Ezra Levant and Andrew Lawton critique Canada’s media landscape, where Rebel News thrives with $8/month subscriptions and lean operations—just four staff—while legacy outlets like Bell Media (CTV) waste resources on 40-person teams, layoffs (1,300 in 2023), and foreign office closures. Lawton highlights legacy media’s avoidance of controversial topics, like Justin Trudeau’s unexplained 2015 departure from a Vancouver private school or the downplaying of his blackface scandal, while conservatives face relentless attacks for ideology alone. An Abacus Data poll (81% disapproval of Trudeau) reveals Poilievre’s seven-point lead, but Levant warns a collapsing NDP vote could force a liberal-conservative coalition against him. The discussion underscores how media bias and inefficiency may doom Canada’s right-wing future unless conservatives adapt strategically. [Automatically generated summary]
A feature interview with one of our favorite guys, fan favorite, Andrew Lawton.
But first, let me invite you to get a subscription to what we call Rebel News Plus.
It's the video version of this podcast.
I'm going to show a few clips to you that I really want you to see with your eyes, not just hear them.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
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And we really do need that dough because we do not take government money.
We rely on you, my friends.
Rebelnewsplus.com.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, a feature interview with Andrew Lawton.
It's June 22nd, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Well, as a rule, I don't like talking to general interest pundits.
What do I mean by that?
I like talking to experts.
The other day, for example, we talked to Shee Van Fleet, who is an expert, yes, but she personally lived through Mao's cultural revolution.
Boy, she has a lot to teach about that subject, including terrifying photos of herself being re-educated.
When I think of general interest commentators, I say, well, that's sort of my job.
Let me talk to a particular expert like Dr. James Lindsay, the master of cultural Marxism.
But in my friend Andrew Lawton, we have someone who is such a great thinker and a clear analyst of what goes on.
I could talk to him all the time because on every subject, he's got a fresh perspective, a vibrant conservative idea.
And so I would talk to him about anything.
And today he joins us to talk about the state of the media in Canada about which he is a subject matter expert.
Andrew joins us now.
Great to see you, my friend.
Hey, thanks, Ezra.
I was nervous with that, where you were going.
I thought it was going to be like, yo, I love talking to experts and none were available.
So here's Andrew.
But you brought it around to be very pleasant and complimentary, and I'm appreciative of it all as always.
I mean, you are like me.
You're a general interest commentator, but I think you've got a fresh take on things.
And I'm saying why I love talking to you.
And I think when it comes to independent media, you actually do know more than the average bear.
I mean, just in your own life, you're the host of the Andrew Lawton Show, of course.
You're on Substack, andrew Lawton.substack.com.
So you have found a way to make a go of it in independent media without any money from the government.
One Person vs. 4000:05:12
That is a rare thing indeed.
And I say that, Andrew, because just last week, CTV, which is owned by Bell Media, one of the largest companies in this country, laid off, I think it was 1,300 staff, if I read that correctly, 6% of their workforce, including shutting down or selling nine radio stations and letting go some big names in there.
I mean, they're closing their offices in LA and Washington and London.
I think they're going down to one person in Washington.
They laid off Glenn McGregor and Joyce Napier, who were their on-camera talent in Ottawa.
That's incredible that a multi-billion dollar company like that can't make a go of it despite hundreds of millions of dollars of subsidies.
Why are you able to make a go of it?
But Mighty Bell Canada can't.
I think there are a few reasons there.
And one, and I don't want to understate it, is the technical aspect.
Anyone that's ever walked into a traditional newsroom, especially in TV and radio, knows they're very large.
They have a number of staff there on dealing with technical issues on production and on-air people.
And, you know, for example, when I was in Calgary for the Alberta election, True North had a little station.
Rebel had a station.
I think we had, you know, four people running our show.
And then you look over and Global has riser after riser after riser with they all took a group photo after about 40 people that were there to do that.
And I, and I think that in general, independent media has come about without money.
We all started doing it because we love doing it.
I mean, you started blogging.
I don't think you made a dime off of it for years.
I remember when you started Rebel in your living room, I started blogging and I think I actually lost money because I had to buy the domain name and the hosting.
But I think in doing that, it's a passion project.
And independent media exists not because they were started as businesses, but because the business came about as a way to facilitate what those of us in this space wanted to do.
And that passion, I think, translates to a passion that exists in the audience as well.
And that brings us to the second part, which is the actual business model, is that our business model is based entirely off of support from people that value the work that we do.
