Jim Karahalios, CPC leadership candidate, accuses the party establishment of silencing grassroots activists like himself—winning a February 2024 lawsuit proving vote-rigging under Patrick Brown—while favoring "Red Tories" Aaron O’Toole and Peter McKay, who he claims copied his policies. With $300K needed by March 25th, Karahalios warns the high donation threshold risks excluding outsiders, citing past flip-flops and endorsements like Garnett Genuis’s support for O’Toole. He argues Western ridings could swing the race against Trudeau’s corruption if the party embraces anti-establishment, pro-growth values, including opposition to the Paris Accord, and urges non-members to join for $15 to restore conservative influence. [Automatically generated summary]
Winning a Lawsuit Against the Ontario PC Party00:08:43
Hello my rebels.
Our goal is to interview all of the candidates running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada.
So far we've had two, Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan.
And today our third, his name is Jim Karahalios.
He's been active in the Ontario PC Party.
His wife is actually an Ontario PC MPP.
And I should tell you it's a very interesting conversation, if I may say so myself.
I encourage you to stick around, including for when he says what he would do with Maxime Bernier.
Very interesting.
Before I get out of the way, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus, which is the video version of this podcast.
You can get that at rebelnews.com.
here's the podcast.
Tonight, our latest interview with the candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada leadership.
We'll talk with Jim Karahalios.
It's March 5th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give one answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I published is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Well, the Conservative Party of Canada is choosing a new leader, and I say I'm glad for that.
But who will it be?
What will they stand for?
How will they fight Justin Trudeau?
And more importantly, fight against the media party.
It's a question that we think about a lot here at Rebel News.
And although we're not formally a Conservative Party outlet, we do support the party in general, despite our criticisms of it.
I think it's very important that we have a strong leader of this party.
And I think it's critical that Justin Trudeau be unseated in the next election.
One of the things we're doing in this leadership campaign is that we're inviting each of the leadership contestants to come here on the show, preferably in studio where it can be more intimate, and to talk to us.
The first interview, more of a biographical nature, but then as the campaign goes on, maybe sharper conversations about different issues.
This marks the third leadership interview that we've done, the first being with Dr. Lesland Lewis, the second conducted by my friend and colleague Kian Becksty with Derek Sloan.
Today, I'm pleased to present to you a conversation with Jim Karajelios, and he joins us in studio now.
Jim, nice to see you.
Thanks for coming.
Good to see you, Ezra.
Thank you for covering stories that the mainstream media, as they like to call themselves, don't cover.
So you're always there to cover the right stories.
Thank you.
Rehan, well, thanks for saying that.
And I know one of the stories that you've focused on as an activist is one of the things that we focused on early in the life of Rebel News, which is fighting the carbon tax.
That's, I think, how I came to know you in that capacity.
Why don't you refresh the memory of our viewers of who you are politically, because you've been an activist for many years.
Right.
I'm a lawyer with two engineering degrees.
I've been involved in conservative politics for 15 years since Stephen Harper became the leader, and I was inspired by his leadership.
But when Patrick Brown took over the Ontario PC Party, we had a couple things going on.
He imposed a carbon tax top-down, like Red Tory establishment politicians like to do, on the membership.
And then soon thereafter, we started seeing nominations with vote rigging taking place in Ontario.
So I started an Axe the Carbon Tax campaign.
I remember that one.
And that was before it was cool.
Yes.
I mean, you were on it, Ezra, but it wasn't just me, but yeah, it was not cool.
And the mainstream media said it was a fringe movement.
Yeah, isn't that amazing?
Tell me a little bit about that, because I know that we face pushback for daring to challenge that sacred cow.
I don't think I ever heard from you what it was like pushing against a nominally conservative party leader, Patrick Brown, on that issue.
What was that like?
Well, it was funny reading the media how they would say it's a fringe movement, everyone's moved on from the carbon tax question.
I knew in my heart that the conservative voters, not only conservative voters, the general public, was not sold on this carbon tax.
And what really comes after a carbon tax from the top from the Red Tories is then they've got to force, the establishment's got to force nominations to go a certain way and block candidates from running that they suspect might not be in favor of a carbon tax.
Because it really becomes a litmus issue, doesn't it?
Because it's not just opposing a tax.
It's, oh, you're a denier.
You're morally unacceptable.
Like, it's shocking to me the deplatforming.
