Ezra Levant examines Ontario’s New Blue Party, led by expelled PC MPPs Belinda and Jim Karahalios, positioning it as a conservative alternative to Doug Ford’s PCs. Ford’s broken promises—like the $60 car tax and land transfer tax—alongside authoritarian moves (expulsions, dissent suppression) and alignment with media figures who mocked his late brother Rob, fuel the split. Randy Hillier joins, criticizing lockdowns and quarantine contracts, while voter fraud allegations in federal Conservative races add to distrust. The party seeks mergers with smaller conservative factions, mirroring Alberta’s Wild Rose Party and BC’s Christian Heritage Party, aiming to restore grassroots representation amid Ford’s perceived betrayal of core values. [Automatically generated summary]
I heard that a new political party might be formed in Ontario.
Now those are easy to do.
The question is can they turn into something?
Well what's curious about this one is it would start off with one legislator, one MPP right out of the bat.
Belinda Karahelios and maybe Randy Hillier, a second one would join and maybe all of a sudden you've got a real going concern.
I'll do a monologue on the subject and then I'll interview Jim and Belinda Karahellios right afterwards.
I think this is going to be an interesting podcast for you.
I hope so.
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Okay, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, a new provincial party is launching in Ontario to the right of Doug Ford.
And it looks like it could have two MPPs pretty quickly.
It's October 13th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government.
But why shouldn't?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
I'm so frustrated by Doug Ford, the Ontario Premier, but I shouldn't be.
I mean, show me a politician who doesn't disappoint you, who doesn't break your heart.
It was Doug's late brother, Rob Ford, who was the beloved one in the family, who had the natural populist instincts.
Maybe it was precisely because he was so flawed and had so many observable problems and personal demons that he was so sympathetic.
I remember when the late Rob Ford, who was really fat, he was going on a diet and he said so publicly, and I get that.
It's a way of getting encouragement.
It's a way of motivating yourself because you've said you're going to lose weight.
You've told everybody.
So now you have to do it.
Because even if you're fine letting yourself down, you can't let everyone else down.
That's often my motivation for doing things too.
Maybe it is for you.
But it's hard.
And Rob Ford one day walked into a Kentucky Fried Chicken and someone took a photo of it and sold it to the Toronto Star.
I presume they sold it.
The Toronto Star had a bounty for anything embarrassing about Rob Ford.
And the star put this KFC entrance as their huge story on their main page of their website.
Top news in the world.
Ha ha, look at that fat guy eating KFC.
I mean, can you believe it?
Can we impeach him?
Because no one at the Toronto Star is fat, you see, and it's fine to fat shame someone on the right.
The local left-wing freebie newspaper called Now magazine had a pretty convincing photoshop of Rob Ford's head onto a nearly naked body of someone really fat.
Here's CTV writing about it purely for the public interest.
And they show the image purely for the public interest.
Look, the media all got in on it.
I tell you, this mean girl shtick was quite something.
The Globe and Mail published a highbrow literary thinkfluencer who called Rob Ford fat, I think like 15 times in one column.
I'm not sure if that's news or opinion, but it was hilarious.
Oh, he's so fat.
Now they later deleted it.
I can't find a copy of the original quickly.
But here's another news website having a good laugh at it.
My point is the personal viciousness was something I've never seen before or since that bad.
It was worse than anything I saw Preston Manning go through or Stockwell Day go through.
Boy, they hated Rob Ford.
And they were so brutally personal.
Here's Trudeau's CBC state broadcaster sending someone right into Ford's home, right on his doorstep, right on his property when he was taking his own children to school.
Here, now I've altered this video in one way.
I've taken out their laugh track to show you what it was actually like.
Mayor Ford!
It's me, Margellahon Taylor.
Mayor Ford, my gosh, I gave up the Princess Warrior stuff, but when I saw what was happening to you, I came all the way from Newfoundland to talk to your hot.
The plug in the jug, keep the muscle on, Dog is a much gutchier kind of fella than that.
