, let me invite you to become a premium member.
Go to premium.rebelnews.com.
It's eight bucks a month and you get the video version of the show too.
Okay, here's the podcast.
Tonight, two conservative parties, two opposite results.
Boris Johnson wins a strong majority in the UK while Andrew Scheer limps back to obscurity in Canada.
It's December 13th and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Big day yesterday.
Andrew Scheer resigned as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
I gave you a couple minutes of thoughts from the road yesterday and I'll give you a few more today.
But what was striking was it happened to be the same day of the UK elections and it was a very strong success for the Conservatives over there.
Healthy majority, 364 seats, I think, out of their 650-seat parliament.
So the Tories have been in power for a decade already there, but they still won and they grew.
Last night's number is up by 47 seats gained.
The Labour Party, led by the hardcore socialist Jeremy Corbyn, shrunk by 59 seats to 203.
Conservatives' Strong Victory00:05:27
Scotland, which has 59 seats in the UK Parliament, went overwhelmingly to the Scottish National Party, a socialist separatist party.
Makes me a bit sad that Scotland and the other parts of the UK might actually separate, that the United Kingdom and the Union Jack would be disunited.
But it's not my fight to fight, and there is a global trend towards smaller jurisdictions and stronger identities.
It's all part of the backlash against globalism.
I think it's good.
It could be seen as a reaction to Brexit, I suppose, but of course, it's its own form of Brexit, too.
I don't know what it means other than Jeremy Corbyn just couldn't get it done.
I think he only had one seat in Scotland.
I've shown you this shocking picture before of Corbyn standing in front of an actual Hezbollah terrorist flag.
Full out terrorist supporter.
Didn't hide it.
Why would you need to hide it when millions of immigrants to Britain from Muslim countries like Pakistan full out support Muslim extremism?
Then again, Corbyn was for terrorism before mass Muslim migration transformed the UK.
Here's a video clip showing some of his associations, including with the IRA.
You invited convicted IRA terrorists to tea in the commons a few weeks after the Brighton bomb, which tried to destroy our elected government.
You stood for a minute's silence to honor your word, Mr. Corbyn, honor IRA terrorists killed by the British Army.
Throughout the 80s and the 90s, you spoke at scores of hardline Republican gatherings which backed the IRA and the armed struggle.
I always wanted and always do want peace, always want a dialogue between people of vastly different backgrounds.
And the minute silence you referred to was in 1987 and it was for all who had died in Northern Ireland.
That's one of the eight Irish terrorists that have been killed.
That was the purpose of the meeting.
So yeah, support for terrorism and hostility to the Jews.
Here's the great Andrew Neal grilling Corbyn about plain old Jew haters in his party.
It's like the UK is turning into France or something.
You've not convinced the chief rabbi or the British Jewish community.
Well, your party is being investigated for anti-Semitism by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Only the BNP has ever been investigated before.
Hard-right fascists.
We're told thousands of cases have been submitted to the Equality Commission.
British Jews, many of them, fear you making it into Downing Street and that if you do, many are preparing to leave the country.
Are you not ashamed of that?
Andrew, this morning I made it very, very clear.
We will, in government, as in opposition, protect any community that's under any threat of any sort.
We will support the necessary funding to protect synagogues, protect temples, and protect mosques.
We will protect the cemeteries also.
We will not allow anti-Semitism in any form in our society because it is poisonous and divisive just as much as Islamophobia or far-right racism is.
And I think we can agree on that.
Except that they don't trust you.
They don't think you're hot centralized.
They've seen you share platforms with the violist anti-Semites.
When you say there, who do you mean?
Many Jews.
80% of Jews think that you're anti-Semitic.
That's quite a lot of British Jews.
I mean, wouldn't you like to take this opportunity tonight to apologise to the British Jewish community for what's happened?
What I'll say is this.
I am determined that our society will be safe for people of all faiths.
I don't want anyone to be feeling insecure in our society.
And our government will protect every community against the abuse they receive on the streets, on the trains, or in any case.
So do apology for any other form of life.
Try one more time.
No, hang on a minute, Andrew.
Can I explain what we're trying to do?
You have, and you've been given plenty of time to do it.
I asked you if you wanted to apologise.
I don't want to.
