William MacBeath explains how Erin O’Toole won the 2020 Conservative leadership by uniting Western voters and social conservatives, despite Peter McKay’s establishment backing and Leslyn Lewis’s strong showing. Lewis, a Black Jamaican immigrant with just 265 CBC mentions, nearly toppled media-favored candidates like Kamala Harris (1,436 hits). MacBeath criticizes Mayor Nenshi for failing to review councillor expenses—like Joe Maglioka’s—while blaming provincial UCP Minister Casey Madatoa for obstruction. Lewis’s rise suggests a shift toward diverse representation, but MacBeath doubts the federal party will embrace it without pressure from grassroots supporters. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
My guest tonight is William Macbeth from Save Calgary.
Now you all know him as a municipal taxpayer advocate, but he's also a longtime conservative activist and he has been involved in federal conservative politics for a very long time.
And tonight we're talking about what else Aaron O'Toole winning the conservative leadership.
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However, Leslie Lewis is the real breakout success story of the Conservative Leadership campaign.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Long, unbearable, drawn-out goodbye of former Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer is finally over, and the party has selected a new leader with Erin O'Toole.
It wasn't the coronation of longtime establishment Tory insider and former cabinet minister Peter McKay that everybody, including the party, thought it would be.
For many, Erin O'Toole will seem to be a continuation of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's slow and steady conservative policies and big tent fiscal conservatism.
But the real standout star of the leadership race was an outsider, someone completely new to politics, Leslien Lewis.
She's not an MP.
She's not really a politician at all.
She's an accomplished black Jamaican immigrant woman based in Toronto who drew the bulk of her support from the West.
And I think she's going to be a star in the party if the party will allow it.
So joining me tonight in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon to discuss what the election of Aaron O'Toole will mean to the Conservative Party and what Erin O'Toole must do next is William Macbeth from Save Calgary.
Joining me now from his home in Calgary is my friend William Macbeth from Save Calgary.
William, we often talk about Calgary municipal issues and we definitely will.
even before Safe Calgary, even before you were doing work for taxpayers on the municipal side, you've been a long time conservative activist, organizer, really involved in conservative politics, both on the party side and the nonpartisan side.
Let's talk about the leadership of the Conservative Party.
Aaron O'Toole won.
which I think maybe surprised some people on the inside of the party.
What do you think?
Yeah, no, it's very interesting.
Aaron O'Toole, who I don't think most people thought of Aaron as the frontrunner in this race.
I think most people very clearly thought that Peter McKay stood the best chance of winning the leadership.
But speaking from someone who's a conservative in Alberta, I can say that Peter McKay probably wasn't the first choice and ended up not being the first choice of a majority of Albertans.
And I think you saw that in a lot of key parts of the country.
Peter McKay, of course, did win Atlantic Canada, which is where he was an MP for many years, where his family's from.
And he did win a narrow lead in Ontario, but he did very poorly in Quebec and he did poorly in the West.
And ultimately, I think Aaron's campaign did a better job of convincing people who were supporting Leslie Lewis and Derek Sloan as their first choice to make Aaron O'Toole their second choice and not Peter McKay.
And if I could pinpoint one thing that I think a lot of people look at, it was Peter McKay's comments immediately following the 2019 federal election, where when he was asked about social conservatives, social conservatism within the Conservative Party, he called it a quote-unquote stinking albatross around the neck of the party.
And, you know, for someone who should understand that the Conservative Party is a very big party.
It welcomes lots of different people into the tent, you know, fiscal conservatives, libertarians, social conservatives, democratic reformers who want to change, you know, things like referendums and more direct democracy.
All of these people have to feel at home in the conservative tent, or at least not feel like they're not welcome.
And I think that's the biggest issue Peter McKay had going into the final days of this campaign.
You know, that's a really excellent point.
It really, the Conservative Party, at least under Stephen Harper, and maybe Aaron O'Toole will be a continuation of this.
It was a place where if you just wanted to be left alone by the government and your fellow Canadians, the Conservative Party was the place for you.