Yeah, hilarious.
Going on someone's front doorstep with a camera while shrieking insults at him when he's taking his young children to school.
They actually flew in that former comedian, Mary Walsh.
Dreadfully unfunny, but they call her a comedian.
It wasn't comedy, it was a smear.
They brought her out of retirement, flew her in from St. John's just for that.
You know, Rob Ford had so many personal demons, drug use, alcoholism, overeating.
I mean, imagine the mental stress and strain, the depression, and then being hounded like this day and night by the media party.
You know, that so-called comedian, Mary Walsh.
By the way, she's a long-time drunk, too.
She talks about it, and I sympathize with her.
And here she is as part of the Bell Let's Talk mental health moment.
Hey, guys, don't pick on people with mental illness.
Hey, guys, let's be nice to each other, not bully people.
Hey, guys, let's not pick on people with addictions.
Except Rob Ford, sucker.
Yeah, that was an ambassador for mental health.
Anyways, the thing is, of course, I don't have to tell you this.
All of these abusive personal attacks on Rob Ford only made ordinary people love him more because when they mock Ford for being fat, what do you think they're thinking about you being fat?
When they mock him for not keeping to his diet, what do they think about you?
Do you have a smoking problem, a drinking problem, whatever?
What would they say about you if they deal with the mayor this way?
So the more the fancy people hated him, the more the ordinary people sort of loved him.
He suffered for them.
And he never forgot who his friends were, and he never forgot who his enemies were.
How could he forget?
They would never let him forget.
And every once in a while, we were reminded that he knew.
Like this wonderful, wonderful interview with that pompous Marxist on the CBC radio.
Perhaps my favorite media interview by a politician of all time.
It's not even contemptuous.
You have to care to show contempt.
Just absolutely treating the CBC the way it ought to be treated.
Scratch at it, treating them better than they ought to be treated, treating them with more respect than they treat others.
But I give you, without more comment from me, the greatest media interview ever done by a politician.
Gravy Train Politics00:14:54
Mr. Ford, congratulations.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
People are saying that's calling it a stunning win.
What do you think that things are going really well?
What drew so much support?
Hello, Mr. Ford.
Are you there?
Yeah, yeah, I'm here.
Yeah.
Oh, are you at some event or?
I'm a coach.
I'm a football coach.
Okay, so you're at football practice then?
Yes.
All right.
Well, okay, we'll continue then.
What is it that you think drew so much support to your campaign?
No, it's just people are sick and tired of the wasteful spending.
People are sick and tired of wasteful spending.
That's the bottom line.
That's what it comes down to.
You know, I'm the only one that could go down there.
You just go get changed.
Go out and get changed.
Don't worry about the water right now.
I love you.
Sorry.
Uh-huh.
So, yeah, I know.
People are just fed up with, you know, politicians squandering hard-earned tax dollars.
And they know that I'm going to get rid of the $60 car registration tax and the land transfer tax.
Well, you know that your campaign has been compared to Mike Harris's common sense revolution to the Tea Party movement.
Do you see those comparisons?
I'm going to compare it to whatever they want.
I don't care.
I just know the taxpayers want the gravy train to come to an end.
And that's Rob Ford, you got to do it.
Do you think there are similarities?
And I don't see there's any similarities.
I just know that, like I said, I'm going to put an end to the wasteful spending.
And stop the gravy train.
Sorry, I'm being distracted for a second.
That's pretty well it.
Mr. Ford, do you think that though there's not people who might think that their taxes are too high or that too much is being spent on things, there seems to be a division in the city.
People in the, you've seen it in even your voting, people who live in more of the core of the city have different priorities than people in the suburbs.
So when you stop the gravy train, some people want to see more public transportation, more bike lanes.
Others want to see better routes out into the suburbs.
How are you going to reconcile that?
Yeah, well, the first and foremost concern with people is money.
That's the first and foremost concern.