We're dealing with this right now with Dr. Patrick Moore, who was deplatformed from a speaking conference over this in Regina.
It really is a crazy religious issue in its own way.
Like, it's a substitute religion.
It's a superstition, this theory of marriage.
And apparently, if you're in favor of a carbon tax, you can get away with anything.
You can get away with vote rigging.
You can get away with misusing taxpayer money.
You mentioned that a couple times.
That was one of your battles with Ontario's PC party.
Well, it didn't start that way.
It started with the Acts of the Carbon Tax Movement.
And then very shortly thereafter, candidates were being targeted in nominations.
Either they were being disqualified from running or they suffered losses because of ballot box stuffing.
And so the other campaign that started was Take Back Our PC Party, which David Menzies interviewed me a couple times during the PC leadership.
You know, they tried to shut down my campaign because they couldn't convince grassroots conservatives that they're on the right side of the issue.
Now, you're talking about the Ontario PC campaign.
Yes.
Well, that came to a head when Patrick Brown was defenestrated.
And, I mean, that was quite a dramatic turn of events.
Right, but what the mainstream media missed is four weeks earlier, I won a lawsuit against the Ontario PC party, and they kicked me out of the party and they walked me out of their policy conference, and they sued me to silence my campaigns and bankrupt me.
And I won the court case in six weeks when a judge ruled.
You know, the mainstream media likes to say the judge said there was no merit to the lawsuit.
No, that's not what the judge said.
The judge said that the lawsuit was a strategic attempt to silence my ability to participate in the political process.
That's short for shutting down freedom of expression, freedom of campaigning.
So you've had this love-hate relationship with the Ontario PCs.
Your wife is newly elected MPP for that same PC party.
That's very unusual to me.
Well, she's doing a great job, and she's a strong conservative.
What's the name of her role?
Belinda Carahalio, from the riding of Cambridge.
Cambridge, got it.
That's right.
So she's doing a great job.
She's fighting an injection site going into the riding of Cambridge.
We've seen injection sites pop up in Kitchener and Hamilton, all around.
And she's been a strong voice.
And she actually introduced her first private member's bill, Bill 150, which would make it illegal to rig elections in an internal party election.
Right now, there's a gap in the law there, and nothing is stopping that.
And the corruption runs rampant sometimes in internal party elections.
And how does the current Conservative Party leader in Ontario, Doug Ford, get along with your missus?
I mean, does he accept and allow this private members' bill?
Because it sounds like it's taking care of old business.
How is her private members' bill being?
Well, it's obviously going forward and fixing a problem.
You know, some of the government staffers, the kids in short pants, came out the day after she introduced her bill and said the government was going to vote against it.
And then they actually read the bill.
And two weeks later, she got unanimous support at Queen's Park.
Well, that's moving over to third reading now.
That's it.
So between second and third reading.
So she's doing a great job being a strong conservative voice in Cambridge.
I'm really, really proud of her.
Great.
Well, I mean, obviously, you're two independent people, but it shows that your family is a very political family.
You're very savvy.
And I find it fascinating, I got to tell you, that you're a dissident, but you're also still within the movement.
And your wife's private members' bill, which was first met with some rejection, is now, you mentioned unanimous consent.
I find that very interesting, but I want to pull the camera back and what I mean by widen the focus, because we're talking about things that you and I have discussed in the past.
That's right.
Patrick Brown, carbon tax, things like that.
Okay, that's interesting.
Widening the Focus00:04:58
But you're running now to be the leader of the Conservative Party for the whole of the country.
And Prime Minister.
There you go.
Yeah.
So let's talk about things that the rest of the country wants to talk about too.
I'm not saying carbon tax is unimportant.
It's extremely important.
And corruption, obviously, we're against that.
What is your sales pitch?
What is your talking point or your main value proposition to voters?
Why would they choose you?
The establishment of the Conservative Party has drifted and they're wildly off base with the membership and the Conservative voters.
And I'm running, first of all, to stop the Red Tory coronation that we see going on.
Who do you think is going to win?
Oh, Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay are the Red Tories in this race.
Okay, well, which one of them do you think is going to win?
That's a good question.
If I'm on the ballot, I don't think either one of them are going to win.
Now, why do you think, I mean, I agree with you about Peter McKay.
I don't think he would argue that either.
I think he's a Red Tory, I think.
We've invited him on the show.
We'll make sure that invitation is clear.
