Ezra Levant and Andrew Lawton critique Erin O’Toole’s leadership amid the March 18–19, 2021 Conservative virtual convention, where his removal of Derek Sloan and Pierre Polyev—key figures like Polyev, Canada’s most effective MP—sparked backlash. O’Toole dropped opposition to foreign aid despite 10% unemployment and unresolved domestic crises, including Trudeau’s $3B+ China funding, while hiring Huawei-linked staff. Polls show a 90% chance of Liberal gains under his leadership, prompting calls for Stephen Harper’s return due to his unity record and policy strength. Alberta’s recall "sham" and Pastor Coates’ legal victory highlight deeper conservative fractures, questioning O’Toole’s ability to rally the base. [Automatically generated summary]
It's in cyberspace, so I'm not sure how much fun or excitement will come from it.
But one thing that I'm interested in is the speech by Aaron O'Toole.
That's tomorrow night.
Sheila Gunreed and I will do a live stream of it.
But look, if things continue the way they are, Aaron O'Toole is going to get crushed like a bowl of eggs.
What should the party do after?
Should they just give him another shot and then maybe another?
I have a proposal to bring in a candidate with name recognition, a track record of success, and the ability to unite different parts of the conservative coalition.
I'll tell you who I think should start preparing for a leadership run for the conservatives, if in fact Aaron O'Toole gets crushed this spring, as I think he will.
So listen to my podcast for that.
But first, hey, do me a favor and consider becoming a Rebel News Plus subscriber.
That's what we call our video version of this podcast.
It's eight bucks a month, and that basically gets you this video show.
Sheila Gunread, David Menzies, Andrew Chapatos.
And importantly, it keeps our lights on.
We pay the bills with that.
Because as you know, we don't take a dime from Justin Trudeau's bailout.
So please go to RebelNews.com and click subscribe.
It's just $8 a month.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, the Federal Conservative Party Convention begins online.
It's March 18th, 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 publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Well, no one knows for sure, maybe not even Justin Trudeau, but the official thinking, the conventional wisdom is we're going to have a federal election this year.
The question is that in the spring or in the fall, the fact that Justin Trudeau has totally flubbed the vaccine process.
Well, that looks bad.
Even if you're an anti-vaxxer, it's embarrassing for him.
But I don't think anything can embarrass Justin Trudeau.
I think we're going to have an election in the spring.
Well, today, the Federal Conservative Party started its convention, its last chance to meet as a party before going into that vote.
Of course, because of the pandemic, the party will not actually meet.
It'll be all done via Zoom, an online conference, which isn't very much fun, but they're going to do their best.
I want to tell you, I've gone through the conference schedule, and in fact, tomorrow night at 5.15 p.m. Eastern Time or 3.15 p.m. Mountain Time, Aaron O'Toole is going to have his big leadership speech.
That's the moment.
Now, normally that would be in front of a big crowd and people would go wild and there'd be people with signs.
It'll be interesting to see how that works when it's really just a YouTube video.
It's tough for any speaker to get energy from an empty camera.
Normally you like crowds clapping, so it'll make it a little bit of a tougher speech, but obviously the speech can be scripted and even filmed in advance.
It wouldn't surprise me if the speech for tomorrow night has actually already been recorded, edited, and perfected.
Sheila Gunreed and I will be live streaming that speech for you tomorrow.
We'll start about 15 minutes before it, so 5 p.m. Eastern Time, 3 p.m. Mountain Time.
I'll be here in our Toronto headquarters.
Sheila will be out west and we'll have a chat.
We'll play the whole speech.
Then we'll come back and talk about it.
And you can participate too with what we call live stream super chats.
So I don't know yet how the convention is going to go, but there's a few things I can observe right away.
Aaron O'Toole's Conventions Woes00:06:03
First of all, Aaron O'Toole, the leader of the Conservatives, is very much scared of this convention.
I know that because of the steps he's taken to weed out any socially conservative members of the party who pose some sort of threat to him at the convention.
I'm not sure what threat that was, but that was the reason why Aaron O'Toole sacked Derek Sloan from the caucus and then proceeded to dissolve Derek Sloan's local district association.