So I'm going to make sure our finances are well taken care of, and then we can deal with all the other issues.
But money is the first and foremost concern, and that's what I'm going to concentrate on.
Well, sure, that's everyone's concern, but we're not sure what it is that you're going to save money on.
Are you going to reduce public transportation?
I'm going to get rid of the $60 car registration tax and the land transfer tax.
So maybe I'm not making myself clear, but I'm going to get rid of the $60 car registration tax and land transfer tax.
And we're going to stop the wasteful spending and not have $12,000 retirement parties and all the other nonsense that's been going on for seven years.
Anyways, I got to let you go here.
Can I ask you about public transportation before you go?
Pardon me, I can't talk to you right now.
I really am on a very tight schedule, so I hate to be rude, but I got to let you go and we can chat another time.
Really nice talking to you.
All the best.
Bye-bye.
I love that so much.
And before I come to my point, and I'm sure you're waiting for my point, let me show you perhaps the most concentrated Rob Ford moment of perfection you'll ever see, too.
That sums him up in a minute.
Tells you everything you need to know about him, why you can trust him.
Why, as I said on Sund News Network on our Rob Ford special those years ago, I'd rather have Rob Ford drunk than any liberal sober.
Ford is a deeply flawed man, but I'd take him drunk over his left-wing predecessor sober.
Yeah, Rob was great.
Here's why.
I've got all the free passes for counselors.
I call them free perks that are tax-free, which is costing the taxpayers millions of dollars.
So let's start off.
Free zoo pass.
Toronto Zoo VIP pass.
The VIP named on this card and his or her family will be granted parking, admission, and rides at the Toronto Zoo without charge.
I can bring everybody and my family here to the zoo for free.
The average person has to pay $15, $20 to get in, $10 or $15 a park, $5 or $10 a ride.
The poor average family is paying $200.
Counselors that are getting paid $100,000 get to get in for free.
Absolutely wrong.
That's just the tip of the iceberg.
Let's get on to some other stuff here.
Metro passes.
Here's a Metro Pass.
This is equivalent to $1,300 a year.
Again, counselors make $100,000 a year.
I take home $1,400 a week net.
Why should counselors get a free MetroPass?
The TTC is dying for money.
We've just increased fares, 25 cents.
The average person out there, the poor working student or the poor working senior that has to get out there and get on the bus every day has to pay $3.
But we, the counselors, get on the bus for free.
This should be eliminated immediately.
That's amazing.
And I tell you all this, and I go on this 10-minute Rob Ford reminiscence rant to tell you Doug Ford is no Rob Ford.
They look a bit the same.
They have the same mom and dad.
And that's about it.
That's it.
Doug Ford is not a populist.
He despises the little people.
At least he says so.
He doesn't champion them.
He's been hanging out with the fancy people now, the folks who hated his brother, called his brother fat.
I mean, look at this headline from the Toronto Star, the paper that mercilessly mocked his brother, hounded his brother, paid people cash so they secretly filmed them on their cell phones in private homes and private places to embarrass them.
Doug Ford loves being loved by the powerful people who hate him.
He sort of hates the little people, the people who used to be called Ford Nation, but really aren't anymore.
They didn't leave him, the people.
He left them and he stabbed them in the heart on the way to the Toronto Star's editorial board.
We have, you know, a bunch of Yahoos out in the front of Queen's Park sitting there protesting that the place isn't open, as they're breaking the law.
Yahoos, who are stupid.
And as for the organizers, you know something, guys?
I don't get it.
I just don't get it.
If we weren't so backlogged on MRIs, I'd send you to the MRI to get your brain scanned because I just, I don't think there's anything in there.
Yeah, that doesn't sound like Rob Ford, does it?
That sounds like the Toronto star mocking Rob Ford.
Except the words are coming out of Doug Ford's mouth.
Doug Ford isn't the type to cut up his little perk cards.
He's not ending the gravy train.
When have you ever heard him even use that phrase anymore?