I don't think he'll come.
Aaron O'Toole, I've been following him on social media at least, and he's trying to sound a little bit tough to say.
Yeah, the day after I said I was collecting signatures and I announced I was running, Aaron O'Toole has tried to portray a true blue conservative.
And it's laughable.
Everyone knows his track record.
He's a Red Tory.
He should be authentic about who he really is.
You know, they didn't talk about Aaron is getting edgy with my candidacy in this race.
And him and Peter didn't talk about a carbon tax for four weeks while they were running, and longer.
As soon as I announced the day after, they went to the Globe and Mail, the pro-carbon tax globe and mail, and said, of course we're against the carbon tax all of a sudden.
I announced another policy that we were going to put in the criminal code, the shutdown of critical infrastructure to make these blockades criminal.
Aaron O'Toole copied the policy five hours later and ran with it.
I'm not ashamed of it.
We're obviously moving the narrative in the right direction.
But if you look at Aaron O'Toole's track record, you look at his team made up of people who attacked Andrew Scheer over his faith, and you look at his campaign chair, Wally Solomon, who ran the Ontario PC Party under Patrick Brown.
He was very, very close to Patrick O'Connell.
Oh, he was his campaign chair, just not very close.
He was running the show.
These are Red Tories.
And so it matters what happened in Ontario provincially to the rest of your viewers.
So are you saying that Aaron O'Toole is really a placeholder for a Red Tory cadre, really the Patrick Brown campaign?
The Red Tory establishment in Ontario ran the Ontario PC Party a certain way.
Then they went after Andrew Scheer.
Members of Aaron O'Toole's team tore him down after that election.
And now we're seeing a top-down race with a $300,000 buy-in to make it very, very hard for a grassroots blue conservative to get in.
Now, you can't put that around Aaron O'Toole's name.
That's the party itself.
I think $300,000 is absurd.
Obviously designed to keep out grassroots candidates.
Now, there's different milestones you have to make.
Tell me, so far you have met the first milestone.
Yeah, we got the 1,000 signatures in two and a half weeks.
We got approved a week after that.
There's an entire process where they review your signatures, your application.
You do an interview with a small committee that no one knows how this committee was created or who's on it.
I got approved.
There were other campaigns trying to get me disqualified.
Even Leslie Lewis's campaign manager told me at the Ontario PC convention a couple weeks ago that he wanted me disqualified from the race.
Aaron O'Toole's campaign, you know, Edgy Aaron, as I like to call him, he's been a little uptight with me in the race because I'm calling him out on his record and being in favor of the Paris Accord.
I want to get Canada out of the Paris Accord.
They were putting some pressure in the back to get me out of the race.
But now we're past the first hurdle and we're getting into the second.
So you've got to raise how much money now?
$300,000 by March 25th.
That's an incredibly short.
Yeah, it's a top-down Red Tory coronation race.
So you've got, like, you've got to raise 15 grand a day seven days a week.
How are you doing with that?
Fundraising is going well, but it's not, you know, I'm not going to sit here and tell you this is an easy thing to do.
This has never been done in Canadian politics in such a short time frame.
You remember the last leadership, Ezra?
They had 18 months to raise money.
And most of the candidates didn't raise more than $300,000 or $400,000, including Lisa Raitt.
She raised $400,000 in 18 months.
Now she's the co-chair of a committee asking candidates to raise $300,000 in two months.
And are there limits for the maximum donations?
$1,625.
The donations go through the party.
So if you donate $400, you get $300 back.
And a donation to one of the other candidates, Leslie Lewis, Derek Sloan, is a vote for Aaron O'Toole.
A donation to Jim Carhalios is a vote for Jim Carhalios.
Because if I'm on that final ballot as the blue Tory fighting corruption, fighting the Paris Accord, fighting carbon taxes, and fighting the establishment, it's going to be a game changer in a different race.
You know, just before we sat down here and turned the cameras on, we were talking about another candidate who was disqualified by some internal committee.
It's this fella, and I can't say I know him.
Donations and Choices00:07:37
DeCary, do you know him?
I shook his hand at the Ontario PC convention.
I don't know anything more about him beyond that.
Here, here's a quick look at who he is.
This is a TV appearance he made, I don't know, a couple months ago.
Take a look at this.
LGBTQ people are real people, too.
I'm just trying to figure out your terms.
Are they not real people?
I think LGBTQ is a liberal term.