Well, if you think that's something, here's the former Labour mayor of London saying that Corbyn only lost the election because of the Jewish vote.
That's a laugh.
There's only about a quarter million Jews in all of the UK.
Even Canada has more, and there's about 65 million Brits.
So they're a sliver of the population.
Their vote didn't make a dent at all.
Corbyn lost seats in working class northern ridings.
Most of the Jews in the UK live in London, really.
It's just a crazy excuse, but that's the Labour Party these days.
Conspiracy theories.
That old mayor, Red Ken, as he was nicknamed, he was just a garden variety communist.
Red Ken was his nickname.
But recall that London's current mayor, the Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan, he literally was a lawyer for Muslim terrorists before becoming mayor.
There's no evidence at all against the three British men.
The only evidence against them is these confessions.
We now have unequivocal proof that the confessions were obtained under duress and under torture.
Boris And The Greenwashing Scandal00:06:58
As there is no evidence against the men, the men need to be released straight away and sent back home to the families.
The Egyptian government and the state prosecutor have made a terrible mistake.
They can correct that mistake by releasing their men now.
What we're concerned about is they're compounding their mistake by continuing to detain them and having this farce of a trial.
This is in breach of Egyptian zone, very important law.
Egypt has a proud history of being the custodians of law and justice.
So yeah, I'm glad the UK voted for Boris Johnson and Brexit, but I'm not sure if the country is salvageable.
I think this slowed its decline.
It's a perpetual ideological war there.
Here's one unhappy Labour candidate.
He actually won his election, but he sure is mad at voters.
Look at this.
Because the Conservative Party have aimed to break up our country.
They aim to destroy our NHS and we will say no.
We will put them in the parliament.
We will fight them in the courts.
We will fight them in the workplaces and they will fight them in the streets.
They will not destroy the country.
Yikes.
And of course, Brexit isn't actually done yet.
Boris Johnson isn't just quitting the EU.
He's talking about negotiating his way out still.
Why not just quit?
The victory was Boris Johnson's, but it came about because of Nigel Farage.
It was Farage who led the Brexit referendum in 2016.
This spring, it was Farage whose new Brexit party came in first in the European elections held in the UK.
I think that probably stealed Boris Johnson's will on Brexit and showed what would happen if he didn't do it.
It was Farage who a few weeks ago announced that his new Brexit party would not contest any Conservative MPs who were already in Parliament or seats where it was close, so the Brexit Party would not split the vote.
I think that is why Johnson got his majority.
I think last night was Farage's win as much as anything, even though he got no MPs himself.
Now, I like Boris Johnson.
He's smart.
I think I like him mainly because he's funny, to be honest.
He can be really quirky.
I think it's a shtick.
i mean what do you think of this i have a thing where i make models of i'd be when i was in like we're mayor of london we build a beautiful i make buses You make models of buses.
I make models of buses.
They're going to be in Downing Street.
No, what I don't make models of basketball, what I make is I get old, I don't know, wooden crates.
Yeah.
Right?
and then I paint them, and they have two...
I suppose it's a box that's been used to contain two wine bottles, right?
Right.
And it will have a dividing thing.
And I turn it into a bus.
So I put passengers.
You really want to know this?
You're making buses.
You're making carbon buses.
That's what you do to enjoy yourself.
No, I paint the passengers enjoying themselves on the wonderful bus.
Great.
That's just really fun.
I've watched that like four times.
He's goofy all around, but I think he knows exactly what he's doing.
He's crazy like a fox.
He's crazy.
Now, when Trump was new, Boris Johnson mocked him.
I think Donald Trump is clearly out of his mind.
If you think that's a sensible way to proceed, you can't ban people going to the United States in that way, or indeed to any country.
And what he's doing is playing the game of the terrorists and those who seek to divide us.
That is exactly the kind of reaction they hope to produce.
And I have to say, when Donald Trump says that there are parts of London that are no-go areas, I think he's betraying a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him frankly unfit to hold the office of president.
Yeah, I bet he wish he could take that back now.
Johnson has other leftist quirks too, besides Trump derangement, which I think he's cured from.
Boris Johnson claims to be really green.
You know, you can bike around London a bit.
The traffic there is so bad, it's probably quicker to bike than to drive, but it makes no sense for most people, most of the time.
I mean, take the subway if you want.
