Erin O’Toole’s first press conference as Conservative leader on August 25th ignored critical issues like China’s detention of the Michaels or U.S. trade, focusing instead on economic struggles—half of Canadian families teetering on eviction pre-pandemic—and CBC funding privatization, which the broadcaster allegedly censored. Candace Malcolm, Independent Press Gallery president, linked Peter McKay’s defeat to his avoidance of conservative media, praising Scheer’s endorsement of outlets like True North and Postmillennial while criticizing mainstream journalists’ hostility toward independent voices. She defended aggressive journalism, like Kian Bexty’s, as essential for accountability, warning that politicians dodging scrutiny may lack leadership grit. The episode underscores how mainstream media’s bailouts and bias clash with conservative authenticity, leaving alternatives like True North to fill the gap. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I go over Aaron O'Toole's first day on the job, in particular his first press conference and more to the point, what the journalists chose to focus on with a great obsession.
I'll show you the tapes.
Hey, before I do, let me invite you to become a subscriber.
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It's these podcasts, but with the video part.
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Okay, here's today's show.
Tonight, Aaron O'Toole's first day on the job, and the CBC goes in for the kill.
It's August 25th and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
Aaron O'Toole's Pro-Choice Pledge00:13:33
There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government goes on is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I'm not sure if you were one of the 100,000 plus people who watched our Sunday night special live stream co-hosted with Sheila Gunread and we had guest appearances by Kiam Bexti.
We were up all night and into the wee hours as the Conservative Party chose its new leader.
It went to three ballots, as you know, Aaron O'Toole won.
A surprisingly strong showing by Leslie Lewis, or maybe not that surprising.
Certainly it was a surprise to the left on the CBC.
But of course I repeat myself.
Well, because it was such a late night, Aaron O'Toole didn't have the same prime time moment to introduce himself to Canadians.
So he tried again today with a press conference on Parliament Hill where he pretty much gave his speech again, this time during daylight hours to the rather refreshed media as opposed to those who were yawning.
I was yawning, I admit, on Sunday night.
Here's a quick clip from his press conference today.
Here's all you need to know about me.
I'm here to fight for you and your family.
And Canada needs a fighter.
You are going to hear the Liberals spin about me.
Here is what you need to know about me.
I am here to fight for you and your family.
And Canada needs a fighter.
Because everything is not okay.
From coast to coast to coast, Canadians are losing their jobs, their homes, and their hope.
Even before the pandemic, half of Canadian families were just one surprise, $200 expense away from not being able to pay their rent or their bills.
Now millions of Canadians are barely getting by.
I know how many of you are more concerned about the future than ever before.
My family and I feel the same way.
Parents are up late at night worrying about what might happen during a second wave of COVID-19 or when emergency programs end.
My wife Rebecca and I understand the challenges, fears, and hopes of the middle class because we live them and we have our whole lives.
We know what it is like to save for your first home, what it is like to save for things like childcare, tuition, and family vacations.
It was a fair enough introduction.
He gave it partly in English, partly in French, and that's fine.
But then he opened it up to questions.
And it was the same old, same old media party.
First of all, the overwhelming number of questions were en français in French by the Quebec-centric Ottawa Media Party.
Now, I've got nothing against answering questions from Quebec or in French.
Quebec is a quarter of our population, and there are some Quebec-centric issues.
But the majority of questions, the dominant majority of questions, were from Quebec journalists, and they were particular obsessions.
Right away, you saw some of the problem with the media party and conservatives participating in it.
Just take a quick look.
Question.
This morning, once again, you said that you are a pro-choice MP, but in 2016, you voted for Bill C 225 that wanted to give legal rights to the fetus.
How can you reconcile that vote with the fact that you say that you are pro-choice?
Answer.
That is incorrect.
It was a bill on public safety, in fact.
And I voted in favor to have debate in committee on that bill because it was on public safety for women.
And that is my approach.
It's possible to listen to people and to be a pro-choice MP.
That is going to be my approach.
Dominated not just by Quebec journalists, but by Quebec journalists from the political activists at the French wing of the CBC called Radio Canada.
And let me bring your attention to this series of questions, again in French by a Quebec activist asking Aaron O'Toole about his views on social issues.
Now, I should tell you that Aaron O'Toole is as left-wing as Jagmeet Singh when it comes to social issues.
That's not my opinion.
That's just who he is.
He's all the way out there on gay rights, gay marriage, gay pride, and further than most Conservatives on LGBTQ.
He's got no problem with the bills that criminalize misgendering people, the kind of things that Jordan Peterson all warned us about.