I don't talk about people that way.
I talk about persons, and I think we all need the full respect for being a human being.
Okay, so you don't think that being gay, you don't think, what do you think that's a choice, or do you think it's biological?
I think it's a choice, and how people are behaving.
It's one thing.
I think government has a responsibility to encourage the traditional value that we have had for the past years.
So that's the kind of SOCON issues that I would bring as a leader.
All right, so that's Richard DeCary.
People can agree with him, people can disagree with him, people can agree with him, but disagree with how he said it, or whatever.
People can despise him.
What I don't understand is why he is not allowed to be put to the test of party members.
And that gives credence to what you're saying about this being an internal cabal.
I mean, let everyone run.
Let an extreme red Tory run.
Let everyone run and let the party choose.
I don't like the fact that they're running it like a closed club.
Right.
So we have a problem with the conservative and liberal establishment in this country that they treat political parties like a private party.
Well, I got to say, you know, the way you just phrased that, you remind me of Maxime Bernier.
Well, Max is a good guy.
We can get into Max in a little bit.
What are your thoughts on Maxime Bernier?
Well, I asked him.
Let's get into Richard and we'll get to Max because I have some important things to say about Max as well.
So my problem with the narrative that's taken place since the October election is Andrew Scheer and Richard DeCari, I believe they got targeted with certain questions from the mainstream media because they're Catholics and because they're Christians.
And there's, and let me just tell you, no surprise, you will be asked those same questions.
It's such a lazy playbook, but our side ought to be able to answer those questions and prepare for them because they're not a secret.
So a thousand people signed Richard Dakari's nomination forms, and a small group of a handful of people disqualified him with pressure from the O'Toole and Lewis campaign to get Richard out of the race.
And Derek Sloan has now jumped all over it within minutes.
He jumped all over it to get the political capital out of Richard getting out of the race.
I want everyone to be in the race.
I want options for the membership because the ultimate determinator or decision maker should be the voter when it comes to races, whether they're nominations or leaderships.
We should be having open and public nominations.
And my biggest concern with what's going on here is Richard Dakari, Andrew Scheer.
You know, I saw people from Aaron O'Toole's team target Andrew Scheer for his Catholic faith, the way he was raised, the way he raised his family.
I didn't grow up in a home like Andrew Scheer did, overtly Christian.
But, you know, there's a double standard where you've got a guy like Wal Eed Solomon, who's the campaign chair of Aaron O'Toole, who in 2007 in the Globe and Mail advocated for Sharia law in banking in Canada and Ontario, two years after Dalton McGuint, he said, were against Sharia law in Ontario, Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty.
No one asks the question if that's acceptable of Aaron O'Toole or Walid Solomon, but if you're a Catholic or a Christian, it's a consistent targeting of questions where Evan Solomon will spend 11 minutes in an interview talking about the biology of sex and not talking about the issues that matter to Canadians.
Yeah, it's a little bit crazy, but my point that I said earlier is that this is not a surprise and knowing how to handle the media.
I think handling the media is actually the number one job requirement.
And I think it's actually Trump's, everyone is so outraged with how Trump talks and insults and pushes back, but I think that's the only reason he survived the utter onslaught of 95% of the media party in 2016.
And that bully nature is the only Mitt Romney didn't have it, he lost.
John McCain didn't have it, he lost.
I think you need, maybe not to be Trumpian, like a minimie of Trump, but if you're not willing to fight the media, you are dead.
I 100% agree.
And you'll see Andrew Scheer's polling numbers, conservative parties, have gone up when Andrew Scheer is now criticizing the blockades.
You know, I came out and I said we need to make that criminal.
We also have private members' bills coming forward.
And it's fascinating to me that his polling numbers are going up now.
And everyone's asking, where was this Andrew Scheer during the election campaign?
Why did he listen to the lobbyists in the back that were telling him how to behave?
Why wasn't he acting like himself?
All right.
Well, you said you were going to talk to me about Maxime Bernier.
What are your thoughts on him?
Well, I firmly believe that we need a united Conservative Party in this country.
And Maxime Bernier said that he had problems with the Conservative Party and how it ran, not only based on policy, but he believes there's corruption in the Conservative Party.
I've seen that corruption from Ontario backroom hacks provincially.
A lot of them are on Peter McKay and Aaron O'Toole's team.
And we need to clean up the Conservative Party.
We need to send the establishment a message.