And in some cases, you know, advertising is like that, but not in the same direct way.
If people think we've lost our way, they're going to cancel their subscriptions.
If people like what we're doing, they're going to donate to us.
And it's a way to make sure that we're always relevant, which goes to the content that I feel is missing from a lot of what the legacy media is putting out.
Yeah.
And you mentioned the 40 people for global news.
And I don't know if you're exaggerating.
That's an enormous.
They did a group photo at the end and there were 40 people, maybe 36, but in that range.
I don't even know how you could do that.
And I acknowledge that if we had 40 people working on this program right now, I mean, I wouldn't even be able to come up with jobs for 40 people to do.
One person to check the thermostat, one person to give you a glass of water.
Yeah.
I don't know how many people I, I don't know if I could even accommodate 10 on this show that I do.
I mean, I used to work for Sun News Network a decade ago when there were 200 people in the whole company.
And it's true they had a sound guy in the studio.
They had a teleprompter roller.
They had a makeup artist or two.
Yeah, they had though.
But, you know, I mean, one of the reasons Sun News failed is it couldn't make a go of it economically.
I think that instead of starting with, well, what do we really need to make a go of it?
They said, well, how were we doing it before?
Let's just trim it a little bit instead of sort of a zero-based approach.
And they just thought, well, we'll just keep getting bailouts or we'll just keep getting bailout either from our corporate owner or from the government.
I don't know.
I just don't think that this show, which is being put on by really two or three people, would be 10 times better if 40 people were doing it.
I acknowledge that Global News production value is better than ours, but is it 10 times better?
I don't believe it is.
And I don't think it has 10 times the audience either.
No, and I mean, just to give a funny story about CTV specifically, years ago when I was doing my old radio show in London, my wife and I were going to dinner one night.
And as we were driving to the restaurant, I saw there was this massive, massive fire that was on one of the streets of this complex.
And, you know, being an intrepid journalist, I pulled over and said, okay, well, we've got some time.
We can go to dinner later.
Let me report on this.
And I started filming it and sending footage back to my newsroom.
And they were posting it up on Facebook and Twitter.
And there was a CTV journalist there who was a renowned CTV journalist in London, Ontario, who was standing around doing nothing because his camera guy hadn't showed up yet.
And I was thinking, well, you have an iPhone.
Why do you need a camera guy?
You are the camera guy.
Journalists vs. Podcasters00:07:43
And it's those little things that I think speak to that dynamic you've just described, which is this idea of how do we make do with what we have versus if we were to start from bottom up, forget everything we know about media, what would we create?
And a great example of this is COVID.
When the lockdowns came in and you weren't even allowed to have people in a studio, what did the legacy media outlets do?
They all started doing things that True North had been doing and Rebel had been doing for years by then and saying, oh, how do we get people with cameras in their home?
And how do we get people connected remotely?
And how do we use home internet?
And no, the quality is not identical to that that you're going to get in studio with tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment.
But it's about that question that you asked there of how much more do you get out of spending a million dollars versus a hundred thousand dollars to use your own studio renovation as an example.
Yeah, I remember when I was at Sun News, we would spend four or even $500 for a 10-minute satellite hit with someone where Skype is pretty good.
I mean, we're talking to you with Skype right now.
You really can't tell the difference.
So I would do two or three interviews a show.
Just that would be $1,500, $2,000 per show in satellite time.
That's just an example of how they operated in the olden days.
And when the government or some big corporation would give you that, oh, sure, why not?
You know, I want to talk for a second about the nine radio stations that Bell is getting rid of.
I mean, radio stations were once so coveted.
You need the license from the CRTC and there was only so much bandwidth, so you had to apply.
Now I understand they're literally just shutting down six of those, like just turning it off.
But again, there's so many podcasters out there.
Everyone's a podcaster these days.
I mean, the talent, there's more talent than ever.
I think it's that Bell doesn't know how to make a go of it because they don't know how to compete with ordinary people who have interesting things to say.
I mean, Joe Rogan is obviously huge right now, but that's an example of a podcaster who's just, I mean, what's his equipment?
He sits down and he talks at great length with the guest.
I think that maybe it's the end of the technological monopoly that has allowed every guy and their neighbor to be a podcaster.
And they're beating the boring, bland commercial radio.
I think that these six radio stations that they're shutting down could obviously be a hit.
People still do listen to radio, but they're not allowed to be interesting because by definition, if you work for the big corporation, you got to be sort of lukewarm on everything.