I find that very unusual.
But if you look at what's been going on over the last few months, it fits a pattern.
Aaron O'Toole eliminating anyone who might be a rival.
We've done a series of shows on this.
I showed you the CBC story where conservative lobbyists like Tim Powers talked about how Aaron O'Toole has to distance himself from conservatives like Jason Kenney and from the hostility to the carbon tax that is a bedrock of conservative viewpoints.
And Aaron O'Toole indeed has talked about he's a net zero candidate, which is impossible if you want fossil fuels.
More recently, Aaron O'Toole demoted Pierre Polyev, the finance critic for the Conservative Party and really the most effective MP in the entire caucus.
Other things along the way, insulting rebel news, which I don't think makes any sense, but he did it.
And just last week, a bizarre and shocking decision to throw out the party's age-old policy plank that called for a reduction in foreign aid.
Now, Canada's unemployment rate is almost 10%.
It's actually the worst out of all G7 countries.
Trudeau's debt is staggering.
It's in the trillions now.
And there's many problems that need pressing help if you're looking to help poor people.
Well, you could look at people within this country even if you wanted to be woke about it, getting clean drinking water in northern Indian reserves that Trudeau once said was his high priority.
Imagine being in favor of diverting money to foreign countries, including, as you know, Trudeau still gives foreign aid to China itself.
Opposing foreign aid isn't just the right thing to do.
It's extremely popular with vast swaths of Canadian population.
But Aaron O'Toole just threw away that policy plank too.
As you know, in recent weeks, O'Toole has hired the former vice president of Huawei Canada and has quietly removed the ban Huawei petition from the Conservative Party page.
I'm worried about the direction the party is going.
We'll see in his speech tomorrow how he wants to present himself to the country.
Really, this is his last chance, in my opinion, before the campaign begins.
And if you scroll through the party's official convention page, you'll start to see what Aaron O'Toole's version of the Conservative Party looks like.
Here's on screen a list of the official speakers of the conference.
You'll notice, obviously, Jason Kenney is not on there, but neither is Pierre Polyev.
Polyev, of course, was demoted, and the Conservatives said, no, no, we're putting him in an even better position.
Really?
He has no position on the speaker's roster.
That's odd.
He had an amazing week.
Remember just the other day when the Kielberger brothers were summoned to parliament?
Take a look at this exchange between Pierre Polyev and the Kielbergers.
What was the role exactly of Mr. Chen, senior advisor to the prime minister in setting up this program?
I don't think he had any role.
Mr. Is that the answer for both of you?
Yes, that's correct.
Who are you referring to, sir?
Can you remember?
Yes, please.
Ben Chin.
There's no role.
Craig, no role?
Not that I'm aware of.
Then why did you send him a message on LinkedIn on June 27th saying, hello, Ben?
Thank you for your kindness in helping shape our latest program with the government.
Warmly, Craig.
Sure.
So I sent 100 messages because I only had seven people, eight people on LinkedIn before that.
And so that day, 100 messages went out.
My EA sent them to people to join on LinkedIn, and he was one of them.
Yes, actually, but Craig, this is your message.
It's signed by you.
And if I could be clear, it doesn't just say, I wish you well.
It says, Ben, excuse me, thank you for your kindness in helping shape our latest program with the government.
Warmly, Craig.
You sent that.
Did you not?
Yeah, I don't dispute that that was sense.
Sorry, sorry.
You got yourself in a lot of trouble here.
You've just said a moment ago, you thought that the prime minister's senior advisor, Mr. Chen, had no role in the establishment of the program, but I have correspondence where you thanked him for helping shape that very program.
It's rare that a political committee meeting is that riveting, that gripping, just for sheer entertainment and wow factor, let alone for actually achieving conservative goals.
Pierre Polyev is a star, which is maybe why he was left off the roster.
Well, look who's on the roster.
As you can see, one of the speakers is named Waleed Solomon.
He's not an MP.
Who's he?
Well, he works for one of the largest law firms in the world.