Johnson's a big global warming extremist in his own way, and he pledges zero carbon emissions.
What we won't do is take a sledgehammer to the economy, which is what Corbyn and McDonnell would do, and thereby make it impossible for us to attain our climate change targets.
So let's go, as I say, let's go carbon neutral by 2050, Corbyn neutral by Christmas.
Thank you all very much.
All right, that was a funny line, but he really is a global warming believer.
There are bigger issues in the UK than global warming.
Brexit, stopping mass immigration, cracking down on crime and terrorism, that sort of thing.
All in all, Johnson's win is important for those reasons and to rebuke the insanity of the UK Labour Party.
Remember that Labour over there used to be as centrist as Bill Clinton, who was pretty centrist.
He did the NAFTA deal, he did welfare reform.
Tony Blair, the former British Labour PM, was about where Mitt Romney is, I think.
I mean, wasn't that leftist?
Corbyn took that party and took it hard to the left, further left than even New York's Alexandria Orkegio-Cortez.
There were some recriminations about that last night.
Here's a centrist Labourite just shredding a hardcore left-wing Labourite who started a pressure group within Labour called Momentum.
That was a grievance group, a hardcore group within Labour that kept pushing for Corbyn to be more and more extreme.
Look at this argument they had last night.
I don't live in London.
I live in Yorkshire.
I live in a working-class community.
And I've known John for many years.
John's been around, you know, from the Bennight days.
And I'm afraid the working classes have always been a big disappointment for John and his cult.
Corbyn was a disaster on the doorstep.
Everyone knew that he couldn't lead the working class out of a paper bag.
Now John's developed this momentum group, this party within a party, aiming to keep the purity.
The culture of betrayal goes on.
You'll hear it now more and more over the next couple of days as this little cult get their act together.
I want them out of the party.
I want momentum gone.
Go back to your student politics and your little left-wing.
But that isn't realistically going to happen.
I'm just saying what I want.
Brexit Rebuke and Party Betrayal00:04:55
Yeah.
Say what I want after if that exit poll's wrong, the most disastrous result for the Labour Party, the worst result since 1935.
People like John and his pals will never admit this, but they have messed up completely.
And it's our communities that are going to pay for that.
I feel really angry about this, that we persevered with Corbyn for this kind of experiment of back to the future.
Wouldn't you say that the Democrats in the United States are doing exactly that, going so far, racing each other to the left?
Bernie Sanders, full-on socialist, the squad Ilhan Omar, and they're not even the craziest of them.
So what do we have in the UK?
Well, hopefully a Brexit, a rebuke to Jeremy Corbyn for sure, and more importantly, a rebuke to the media party who were against Brexit and against Johnson.
They'll still try and scuffer it, I'm sure.
Maybe we have a lesson for American Republicans.
They too shouldn't make the mistake that, sorry, American Democrats, pardon me, that they shouldn't make the mistake that Corbyn and Momentum did, going full out socialist, full out pro-Islamist.
They're going that far.
The squad is taking them that far.
And what about us here in Canada?
Well, let me ask you this.
What did Andrew Scheer stand for as conservative leader?
The dairy cartel, I know, that picture of him drinking milk is iconic.
Can you think of anything else that's iconic?
That's that's so, Andrew Scheer.
Who is he?
Is there any policy for or against that really defines him?
And don't even say gay rights or abortion or whatever, because, of course, he really didn't talk about those things.
He's weasly and wobbly on those issues, depending on who he's talking to.
That's the problem.
He convinces no one and offends everyone because he's a bit of a trickster on it.
He tried to play up his folksiness in the campaign, like in this ad showing him walking through a neighborhood in Regina being really folksy.
He played up that he has an old minivan.
Oh, shucks, I'm just like you.
Except it turns out that he was just, that was just focus group blather too.
On the day he resigned yesterday, and possibly the cause of his resignation, though he denies it.
It turns out he was taking money secretly from the Conservative Party to send his kids to a fancy private school.
Now, I get that.
Ontario public schools are some of the worst in Canada.
Private schools are expensive.
I don't know what school Andrew Scheer sent his kids to.
Maybe he sent them to a private Christian school.
So maybe that's an additional reason he did it.
Get out of the terrible public system.
And maybe if it's a Christian school, he's Christian.