In fact, he is rather proud of how pro-LGBTQ he is.
Now, you know, take it or leave it.
That's who he is.
But my point is, even that wouldn't save Aaron O'Toole from the media party.
He is as pro-LGBTQ2 plus as Jagmeet Singh.
Take a look at this.
Thank you.
Merci.
Notre prochaine question est de Michel Lamarche de TVA.
A vous la parole?
Please go ahead.
Bonjour, Monsieur O'Toole.
Good morning, Monsieur O'Toole.
... sur l'environnement, votre discours...
Your speech on the environment, pipelines, guns, and private members' bills on abortion.
That's the same thing as what Adris Schere says.
Are you ready to change to sway the Quebec electorate?
Answer I received the support of thousands of Quebecers, and I am proud of my team in Quebec.
I won the leadership rates as a pro-choice member as someone who has a very clear record on social issues.
And that will be my approach as Leader of the Opposition and as Prime Minister.
I will be absolutely clear.
I will defend people's rights, all Canadians' rights.
All right.
Well, Aaron O'Toole answered, as he always has, that he ran as a fully pro-choice, fully pro-trans candidate, and he won.
All right.
Well, the CBC wasn't done with him yet.
came back a second time asking him about a particular vote he made four years ago.
Here, take a listen to that.
Question.
But women's rights advocates will tell you that that's the kind of bill that tries to open up cracks to reopen the debate on abortion.
How can you reassure people who may think that?
Answer.
That was a bill on criminal sentencing, actually.
And I have a completely clear track record on social issues as an MP.
That's not the case for Justin Trudeau, because in 2013, I was the first of only 18 Conservatives who voted for a bill for the LGBT community.
Mr. Trudeau missed the vote for a fundraising activity.
For the Ontario Liberal Party.
But I have a clear record, but Mr. Trudeau does not.
Okay, so two questions in his debut press conference about his support for a particular law four years ago.
The bill failed, by the way.
It was an opposition bill.
It did not pass.
But take a look at how the Parliament of Canada itself, this is from Parliament's website, describes the law that Aaron O'Toole voted for, the law that French CBC is so obsessed with that they asked not one but two questions about him on Aaron O'Toole's first day on the job.
I quote, this enactment amends the criminal code to make it an offense to cause injury or death to a pre-born child while committing or attempting to commit an offense against a pregnant woman.
And to add pregnancy is an aggravating circumstance for the purpose of sentencing.
That's what this law is.
It's not an anti-abortion law.
It's not a pro-life law in terms of in any way inhibiting the mom's power to abort the child.
You heard from Aaron O'Toole.
He's 100% pro-choice, pro-abortion, with or without any reason.
Like he's just all, he's Jagmeet Singh on that stuff and he's proud of it and that's who the Conservatives voted for.
But even that isn't enough because he dared to vote for a bill that said if some robber or mugger on the street, God forbid, punches a pregnant woman and injures the child or even kills it, that that is an offense and that goes to sentencing.
Believe it or not, Justin Trudeau and the Jagmeet Sings of the World voted against that bill.
Because Aaron O'Toole voted to protect the baby in an assault, that's called by the CBC being too pro-life and disqualifying.
And the CBC is already campaigning against him.
Do you see my point?
The CBC, they have the most pro-left-wing social policy guy they could ever find in Aaron O'Toole.
He boasts about how he was the first conservative to go all the way down the road.
All right, that's who he is.
But that's not enough for the CBC.
They won't let it go because he's a conservative.
He pointed out in his answer that Justin Trudeau himself didn't vote for that bill.
He just found himself at a party fundraiser that day.
I want to show you one more thing, and I got this directly from the O'Toole campaign.
Take a look at this tweet.
Aaron O'Toole did an interview with CBC Radio, and the CBC published their exchange.
But according to the Aaron O'Toole campaign, the CBC deleted this exchange from the interview.
So this was part of the interview.
It was a question asked by the CBC to Aaron O'Toole about the CBC, and it was deleted, edited out of the interview before it was broadcast.
Take a listen.
Mr. O'Toole, I can't have you on the CBC without asking you about your policy for the CBC.
You have some policy plans that include defunding English television and news network, though you say you will not touch CBC radio, which this show runs on.
Why would you seek to reduce the number of journalism outlets in the country when the industry is widely seen as being in a bit of a crisis?
And we do have the rise of very discredited news sources online.
So why get rid of ones that Canadians have grown up knowing they can trust?
Well, I won't get rid of, as you said, radio.