You can't take strong positions on anything because you'll get a call from CTV or Bell.
I don't know.
I just think it's incredible that what used to be such privileged real estate, a radio license, is now literally being thrown in the garbage.
Yeah.
And again, I'm totally willing to be transparent about this.
So this microphone that I'm speaking into now was about $450.
And it's a broadcast quality microphone that would not be out of place in a traditional radio studio.
The cable connecting it to my computer is maybe about $15.
I have a little box that was $150 that connects that cable to my computer.
And the whole thing is less than $1,000.
And if you wanted to, you could even buy for $150 a microphone that might not be as good, but will still be perfectly reasonable for what a lot of people want.
That is a low barrier to entry.
And the way that you compete is not by how fancy your equipment is, by how good the content is.
And that's where these companies in Canada, be it where I used to work, Chorus slash Global, Bell, Rogers, there are some regional chains out west.
What they've lost sight of is the importance of radio content.
The license doesn't matter.
The studio doesn't matter if the content itself is crap.
And talk radio, which used to be one of the most powerful media available.
It used to be so tremendously subversive.
It used to be irreverent.
It used to be unwilling to go along with the government narrative.
But these companies killed that.
And then they wonder why the business model for radio, which has existed for 100 years, is no longer.
Yeah.
Well, I guess one of the reasons that Bell Canada is worth so many billions of dollars is that they're cold-blooded.
And when it came down to it, they had no compunction firing some of their on-air stars.
I was actually quite surprised they got rid of their bureau chief, Joyce Nape here.
I guess they just don't care.
They care at the end of the day about dollars and cents.
One of the things that Bell said when they shut down these radio stations and fired their staff is they complained about how the internet is sucking up all the money.
And they sort of grumbled a bit about how they needed C18 to give them money from Facebook and Google.
I think that the Trudeau government is really trying to nationalize the media by saying, look, you don't have to go out of business.
We will give you money directly in a subsidy through C11 and we'll commandeer Facebook and Google to give you money through C18.
And between government money and big tech money, we will basically replace your income.
We'll give you more than half of your income.
Just don't color outside the editorial lines that Justin Trudeau and his appointees dictate.
What do you think of that thesis?
No, I think you're right.
And I think that the best thing for government is for all of these things to be dependent on government, because then government gets to decide which media outlets survive and which ones don't.
And it's censorship by economics, because if government could turn a switch and shut off rebel news, they would love to do that.
But they can't do that without being increasingly and explicitly totalitarian in nature, in a way that would be subject to a little bit of backlash, we hope, maybe not as much as perhaps we might think there should be.
But they can do it another way.
They can force YouTube to manipulate the algorithms, force Facebook and Twitter to manipulate the algorithms, force these companies to subsidize the good kind of media.
Not that Rebel or True North would want it, but we know that we wouldn't be on the list to receive it anyway.
And when I say censorship by economics, what they're trying to do is basically kill the business models of anyone they don't want to exist and prop up the ones they do want to exist.
Yeah.
You know, I think that it's slowly, subconsciously undermining the profession.
There are some great journalists out there, and let's acknowledge Bob Fife and Steve Chase of Globe and Mail, who've done great work on Chinese influence.
So there are some great journalists out there, even with media that take huge government checks.
But I think they're the exception that sort of proves the rule.
I think that for true criticism of Trudeau, other than Rebel News, True North, Western Standard, Counter Signal, a handful of independents, for true criticism of Trudeau, you've got to go to the foreign media.
Why Trudeau Left Midway00:06:21
New York Post, Daily Mail.
I think that most journalists in Canada just won't be rough with Trudeau.
Let me give you a quick example.
You tell me what you think of this.
For more than a decade, there's been questions about why Justin Trudeau left the fancy Vancouver private school where he was teaching.
He left mid-semester.
That's very unusual for a teacher to leave mid-semester.
But they may be a perfectly good explanation for it.
Or, as the innuendo and gossip has it, maybe there's a terrible reason for it.
Maybe he got a little bit handsy with a young student who experienced it differently.
We simply don't know because he hasn't asked about it.
But then in parliament, just a few weeks ago, Pierre Polyev threw that back at Trudeau in quite a jab.
Here, let's play the clip just to remind our viewers.
Take a look at this.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, I was a high school teacher before getting into politics, and I'm having a little trouble remembering what exactly the job that the Leader of the Opposition had before getting into politics.
Mr. Speaker, we have a plan to fight climate change.