He's retired.
No, he's not shutting down the gravy train.
He's shutting down mom and pop businesses, restaurants, bars, theaters, gyms, whatever.
Rob Ford fought for the little guy.
Doug Ford fights against the little guy.
Oh, it's for your own good, you see.
And Doug Ford has an anger and a rage that Rob Ford never showed towards the people.
What a disappointment.
And I say this is a guy who went on TV, the most watched episode in Sun News Network history, to praise the brothers.
But really, now that I think about it, I wasn't really praising Doug Ford.
I really didn't know much about him at the time.
It was Rob Ford I knew.
And it shows.
So we have an Ontario Conservative government that isn't conserving anything really.
Look at this.
Doug Ford says the Liberal government is amazing.
And she says, Christy Freeland says that Doug Ford is her therapist.
It's a lovely friendship, isn't it?
Doug Ford isn't loyal to Ford Nation or the Conservatives.
He's got no time for them.
He's loyal to his new friends in the media party, in the Liberal Party.
He's not going to campaign for the Conservatives against Trudeau.
How could he?
Why would he?
He's on their gravy train now.
He's the conductor.
Why would he derail it?
What a disappointment.
But really, where's a Conservative to go?
I personally know of a number of Conservative MPPs who are upset with how pro-liberal Ford is.
But put aside the partisan part.
They're just upset with Ford's second wave of lockdowns, his complete deference to experts like Teresa Tam and the dozen mini Teresa Tams salted throughout the government of Ontario.
There are a grand total of 34 people in all of Ontario, population 14.5 million.
34 people on ventilators.
There are almost 3,000 acute care beds with ventilators for COVID patients.
So each ventilator patient has 100 hospital beds to themselves.
Here's a graph showing how many people in Ontario have tested positive on any given day.
And you bet it's skyrocketing.
Oh, yes.
But the number of people in the hospital, it just isn't skyrocketing.
They're not getting sick, or at least not very sick.
No wonder the media keeps talking about cases, not actual illnesses.
You see, half of those cases are false positives.
So says the government itself.
And in fact, if you're testing in a population that doesn't have very much COVID, you'll get false positives almost half the time.
So who's going to criticize Doug Ford and his unscientific lockdowns and his bans and his rules and his regulations and his dismissive smear against the people?
Who?
The Liberal Party?
They want to go even harder against the people.
Same with the NDP.
They love this.
This is the big spending, big borrowing, big taxing socialist utopia they always dreamed about.
The eco-nuts love this too.
They shut down the economy as they always wanted to do.
The government unions love it.
They're essential.
They get paid no matter what.
They get paid not to work.
Private businesses are shut down.
The political class hasn't been touched by these lockdowns.
None of Doug Ford's new friends have been impacted in any way.
And you don't seriously think he follows his own rules about social distancing or masks or not connecting households, do you?
I mean, do you really?
I mean, do you, really?
So what's the alternative?
I see Maxine Bernier is running in a federal by-election in North Toronto.
I like him, but he's going to be lucky to get 10% of the vote there.
Sorry, I wish it weren't so.
I wish he'd win.
But even if he did, he's federal, of course.
He's not provincial.
Provincially, I see nothing other than a handful of conservative backbenchers too timid to speak out seriously, just total submission and compliance in that caucus.
Very obedient.
Except last night, I see that Jim Karahalios, a gadfly in both the federal and provincial conservative parties, and his wife, Belinda, a Conservative MPP who has been ejected from Doug Ford's caucus, they were talking about starting a new political party.
So on Friday, right before the Thanksgiving weekend, at the end of day, Elections Ontario sent us formal documentation and they approved the name of a new political party, the new Blue Party of Ontario.
And we've now received the okay to use that name for a political party.
And we'll either have to collect a thousand signatures from people across Ontario who are eligible to vote in a general election and submit that to Elections Ontario to get approved.
There's also a possibility that we can work with some other smaller parties in Ontario that already exist and see if there would be a merger of some sorts to speed up the process.