And what we want to do with English television is privatize David.
So I think what we don't need is Canadians spending millions of dollars to create the Family Feud Canada edition.
Is that where taxpayers' money really should be going?
That's not the total of the CBC television output, though.
I mean, that's a very selective example.
Well, the ratings show that very few Canadians watch CBC.
And so why should 100% of taxpayers subsidize it?
So it should be more of a public broadcaster model, David, with less commercials, less competition.
That's why I like CBC Radio.
As you know, I listen to this show regularly and have for years.
It doesn't compete with the Shaw and the choruses of the world.
So it's time for a modernization.
I also think CBC Digital has helped undermine private newspapers and other things.
And Trudeau's creating a $600 million media fund for that.
Why should government interference then lead to a private sector media bailout?
It's dumb policy again.
So I think it's time you will see a nimble and very effective CBC because it will get to its public broadcaster roots.
And I think in an age of streaming where all of our kids are watching Netflix throughout this pandemic, we don't need to be doing things the way they were done 50 years ago just for the sake of the status quo.
I think it's time for a shake-up, and that's what I'm offering.
Okay.
Aaron O'Toole, good luck with the rest of the campaign.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, David.
Why didn't they broadcast that?
It was a question asked by the CBC and answered by Aaron O'Toole.
Why would they censor that?
Why did they delete that from the record?
That's like what Stalin did.
He would edit out people from a historical photograph if they became inconvenient.
There's hubris, there's arrogance, there's a lack of self-awareness in the question, oh, how can you allow online news sources that are untrustworthy?
We've got to stay with the trustworthy CBC.
There was a lot of condescending snobbery and self-unawareness there, but the fact that Aaron O'Toole gave an answer they didn't like, they simply hit the delete button.
That's the CBC.
That's the media party.
Challenge The Mainstream Media00:15:25
Aaron O'Toole's first day on the job.
Most of the questions in French.
Most of the questions attack-oriented.
No questions about Communist China.
No questions about getting the two Michaels back from China.
No questions about banning Huawei.
No questions about how to increase trade with the United States.
No questions about our civil liberties during the pandemic.
But lots of questions about LGBTQ2.
Even though Aaron O'Toole is already all the way down there, the CBC plan a total war against him because he's a conservative.
I guess all that's left to be known is: will Aaron O'Toole bend the knee to this pack of haters like Andrew Scheer did?
And if he does, does he think it's going to end any better than it did for Andrew Scheer?
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, as you know, from our eight-hour marathon live stream coverage on Sunday night, which bled into Monday morning, Aaron O'Toole won the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, not on the first ballot, nor on the second, but on the third, where overwhelmingly, Aaron O'Toole was the second or third choice of candidates who had marked Leslie Lewis as their first choice or Derek Sloan.
It's obvious now, and I think it was even obvious back then, that if Peter McKay didn't win or come very, very close to winning on the first ballot, he would be in deep trouble.
And let me put a second theory, a hypothesis of why it was that McKay lost so badly.
The Toronto Star was startled by it.
I didn't know what to make of it, but here's my theory.
When Peter McKay refused to come to the Independent Press Gallery debates that were moderated by our friend Andrew Lawton of True North, he sent a signal to the other candidates' supporters that he did not think they were worth his time.
And so it is my hypothesis that the actually the key strategic error for the McKay campaign was to snub the Independent Press Gallery's debates in a manner that was so high-handed that every supporter for Derek Sloan or Leslie Lewis said, oh, he doesn't just disrespect Andrew Lawton and Candace Malcolm.
He disrespects all independent media and through them, me, thousands of Canadian conservatives would have thought, he disrespects me.
And joining us now via Skype to talk about my hypothesis is our friend Candace Malcolm, the president of the Independent Press Gallery.
You were on the line there while I laid out my hypothesis.
Maybe you're too modest to acknowledge it, but I put it to you that your debate, which was so excellent, and I've told you this before, Andrew Lawton did such a magnificent job.
It was truly a career highlight.
But the manner in which Peter McKay snubbed you, your event, Andrew Lawton, and everyone who watched, I think people remembered that when it came to marking their second and third choice.
What do you think of my hypothesis?
Well, it's certainly interesting.
I hadn't heard it before just now.
And I think that the one thing that I will agree with you on was that Peter McKay seemed uncomfortable.
He didn't seem interested in connecting with the base, connecting with the sort of true blue conservative members, people in Western Canada, people in Alberta.
He never really seemed comfortable.