Whether you were a libertarian or a social conservative or, you know, a socially progressive person, if you just wanted to be left alone to live your life and be a little more free and pay a few less taxes, the Conservative Party was the place for you.
And then I think there was this push for the party to be openly socially progressive when that's never really been necessary in a party of leave me alone.
Certainly, I think that for social conservatives, they understand that as a big tent, they're not going to get 100% of what they want on every one of their issues.
But what they do expect, I think, is to be treated with respect, to have their ideas and policies treated with respect.
And it was something that I think Aaron O'Toole did quite smartly over the course of the campaign was speak to people, social conservatives, libertarians, different groups within the party, about the issues that they care about.
And he did so respectfully, which is why people like, I think, Dr. Lewis and Derek Sloan told their people to have Aaron O'Toole higher as a second choice on the ballot than Peter McKay.
And I think ultimately it was smart politics, smart strategy.
And I hope it's something that Aaron O'Toole carries forward with now that he's leader and he's looking to put together a plan to win the next election.
You know, it's funny because I was watching Aaron O'Toole's press conference today.
We're recording this on Tuesday.
It'll go to air on Wednesday.
But, you know, there's this insistence from the mainstream media about kicking Derek Sloan out of the party.
And it's funny to me as someone who is often a critic of the mainstream media to see Aaron O'Toole really, his next job should be uniting the party.
And I think he's already started to do that just based on the fact that so many of Lewis's votes, Lewis as an outsider, her second choice was Aaron O'Toole.
But it seems to me like the mainstream media wants to continue this fracturing off of the party, started with Maxine Bernier, and now they're suggesting, oh, well, now you need to kick Derek Sloan out of the party.
I think the true test will be, will Aaron O'Toole give in to that push from the left and from the mainstream media to do those things?
Or is he going to be the big uniter?
It's a really important question.
And I think, and I'm hopeful, that based on how he's behaved so far, his attitude will be to build as big and broad a tent as possible to welcome a diversity of views inside it.
You know, there is a very strong temptation to bow to groups like the mainstream media who are demanding a course of action.
But what I think people have to remember is it's not about winning the votes of journalists or about winning the votes of people who have never voted or will never vote conservative in their entire lives.
It's about making sure that the base of the Conservative Party is united and supports the leadership of the party and that people who switch between, say, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, depending on the election, find things that they like about the Conservative Party so that they put their ex next to the Conservative candidate next time.
Leslie Lewis' Close Call00:07:29
So if you can fall into the trap of trying to please people who don't want your party to win, and that's not how you win an election as a conservative.
You win.
I mean, look at our last provincial election here in Alberta, where the media coverage was basically an extension in some ways of the CPP campaign.
And yet a million Albertans showed up to vote for Jason Kenny and the United Conservative Party.
So to me, if you listen to the media, you can often be led astray.
You should listen to the base and you should listen to people who are open to voting for your party if certain conditions are met, if certain policies meet their needs, if you speak to what they're concerned about, families, jobs, economy, taxes, all of those sorts of things.
You know, that's such a great point because I think there's no greater example of the disconnect between the mainstream media, and that's so often Toronto and Ottawa-centric, between what they think the conservative base cares about and what the conservative base cares about.
I think the greatest example of that is Leslie Lewis and the coverage of Lesland Lewis.
You and I were talking yesterday and I pulled the numbers yesterday.
If you go on the CBC website as of yesterday, there was 1,436 unique hits for Kamala Harris on the CBC website.
So that's the state broadcaster that gets $1.6 billion a year from Canadian taxpayers who talk about Canadian things versus 265 hits for Lesland Lewis.
So Lesland Lewis doing something quite historic.
She's a black, accomplished woman, immigrant from Jamaica, from Toronto.
You would think that she would be somebody that the CBC and the mainstream media would champion.
And yet they hardly talked about her.
And many of the mentions of her were just indicating that she was also running in the race against everybody else.
And yet, Leslie Lewis took Saskatchewan, took backwards Hillbilly, Saskatchewan.
Oh, there are a bunch of bigots out there because they're so conservative.
She won in Saskatchewan, and she came in second here in Alberta.
You know, I think obviously Erin O'Toole winning the leadership race will be the most written about story.