Those are good reasons to send your kid to private school.
But why wasn't he paying for that himself?
Why was he taking money secretly from party donors?
The leader of the opposition makes more than a quarter million bucks a year.
That's also the kind of money he made as Speaker of the House for a decade.
And let me remind you, both of those jobs, Speaker of the House and Office of the Leader of the Opposition, they get free houses in both of those positions.
So why is he getting free money from the party for school, apparently without the knowledge of the governors of that Conservative Party fund?
And how could he criticize Justin Trudeau for the same sort of things while he was doing that on the lowdown?
Weirdly, I think he was fake.
He was an empty slate.
He was a nullity, a nil.
That's not enough.
You can't win with that.
I mean, you can be the opposite.
You can have flaws, even deep flaws, and still win if you believe in something and fight for something.
Boris Johnson, Donald Trump are proof of that.
I can tell you something about those two winners, Trump and Johnson.
I can tell you something about them that is so true and so authentic and so important and so believable and so flavorful.
Brexit, Make America Great.
Whatever else they did or said, whatever other errors they made, whatever gaffes are unfurled about them, you'll still believe in them if their ideas are right for you.
Boris Johnson promised to make Brexit happen.
That's all people needed to hear.
He never stopped talking about that, by the way.
So if you wanted Brexit, you knew what you had to do yesterday, and Brits wanted Brexit.
They wanted just to end the issue.
Corbyn was a never-ending story on that.
Trump is about America first.
Make America great again.
What does that mean in real life?
Jobs, less foreign military entanglements.
Everything else is secondary.
Both Johnson and Trump had gaffes.
You could say they're gaffe machines, but nobody cares.
Can you tell me truthfully what Andrew Scheer stood for or against?
I swear I can't.
I swear I can't.
And I'm not being dumb on purpose.
I can't tell you what he believes in or ever did other than milk.
Leadership Contests Lost00:15:39
And I think that's why he's gone.
And maybe we can learn from Boris Johnson and Donald Trump in Canada as Conservatives choose a new leader.
Maybe have someone who stands for something, preferably something conservative.
Stay with us for more.
I've informed my colleagues in the Conservative Caucus that I will be resigning as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
And I've asked the Conservative Party National Council, I will be asking the Conservative Party National Council, to immediately begin the process of organizing a leadership election.
Well, there you have it.
Andrew Scheer making an announcement that came as a surprise to many because, of course, he had assured the party that he intended to press on.
And in fact, there were some support sheer grassroots groups popping up to rebut the dump shear groups that had presented themselves.
It was a bit of a surprise.
And one possible explanation, though it was somewhat denied by the party, was that it had to do with party expenditures being made from the Conservative donations to help subsidize the cost of Andrew Scheer's kids' private school.
Now, the party says that there was nothing untoward there.
It was standard expenses that the party would pay for any leader.
But the timing of that story seemed coincidental.
I don't know if it's that important to understand exactly what the precipitating factor was because what's done is done.
And I think the party and the country ought to think about what comes next.
Well, one man who followed the last election closer than most and understands the workings of the party, especially in technical matters like its constitution and its leadership races, is our friend Manny Montenegrino, who used to be Stephen Harper's lawyer.
And he joins us now by Skype.
Manny, great to see you.
Great to see you, Ezra.
Well, I was surprised, no doubt about it, because it certainly looked to me like he was digging in there.
There were some people calling for his resignation, but he seemed quite firm.
And now he's gone.
What do you make of the whole thing?
I thought it was going to happen.
I wasn't quite surprised.
The calls I received and what I was seeing, I didn't think he had a chance to continue.
Andrew Scheer is a very decent man, a very good man, but he certainly did not grow into the role.
And I think Canadians and Conservatives want their leaders to grow into the role.
And he didn't do it.
So I think, you know, there was an opportunity for Andrew after the election, after understanding the reasons of his loss, is to sit there and say, okay, I'm going to grow.
I'm going to do something differently.
He kind of didn't.
And he doubled down on it.
And I think that was the straw that broke a lot of Conservatives backs and that precipitated this.
I'm very pleased.
I think he did the most honorable thing.
And this is a tribute to Andrew Scheer by doing it quicker than later.
He understood the process, understood the turmoil that would do it.