He seems much more comfortable with the sort of Toronto liberal crowd, the Toronto star who endorsed him, the CBC.
Those are sort of more his people.
And the example of him not showing up at the very last minute to our debate kind of exemplified who he is, which is that he doesn't really feel comfortable.
And he isn't really amongst the conservative base.
He's not really one of us.
He's sort of not quite an outsider, but just someone who doesn't really feel comfortable, doesn't really know how to communicate, doesn't know what to say.
That's why we saw like a lot of missteps and a lot of sort of flip-flops when it came to him trying to communicate that message.
And perhaps there is something to that idea because the Independent Press Gallery debate happened sort of right at the end.
It was right at the last moment where you had the opportunity to change your mind right before nailing out your ballots.
So, we did time it that way to make it an important event.
And, you know, credit and props to Aaron O'Toole for showing up, even with the switched the sort of new agenda that we had.
We didn't do it a debate.
We did fireside chat.
So, he was adaptable to that.
He sat down, he had a long-form interview and conversation with Andrew Lawton, which I think people appreciated his willingness to engage with us, to talk to the media.
And by virtue through talking to independent media, talking to the conservative base, who obviously they're the ones making the decision.
It's not the Toronto Star.
It's not all the fancy people in Toronto who determined who's going to be the leader of this party.
It was the base, it was the members.
And like you said, they put Aaron O'Toole as their second or their third choice, and that's why he won.
Yeah.
Well, I remember talking with you that day when you were sandbagged by Peter McKay.
I mean, first, Leslie Lewis said she had an earache and her doctor advised her.
And I think a few eyebrows were raised, but look, you got to take a woman at face value when she says, My doctor said I have an earache.
And the fact that her campaign manager, Steve Outhouse, showed up in person to basically say, Look, we're sorry, that made it credible.
And I want to take Leslie Lewis at face value.
That's a real excuse that apparently was backed up with proof.
And I don't think anyone took it as a snub.
But when McKay opportunistically said, oh, huh, well, if she's not going, I'm not going in solidarity with her earache.
At which point Steve Adhouse said, yeah, we don't want that kind of solidarity from you, bro.
It wasn't just that he canceled.
It's that he said, yes, I'll be there at the last minute for a fake excuse delivered fakely.
And that said everything.
This guy, so you use the phrase uncomfortably.
He's uncomfortable with grassroots populist nationalists.
I don't think discomfort is the word.
I think there was a condescension, any excuse to bail.
Let me put it this way.
If it were the Globe and Mail that were sponsoring that fireside chat, if it were the CBC, do you think he would bail so cavalierly?
No, he would not.
And people saw that and they saw, I call that contempt.
And I remember talking with you, Candace, that day, and you were perturbed by what had happened, rightfully so.
It was a last-minute sandbagging.
But in my view, with the passage of a few weeks' time, I think that crystallized in the minds of thousands of people the true nature of McKay.
I don't know what the total viewership of your debate was between our live stream and your live stream.
And I think True North had it.
And like there was a lot of eyeballs on this.
It wouldn't surprise me if 100,000 party members watched it or the clips from it.
100,000 people saw the true nature of McKay.
That's my hypothesis.
Well, and it went even further than that, as we're just on Twitter alone, which Twitter isn't a very good representation of the Canadian general public at large, but a lot of political activists on there, a lot of people who are members of the party.
The Independent Press Gallery hashtag was trending.
It had over 5 million impressions that night.
So even if you weren't watching the actual footage, people were talking about it, people knew about it, people saw it.
So I think that everyone was aware.
I would say it was a major strategic error on behalf of Peter McKay.
I mean, obviously his strategy was, hey, look, I'm a conservative who would appeal to liberals.
So that's my brand.
And if I'm running, I'm kind of like Justin Trudeau, but without the scandals and without the baggage just yet, right?
I haven't even gotten into office yet.
And that was sort of his appeal.
I know the CTV show, The Social, which everyone was making fun of them after the Don Cherry thing because a woman went on a rant about how white boys are very nice or whatever.
So anyways, a bunch of liberal ladies that are, it's kind of like the Canadian knockoff of the view.
And they were all talking today about how disappointed they were that Peter McKay lost because even though they're lifelong liberal voters, they might have voted conservative if Peter McKay had won.
So that's kind of the audience that Peter McKay was going after.
And I think it was a major strategic error because that's not what conservatives want.
That's not what conservative members want.
Sure, there are a couple of people, a handful of the party that says, you know, anyone who can win, let's just put forward anyone who can win, regardless of what they stand for, what they believe in.