But in my mind, the most interesting story of the leadership race is Leslie Lewis and the fact that someone who wasn't a career politician, didn't have a political background, came within a hair's breadth of being leader of the Conservative Party.
I mean, if you look at that second ballot result, had a few more points gone her way and she had been pushed up into second place, it's quite possible she would have won that leadership.
And you're absolutely right that she did not get a lot of fair and detailed coverage in the media.
I mean, Kamala Harris rightfully is a news story of the fact that it's a woman on the ticket who's African-American, who could quite likely be the first female vice president.
I'm not saying that that's not a news story, absolutely.
But it's even more remarkable to think that someone like Leslie Lewis came inches away from leading one of Canada's two main political parties.
And regardless of the fact that she didn't win, she will play a key role in the Conservative Party moving forward.
She will be a minister, a senior minister under Prime Minister O'Toole, if and when that ever happens.
Now, I guess the question is, why do you think they didn't cover her then?
Well, you know, I can't really comment on how the CBC makes decisions.
I don't really know.
I guess I would say that Leslie Lewis didn't fit conveniently in one of the boxes that a lot of media like to have when it comes to conservatives.
So they are used to conservatives sort of being middle-aged white guys who are either suburban or from small towns.
And I don't think they really knew what to make of Leslie Lewis.
She didn't fit neatly into a stereotype or a mold for a lot of the media.
And so they were flummoxed, I think, by her candidacy.
I mean, not to derive all reporters who cover politics, but I'm sure quite a lot of them looked at Leslie Lewis and thought, what are you doing in this party?
You aren't a conservative.
And I'll make that judgment just on superficial and personal characteristics, that a woman couldn't be a conservative leadership candidate, that a minority or an immigrant couldn't be a conservative leadership candidate, that a highly credentialed person couldn't be a conservative leadership candidate.
So I'm really excited.
You saw Lesland today put out a great graphic showing her support for Erin O'Toole and saying, I'm going to be with you as we win the next election together.
And I think that's actually the attitude we need, that we're all in this together and that we need everybody from the Aaron O'Toole's to the Leslie Lewises to the Derek Sloans.
We need every single person who's a conservative voting conservative to win the next election.
Yeah, it's going to be interesting where the diehard Peter McKay supporters fit into all of this because there are a lot of them and a lot of them were pretty prominent Western politicians even.
I think Aaron O'Toole has a big job ahead of him, sort of mending that.
I mean, that's a really big ideological crack in the party, but I think it's the same one that Harper had to mend with Peter McKay, actually.
Yeah, it's not something that I think a lot of people think about when they think of Stephen Harper, but you know, I worked on his leadership campaign back in 2003 and 2004.
And the moment he became then leader of the Canadian Alliance, he reached out to heal.
You may remember that a group of MPs had broken away to form this new caucus.
Well, the first thing he did was bring almost all of them back into the fold.
And then when he pursued the merger with Peter McKay and the PC party to form the new Conservative Party, after he became the leader of that party, he invited people from the PC side, from different leadership campaigns to not only be in caucus and to have prominent caucus roles, but also key staffers, key political employees who had not been on his campaign team, but who he recognized talent and ability in.
So I think for Aaron O'Toole, he does have a big job.
Of course, Peter McKay received the most caucus support.
The most MPs indicated their support for him.
I suspect, though, that based on how hard he worked in the campaign, Aaron O'Toole will be rolling up his sleeves, making phone calls, having meetings, and he'll be making sure that everybody, every caucus member, Peter McKay's campaign staff, the whole group, he will try and make them feel at home in an Aaron O'Toole-led Conservative Party.
Yeah, I mean, I hope one of those phone calls he makes is to Jason Kenney to ask Jason Kenney how you did it, because Jason Kenney did much the same thing, sort of taking two parties, smushing them together, and making sure that there's a place for everybody within it.
City Hall Controversies00:05:54
So it can be done in one of the most conservative places in the entire country.
I want to now talk about some municipal issues.
So at Safe Calgary, you guys have been on the case of Councillor Joe Maglioka.
I think Maglioka, am I saying that right?