He was best known as Patrick Brown's best friend and ally in his disastrous pro-carbon tax leadership of the provincial Conservative Party.
Wally Solomon has also been accused of being soft on Islamism.
He's denied that and sued anyone who said that about him, including other conservatives.
Conservative Leadership Crisis00:10:02
Having Wally Solomon on the platform of speakers and banning the likes of Jason Kenney and Pierre Polyev says a lot about the direction of Aaron O'Toole.
If you click on related events on the website, the first thing that comes up is another scary indicator.
Again, these aren't official party events, but these are events that the party is promoting on their website, advertising to people to join.
And you can see it's by a group called Clean Prosperity.
What's that?
Well, you can probably guess.
That's a global warming activist group.
I don't know how they got on this list.
I assume they paid money to Aaron O'Toole.
And of course, Aaron O'Toole is proud to be associated with him, unlike, say, Rebel News, Pierre Polyev, or Derek Sloan.
I find it deeply troubling these little indicators.
We'll see in the speech tomorrow night.
I'm not prejudging it, but recent events tells me I should have a low expectation.
Tomorrow's speech is at 5.15 p.m.
I imagine there'll be a little preamble video, a prepared, produced video that shows the great successes of Aaron O'Toole's six months as party leader.
Well, if that were the case, it would be quite a short video.
This is when he needs a bump.
Parties often have a bump in the polls from their conventions because the conventions give them a chance to showcase themselves on their own terms, and the media often covers that.
I doubt that's going to happen here.
There's not a lot to show.
And most of the proceedings are not going to be made available to the public.
In fact, there's a frequently asked questions section of the page that says, will any of these sessions be available online for viewing?
And the party explicitly says, no, they will not.
It's almost like it's a secret convention.
I presume the party's leadership speech tomorrow night will be made public, but I don't expect there to be a bump in the polls.
In fact, if you look at that CBC poll aggregator that we've looked at before, and again, I don't trust the CBC as far as I can throw them, but all they've done here is simply aggregate all the polls.
So they're just putting it all together in one place, and they're extrapolating from that based on region and province, how many seats they expect each party to get?
You can see there's a bit of a bandwidth there, but they predict that the Conservatives will lose a dozen seats if Aaron O'Toole stays on course.
And they say that the likelihood of a Liberal Party majority is 46%.
The likelihood of a Liberal Party minority again is another 44%.
That's a 90% chance of a Liberal victory.
Only a 10% chance of a Conservative victory, and that would only be a minority.
So what happens if, let's think a few months into the future, what happens if those poll predictors come true?
If Wally Solomon, the mastermind behind Patrick Brown's success in Ontario, becomes the mastermind of the same disaster for Aaron O'Toole.
What happens if he in fact rolls the party back and gives Justin Trudeau a majority win?
Well, some might say Aaron O'Toole simply didn't have enough time.
He'll want to hold on and get a second chance and run for the party again.
I can understand there would be some fatigue in the party from having leadership races.
There was just one six months ago.
But if Aaron O'Toole can't even muster party support now in his, quote, honeymoon phase, how is he going to do it later?
Would Pierre Polyev throw his hat into the ring?
And by that I mean would he challenge Aaron O'Toole's leadership if Aaron O'Toole loses the seats he's expected to do?
I'm not an expert in the Conservative Party constitution, but I expect one of the reasons O'Toole's having his conference now is so that there's no legally required leadership mandate for quite a while.
Again, I'm not an expert in the rules.
Pierre Polyev briefly threw his hat into the ring, at least in an exploratory sense, in the last leadership race before suddenly dropping out.
I was very sad that he did.
I thought he was excellent.
Perhaps something was brought to an attention, some opposition research designed to embarrass him, perhaps some personal scandal.
I simply don't know.
But I was sad that he dropped out and I hope he reconsiders.
But what if he doesn't?
Or what if he does and the party just can't win?
Peter McKay, who came in second in the last leadership race, was no winner either, I believe.
Is the Conservative Party doomed to an eternity in opposition?
Could Justin Trudeau do what his father Pierre Trudeau did and govern pretty much for 16 years?
That was Pierre Trudeau from 1968 to 1994.