And to do it before Christmas, it just speaks to the decency of the man and how he puts party ahead of himself.
So that's a great tip off to Andrew Scheer.
Well, it's funny because I was paying attention to the British elections last night.
And this morning, Jeremy Corbyn said he is going to step down as the leader of the Labour Party.
He said, after some time for reflection, and I thought that was a little bit curious, but then I got an email today, and Manny, I just read this email moments ago before we sat down for the interview, and it got me thinking.
An email from a senior party source said that Andrew Scheer has not yet resigned.
He's sticking around and reflecting, as Jeremy Corbyn is, that Scheer's team is still running the show in Ottawa for the Conservative Party.
And here's the last part I heard.
And again, I haven't been able to corroborate this, but I just heard this from a senior source who's usually accurate.
The party's National Council, that's sort of like the board of directors of the party, met for two hours last night on this subject, but they have not yet determined the timeframe for the leadership.
So maybe it's nothing, but Andrew Scheer is still the leader.
His staff still runs things.
He still disciplines MPs, controls the party whip, the House leader, the agenda.
And the party, although they are engaged with this matter, have not set a date.
Maybe they need more time to do so.
But, you know, I don't know what that means.
Maybe things are still so sudden it takes some time to digest.
Sure, yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's it.
I think that's it, Ezra.
I don't think you have to read anything, you know, nefarious into it.
This certainly took a lot of people by surprise because we were expecting it, you know, sometime after Christmas, so it's a good move.
I think this is a great move for the Conservative Party.
And it speaks to, you know, the admiration I have about this party, how principled it is.
You know, Ezra, we have to look at the realities and a lot of Conservatives don't understand the realities of Canadian politics.
And certainly, you know, if you look at the last seven elections, the progressive vote has been somewhere between 60 to 70 percent.
And conservatives have about 30 to 38 percent.
So that is the case, and that is something that we have to understand.
And in this election, even though the conservatives got more votes per than any other party, it still lost.
And what we saw in this election, and I thought the Prime Minister Justin Truder did a good job.
He was hemorrhaging votes.
He lost a million votes.
But he started calling himself a progressive.
I mean, near the end, he didn't use the word liberal.
He said, we progressives have got to stick together.
We need a progressive candidate.
And when you say the word progressive, you draw.
And what happened?
He siphoned out.
Although he was losing a lot of votes, I'll call the middle liberals that just were appalled with what he's done.
He drew the hardcore progressives from the NDPs.
650,000 votes is what the NDP lost.
And he drew from that to give him his minority government.
So we have to understand that, that there really is no principled party on the other side, and yet we're the principled party always trying to fight it.
So that's the challenge that Conservatives have.
I'm really pleased with the results of what's happened recently.
I thought, I was a Bernier supporter in the election in 2007.
I was hopeful that Andrew Scheer would grow into the role.
He had two years before the election to grow into the role, and he seemed not to have grown into the role of leader of the opposition.
He did so slightly, but certainly didn't grow into the role after the loss.
Ezra, I had the pleasure of being with Prime Minister Harper after he lost in 2004, the day after.
And I met with him and I saw a person who learned so much.
I saw a person with great desire.
And, you know, Prime Minister Harper only had about four months from being a leader to his first election.
And he grew into that role.
He learned.
And he is just a brilliant.
And you saw that.
You saw how he was pragmatic and winning minority after minority with the battles that conservatives have against the media.
So he was a quick study, a bright man who understood a loss and was really devastated by the loss.
And he grew and he grew and grew and grew.
And he continues to go today as a great statesman.
We didn't see that acceleration of growth with Andrew Scheer, which is incredible if you want to capture all the 38% of conservatives out there to form government.
He sort of went into hiding after the election.
Well, let me ask you about the leadership race.
And I hear what you're saying.
I shouldn't read too much into the fact that he has not yet resigned, that the party has not yet set a date.
But let me ask you about the leadership contest.
My view, I don't remember the exact rules from the 2017 leadership campaign, but it struck me there were two problems with it.
First of all, because of the intricate system for points per constituency and then the ranked ballot and all these things, there was no winnowing.
There were no different moments of truth.
Like I'm watching with great interest the Democratic presidential primaries, and every few weeks someone else drops out because they're just not getting any purchase.