Yes.
Yes.
Okay, perfect.
I thought he was a conservative.
The way he spends taxpayer money, I guess he's not.
So there was an investigation into his expenses, which is great.
However, Nenshi is passing the buck on to the provincial government saying, well, why didn't you do anything about this guy who's on my city council?
Yeah, I will say, you know, as a conservative, I'm disappointed.
Joe Maglioka was one of a handful of conservative counselors who we could reliably count on 90% of the time to vote for lower taxes, to vote for spending cuts.
And it's painful when someone who ideologically has been aligned with you doesn't demonstrate the kind of behavior and principles that we would expect from our elected officials.
And yep, there's no doubt he made some bad choices when it came to his expenses.
The mayor, though, in my opinion, is shedding crocodile tears.
The mayor just doesn't like UCP Minister for Municipalities, Casey Maddoo.
He's not a Casey Maddie fan.
And I understand why, you know, the mayor has asked for more taxing powers.
And Casey has said no.
The mayor has asked for buckets of cash just to be dropped into Calgary for whatever priority they want that week.
And Minister Maddie has said no.
There isn't a lot of extra money lying around.
You're going to have to prioritize and make better use of your existing resources.
But now, having expressed nothing but displeasure by and large with Minister Madhu, the mayor wants the minister to do the dirty work of punishing a city councillor who made questionable spending decisions, who made inappropriate spending decisions.
And the minister said, no, look, you take care of this.
These are your counselors.
You are supposed to be the chair and leader of this council.
You have to act like it.
And a better question, I think, is, this is not the first time we've had questionable expenses on the part of city councillors.
How were decisions like this allowed to go on for so long with a broken process for reviewing and approving city council expenses until finally it resulted in this one incident getting caught?
And I think the mayor, who's been there since 2010, has to take some responsibility for not improving this system, for not instilling a better regime and more rules and safeguards for expenses, and instead allowed this to happen on his watch.
Yeah, I think it's interesting that the mayor suddenly has a problem and needs to see a change in the system now when a conservative has his hand caught in the cookie jar.
When it was coming from the other side of the aisle, like you say, the mayor had 10 years to fix this and never actually did.
And thank goodness for you folks at Save Calgary for always shining a light on these issues and for standing up for taxpayers.
William, tell people how they can support the work that you do with Save Calgary and where they can find more information about your next projects.
So we mostly live online.
We're a small and plucky little group of activists who just want to see better government down at City Hall.
You can find out more about who we are, what we do at savecalgary.com.
I would encourage you to go on Facebook, to go on Twitter, to check out at Save Calgary, where we post content every day, where we release information that we've gleaned from paying attention to the shenanigans down at City Hall.
Please sign up to our email list where we put out a weekly newsletter.
We just did one quite recently about the fact that they want to once again make collecting your garbage more expensive and happen less frequently.
So only in Calgary could you say we're going to pick it up less often and charge you more for that less service.
And we did one last week.
You know, we've been arguing for spending cuts.
City Council likes to come back and say, well, we can't cut spending except for police and fire.
There's the only place we can find savings.
And Save Calgary said, well, here are 14 places you could cut that aren't police and fire.
It's just that you're not trying hard enough.
So savecalgary.com, our website, check us out on social media, sign up to our email list.
And if you have the ability and the means, consider making a financial donation because unlike a lot of other groups, we get no taxpayer funding.
We rely on the support of individual Calgarians and Albertans for our support.
And folks at home, let me tell you, they can sure stretch a buck.
They saved you from the Olympics on a shoestring budget when the city had endless money, deep pockets, and an entire corporation working to make sure that Calgary got that Olympic bid.
And Safe Calgary was so instrumental in saving taxpayers from Calgary.
William, thank you so much for coming on the show.
We'll have you back on again real soon.
Thanks very much, Jill.
I hope the success of Leslyn Lewis, in spite of the lack of mainstream media coverage, and even though she's an outsider to politics, sends a strong message to the Federal Conservative Party that the base wants something different than what they've been offered lately.
Will the party listen?
As usual, I'm ready to be disappointed by the Conservative establishment in Canada.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.