And that's help is on the way.
So people have reached out to us, said, you can't stop.
You got to run again, Belinda.
You guys need to together not give up.
And so that's the solution, creating a new party in Ontario because the Ontario PC Party, there's no democracy inside of it.
And they say that Randy Hillier, an outspoken Conservative MP, also kicked out of the caucus.
Well, who knows?
He might join them too, possibly.
So it's the new Blue Party of Ontario for us moving forward.
It's very exciting.
And the first goal would be to help you get re-elected.
And Randy Hillier, whether he runs as independent or maybe when he closes the loop there with the Ontario PC Party sitting on their writing board, it'd be great to have him run under the party banner.
Wasn't that interesting?
I really wish Maxime Bernier had a seat in parliament, just one, maybe many.
But without one, he's just a pundit, really.
A new party with seats in an, without seats, rather, a new party without seats, it's an advocacy group.
It has no resources, no office, no right to speak in the legislature, but imagine a party with a couple of seats.
Don't laugh.
The provincial liberals only have eight.
I don't know Belinda Karahelios well.
Randy Hillier has been the best critic of the lockdowns in Ontario.
I mean, look at this provocative but fact-based question he put the other day.
Thank you, Speaker.
Speaker, my question is to the Premier.
In my supplemental question yesterday, I asked this government if the people of Ontario should prepare for internment camps.
In September, the federal government posted a call for expressions of interest for contractors to supply, provide, and manage quarantine isolation camps throughout every province and every territory in Canada.
These quarantine isolation camps, however, are not limited to people with COVID, but provide a wide latitude for many people to be detained.
Surely this government is aware of the intentions to build these isolation camps from coast to coast.
And my question to the Premier is, how many of these camps will be built?
And how many people does this government expect to detect?
It's not a conspiracy theory.
That's a question based on a procurement contract tendered by the Liberals.
I can tell you, many Conservative MPPs are thinking that quarantine facilities procurement, that's nuts, that's crazy.
Don't go there.
But not one has the courage to say it out loud.
The NDP and the Liberals are lusting for it.
Doug Ford's silent about it.
I like the fact that Randy Hillier is talking about it.
If this new party starts, even with two MPPs, they can raise issues that otherwise would be ignored.
Real issues, real questions, providing real opposition that the media party hasn't, that other opposition parties haven't.
The Civil Liberties Associations haven't, real opposition.
And who knows?
Maybe they would grow in number with more defections.
Surely not every one of the 72 PCs love what Doug Ford is doing.
Surely there is at least, I don't know, one businessman in there or one nurse or doctor or accountant who says, you're ruining people's lives now.
The lockdown is killing more than it saves.
Who knows?
A guy can dream, but stay with me.
Defectors Dreaming00:07:49
I've got Jim and Belinda Karahalios on the line to answer my questions.
And joining me now live via Skype are Jim and Belinda Karahalios.
Hello.
Thanks for taking the time to be with us today.
Hi, Ezra.
Great to be here.
Thanks for having us.
Well, my pleasure.
I watched your mutual interview.
I guess you sort of interviewed each other over the Thanksgiving long weekend, and I thought it's interesting, but I thought there was also a lot of news in it.
The idea of creating a new, explicitly conservative political party in Ontario is news, but it's much more powerful news if that party starts off with an actual elected representative.
And Belinda, that's your plan, I take it, is to be the first MPP in the new Blue Party.
Yes, that's correct.
You know, currently, Ezra, there is no party in the Ontario legislature that is defending the taxpayer, defending places of worship, defending small businesses, none promoting or protecting freedoms or democracy or fighting political corruption.
And that's what the new Blue Party stands for.
So if I understand from your video yesterday, you have the name pre-approved by Elections Ontario, so they won't strike out that name later as being too close to another party or confusing.
So you have to go through the effort of getting, I think, 1,000 electors to sign a petition saying, yes, this is a new party.
