Front Burner - Conservatives face off in leadership debate

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

On Thursday night, Conservative leadership hopefuls faced off in the only English language debate of the campaign. Candidates went toe-to-toe on issues like expanding the party’s base, climate, race and more. Today, CBC’s Power and Politics host Vassy Kapelos provides her analysis as the race to become leader of the party enters a crucial stretch.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Josh Bloch. When the next federal election rolls around, the Conservative Party will have a new leader. But they haven't yet picked who that person will be. For the last two nights, four candidates for the job have made their case in live stream debates for why they're the one to take on and take down Justin Trudeau.

Today, Power and Politics host Vashie Kapelos explains and analyzes last night's English language conservative leadership debate. The only one of this race. This is FrontBurner. Vashie, thank you so much for joining us. Hi, Josh. Great to be with you. So we're reaching you late Thursday night after the debate. I think given what's going on in the world right now, I'm going to bet that the conservative leadership race hasn't been on the top of a lot of people's minds right now. Can we just start to remind us who was on that stage tonight?

You bet. I think you're right to say that probably not everyone is consumed with this right now. So I'll refresh everyone's memory. There are four people who were on the stage tonight. The crowd was whittled down to these four. A higher number of people tried to get in the race, but ultimately didn't make it through to this round. So we've got Aaron O'Toole.

It's time for a true blue conservative who can win the next election and get our country back on track. Who I think some people will recognize. He is an MP currently. He's, I think, 47 years old. He used to be a minister under the previous prime minister, Prime Minister Harper. He was Veterans Affairs minister for a little while. And he's an MP now, and he's a foreign affairs critic. We've also got Peter McKay, who probably is the most well-known of the group. I will unite the party as I did before with Stephen Harper. I will defeat Justin Trudeau,

and I will bring us back to form a national conservative majority government. He used to be justice minister and defense minister and actually used to lead the Progressive Conservative Party at one point. So he was around for a really long time. You got Derek Sloan, who probably hardly anyone knows of. He's just 35 years old, brand new MP from Ontario. I'm the only candidate that is committed to defunding the World Health Organization and getting Canada out of the Paris Agreement.

He's one of the two socially conservative candidates, and the other is Lesley Lewis. She's 49, I believe. She's also a lawyer. Everybody's a lawyer on the stage tonight. And she's the first Black woman to run for the leadership of the party. I ran my campaign based on these principles of courage, compassion, and common sense. And with your help and support, that is exactly how I will run this country and this nation. And she also, as I said, identifies as socially conservative. Right. And the clear front runners in this case are Peter McKay and Erin O'Toole. I'm curious to know, what did we learn tonight in this debate about the difference between

these two? So I would say not a whole lot. I think because, so last night, and I'm sure we'll get into this a little bit, but last night was the French language debate. And it actually almost punctuated the fact that these are the two frontrunners because they really went after each other. And most especially, I would say, Aaron O'Toole went after Peter McKay, who is perceived as the frontrunner. Mr. McKay, you attacked me for my Quebec platform. Tonight, it was much less so. So there were certain times when I would say like on environmental policy or foreign policy where Peter McKay has probably less of his policy out there already, whereas Aaron O'Toole has like, you know, a 50 page document on his platform. Mr. O'Toole try and say, OK, here's what I would do versus what you would do. And Peter McKay sort of say, oh, you know, well, let's say on the environment, for example, they're both against the carbon tax. So not much dissimilar there. But then at the same time, Mr. O'Toole wants to basically levy a heavy emitters tax.