We have a plan to continue to move forward on supporting Canadians with a grocery rebate, with a growing economy, with great middle-class jobs.
We're delivering health care supports for Canadians from coast to coast to coast, delivering dental care that has helped 300,000 kids access dental care over the past number of months, including 1,100 in his own writing.
Mr. Speaker, we will continue to be there for Canada.
Honorable Leader of the Opposition.
Yes, and yes, and he left right in the middle of the semester, and I'm having trouble remembering why.
That was the sneaker.
He certainly wasn't a math teacher.
He certainly was not a math teacher.
Now, that's a dramatic thing Pierre Polyev said.
He didn't provide the answer.
He said, we don't know why Trudeau left Midway.
And there were gasps, and Andrew Coyne called Pierre Polyev a thug.
But not a single journalist said, hmm, maybe that's innuendo.
Maybe that's a kind of slur, or maybe there's something there.
Nobody knows.
I'm just going to ask Trudeau that question.
And here he is, eight years after becoming prime minister.
And I don't think a single journalist has ever asked the prime minister, hey, by the way, why did you leave halfway through?
And that's my point, Andrew.
To vet the prime minister, to vet the candidate, Harper, Jason Kenney, Doug Ford, they've all been vetted, them, their family, their businesses, their history.
But I don't think a single journalist in the parliamentary pest gallery even asked in a friendly, let's clear the air kind of way, hey, Trudeau, why did you leave that girl's school?
Even if the answer is it's none of your bloody business.
No one asked, did they?
I'm not aware of anyone asking specifically.
Now, I do know in 2019, Marika Walsh of the Globe and Mail asked Trudeau if he had ever signed an NDA for misconduct.
And this was because at the time there was this trending, I'll say rumor because there was never anything factual or evidentiary to support it, that there was an NDA or were NDAs between Justin Trudeau, and it was very nondescript.
I know Warren Kinsella had stoked this in some way.
And again, I'm no defender of Trudeau, but I have to be completely forthright in that I have never heard anything more concrete on this at all than simply the rumor.
And all the rumors tend to trace back to sources that do not have any credibility.
But again, I also think that the fact that he left midway through the semester is not a rumor.
That's a matter of public record.
And it wasn't until the 2019 election that West Point Gray, the school, had come out and actually given a comment saying, no, no, no, there was nothing to see here.
And again, I don't know what loyalty, if any, exists between that school and Justin Trudeau, but the fact that he left has been subject to multiple conflicting explanations from Justin Trudeau himself.
So I do not like the idea of suggesting a reason that does not have any basis, but it is a legitimate question to ask.
Yeah, and I don't know the answer to it, by the way.
I'm just trying to point out that a more carnivorous press gallery might inquire.
No, and if I can jump in there, Ezra, the media has started to turn on Justin Trudeau now.
After 18 years, only now.
Yeah.
Which meant that in 2015, when he was seeking election, there was no interest in vetting him.
And even now, the media doesn't like Justin Trudeau, but I think they dislike Pierre Polyev more because they dislike conservatives more.
And if I can give you my theory on this, I do not believe it's fair to say that the media will never attack liberals.
What I believe is that when the media attacks liberals, it's because they haven't lived up to the media's ideal of what a liberal is supposed to be.
They're impugned because of their behavior.
When the media attacks conservatives, it's because of their beliefs.
It's because of what they fundamentally believe.
And that's an important distinction because the media wants a pure liberal.
The media doesn't want any conservative.
Let me say one more thing.
You mentioned that the media was not vetting Trudeau in 2015.
We know that's true because remember when an American magazine published the photos of Trudeau and Blackface?
Immediately, the CBC and Global News, immediately, and I mean within an hour, released their own photos and in the case of Global News, their own video of Trudeau and Blackface, which means they had it.
They were sitting on him.
For whatever reason, they did not show the world.
Credible Silence In Government00:02:57
It was only once they were scooped that they said, oh, well, I guess it's out there.
We may as well get in on the action.
You're telling me if they had a blackface photo of Stephen Harper or Danielle Smith or any conservative that they would have sat on it saying, oh, that's not news.
Were they?
He was only.
Yeah, the guy was elected in 2008.
It took 11 years to find the first one, and it took 11 minutes to find the next three.
And my point is that they're just more docile.
And I don't know what the answer is, but I showed this the other day.
The first aggressive scrum against the Trudeau cabinet was when Marco Mendocino came out and the hollering and the hooting.
I haven't seen this since Stephen Harper was PM.