Only a brief break in there for Joe Clark.
What should Conservatives do?
Who has the policy smarts?
Who has the true conservative beliefs that would unite the party, both fiscal conservatives and social conservatives, populists and downtown Toronto fancy pants?
Who can do that?
Who's strong enough to stare down the media when they're just giving him a rough time?
Definitely, Aaron O'Toole is not.
Who has the name recognition to instantly take a jump in the polls?
whose personal temperament, whose personality is a fit for these troubled times.
I know a guy.
His name is Stephen Harper.
He was the most successful conservative leader in a generation.
He put back together a fractious conservative movement that had split amongst the Conservative Party and the Reform Party.
He wasn't beloved by journalists, but he was respected by them.
In this era of wasteful spending, his penny-pinching approach and his economists' pedigree would serve him and our country well.
And more to the point, he's a winner.
He didn't win his last election, but by then I think people were fatigued and the media and the perfect storm of the campaign gave it to Trudeau, but just barely.
Well, now it's Trudeau's perfect storm of incompetence, debt, and high unemployment.
I say, bring back Harper.
Let him put things together again.
Is he really enjoying himself being a consultant?
Unlike Brian Mulroney, Stephen Harper doesn't crave status and pedigree.
Unlike Brian Mulroney, Stephen Harper doesn't crave money.
I think he's enjoying talking to Israel's leaders and India's leaders and people he finds genuinely interesting.
But I've got to think that whenever he turns on the TV and sees Trudeau muck it up again or see Trudeau being the lightweight at the G7 or the G20, that a part of Stephen Harper thinks, I should be there, not that chump.
So I say, let Aaron O'Toole give his speech tomorrow and Sheila and I will give you our true and honest reaction.
And I say let Aaron O'Toole run in the next election.
It's too late to change it.
But if he does what everyone thinks he'll do, blow it.
I think the answer isn't to give him yet another try or even just to ask the party to go through yet another leadership with candidates of no account.
I think the answer is to draft Stephen Harper.
He's still young enough.
He's still engaged enough.
He's still smart enough.
And I think maybe he's the only guy who can bring the Conservative Party's confidence back.
You know, we had a petition for Stephen Harper a few years back.
I don't know if you remember.
When he retired, we put up a petition to name the Calgary International Airport Harper International Airport.
The story got a little bit of buzz, but it didn't happen.
Did you really think Justin Trudeau was going to give him that?
Well, let's stop talking about airports and let's actually petition the man himself.
You know, I've known Stephen Harper for quite a while, and I know one thing about him.
He's thought about government and governing as a conservative his whole life.
I don't believe his true purpose is to be a lobbyist or a consultant or a jet-setter for its own sake.
I believe his purpose is to give conservative leadership to Canada.
And I believe that his whole family would support him, especially now that his kids are grown up and he can focus all his attentions on the job at hand.
If you agree with me that Stephen Harper should start wrapping up his career and think about coming back to serve the country, obviously that's a personal decision for him to make, but he's a man with a public spirit.
If you think he should decide to come back, then I ask you to go to bringbackharper.com and sign the petition.
I want to get thousands of conservatives to sign the petition, and we will deliver that petition to Stephen Harper and tell him, boss, you're not done yet.
You got one more mission to save this country.
If you agree with me, go to bringbackharper.com and sign that petition.
Stay with us.
Well, if you want to talk about conservative politics, you've got to talk to Andrew Lawton.
He knows his stuff.
He's one of our favorite guys, and he works for True North.
He joins us now via Skype.
Andrew, great to see you.
The Conservative Party convention is on, and normally you'd be there, but there's no there.
Conservative Politics Recall Debate00:14:04
It's all an online conference, isn't it?
Yeah, and my approach to this is kind of yet another virtual event.
It's difficult a year in to get excited about too many Zoom events, but this is the era in which we're living.
Yeah, I don't blame anybody for this.
I mean, the Conservatives probably couldn't hold this event anywhere in Canada.
They'd have to fly down to Florida to find a place that would allow them to meet.
And of course, that wouldn't work with the quarantine.