Now, Jim, you're pretty good at the emails and the websites.
I can't imagine that getting 1,000 signatures going to be hard for you.
Is that something you can do online, or does it have to be people signing by hand a petition or something?
Well, every time you do something like this, Ezra, it's a new challenge.
We should be able to get 1,000.
It doesn't have to come from a certain number of ridings.
And as far as we know, it could be physical form or scan.
There's also the option, you know, if there's a snap election, we run three candidates, we get registered, or we work with another existing party to do some kind of a merger.
We've already had petitions coming in since last night.
Pleasantly surprised, caught us off guard.
They're coming in.
We haven't had a chance to count and see how many we've received.
But there's a lot of support across Ontario for a party that represents the values that Belinda discussed and a party that doesn't agree with all the other establishment parties on every major policy issue.
Now, Belinda, I know your former caucus colleague, the both of you, are on the outs now, Randy Hillier.
I very much appreciate his principal take on things.
It didn't surprise me one bit when he was given the boot by Doug Ford.
He's a bit of a dissident in his own way, like you guys are.
Have you had any communications with him that you're at liberty to describe?
Because one MPP in a new party is something, but you have two.
All of a sudden, you're a bit of a thing.
You can have caucus meetings.
You maybe one day might even get some sort of a budget from the speaker's office.
I don't know.
Maybe you sit next to each other in the provincial parliament.
Have you talked to Randy at all?
Or at least are you able to tell us if you have?
So in order to get any type of benefit in the legislature, you do need to have 12 people.
So if Randy were to join, we'd be another 10 people away from that.
But as far as I know, he's still part of his PC board.
I don't know if his intention is to run again, but always open to conversations.
Yeah, we support Randy, and he's been through a hard go with this Ford government.
He was a loyal PC caucus member for 14 years, fighting some of the underhanded things that we saw under the prior leader, got to turf very early on under Ford under bogus allegations from Ford's backroom boys.
And so we support him.
So if he makes the announcement he wants to run again, even as an independent Ezra, we would support him.
It'd be great to have him on side and have Belinda and him as two MPPs as part of the same party in a united front.
Now, I mean, Jim, we've been following you for some time now.
Most recently, in your campaign to become the leader of the federal conservatives, that ended when the party disqualified you, banned you, fined you in a closed-door hearing.
We objected to that, just like we objected to the other candidates, DeCary from Quebec, being thrown out.
My point of view is in a Democratic party.
Let the members decide.
But that is how your fate ended there.
And you had similar internal battles with Ontario's PC party under its former leader, Patrick Brown.
I think it's good to be a dissident.
I regard myself as a dissident.
But are you a builder also?
And I remember I asked you a question to this effect when you ran for the federal conservatives.
You're a critic, which we need, we don't have enough of.
You're a, you bring a focus to shortcomings.
But are you a builder also?
Can this be more than just a party of the people Doug Ford kicks out?
Belinda and I are builders, Ezra, and you'll know that it's largely the same people in the back in the Federal Conservative and the Ontario PC Party when it comes to internal party races.
If we weren't builders, Ezra, we wouldn't be in this position.
If we were running and finishing last, whether it was Belinda's nomination, me running at a PC convention or in the federal leadership, they'd ignore us.
So it's exactly the fact that we're not just critics.
We were asking for the PC party to abide by their constitution, their processes.
They're the ones that are offside and going rogue with just basic democratic things that they promised the members.
And we were able to build movements and become a threat, and they went after us.
If we weren't builders offering solutions, they would just leave us alone and ignore us.
And if we weren't builders, Ezra, in the 2018 PC leadership race, all four candidates wouldn't have agreed with Axe the Carbon Tax, take back our PC party, cleaning up the party.
All right, fair answer.
Hey, Belinda, I presume that you would be the founding leader of the party.
Is that correct?
And would there be a party convention where that would be formalized?
Would you just sort of start off as the founding leader?
Would there be a leadership contest?