But there's debates all the time, there's polls all the time, and the weak are being culled from the herd.
If I recall 2017, everyone was in till the very end.
There was no moments of truth until then.
It was easy to game the system.
And so I think that neither of those things are good, the no-winnowing, like letting all 14 go to the final vote, and that the rules were so intricate you could really work the rules rather than work the same democratic rules that would apply in the election.
That's my view.
What do you think?
I think they got to change the rules this time for how they select the leader to make it more real life.
Yeah, no, I think you're right.
I think I'll start.
You know, we have to look at the UK.
I mean, the UK, the caucus picks the leader.
So we've seen that.
So we're more akin to the UK model than we are to the American model.
But Ezra, let's, you know, you know, it's not a mystery.
And, you know, people talk about Parliament and what's happening and what the Liberals do, and the media always shrouds it in a mystery.
It's not a mystery.
We have actual evidence of what's going to happen.
So take the evidence and work backwards.
Now, here's what I mean by that.
Stockwell Day became the leader of the Alliance Party September 2000.
The election was called November 27, 2000.
He had basically two, three months to get going.
They did it intentionally.
John Kretchan knew what he was doing.
We have a new leader.
Nobody knows.
They barely got their oars in the water and boom comes the election.
Stephen Harper, brand new party, February 6th, becomes leader.
I was there.
June, the election.
Another four months to get ready.
Do not think for a moment that the Liberals are not going to do this again.
They are going to structure a failure in this government, whether it be in, and I suspect that it will be during budget time.
They'll put something in it that will be a poison pill to a few people to force an election.
And when you have your opponent without a leader or trying to get a leader, even a black-faced Trudeau would win because you're winning in the absence.
So I wouldn't get, I would sit there and deal with reality.
The reality is we're in a minority government.
And reality is, in my opinion, the only hope that the Liberal government, I mean, we talked about this, Ezra.
Here he is on his first official, this is the prime minister on his official natal, and he makes a complete utter fool of himself again and enrages the president.
So we know that he's weak.
He hasn't learned.
He hasn't grown into the role.
The prime minister, his only hope is some shenanigans.
And I truly believe that we will see the fall of this government in the next six months because it will be orchestrated by the liberals.
And you've got to be prepared.
Conservatives can't be always looking for perfection.
And I keep saying this to conservatives.
Never make perfect the enemy of good.
And that's what we do.
We always look for perfection and we hurt good and we allow bad to win.
So I would go kind of backwards.
I'd say, oh, well, let's say an election is called in June or an election is called in July, which is probably the case, because why would the Liberal Party give the Conservative Party a platform to get going?
They haven't done it in the past.
It's been two months, four months.
So I'd structure, you know, if I were giving advice, I'd be sitting there saying, okay, and you've got to pick a leader that doesn't have the benefit of two years to get his sea legs.
We had Andrew Scheer who had two years and really didn't get a grasp of what it is to become prime minister.
So I would put all that into it.
That's very interesting.
Well, I mean, if the election is called so precipitously, the Conservative Party had better get cracking with their leadership contest date if it's not going to be Andrew Scheer again.
Well, listen, Manny, I've just been looking at names that have bubbled upwards as possible suggestions for successors to Andrew Scheer.
Some people have taken themselves out of contention already.
For example, Brad Wall, the very successful former Premier of Saskatchewan.
I know the guy a little bit.
I think he's a great communicator, looks good, sounds good, ran that province successfully, but he said categorically he's out.
I think that you've got to know workable French.
And I know that rankles a lot of Westerners, but my point of view is you've got to talk to a quarter of Canada.
You got to at least be able to talk to them if you want to be prime minister of the whole country.
I think that's just a fact.
Let me rattle off some names to you, Manny, and give me a one-liner on each of these people.
I'm not asking for your endorsement or unendorsement.
I just wouldn't mind your quick thoughts.
I'm going to put some names to you.
Some of these are my favorites.
Some of these are other names I've heard out there.
Let's start with Ronna Ambrose.
That's the name Brad Wall actually put forward.
Well, you've picked the person on top of my list.
Oh, really?
Yeah, no, I think she is a great communicator, a bright woman.
And remember the metrics that I've given you, Ezra.
You need someone that could possibly go into an election in 60 days with gravitas or 80 days or 90 days.