And Mr. McKay was critical of that. So like a little bit of stuff like that. But it's not like I don't think you would walk away from that and all of a sudden be like, okay, I have two very stark choices here. Right. But I mean, I watched the French language debate and, you know, Peter McKay called Aaron O'Toole at one point, Aaron Trudeau, and there was accusations of flip-flopping. I mean, it was a very different tone in that debate. This is what Mr. Trudeau, father and son have done. And now we're looking at Aaron Trudeau. It's incredible for you to take the same position as the Trudeaus. It was so different. And I think it might have backfired to a certain degree on Aaron O'Toole, or at least like, it's not like I'm an expert in

knowing what backfired. But I mean, I was talking with conservatives all throughout the night last night, and then today, and even on my show, and they were almost unanimous, and they're not attached to any of the candidates, the ones who are on my show. They were almost unanimous that he kind of went too far, right? And they were a bit critical of it. They didn't think it would go over so well with the membership. And more even than him going too far, Mr. McKay seemed to, like, be able to fend it off. And so last night you had a lot of conservatives saying i think

mr mckay not that he you know landed a knockout punch or anything but that he walked away looking like the next leader of the party and so it seemed like mr o'toole internalized that and so today we really didn't see the the like efforts to dismiss mckay to the same degree or to, I mean, there were certainly instances where he was saying, you know, I'm more, I'm different than Justin Trudeau, you're not. There was a bit of that, but certainly not to the level that there was in the French debate. Well, and speaking of the change in tone, there was this really funny stretch tonight. They had questions posed by Canadian citizens. One question was posed by a child named Max asking why the candidates wanted to be prime minister. And for like 10

minutes straight, everything was addressed to Max. Thanks, Max. And the short answer is for you. Max, it's simple. I'm a patriot. I love this country. It bubbles through my blood. Thank you for that question, Max. So Max, I hope to see you on the campaign train. Max, I don't know if you play hockey or soccer, but we know that the principle is to pass to one another, is to be on the same side. So Max, I'm empowered by your generation. I want you to be proud of your country, Max.

Ensuring that there will be jobs for you in the future, Max. That debt, you will be responsible for, Max. One thing that's important to me, Max, is the way in which we're selling out Canada piece by piece, like we were able to do by advocating for the OAS for your grandparents, Max. Max, I believe that the children are the future. And part of those chances, Max, will be technology and the jobs of the future. And that's why, Max, it is very important for us to have strong fiscal policies.

Well, Max, I hope you got an answer to your question tonight from our candidates. Oh, my gosh, my head was exploding. I didn't even know what to do with that. I was like, Max, Max, Max. It was it was kind of I think it actually brings about an important point that we should get across. And that is this was not a debate like the ones that we're used to seeing during the federal campaign. This was very much put on by the Conservative Party and moderated by the party, too. It was moderated by Lisa Raitt, who's a very well-known MP who lost in a kind of a surprise loss in the last election in the rotting of Milton.

And she is now running. She's the co-chair of the leadership committee for the party. So she moderated the debate. It was run by the Conservative Party. It's not like there were journalists there to ask questions like they use these videos. And I thought that it became the debate structure was more effective in the latter half where they actually had time for open debate. But the first part where they were like, you know, Max was saying, why do you want to be prime minister? It was just it was I don't know if I'm if I'm a member of the party, what did I just get out of that? Right. And then they started talking to Max about peacekeeping and about economic

rebounds. Max, Max. And they all kept referring to Max like he was right next to them. I texted the spokesperson of the party. I said, can I get Max on my show tomorrow? I saw someone tweeting that Max is the new Joe the Plumber. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you.

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So we've talked about the two frontrunners. I want to go back and just learn a little bit more about Lesley Lewis and Derek Sloan, who represent the social conservative wing of the party. Derek Sloan, for me, felt like an internet iteration of conservatism. He did a lot of name-checking things like shadow banning and cancel culture, and Jordan Peterson saying things like Antifa is a terrorist organization. We see a crackdown on free speech. We see a cancel culture that exists in the world of political correctness. It also exists on social media where we have

banning and shadow banning and algorithms that lead people in certain ways in some of our biggest search engines. Free speech is a big seller for our younger generation. Look at Jordan Peterson, his opposition to Bill C-16, which I am also against, raised him into the stratosphere in terms of popularity with primarily young people. These are things that we should take seriously, free speech in universities.