But I think there's a bigger population of conservatives out there who really believe in conservative values.
They want Canada to be a strong, stable country.
They want balanced budgets.
They want all these things that conservatives believe in.
They truly want these things for our country.
And so it's not just about who can win an election.
It's really about who's the best torchbearer for these ideas and who can defend them against the many people that come after conservatives-be it liberals, partisans, the media, all these kinds of things.
So I think that McKay made that strategic error.
And where he made that error, Aaron O'Toole did the opposite.
He engaged with us and he was much more open-minded to real conservatives.
Well, you know, I watched, of course, the marathon on Sunday Night Internet.
I, you know, I told the misses, oh, I'll just be out for an hour and a half.
It's just going to be a quick announcement.
Yeah, eight hours later, I come home at 1 a.m.
She said, where were you?
She was watching too, actually.
I watched, and there was one moment there where they showed Peter McKay's lovely family.
And you may recall that he married a beautiful human rights advocate, a model, actually.
Her name is Nazaninafshin Jam, an outstanding woman, human rights activist.
Like, I just very much admire her.
And they've got a young family.
And I watched that and I thought, you know, the big winner was Aaron O'Toole.
Leslie Lewis had a heck of a show.
But Nazanan Afsin Shin Jam and her kids won because now Peter McKay can go back to his happy life as a well-paid lawyer at a large law firm in Toronto.
And he doesn't have to be on the road 200 days a year, gritting his teeth when he meets farmers from Alberta or gun owners from Northern Ontario.
He can hang out in the fancy parts of Toronto and live his fancy life and good for his wife and kids.
I'm not saying any of this ironically.
I am really happy for them and I bet they're sort of happy too.
Well, that's the thing, Ezra.
People think of politics as sort of this glamorous lifestyle.
You look at the Trudeau's and all their houses and all the money that they get to spend, all their nannies and everything.
But the reality is that being a political leader takes a huge sacrifice.
And most of the time, it's not very glamorous.
It's giving speeches in church basements and talking to 10, 15 people at a time.
I think this was a bit of a different campaign just because we were all in lockdown.
So it's not like Peter McKay really had to make a big sacrifice to his family as long as he had to travel all over the country.
He was probably sitting at home in Toronto for most of the time.
But I second the notion that I do admire Peter McKay's wife.
I think she's a lot more outspoken and principled than anything I've ever seen.
She should have run.
Yeah, that would have been interesting.
Now, I want to play a clip from the other night.
I'm not a big fan of Andrew Scheer because I don't think he was authentic.
I've told the story many times of when he was first elected.
He invited me to meet with him in his Parliament Hill office.
And I was happy to meet with him.
And his father was there and his whole family was there.
And they really had a clear message for me.
This was right, this is way back in the day when he was just elected.
And the message is: I'm the true conservative, social conservative, fiscal conservative, I'm conservative all the way.
And having his dad there sitting next to him sort of was like a guarantor saying, I know my youngster, Andrew, is just in his 20s, but I'm here just to tell you I'm going to keep an eye.
It was sort of a strange thing to meet with an MP and his dad.
I thought it was nice.
It felt sort of family-ish, and they were trying to telegraph to me, we really are the real deal conservatives.
And I left that thinking, oh, that's sort of cool.
And I remember one of the things that he told me about was that he was going to be a part of a secret, actually, multi-partisan group of MPs, liberals and conservatives, and maybe there'd be a block or new Democrat in there too, who were pro-life.
So he was so hardcore conservative that he was going to set up this secret club.
I don't know why it would be secret if you're loud and proud about it.
So that's who he really wanted me to know he was.
But when he was the conservative leader in the debate, Candace, he didn't fight.
And I'm not even talking about pro-life or gay marriage.
Let's not even talk about that.
I mean, just can you fight for conservative ideas at all?
Can you show me some of that backbone and we're going to be true blue that you told me about in private with your dad?
I think Andrew Scheer's failure in the last election was largely because he didn't have the courage of his convictions.
He probably in his heart was conservative, but he lacked the courage to say so.
And I say all that, sorry for this super long preamble, but look at this quick clip from Andrew Scheer's never-ending speech on Sunday night.
He makes specific reference to you, Candace, or at least to True North.
Take a look at this.
In times like these, it is even more important for every single conservative to stay united and do everything you can to work together to spread our message of hope.
So it doesn't matter what kind of conservative you are.
Our party needs all of you.
And we need you to go out and find more people who share our beliefs.
Please stay involved.
Be bold.
Think.
Challenge the mainstream media.