And I'd love to see Max Bernier run as a Conservative in the future because if we were a United Party in the last election, we would have had more votes.
We would have had more seats.
You ask the Red Tory establishment, they'll tell you they want a Big Tent party.
Well, I saw an analysis where if the PPC votes were with the Conservative Party, and if Max Bernier and other good candidates he had around, like Salim Mansoor, ran for us, we would have had eight, nine, ten more seats, maybe even more.
Did you run for the state of the United States?
In my estimate?
No, I did not run for us.
Okay, because you said run for us.
What I meant was I saw PPC candidates that should be allowed to run in internal party nominations for us, the Conservative Speaker.
I think it was outrageous that Celine Mensour was blocked by the Conservative Party.
Well, that's very interesting that you would invite Maxime Bruni back in.
I don't think the other candidates would say that, at least not O'Toole or McKay, but I don't know without checking.
We've gone down this road before of a split party.
Yeah.
And, you know, when I interviewed with you in the Ontario PC Party a couple years ago, there were people locally or provincially that said we should start a new party.
And you and I agreed that you need one strong Conservative party and a grassroots party to take on the Liberals.
And now we're seeing this split, and we're seeing a third movement start out west with the Wexit movement.
And that's not good for conservatism long term.
It's exactly fracturing under the same lines.
The right was fractured.
And the Red Tory establishment think they know better.
They think it doesn't matter if Max is getting a quarter million votes, if the Wexit movement is gaining speed, we can just tell the membership and the voters what they should believe in and we just move on forward.
Eventually we're going to win.
We're not.
We're going to be in hiatus for a very long time if we keep fracturing the conservative movement.
Well, you've spoken, you used the word coronation.
You didn't specify really Aaron O'Toole or Peter McKay.
You said both.
They have teams, you've described them, including, you mentioned Waleed Solomon.
Fracturing Conservatism00:14:57
I'm slightly familiar with him.
He's a big shot at a big Toronto law firm.
Oh yeah, a big B Street firm with Brian Mulroney.
Oh yeah.
Very large, one of the world's largest law firms.
Peter McKay is a lawyer at one of the world's largest law firms.
And the reason I mention that is because law firms have partners and associates who can each cut those $1,600 checks.
You work at a big law firm and a big shop partner there says, I'm chairing this campaign, you could have 50 or 100 checks walk in of $1,600.
You're right.
And you take care of it that way.
And everyone wants to be a judge.
So all these lawyers, oh, I'll maybe do some door knocking and volunteer.
So McKay has some of that, and he's got the family, you know, maybe he inherited some helpers and some support from his dad.
Aaron O'Toole, Wally's Solomon at the Big Law Firm.
Aaron O'Toole's dad was a politician as well, very well connected.
So I guess you said it was going to be a coronation, if not for me.
How are you?
I mean, we've talked a little bit about your David and Goliath fights before, and you're not nothing.
You've been around, you did have campaigns, your missus is an MPP, but it does seem like a lopsided fight.
There's two big hurdles for me.
And the first hurdle is the $300,000 in donations.
Because I announced two weeks later, we had signatures from all 10 provinces and over 180 ridings.
I'm quickly at 3,000 signatures.
I was the last person to jump in the race.
So the grassroots support right across the country is there.
And now I have to raise the $300,000 by March 25th.
So you're right.
When the Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay campaigns had one hand, in one hand was the knife that they were plunging in Andrew Shears' back.
In the other hand, they were collecting checks from Bay Street to get in the race.
That's an advantage for well-connected insider candidates, those that are born into politics, and those that have corporate interests, and people running their campaigns that are in the business of politics.
All right, so are you running to make a point or are you running to win?
No, I firmly believe that I have the grassroots support across this country.
In two weeks, I got over 1,000 signatures.
We're almost at 3,000 signatures.
The big hurdle is March 25th.
If I get in this race and I'm the blue Tory who wants to get out of the Paris Accord, who wants to clean up the party, who wants to fight the establishment, I see the sky's the limit with our candidate.
But I have to get past March 25th.
I got to tell you, 1,000, 3,000 signatures, what you're saying, in a big country in a few weeks, I'm not impressed.
Oh, okay.
I mean, like, I'm just winning it as a contract.
I mean, I'm impressed enough, but I'm like, how are you going to beat O'Toole and McKay, and how are you going to beat Trudeau?