Just a quick refresher.
Take a look at this.
How is it?
How is it?
We have questions.
Come on.
Come on.
I didn't miss that tell you.
What's the explanation?
How is it credible?
How is it credible that all of the most senior staff who are paid for by taxpayers and government and the PCO and the Prime Minister's office and your office knew, but somehow you and the Prime Minister were only told after the fact.
How is that in any way credible to the average person who goes to their job and does their job every day?
Okay, first of all, let's all take a breath.
And I want to be responsive to your questions.
What I said was that I would be coming down to take more questions this afternoon.
But what I would say and then you didn't cut your office together.
We waited for five hours for you right now.
Well, I'm here right now and I will be here again.
But I agree with you that there is a challenge there, which is why we have taken steps to address that through corrective actions internally, as well as by making sure that the CSC works very closely with victims' families going forward.
But why didn't your staff tell you?
Is it standard operating procedure at your office that you are kept in the dark?
And will you let anyone go in response to the handling of this?
Of course not.
And my job as the Minister of Public Safety is to make sure that we are identifying issues where there are challenges on information flow.
And so what I have done in each and every one of these cases is to be responsive to those challenges by issuing ministerial directives to clarify so that we are strengthening our ability to get the information that we need.
So that has been done, certainly in the case of Bernardo, through the issuing of a new ministerial directive.
As far as internal matters, I've dealt with it.
What happened?
What happened?
Why can you send it to it?
Mr. Minister, Mendesian.
And again, I think in this case, Andrew, they were more mad that Mendocino canceled on a scrum the night before.
It wasn't the substance that made those reporters so angry.
It said he broke a personal promise to them to answer questions the night before.
I think, you know, Donald Trump jokingly said, I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and, you know, some people would defend me.
He said something to that effect.
And people hang that around his neck.
Worries About Trudeau's Re-Election00:07:49
That's actually how Trudeau lives.
I mean, the way he skated from the sexual assault of Rose Knight, the she experienced it differently, woman, the way he skated on Blackface, those are scandals that have undone much better men than him.
Yeah, and I mean, one of the things with Donald Trump, whatever people think about him, is that a certain point, so much was being thrown at him, it all became noise.
And that has been the very thing that's happened to Justin Trudeau, where now he's been there long enough and we've already decided that as a society that we're okay to move on anything.
I mean, how the liberals managed to turn blackface into old news in nothing flat.
I think it was Judy Scroe, the liberal MP, that had given that great interview during the 2019 election in which she said black people should be flattered that he wanted to be like them.
I mean, that is some brazen spin that the media let the liberals get away with on Justin Trudeau.
Hey, let me ask you one last question.
I appreciate you giving us so much time.
I follow a number of different pollsters, but one of the ones I follow, because I used to know him, is David Coletto, and he's with Abacus Research.
Now, I know that Abacus is liberal-oriented.
Their founding chairman was Bruce Anderson, whose daughter was Trudeau's communications director.
Perry Tsergis is still, so he's a very, very, very liberal shop.
And I follow them, Andrew, because when they criticize Trudeau or when they're worried about Trudeau, I take it at face value.
It's sort of like a dog bites man, you don't pay attention, but man bites dog.
You do.
When a liberal pollster rings the alarm about the liberals, I'm going to take that at face value, right?
That I might not if it's a conservative pollster.
They ran a poll about a week ago showing not only that the conservatives under Pierre Polyev have a significant lead, like seven points, if I recall, but they also said that 81% of Canadians do not think that Trudeau deserves to be re-elected.
Now, a good chunk of those say they're not thrilled about their options, but 81%, like that means you've got five people in a room.
Do you think Trudeau's done a good job?
No.
How about you?
No.
How about you?
No.
How about you?
No.
How about you?
Yeah, okay.
Like, imagine.
And you break that down demographically.
The number of young men who think Trudeau deserves to be re-elected.
I mean, there's certain demographics that is approaching single digits.
But do you think he's going to pull the rabbit out of the hat?
Do you think he's going to win despite 81% saying he doesn't deserve?
Do you think he'll slouch to yet another victory?
If you had told me a month before the 2019 election that the scandal-ridden Justin Trudeau would win when we get photos of him in blackface that dropped during the middle of the campaign, I would have been like, okay, come on, you're being ridiculous.
That's never going to happen.
I mean, obviously he couldn't win.
Even he couldn't win in a situation like that.
And then he did.
So I do not underestimate Justin Trudeau.