Don't take their narrative as fact.
Check out smart, independent, objective organizations that are growing all the time, like the Postmillennial or True North.
There are other places to get information.
That's a nice shout out to you and to Postmillennial.
And I agree with that advice, by the way.
I very much enjoy your work and those of your colleagues.
I think Andrew Lawton is one of the finest journalists in Canada, certainly one of the smartest.
Paying Member Praise00:07:03
And I praised him before.
I think the Postmillennial is interesting and they're building up a lot of traffic.
I support them.
I'm a paying member of theirs.
I just don't think Andrew Scheer lived that when he says, quote, challenge the mainstream media.
Did he actually do that?
Don't take their narrative.
I don't think what he just said there in his dying minutes as leader, if he would have actually lived that in the campaign, he might be prime minister right now.
Yeah, so I agree with a lot of the things that you just said.
I think that Andrew Scheer sort of struggled to come out of his shell.
He had never really, before becoming leader, he had never been in a position where he had to be combative.
You know, he was the Speaker of the House, which is a more neutral role during the Harper years.
You know, you have some ministers that really play the attack and they're good at sort of being partisan and doing the political stuff.
You know, think of Pierre Polyev or in the Harper government, it was John Baird and Jason Kenney.
And those are the kind of people who are just really naturally aggressive and they've had a lot of experience doing that.
Andrew Scheer didn't really have that experience during that time because he was put in this sort of neutral position.
It was actually really unprecedented that someone who had been a speaker would go on to become the leader.
I'm a little bit more forgiving than you are, Ezra, about Andre Scheer because I think that deep down he had the conviction, he had the values, and he really was a good person to lead the party, but he just didn't have the experience.
He kind of had his work cut out for him.
And maybe, you know, if he was five, ten years older, or if he was able to stay in the role, in the position for longer, he would have come out of his shell.
We started seeing that more and more.
There's been a couple of instances, like five or six instances, where I've seen his performance in the House or I've seen him come out and actually be combative against the media that's obviously very unfair and biased and trying to put words into his mouth and kind of punch back.
And, you know, every time it happens, it's like, where was this guy during the 2019 election?
That's what conservatives want to see.
That's what Canadians want to see as someone who defends themselves and pushes back.
Whereas, you know, Andrew Scheer was a little bit more shy, more reluctant.
He would kind of, you know, try to change the channel by making a joke or be funny or be charming and smile and that kind of stuff.
And that didn't really cut it.
And so you kind of did see him learning on the job.
It's sort of unfortunate.
As he was going out, he put forward a pretty strong speech.
He talked about how the ideology on the left is not actually compassionate, how the conservative ideology is the one that we should be promoting and projecting and talk about all the success stories.
And you kind of just feel like it's a shame for him personally that he didn't really come to that place where he was really confident and doing the things that he needed to do until after it was too late.
Because I do agree that he didn't really do that in 2019.
And had he done it even just a little bit more, I mean, keep in mind, he won the popular vote.
He increased the number of MPs that conservatives had.
He knocked Justin Trudeau down to a minority government.
So in many ways, he was really successful.
But at the end of the day, I think he just sort of lacked that confidence needed to really push him over the edge.
And at this point, you know, just wish him well.
And I thought it was really nice that he gave that little shout out to True North.
I mean, you know, you're in the same situation.
Someone who's built a business from scratch in an incredibly competitive and difficult industry.
The media is really hard.
You see newspapers failing, media companies laying off journalists, all of them going hat in hand to the government.
You know, it feels kind of good to build a successful model that doesn't need the government to survive and then to get a shout out on the biggest sort of political stage of the country was definitely a proud moment.
Proud of what my team has been able to accomplish in a short order.
Yeah, well, you were great.
And the Independent Press Gallery is also an important project of yours.
It's, I guess, parallel to True North.
I really do believe that your debate crystallized a lot of people's impressions about McKay.
I also saw, by the way, that clip of, I mean, you're much more forgiving of Scheer than I am.
He lived canceled culture.
He literally had our reporter, David Menzie, handcuffed by police for trying to attend a public event.
So I'm less amiable towards Andrew Scheer, and I'm delighted that he's finally gone.
But I saw in reaction to that video we just played of Andrew Scheer praising post-millennial True North.
We clipped that from your Twitter feed, as people can see.
I saw in reaction to that a lot of media party journalists huffing and puffing.
Oh, imagine being praised, like Jason Markasoff.
Here's David Aiken, my former colleague, who says, Andrew Scheer just told conservatives to ignore the MSM and get their info from the Postmillennial and True North Center.