Like, if you added a zero to those numbers, I'd say, well, okay.
But, like, how are you going to raise 300 grand?
How are you going to beat those guys?
So the signatures, I'm contrasting to Peter and Aaron, who have taken longer to get the signatures.
That's what I'm saying about the signatures.
You're right.
When I provide a refreshing grassroots anti-establishment, get out of the Paris Accord.
We're going to axe the carbon tax message to conservative members.
My campaign is quickly gaining traction.
And if the mainstream media finally starts to cover me, which they haven't wanted to cover for four weeks, my number one goal is getting past March 25th, getting on the ballot, and letting people know who I am, who our family is, and what we're fighting for.
And I believe that the vast majority of Conservatives agree with the message because everyone I talk to and everyone who gets to know what we stand for gets on side.
Now, you mentioned Leslie Lewis's campaign manager.
I know who you mean.
I know Wally Solomon and I know some of the people in Peter McKay's campaign.
Who is with Jim Karajelios other than Jim?
A grassroots conservative.
So I don't have a campaign manager.
Of course I have a campaign manager.
We have a campaign office in Cambridge.
It's being run.
I don't like to talk about the people running my campaign management.
I'm not looking to name check them.
I want to know, like, it's one thing to be an activist.
Yeah.
I am one.
Yeah, it's one thing to be a pundit.
I am one.
And I don't deny that you have some political infrastructure.
Your missus successfully became an MPP.
Right, right.
But all these things that we're talking about, the advantages of the Red Tory candidates, they come with their disadvantages, but they have an advantage.
He's got boots on the ground.
So are you traveling the country?
Mainstream media is not covering you.
Get used to it.
You know, that's welcome to being a conservative candidate.
Absolutely.
So what are you doing?
Have you been to Alberta yet?
Have you been to BC yet?
We've been in the race for four weeks.
We've gotten the campaign up and running.
We're obviously going to tour the country.
We've got to get the signatures in place and the infrastructure in place to hit that tour.
But you can't put the cart before the horse.
I have regional organizers right across the country.
The chair of Manitoba for me actually was Andrew Scheer's chair.
I've got people in Saskatchewan that are chairing.
Alberta, BC, obviously very strong in Ontario.
We've got a campaign office set up in Cambridge.
And you can't run in a campaign if you don't have, even in the application they asked for, campaign managers, point of contact, CFOs.
And there's other advisors that I keep in confidence because when you're running an anti-establishment campaign, Ezra, and you see that the establishment likes to come down hard on the grassroots, there are people that give me advice that I keep in confidence because I am curious who they are, but more, I was curious, do they even exist?
Because I enjoy the lack of responsibility of just talking into cameras.
I mean, we do organize.
What am I saying?
We have 1,600 people signed up for an event on May 19th in Regina.
So that's boots on the ground.
But at the end of the day, my job is to provide political commentary to Canada.
I've got riding a president of the United States.
That's different than can you.
I've got riding presidents across the country that are signed up to the United States.
And what about in Quebec?
One of the most interesting things you told me today is that you're open to Maxine Bernier and you want to rejoin what has split.
That's very interesting to me.
What are your Quebec plans?
Because I think like me, your francais is very, very limited.
Well, I speak the universal language of fighting corruption and I'd love to see Max Bernier be my Quebec lieutenant when I'm leader.
Have you had any communication with him whatsoever?
With Max?
Or his people?
Not during this race, no.
I think that'd be inappropriate during a race.
Well, it would be a hell of a thing to bring to the table and say I'm bringing Max back to the case.
Yeah, I'm going to leave it open to him.
As leader, I'm going to clean up the party.
I'm going to fix the policy process that he has a concern with.
We're going to have open nominations, and I'm going to lay it all out for Max, and it's going to be up to him.
I haven't closely studied the rules for this leadership race, but Andrew Scheer's campaign manager, Hamish Marshall, did, and he gamed the system, and credit to him.
And one of the ways that Andrew Scheer won the last leadership race is he did the math, and he realized one member in Quebec is worth about 10 members in Alberta because of the point system.
Now, I don't know the minutiae of the system now, but that's why Andrew Scheer went full dairy cartel, is because a handful of votes in Quebec outweighed votes elsewhere.
My point is, do you have any game in Quebec?
Because if you're conceding a province with a quarter of the population to O'Toole and McKay.
Why do you think I'm conceding it to O'Toole and McKay?