How would that go?
So the news was released less than 24 hours ago.
So we're still kind of, we've got to submit the signatures once we get them.
So that hasn't been discussed yet, but that will be coming.
And we have a team helping us, Ezra, in the back.
And part of the thing we didn't cover in the video is Belinda tasked me.
She came up with the name.
She said, Jim, go and figure out if Elections Ontario will let us use this name.
And they caught us off guard Friday end of day, pleasantly.
We're not complaining about it.
We thought it would take five, six weeks to get a yay or nay or some suggestions.
And they sent it back Friday, put it up on the website on Elections Ontario so it was public.
So we felt like we needed to let people know before someone checked on their website what was going on.
New Party Name Approved00:07:21
Well, I'm guessing they don't have a lot going on these days at Elections Ontario.
Well, they do a good job.
They do a good job.
Well, I'm glad to hear it.
The federal counterparts apparently allowed 3,500 foreigners to vote in the last election that we know about.
Yeah, and voter fraud starts in internal party races and then it bleeds into general elections.
So it's becoming a problem.
Yeah, I agree.
I know there's a number of Ontario Conservatives who are not thrilled with this lockdown.
They might be agitated by Doug Ford for personal reasons or for particular issues.
But the general approach to lockdown, I think you look around the world and I think that it's not even a left-wing, right-wing divide.
It's an authoritarian divide, big government, authoritarian, reduce democracy, stay in the emergency state, keep issuing orders by fiat or governing by regulation.
The United Kingdom and Australia's state of Victoria have to be the worst for that.
But I sense a divide and it's about 90% of the people on the authoritarian side and about 10% of the people on the Liberty side.
But I see the pendulum swinging back in some places like the UK.
Do you know of any sitting Doug Ford MPPs who have expressed privately their concern with the way Doug Ford has just absolutely embraced the medical political state, the medical political industrial complex?
Sure, Teresa Tam, sure, World Health Organization will just hand you all the decisions that we used to make democratically.
Is there anyone in Ford's caucus who says, you know, I don't like the way this is going?
Yeah, so I have a good relationship with a lot of the PC caucus members still.
And, you know, a lot of them were frustrated with a lot of the flip-flops that occurred, so promises made in the 2018 election that were then broken after we all got our seats in government.
And this was the breaking point for a lot of them.
But I understand that there is a lot of fear.
So there was a whole, you know, all 72 sitting MPPs were appointed.
If they said it was acclaimed, but we know it's appointed for the next election.
So it's a carrot that's being dangled, right?
So a lot of them, as much as they don't agree with it, unfortunately, there's no real dissent that's allowed.
Because as you saw with me, once you actually publicly speak out against something, you get the boot.
And wondering what the MPPs think or believe, Ezra, doesn't really matter anymore because we're in a world now where they don't even have the right to speak out without getting turf.
And so it's just about what the leader and a couple of his handlers think and maybe a couple in cabinet and everyone else, you know, who cares what they think?
And constituents across Ontario are left without democratic representation in that kind of system.
And that's what I have the most issue with is the fact that at the end of the day, regardless of what party someone stands for, the member of provincial parliament is the voice for all of his or her constituents.
And when you do not allow an MPP to speak on behalf of their constituents, you've silenced all of those people.
So so much for democracy.
And I have a huge issue with that.
Yeah, I'm not as familiar with the smaller parties in Ontario as I should be.
But if the other provinces that I know better are any guide, there's typically parties to the right that don't have a chance of electing a government.
They usually don't have the chance of electing even a single seat.
But in some ridings, they pick up 5, 10, 15% of the vote if they have a charismatic candidate.
I'm thinking in some parts of BC, the Christian Heritage Party.
I'm thinking actually provincially, the BC, they have the Provincial Conservative Party.
In Alberta, it used to be split between the Wild Rose Party and the Alberta Alliance, etc.
Are there other small parties in Ontario that might agree to be rolled up into the new Blue Party, given that you guys have the profile and at least one seat in the provincial parliament?