We don't have, and by the way, the media will not give a conservative leader gravitas, a new person gravitas.
So it's not going to be earned by the media.
We're not going to know.
Peter's Conservative Choice00:11:10
So it's going to be an unknown versus Justin Trudeau.
And so Rana meets that goal.
I mean, that is, given her own talents and so on, and she's already succeeded and she just perfected herself as an interim leader.
She would be, in my view, meets all the criterias, what I would call under this exceptional circumstances of a minority government, which is going to fall.
So yeah, I put Ronna very close to the top.
Oh, isn't that interesting?
Let's just want quick snappers.
One of my favorite guys, Pierre Polyev, or Polliver is sometimes called.
What do you think of him?
He's an Ottawa area MP.
He's a brilliant communicator.
He's very good.
But, you know, I think he would be excellent.
But again, I'm looking at the, you know, who could do the best given the shortest period of time.
If we're prepared to say, you know, that was the problem with election 2007.
We all believed that there's no way that Trudeau was going to not have at least 10 years, you know, two majority mandates and maybe a minority mandate.
So we were choosing someone that could grow into the role.
And that was how Scheer was chosen.
He thought in his mind he'd have six, seven, eight years to grow into the role.
That didn't happen.
We were all shocked when we, not you weren't shocked, Ezra.
I wasn't shocked.
We knew who the true Justin Trudeau was, but the Rustic Canadians found out that he's a complete imposter in a lot of two-faced positions that he has.
So unfortunately, I think Pierre will ultimately be a great leader at one time, but it's going to be tough for the media to give him the credit that he now ultimately deserves.
I think he should run in any event, even if it's just to get his feet wet for perhaps a future occasion.
Let me whip through a few names.
A name that's perennially mentioned is Peter McKay.
What do you think?
Well, I mean, I have great respect for Peter.
Peter worked, and I was part of that when he did an immense job of putting the party together.
Peter is a great person, did a lot, but I really don't think he's going to be the person.
There is still a lot of issues with respect to him speaking out too soon, seemed to be too anxious.
So these things are going to harm you.
You need someone pristine.
And it's, you know, again, I go to the point.
In 60, 70, 80 days, if there's an election, you need someone pretty pristine.
And why I go back to Rana is the prime minister put her on the NAFTA advisory board.
Pretty hard for the Liberal media to go after Ronna Ambrose when she was put on by the Prime Minister on a very important role.
So she's a very bright woman, figured that out, and she's touted as being the ambassador, the next ambassador to Canada under the Liberal Party.
So, you know, it's pretty hard for the media to go after Ronna Ambrose.
But I think unfortunately, Peter McKay doesn't have the time to fight off that media concern.
Right.
There's an MP that I've always liked from Manitoba named Candace Bergen.
I think she's ideologically sound.
I think she's a good communicator.
I'm a big fan of hers, but I wonder if she has the profile.
What are your thoughts on Candice Bergen?
She's brilliant.
I mean, good pick.
Brilliant woman.
You know, the Conservative Party have so many strong women.
You know, even Lisa Rait, she said she's out of it.
Candace is a strong, bright woman, but has not will earn earn earned that media.
You know, there's, you know, there's kind of a gauntlet conservatives have to go through.
Conservative leaders.
They have to run the gauntlet of the liberal media.
They get beaten and beaten and beaten.
And if you survive, then you can move on.
She hasn't been put through the gauntlet.
So unfortunately, there'll be something that they'll find.
And she's a bit of an unknown.
And again, we don't have the luxury.
If this was a majority government that we face, a liberal majority government, and this has happened and we have three years, then all these people that you've mentioned, I think, would be great candidates.
Give them two years to establish themselves and show their strength.
I think Candace would be perfect.
I don't think in this circumstance that she would fit that role.
Let me throw one last one at you.
And I suppose it's a direct reaction to what you just said.
There is an MP who, in his own way, is a household name and face because for years he was a TV announcer.
He's a good communicator.
I think people know him or feel like they know him.
I'm talking about former global TV anchor Peter Kent.
He's from the greater Toronto area, Thornhill, so it's not actually Toronto, but it's close-ish.
He had senior roles under Harper.
He was a cabinet minister.
Really didn't get into trouble.
Cautious guy, but I'd call him a conservative.