He spells millennial wrong.
He's not really mad about it, but Jason Markasoff was furious about it.
And he said that you should be embarrassed that he gave you a shout out, not proud of it.
It's a bit of chutzka because David Aiken is a member of Unifor and Jason Markasoff is a member of Unifor.
Those are journalist unions that donate their own money to a third-party campaign against Andrew Scheer.
And of course, all newspapers and most other media take bailouts from Trudeau.
I've never seen Aiken or Markasoff show any reluctance to take actual cash from Trudeau or give their own cash as a kickback to Trudeau through that third-party campaign.
But boy, were they mad that you got some praise in the dying moments of a conservative leader?
What do you make of that?
Well, that was just the sort of tip of the iceberg, Ezra.
There were dozens of the sort of blue check liberal journals that were sort of losing their mind over it.
You know, the typical kind of whiny liberal brigade, people like Justin Ling, Dale Smith, people like that.
There were reporters from CBC, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, all posting about it, sort of, you know, their shock or just trying to put out there, you know, kind of trying to smear Andrew Scheer and by Association True North.
I take that as a compliment.
The fact that there were so many journalists tweeting about it, talking about it, outraged about it, I think that probably means that we're doing something right.
They don't like the competition.
They don't like the fact that we try to tell the other side of the story, the fact that we legitimize conservative views and opinions and we tell the other side of the news.
It's sort of natural that they're going to be, you know, envious or wary of the kind of online competition that we're providing and the fact that we're on a national stage.
Look, I have no qualms about being proud of it.
Rebel News Update00:03:48
I'm proud of the fact that I built an organization from nothing.
You know, I was doing it on my own for a long time and finally was able to bring on new reporters, hire people, pay people salaries.
It's an incredible feeling to build a business.
And all those snarky journalists sitting on their phone on Twitter, look, I'd like to see them build a business from scratch and employ people and get a national recognition on the main stage.
I don't think I should be embarrassed about it at all.
It doesn't matter which politician it was, even if it was a politician that I hated, I would still say, hey, look, at least they're acknowledging us and paying attention to us.
That's a good thing.
So I don't really take too much weight to all those snarky comments other than just to sort of take it as a compliment.
Yeah.
Well, listen, we're super fans of yours and your team.
I've kept you a fair bit of time right now.
Let me close by asking you, are there any new projects you're doing?
Is there anything you'd like our viewers to check out?
We know that Andrew Lawton has a show.
Is there something you'd like to direct our viewers to?
Because I've said this half a dozen times before.
I believe it's incumbent upon Rebel News viewers to also support other independent voices.
Yours, Spencer Fernando, is one of my favorite guys.
He's out there in Winnipeg.
I support almost any independent media because I know the story you just said of building from scratch.
And if it's 10 bucks a month, I can afford 10 bucks a month here or there.
Give me some news from True North.
Is there something you're doing that you'd like our viewers to take a look at?
Well, we always invite people who aren't as familiar with True North to check out our platform.
Check out what we do.
It's tnc.news.
That's our website.
You can also find us on YouTube and Facebook.
We just have a lot of interesting programming, a lot of exciting programming.
We have investigative journalists across the country who are always digging up stories and putting out exclusives and news.
I host a long form interview show called the True North Speaker Series.
And actually, Ezra, you're a guest this season, and we recorded that interview already.
So that's going to be released later this fall.
I also just recently sat down with Rex Murphy, and we did a long in-depth interview.
Yeah, it was great.
We got to talk all about the little post-media kerfuffle that he went through.
I'm going to tune in.
I'm going to hang on every word.
I'm so interested in that.
I'm so interested to hear Rex's point of view.
Do you know when you're going to make that public yet, or is that not yet scheduled?
Well, we've already recorded it, so we're just in production now, and I think we're going to start the next season in September.
So give us a week or two, and that's going to be released.
I can hardly.
And is that going to be behind a paywall or is that going to be on YouTube?
How are you going to do that?
Yeah, we just put it right out there.
We don't have a paywall at all, so it'll be available on Facebook and YouTube when we release it, and it'll be part of a series.
So every week we'll release a new episode.
We'll probably do 10, 10 interviews in total.
We did 10 in the spring as well.
We had a lot of interesting guests as well.
We had Maxine Bernier.
We had Douglas Murray, Barbara Kaye, a bunch of people like that.
So you can go back and look at those interviews.
And then we have a new season coming up.
So we're always busy over at True North.
We keep busy.