So we're happy to talk to, you know, when you're building a party, you want to talk to as many people as possible.
And if they share the values and the go forward, we're happy to talk to them.
The trajectory of the PC party over not only the last two leaders, but really over the last 15, 20 years has resulted in Ontario with a number of small political parties, not just one or two.
And, you know, I think that that's a direct reflection of having a PC party that doesn't represent the activists and the voters on the ground who vote for it.
And people want to do something and they register political parties and that's their only outlet.
That's their only avenue.
So there's quite a few parties out there.
We don't know the people who lead those parties personally with the exception of one or two.
But we're happy to have those discussions.
Absolutely.
Well, I think this is very interesting.
I think that for so long, conservative parties have taken conservative voters for granted simply by saying, well, where else are you going to go?
I think this new party you are conceiving perhaps answers that question.
It'll be interesting to me if Doug Ford tacks back to the right to nip you in the bud, or if he does the opposite, if he drives more people to you by contemptuously dealing with your issues.
Well, he'll most definitely do that, Ezra.
Even after Belinda started asking questions in the House the last three, four weeks, you saw him give some rhetoric in some of the press conferences.
Post-media came running to his defense for a 24-hour news cycle.
Oh, he's back.
Doug Ford's back.
He's definitely going to do that.
But Belinda's exposed so many flip-flops of the Doug Ford government that any conservative voter who buys his rhetoric after two years of what we've seen, you know, fool me once, Ezra, but we got to look beyond the rhetoric and see at what he's actually doing.
He's not Rob Ford.
He's Doug Ford.
He's an authoritarian and he's not conservative and he's not for democracy.
Doug Ford's liberal government.
All right.
Well, listen, good to catch up with you, too.
Thanks for taking the time to be with us.
We'll follow with great interest and we'll see what our friend Randy Hillier does, another MPP who speaks his mind.
We'll see if other conservative MPPs decide to leave the Doug Ford party and join you or who else you attract on the grassroots side.
Keep in touch with us.
Thanks, Ezra.
Thank you so much.
All right.
There you have it.
Jim and Belinda Kerry-Helios, who announced over the weekend that they have pre-approval for the name of a new party in Ontario, and now they're going to try to build it.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Welcome back.
Drea Joins The Team00:01:56
Your letters on our show yesterday on the best of Drea Humphrey.
Paul writes, great find by Rebel News.
Drea is another great addition to the team.
I am so thrilled with how she's doing.
I think she's wonderful, and Vancouver is such an important city, and she covers the hot issues.
She's doing a great job.
Jer writes, Drea does a fantastic job of representing Canada's West Coast.
Are there any plans to bring on an East Coast member to the team?
Maybe Rex Murphy would be interested.
Well, I love Rex Murphy.
I don't know if he's an on-the-ground reporter, though.
He's more a commentator who sits back, looks at the passing parade, and gives his commentary.
I don't know if he's ever actually gone out into the field as a reporter, certainly not in recent years.
He's the best.
I think he's probably all locked up in an exclusive deal with post-media.
I don't know if he'd even do a Rebel video, but I would like to have someone in the Atlantic.
They've got to be good.
They've got to be rebellious in spirit.
They've got to be courageous to swim against the current there.
I should say we do have one journalist in the Atlantic, and she's slowly gearing up.
It's our friend Anna Slatz.
And she's not going full-tilt.
She's not doing videos every day, but she's doing writing for us and editing.
And who knows?
Maybe she will be our Atlantic star.
I'll have to talk to her some more.
Instead of brainstorming on TV, I'll give the gal a call.
Anyways, we do have lots of talent these days.
Anna's great.
Dre is great.
And we recently hired someone from Port Coburg, of course, Tamara Ugalini.
There's a lot of rebels, and we're fighting so hard.
And, you know, one of the hardest fighting is down in Australia, Aviamini in Melbourne.
So we're giving her every day.
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