I mean, not as conservative as me, but no, not a lot are.
I like the cut of his jib.
What do you think of Peter Kent?
Peter's a great guy.
I think your assessment is right.
I don't think you need, you know, you need a special fighter.
I mean, it's hard to win a conservative.
I don't know why Canadians don't understand this, conservatives, Canadians, but it's very hard to win as a conservative.
And you need someone that has fight, and I used to say this, you have to find someone that hates losing so much more than winning, like winning.
Stephen Harper hated losing.
When I saw him in 2004, it reminded me of watching Wayne Gretzky when, you know, the story when he lost his first Stanley Cup.
He was in the dressing room for hours pounding away because he hated to lose more than he wanted to win.
And you've got to find that.
I mean, you see that in President Trump.
This is, you know, like people, you've got to hate to lose.
And Trump hates to lose.
And Trump also, you know, President Trump also learns.
He's a fast learner, much like Prime Minister Harper was.
And so you have to have a person that's capable of learning, understanding that you're fighting the media, understanding you got to, and you've got to hate to lose.
And I don't see that in Peter Kent.
Very interesting.
Well, I hope that some of these names put themselves forward, even if the likelihood of them winning is not overwhelming because, I mean, first of all, I would like to see a lot of the names we've just discussed make it into any future cabinet and let the party members choose.
Let the party members choose.
I think that there is a good bench there.
And what I've left our conversation with today, Manny, is the urgency that this process needs to get underway because it's not a majority government.
There aren't years and years.
I think it's measured in months.
We'll continue to talk about this in the time ahead of us.
But I guess the race is on already.
Manny, it's great to talk to you.
And I know you'll help guide us through the conversation as the leadership race goes.
Thanks for joining us again, my friend.
No problem.
Take care, Es.
All right, there you have it.
Manny Montenegrino, the CEO of Think Sharp.
Some very interesting comments by him.
I think he's exactly right.
The liberals will spring the trap on the conservatives when the leaders are unready.
They've done that before.
They've done that regularly.
It's unfair, but so is life.
And I think they'll do that to whoever the next leader the conservative is.
They'll spring the trap on him weeks after he or she is chosen.
All right, stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
So what do you think about Andrew Scheer's departure?
Actually, don't even answer that.
Like you, I probably don't even care.
And now that it's gone, why spend another second talking about it?
Let's talk about something far more exciting.
What do you think of the prospects to succeed Andrew Scheer?
I've been following this debate online on Twitter, and names that keep coming up are Pierre Polyev, I really like that name.
Aaron O'Toole is a name that comes up.
I see Peter McKay's name, but I don't see it being said in any serious way.
I see Ronna Ambrose's name being rooted and even Michelle Rempel.
I don't know.
I think the more, the merrier.
But look, I think there were 14 candidates of memory serves last time, which is fine.
That's great.
I mean, look, both the Democrats and the Republicans in this cycle and the last one had more than a dozen candidates, probably just about 20.
And that's good if there's a smart way to winnow it down.
The problem with the system last time is there was no early reckoning.
There was no early indication of how these candidates were doing.
So it was all solved right at once in this preferential ballot that you couldn't really negotiate.
It was just like really by computer all on one day.
And I think the result was the worst of all worlds.
It was the least unfavorite guy won.
Everyone's second place guy won.
That is not how you choose a top dog winner.
Frankly, Donald Trump would not have won under the everyone's second place guy.
I don't think Boris Johnson would have either.
So I think there needs to be a proper process that the Conservative Party has.
But other than that, bring it on.
Let's have a good rollicking debate.
And I can assure you the Rebel will be part of it.
And now that Andrew Scheer's gone, his really weird censorship of the Rebel, or not even censorship, he didn't censor us.
He just banned his team from talking to us.
There's so many friends I have in the Conservative Party, MPs, senators, who I would talk to privately and say, hey, come on the show, talk about that.
And they'd say, sorry, no, we're not allowed to.
Not allowed to.
Well, you know, right there is sort of an indication you might have a problem if the leader of your Conservative Party won't talk to reporters from the, really, the only conservative news outlet in the country.
But who cares about all that?
That's all in the past.
I'm looking forward to a rollicking leadership debate.
And you know the Rebel will be right in the thick of it.