I'm not as interested in the virtual nature of the convention as I am a few little signs of the party's direction.
Let me give you a couple examples.
Clean Prosperity, which is sort of a global warming think tank, is having an official event.
I don't see the Taxpayers Federation there.
You have speakers like Wally Solomon, Patrick Brown's former top aide, but Pierre Polyev isn't a speaker.
And I'm worried that these are little signals and symbols of the party's direction.
What do you think?
Yeah, it's a bit concerning that conventions, and I'll take a step back on this actually, because the problem with political conventions is that they are more about theater than they are about substance historically.
Despite debates on policy resolutions, a lot of the outcomes are very scripted.
And under normal circumstances, why people go to these things is to schmooze.
People want to hobnob.
People want to do all sorts of things.
And yes, you have special interest groups that want to be a part of it by hosting their hospitality suites and all that.
But there is a big issue right now because this is, despite the virtual nature of it, Aaron O'Toole's coming out party to the conservative base as leader.
You may remember it was in August that he became the leader.
He gave his victory speech at 3 in the morning or something like that.
But this is his first time to really address the base, address the party membership since that night.
And in doing so, he's addressing people that voted for Derek Sloan, who voted for Lesland Lewis, who voted for Peter McKay.
And the thing about that is that of the four candidates in the race, Derek Sloan's now out of caucus.
Peter McKay is not running again.
So there's a lot lacking in the coalition.
And his thing has to be, can I keep this party together?
So I think that's the big narrative out of here.
And it is interesting to go back to your question about who the party is choosing to really make as part of that coalition.
Yeah, I remember when I briefly ran for office some 20 years ago, Stephen Harper was the new leader, and I watched him rebuild the Conservative Party.
The first thing he did is he brought back the breakaway MPs, Monty Solberg, Deborah Gray, Jay Hill, who went into something called the Democratic Representative Caucus.
So the Canadian Alliance had fractured.
He put that back together.
Then he put it together with the Conservatives.
He did that deal with Peter McKay.
So just watching Harper rebuild the coalition, there was room for social conservatives.
There was room for fiscal conservatives.
There was room for Western Conservatives.
Like you could see it in real time as he literally brought people in one by one.
You could feel it.
I don't feel that with Aaron O'Toole.
I see him pushing aside Derek Sloan.
Dissolve.
I think he pushed aside Pierre Polyev.
Like, I just don't buy the excuses that he was repositioning Polyev.
Where is he in the lineup?
I just, I'm worried about him.
I don't think it's going to win.
And even if it did win, I mean, I mentioned in my monologue, O'Toole just came out in favor of maintaining foreign aid at Trudeau levels.
That's the most unconserved thing I ever heard.
It's not a political winner.
I think he's just afraid of being conservative.
Anyway, I'm ranting.
What do you think?
It's funny, when you mentioned foreign aid, I used to, in the before times, travel a fair bit for the nature of my work.
And, you know, everyone who's ever been on an airplane has heard that whole, you got to put your own mask on, a different kind of mask than what we're used to now, but you've got to put your own mask on before you assist others.
And that's the reality, is that countries have to look out for their own interests before they help others.
And in great times, yes, Canada may have had some extra money that it could spare to other countries around the world that were struggling.
But the one thing we saw in the pandemic is that we actually, as a country, have not been able to look after ourselves.
We weren't able to shore up personal protective equipment.
We aren't able to produce any vaccine at all domestically.
We aren't able to import at a rate that is anything to be proud of vaccine from elsewhere in the world.
And it's other countries that have now had to come to Canada's benefit on this.
So I think the foreign aid discussion in the COVID era is a very interesting one.
When Canada could not look after itself in a time of crisis, why are we talking about maintaining foreign aid to other countries that, by the way, I would say has not been particularly effective?
And I don't think this is a contentious issue in the conservatives.
I think if you were to put ending foreign aid 100% on a ballot question at a Conservative Party of Canada convention, it would probably pass 90%.
So I find it odd that this is the one he's choosing to go against the base on.
Yeah.
Well, and as I said in my monologue, I just think it's the latest in a series of things.