We also do documentaries.
We filmed and produced a documentary called Calgary and Crisis that was released in April.
And we have another series that we're working on right now that's going to be released later in the fall looking at hypocrisy and the environmental movement and green projects and stuff like that.
So we try to put out a lot of content.
We're busy.
We do a lot and we're continuing to grow.
So if you haven't checked out True North, definitely I encourage you to go over and do that now.
TNC.news.
Candace, I can hardly, you just said about five things there that you've got going on that I've got to put in my calendar.
Those are, that's a must-see TV.
Kian's Prickly Questions00:04:55
The Rex thing, of course, is just absolutely tantalizing.
Congratulations on everything you've done.
I'll say goodbye now, although we could talk all day.
Every single thing you mentioned, I know will be of interest to our viewers.
And so let me say one more time to my friends who support Rebel News.
I know there's only so many dollars in your wallet, but you're forcibly extracted from your wallet to pay for the CBC.
So please consider voluntarily supporting one of your greatest allies in Canada, our friend Candace Malcolm.
And I know some of her team.
They really are outstanding people.
Candace, I'm gushing again.
Let me say goodbye to you and thank you so much for your time.
Well, thank you for having me and thank you for all the kind words, Ezra.
There you have it.
Candace Malcolm, the boss of True North, just I believe what I said earlier, that her debate that she organized through the Independent Press Gallery and that was done so effectively by Andrew Lawton, I believe that was a crystallizing moment in the minds of thousands of party members.
And I think that's one of the reasons why Peter McCain is not the party leader.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back to my monologue last night.
Wendy writes, I credit Rebel News for McKay's demise.
You exposed a grown man acting like a smug elitist jackass.
Impossible to respect him after seeing him behave like such a child and so rude.
It was weird.
I mean, I've met Kian a dozen times.
I don't find him physically terrifying.
He's not mean.
His questions can be prickly.
Well, yeah, welcome to journalism.
He's by himself with a cell phone.
Like it's not like a pack of hounds.
So when Kian Bexty follows a politician around and asks him some prickly questions, I'll admit he can be prickly.
Let's go all the way and say, oh, he was annoying.
Yeah, okay, welcome to journalists holding politicians to account.
You want him to be like a waiter at a restaurant.
Excuse me, sir.
May I interrupt?
No, we were trying to get questions answered from McKay.
And he so flustered him, it made him panic, it made him run away, made him duck into the bathroom, it made him just freak out in general.
If that's how you react to Kean, how are you going to react when it's Justin Trudeau and his killers coming for you?
And if you actually become prime minister, how are you going to react when it's Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump?
If you panic because Kian Bexty asks you a prickly question, you are not quite yet ready to be the leader of a country.
Bruce Wrights, I'm so glad Peter McKay's arrogance put so many conservatives off, though I don't have much hope for Aaron O'Toole's future performance.
He's better than McKay.
Yeah, well, we'll see.
I mean, Stephen Harper was the winner.
He was re-elected many times, and he lost in 2015.
Then the second choice was Andrew Scheer.
The third choice was Peter McKay.
The fourth choice was Aaron O'Toole.
I don't know if he's got the horsepower to win.
I mean, Justin Trudeau is damaged, but the media party is as desperate as ever to keep him in there.
I'm more hopeful than if it was McKay, but I'm still sort of leery of the whole thing.
Paul writes, I do not trust nor will I vote for any conservative candidate that's afraid to talk to independent media.
I call it the backstabber Ford rule.
Well, that's the thing.
I mean, the CBC is full of corrupt hacks.
It's a revolving door between the CBC and the Liberal Party.
You've had outrageous scandals at the CBC, Wendy Edward Mesley, Rosemary Barton suing the conservatives, Jian Gameschi physically assaulting women both at the CBC that he met and elsewhere.
And yet, the idea of boycotting all those CBC, that just would be a weird thing to do, I think.
Yet these conservative politicians boycott independent conservative media.
Just because you answer someone's question doesn't mean you endorse every single thing the reporter has ever said or done.
I think it's a test of authenticity and a test of courage.
If you will not answer a question put to you by True North, the post-millennial, Rebel News, then you're a bit of a freighty pants.
I mean, even Justin Trudeau, he tries to ban us, but even when Kian Bexti and David Menzies made their way into the debate with a court order last October, Justin Trudeau answered their questions.
He didn't answer them well, but he answered them.
Imagine being someone like Peter McKay and running away.
We'll see how Aaron O'Toole does.
We'll see how he does.
All right, that's the show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, do you at home?