And that's not an endorsement of his character.
That's just an acknowledgement of the media climate and political climate.
And generally speaking, the weakness of the conservative campaign machine in the last two elections.
Remember, it was the conservatives that failed to find that blackface photo anywhere between 2008 and 2019 in their opposition research, which I think is a blight on them.
They were too busy making the nice hair TV ad.
So I think it is possible that Justin Trudeau could win.
I have also entertained the idea that when he is ousted, it will not be by Canadian voters, but rather by Liberal Party members.
Now, so far, I haven't seen the dissent within the liberal ranks because he has kept just an iron grip on his caucus and on his party.
But I have to wonder if these poll numbers pick up, if the liberals are going to be looking and saying, okay, you're just not doing it for us.
You're not doing it for us.
And in that case, I think he'll won an election because it's just the Hail Mary pass, the only chance he really has of staying in power.
My worry is what happened in Alberta provincially could happen federally, which is that all the anybody but Danielle Smith vote coalesced against around Rachel Notley.
There used to be smaller parties, the Green Party, the Alberta Party was a thing, the Liberal Party, all those vaporized.
Everyone who didn't like Danielle Smith coalesced around Rachel Notley.
Danielle Smith only lost a couple of points, but Rachel Notley gained.
I'm worried that the polls right now show Jack Meet Singh with, what, in the 20s.
I'm worried that if Pierre Polyev runs a strong campaign, that leftists and anyone but Polyev, they'll all coalesce around Trudeau.
And maybe he'll do a lot better than he looks because people will just say Jack Meet Singh was a non-entity.
He was a placeholder.
We need to back Trudeau.
I'm worried that we're going to go to a two-party system.
And in that, Canada is liberal enough that it could save Trudeau one more time.
Last word to you.
Yeah, I think it's a legitimate fear.
And I think that the collapse of the NDP vote generally has been good for conservatives.
But if the NDP have a resurgence and the liberals hold their own, it could work for the conservatives.
But if the NDP vote collapses even further, it absolutely will not.
And I think the one thing we've seen in the last few elections is that how difficult it is for the conservatives to find a regional breakdown that triggers a victory.
And the one thing I'll say is that there is no such thing in my view anymore of a conservative as a conservative minority government.
It's either a majority or a liberal NDP coalition.
Right.
I said that was the last thought, but there is one more thing I want to show you.
Here's Aaron O'Toole.
I'm sorry, I'm chuckling.
Maybe you're more sympathetic to him than me, but here's Aaron O'Toole.
I know the clip you're going for, and I am not at all sympathetic.
Hey, if we just tried what he tried and then tried it again, that's the ticket.
Here, take a look at this.
You know, the Conservatives won the popular vote in the last two elections.
It just wasn't efficient enough.
And Mr. Trudeau, some of the polarization is actually focusing and over-delivering your small cohort.
So he's now one two minority governments with a smaller popular vote and in some elections being virtually shut out in certain provinces of the country.
So I think had the pandemic not been a part of the discussion, I had a lot of fiscal conservatives that wanted to see the conservatives with a smart plan on the environment.
A lot of business leaders, for example, or small business owners that wanted to make sure they lowered emissions for their kids, but were worried about our competitiveness, worried about trade relations, thought Mr. Trudeau's ethics were questionable.
So there's a bunch of voters that want to see the Conservatives address all issues.
I think Pierre will do that.
Yeah, how's that not just what he tried and failed?
I don't get it.
He's saying do what he did, but what he did didn't work.
No, the thing is that he's literally describing the very experiment that we tried.
I mean, I didn't love the Aaron O'Toole era of the Conservative Party of Canada, but as a historian and as a scholar of political science, if you will, I loved it because it gave us the ideal test case, the natural world experiment of what happens when the Red Tory Brigade, the so-called centerized conservatives, get to decide what happens.
Moderate Vision Fails00:00:55
We take a moderate leader who spends more time denouncing certain factions of the Conservative Party, who rolls on his leadership platform and comes up with a moderate conservative vision that doesn't really seem all that conservative, that gives up everything to win in Quebec and in the GTA and does neither.
It was the very perfect test case of why these people are wrong, why diluting your message does not result in a victory.
And it's a shame that Aaron O'Toole hasn't realized that two years on.
Well, I'm glad that no one other than the media party will listen and obey him.
There you have it, Andrew Lawton, one of our favorite guys.
He's at TrueNorth, TNC.news, and you can follow him on his substack, andrewLawton.substack.com.