He's scaring me on a few things.
I'm worried he's going really wobbly on the carbon tax.
And even if he says the words, I'm against a carbon tax, I feel like de facto he's approving a carbon tax by other names.
It scares me.
Can I throw one crazy idea at you?
I don't think you heard my monologue because I just recorded it before you came on.
I said, look, I want a Conservative to win.
I want Trudeau to lose.
I think that's obvious for anyone who knows me.
But I also am realistic.
I look at the polls.
O'Toole has not had a bump in his six months as leader.
I just don't see him getting traction.
And I feel like he's demoralizing part of his base.
Maybe I got it wrong, but that's how I see it.
I think he's cruising for a bruise.
And go ahead.
Yeah, I guess the challenge is that right now the message seems to be, hi, I'm Aaron.
Let me introduce myself to you.
And he's been somewhat, I think, self-aware in that sense from the day he took the stage in August and accepted.
And even some of the videos and messaging he's put out since then of just being candid, you don't know me.
Here's who I am.
But at a certain point, you have to ask, why are you still introducing yourself?
What is it that's missing?
And is it just that Canadians aren't paying attention to politics?
Perhaps.
We know, and I know from being a candidate, a lot of the time people do not start paying attention until the last couple of weeks of the campaign.
But when you look at, okay, we have a prime minister right now that's been pretty mired in scandal.
You've got government spending that's up to just untold levels, some of which can be attributed to spending programs that people would welcome, but other spending is just, you know, stuff like the Wii scandal.
And you've got a new fresh conservative leader who you'd think would get a bit of momentum just by virtue of being new, of being a fresh face.
So yeah, there is the question of where are you going to get that support from?
Are you going to get it by introducing yourself to Undecideds?
Are you going to peel support from the Liberals, from the NDP?
I know Aaron O'Toole has focused a fair bit on Quebec as the goal to get some support from the bloc from there.
And I haven't yet seen the plan as to where they want to grow.
Yeah.
You know, this whole let me introduce myself to you, Lynn.
Let's think about another industry.
Let's say a film actor or a pop singer.
You don't care about an actor or a singer who says, hi, let me tell you who I am.
You say, oh my God, who's singing that song?
Who's that?
Or, wow, I just saw an amazing movie.
Who's that?
So you look at what they do before you care about who they are.
I think politics is the same way.
Some guy just saying, oh, hi, can I introduce myself?
You don't need to introduce yourself if you're really coming out with powerful, motivating, articulate, visionary statements.
People get to know who you are pretty quick if you give them a reason to.
I mean, I'm thinking of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida.
No one said, who's the governor of Florida.
They said, who's the guy who's got the lockdown right?
So it's what he did.
Let me come back to my monologue.
If O'Toole loses, and I'm not saying he's going to, but boy, it looks that way.
I got an idea, and it's maybe it's crazy.
I want to throw it at you.
Who's got name recognition?
Who's a true conservative?
Who has the respect, if not the like, of the media?
Who can build a party, put the pieces back together?
What do you think of a petition to bring back Harper?
To say, look, buddy, we know you're not loving being a lobbyist consultant.
It's not your thing.
You're not like Brian Marooney, who wants status or money.
You love conservative leadership.
Come back, heal the Conservative Party, and beat Justin Trudeau.
What do you think?
There's precedent.
There's precedent.
If you look at Pierre Trudeau, that's what he did.
He left, he was out, and then he came back.
And, you know, ultimately, his most successful term politically was that term that he came back to the term in which he did the most damage.
But for him, politically, that was his most successful time.
Charter of Rights, National Energy Program, things that you and I hate.
He got it all done in his bonus term.
Imagine Harper comes back.
Boy, I'm warm into the idea.
Harper comes back.
He's only 61.
I just checked.
He's 61.
That is a very young man in Paris.
Donald Trump's 74.
Harper's 61.
His kids are grown up, so he doesn't have to worry about little ones at home.
He comes back in and he's just sort of like, guys, I told you so about True.
I told you so about everything.
He's made a fool out of us.
He's blown all the budget.