I don't think you are.
I'm asking if you are.
I'm asking, do you have anything in Quebec?
I do have people in Quebec that are supporting, and I've got signatures from Quebec, and I'm not conceding anything.
And the dynamic of every race is different.
And I think the starting point is it's not gaming the system.
There is no gaming as a system.
So you need to know the rules.
Of course, you need to know the rules.
And I know the rules in terms of how the votes are and the points are tabulated.
Am I right to say that a vote in Quebec in a small membership riding?
It just depends on how many members are.
Let's say there's 200 members in a rural Quebec riding and 2,000 members in the Calgary riding.
The threshold's 100.
So if you've got 50 members in a riding in Toronto or a riding in Quebec, every member gets one point.
If there are 1,000 members in a riding like Cambridge or out West, it's a percentage.
But the race is different because when Andrew Scheer ran, the prominent leading candidates in the race were not really from Ontario.
Like Aaron O'Toole finished a distant third in that race.
Now we're seeing a race where Peter McKay and Aaron O'Toole are from Ontario.
I'm from west of Young Street.
We don't have a Western candidate aside from Rick Peterson, but he's establishment Red Tory in the race.
And the Western vote's going to be very, very significant.
And I don't think Aaron O'Toole or Peter McKay's pro-Paris Accord message is going to be appealing to conservatives in Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, B.C. Is that the big issue?
Rule of law is a big issue.
The Paris Accord is a huge issue.
What do you mean by rule of law?
Rule of law, seeing as the way we're governing our party and the way we're governing our country and the way Justin Trudeau has been governing Canada in a corrupt manner.
And everyone's tired of these backroom negotiations between lobbyists that are setting government policy, whether it's Jody Wilson-Raybolt on the left getting kicked out or someone on the right that's denied the opportunity to run a nomination or leadership.
People are tired of it and they're tired of the establishment.
And that's what I'm hearing on the ground.
We're tired of the establishment that are not giving a choice to us, that are not defending the taxpayer, that do not see a pro-growth economic agenda for our country, and are not willing to stand up for conservative values.
And we're constantly being persecuted because we have Christians in our party.
But if you believe in Sharia law or Sharia banking, no one from the mainstream media is attacking those type of positions and saying they're inconsistent with Canadian values.
So there's a whole host of issues.
And I'm releasing platform commitments every week.
You got a couple out of me today that I didn't really want to jump out of the gate on on the Max Bernier question, but good for you.
There's a lot of important questions on how we unite conservatives across the country to defeat Justin Trudeau.
So what are the dates again?
You're cut off, you said March 25th.
March 25th.
That's for the dough.
That's right.
And then what are the other milestones that are going to be?
That's it.
And then we go right on the ballot.
So if I'm on the ballot, it's going to be a different race with me, Peter McKay and Aaron O'Toole.
And how is the voting conducted?
Is it by mail?
Is it online?
Is it in person?
How does it vote?
You know, they haven't disclosed that yet, but typically in the Conservative Party races, we vote by mail.
I certainly hope they don't go to an online version like the Ontario PC Party did, which was a disaster.
Yeah, or look at that.
People couldn't get pinned.
Yeah, just awful.
So, yeah, I think it will be by mail, I assume, but I don't know.
I don't know those details yet.
I think people are not concentrating on the race because they don't know who's going to be on the final ballot.
And this $300,000 threshold is a shame.
It really is a shame, because we've got eight candidates in the race.
We should have had nine.
And it could end up that only Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay raised the $300,000.
Can you imagine the outrage from grassroots conservatives that see eight candidates right now and then on the ballot there's only two?
I don't think it would be outrageous.
I think it would be disconnecting and saying I'm devastating for the party.
And, you know, we see politicians like Patrick Brown that run on one platform when they're running for leader and then they flip after they become leader.
Aaron O'Toole's copying the same playbook.
This concerns me because if someone like Peter McKay wins a leadership as a Red Tory, and we know who he is, conservatives will say I should have got more involved.
I should have tried harder.
If they are blocked out of the political process because of some egregious rules, if they have a leader like Aaron O'Toole pretending to be blue and then he's going to govern as a red, people throw up their hands and say, I'm done with politics.
That concerns me tremendously for the conservative movement because we need more people involved.
That's the only way to beat Justin Trudeau is a movement that turns, that funnels into a party and that beats Justin Trudeau.
Well, it's very interesting and I am frustrated by the entire process.
I am worried that what I see so far, no disrespect, suggests that we're going to have Justin Trudeau as our prime minister for another two to six years.
And that's too long by me.
Well, don't lose hope.
That's why I'm in this race, Ezra.
If people want me in this race, they can donate.
What's your website?
JimCarahalios.ca.
I know it's a- I'll put that on the screen so people can't get it.
That'd be great.
You can always Google it.
Or even if you Google Jim Acts, the carbon tax, it'll come up as a top search item.
If I get in the ballot, I believe the sky's the limit and I'm going to win with a pro-Western message with getting out of the Paris Accord, with fighting the establishment, and we're going to win.
But the hurdle is the $300,000.
And when I see Aaron O'Toole working with candidates like Leslie Lewis, a donation to the Lewis campaign or the Derek Sloan campaign is a vote for Aaron O'Toole.
A donation for Jim Carahalios is a vote for Jim Carahalios.
You're talking about Aaron O'Toole, and I think that maybe it's because Waleed Solomon is the overlap between Patrick Brown and him.
I assumed that Peter McKay was in the poll position.
Am I wrong?
Well, that's what the media will tell you.
They're releasing.
No, I know.
I don't know what I know.
No, they'll release these junk polls in the mainstream media where they take a poll of every Canadian.
You know, we've seen this when Christine Elliott was running against Doug Ford.
They do these polls and they ask everybody, who do you think?
And the person that has name rack, because they've been a cabinet minister because they're the son of a...
How about sitting MPs or senators?
Yeah, they're not registering in these polls either.
But the voting, the decision makers and the leadership, are the card-carrying members of a party.
And so I don't believe- Do you have any support?
What I mean is, do you have any support in the caucus?
Are there any MPs or senators who are supportive of that?
Caucus predominantly is endorsing Peter McKay at this point, but not the majority.
The vast majority of caucus hasn't endorsed anyone.
I think Aaron's got one caucus endorsement in Garnett Genuis.
I have no idea why Garnett would endorse a Red Tory.
Peter McKay has more.
Most of caucus I'm hearing from riding presidents are waiting to see who's on the ballot past March 25th.
So I think you're asking some questions that are early because when the final ballot on March 26th is set, we'll see.
And you know what's interesting?
Venn Diagram Debate00:02:40
A lot of times people should pay attention to the people, the members of caucus that don't endorse anyone.
Because when you're running an anti-establishment campaign like me, getting a caucus endorsement is very difficult.
But I can tell you from riding presidents I hear that tell me their caucus members not endorsing Peter and Aaron, I take that as a nod to, I hope Jim gets on the ballot on March 25th and we have a good solid conservative running.
Well, we'll have to leave it there.
What we're doing for all the leadership candidates who come on the show, and we did this for Leslie Lewis and Derek Sloan, is that we're taking this interview that we normally just put on the paywall for our premium subscribers, we're going to put it on YouTube, and we're going to email it out to all our supporters across country.
There's obviously not a total overlap between our viewers and the Conservative Party.
But in the Venn diagram, I'd say there's quite a bit of overlap.
And in the email, we'll also have a link to your website because I view this as a sort of service for us to talk to as many of the leadership candidates who as will come on and to make it really easy for people to click.
We have extended invitations to McKay and Aaron O'Toole, and I will make sure that we refresh that invitation today to let them know that they should come on and answer my best questions.
And as a reward, if that's the right phrase, we would send that video to every one of our people and say, if you like this guy, click here.
I don't know if they will accept because I wonder if my questions would be too prickly to them.
But surely if they can't face my questions, how could they face tougher questions in the campaign?
So I hope Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay come on.
I think it would be taken very well by our viewers.
And like I say, if you can't take on Rebel News, how are you going to beat Justin Trudeau?
If you want to see a more Conservative Party, you should join the Conservative Party.
So if your viewers on the Venn diagram are not Conservative Party members, they should take out a membership for $15 to vote in this race.
If they can afford a donation, they should do that because the opposition party in this country is the Conservative Party of Canada, and we have a chance in this leadership to make it a true Conservative Party that stands up for Conservative principles.
So thank you for all your work, Ezra, and for this interview.
Well, it's nice to see you.
You too.
There you have it.
Jim Karajelios.
And we'll send this video out to all our people.
What do you think?
Send me an email with your thoughts to Ezra at rebelnews.com.