Bring back the grown-up.
Put the grown-up in.
I think the media would actually like it.
Or if they hated it, at least they would respect it.
How could he possibly do worse than Aaron O'Toole?
Absence has made the heart grow fonder.
He's been away for five years.
People miss him.
Well, you become a statesman when you've been out of it for a while.
And that's something.
I mean, I remember when George W. Bush was Hitler, and now George W. Bush is like the model Republican that the left holds up as why can't all Republicans be like George Bush?
And I'm like, I'm like, where were you guys in 2006 or 2008?
Well, it sounds like you like my idea a little bit.
Sounds like maybe a little bit.
Are you serious?
You like my idea?
I don't think it's going to happen, but I think it would be interesting.
And I will say to Stephen Harper's credit, one of the things that was interesting is that when he left office, he didn't do what everyone else did, which is get a do-nothing role on a law firm where you take no clients, you cash a big check every year.
His book even wasn't the memoir of like, oh, yes, my endeavors for public service began on a park bench in Calgary in 1962.
No, he wrote about policy.
He wrote about a lot of things that matter.
And you look what he's done going into work with the International Democrat Union.
So, no, he likes being in the game.
I would imagine that he's not interested in jumping back.
But there is something that I would bring up, Ezra, which is that if Aaron O'Toole does lose, that would make Justin Trudeau one of the most successful Canadian politicians in Canadian history.
He would have dethroned three conservative leaders in a row, one of whom was a prime minister.
And despite whatever misgivings people in Canada have about Trudeau, that is a metric of success that would be very dangerous for the conservatives to come back from.
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, you know what?
I'm going to think more about this.
We got a petition at bringbackharper.com.
We love our petitions over here, Andrew.
But I think that you said, I'm not even kidding.
You plunked down 20,000 names on Stephen Harper's desk saying, we want you back, buddy.
We need you back.
Not even want you.
Everyone wants something.
We need you back.
I don't know.
I think it's compelling.
We'll see what happens.
Great to see you.
Thanks for taking the time.
Thanks.
All right, there you have it, Andrew Lawton, one of the best guys around.
I recommend the Andrew Lawton show.
He's over there with our friends at tnc.news.
Excuse me, those are the true north guys in Yale's doing a great job.
Stay with us.
More at home.
Hey, welcome back on my show last night.
Tammy writes, it's ridiculous.
10% should be very enough for recall.
This bill is a sham.
Yeah, you know, the California Constitution says 12%.
And they haven't had recalls all the time.
They've only had one successful recall in recent memory.
They've had a few attempts, but you know, the threat is real enough that it causes politicians to be better behaved.
40%, you know, I haven't studied it very deeply, but I doubt there's a single jurisdiction in the world with 40% of the total electors, not just the number of voters.
I doubt there's a single jurisdiction in the world that has ever met that standard.
Paul writes, this recall, smoke and mirror nonsense, goes to show that Alberta needs a viable opposition party.
The UPC is going down the same road that got the NDP elected.
Yeah, look, I don't understand the point.
If you don't want a recall legislation, then don't have one.
But having a fake recall legislation that's literally impossible, and not just that, invites the poison pill approach.
I told you that because you can only attempt to recall someone once every turn, some faker, some agent provocateur, some agent of an unpopular MLA can start a petition for recall, let it lapse, and then the MLA is home-free.
Look, if you're going to do that, why not just don't do it?
Bringing in this shoddy recall legislation is really just another way of trying to trick conservatives into thinking that their policies are being enacted.
Fake Recall Legislation00:00:41
Laurel writes, I'm happy for Pastor Coates, his family, and congregation.
Let's hope the government's unholy and unjust persecution is finished and they have seen the light.
Kudos to the hardworking legal team.
I'm very pleased with the success that John Carpe and his group have had.
It's frustrating that the pastor was in prison for a full month, but it sounds like he'll be out as soon as tomorrow.
We will continue to report on the story at Grace Life Church because I can only imagine if the pastor didn't bend the knee after a month in prison, he's surely going to make his way to the church on Sunday.
That's going to be amazing.
Well, that's the show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.