And I'm against this form of lawlessness. And for some of these organizations like Antifa, I would declare them a terrorist organization for their promotion of lawlessness and anarchy. Yeah, I think that's a really good way to describe it. And I'm still very unsure what his base of support is in the party. I think that there are, and this is sort of derived from as many people his base of support is in the party. I think that there are and this is sort of derived from as many people as I can talk to in the party. Like there are

social conservatives. There's a lot of them. They supported, you know, I think there was like 14 percent of them supported socially conservative candidates in the last race. But Derek Sloan isn't just socially conservative, right? He's not just talking about certain issues or family or abortion. He has expanded into this whole realm of things around vaccination and cancel culture, like you said. And he has transgender rights. He's very inflammatory about that. Many new Canadians are social conservatives. They don't believe that there are 72 or 102 genders.

They don't want their kids to be confused. And insulting to a lot of people. And I think, like, I don't know if you call it fringe. I don't know what the exact perfect way to describe it is. But I'm unsure of where his base of support will be. Now, he has fundraise. It's not like he is, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars behind everyone. Certainly Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay are at the front. And then he's somewhat similar to

Lesley Lewis. But I don't know how much he's going to resonate. I think if he does resonate, that could be a potential problem for the Conservative Party, because in the long run, this isn't just about picking the next leader of their party. It's about being able to campaign and successfully run against the liberals in the next election. And if you'll think back to the past few elections, one of the most successful strategies of the liberals has been to emphasize a narrative that sees people like Derek Sloan representative of a lot of the party and sort of create a narrative for voters that like if you're voting for conservatives, this is the kind of thing that you're voting for. I'm

not saying that's always true or it's not always untrue either, but it certainly has been like a wedge issue and would potentially create a whole host of complications for the party going forward. So I think he's one to watch only to see how successful he can be. And if he is, or to whatever degree, like what does that say about the party? Well, and at one point he was accused of racism after questioning Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam's loyalty. One of the issues with Justin Trudeau's handling of this situation has been his reliance on the advice of Dr. Teresa Tam. His own party did, right? Like he said, is she loyal to, and he was talking about some of the

decisions she's made with the WHO, which by the way, he wants to completely defund. And he was saying, is she loyal to Canada or China? And dual loyalty is a, it's a very well-known racist trope, right? In his own caucus, many members, I'm thinking of Michelle Rumpel tweeting very soon after that, were very, very angry with that. Even Andrew Scheer eventually, after a couple times of being asked, said those are not the views of the Conservative Party. So he has certainly said some very controversial things. I think especially given the results of the last election,

Conservatives who want to be successful in the next one have been trying very hard to distance themselves from people who represent those types of views, but they don't seem to be able to do it completely. And so that's why I'm really, really curious to see how he performs in this race. Well, and Leslyn Lewis is another socially conservative candidate, and she seems to take a very different approach. What did we hear from her tonight? Yeah, she is very different. I find it harder to figure her out, if that makes sense.

Like, I'm not exactly sure who she is necessarily appealing to. I get the social conservative aspect of it all. She does have other policies around, for example, economic policy. But when she was asked about foreign policy, she focused very much on saying things like, well, you have to get stuff right at home before you look outwards. I thought actually the most interesting part of the debate tonight where she is concerned is I thought she offered a really good definition of systemic racism and a defense of rooting it out that we have not been so accustomed to hearing from any other of the candidates? Many people respond to the question of systemic racism

by saying, I'm not a racist. That is individual racism. That shows evil intent. So systemic racism, we have to understand, is something very different. It deals with outcomes, outcomes that are negative. And so when we... They spoke later about it after the debate, but she was pretty unequivocal about what systemic racism is. You know, she talked about it being systems that produce unequal outcomes for people depending on their race. And she had tons of examples, like the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the justice system, how they're convicted at a higher rate,

they're charged at a higher rate. And she acknowledged that that was a problem and that it should be fixed. A First Nations person's charge with the same crime as a non-First Nations is more likely to be found guilty of that crime. It's more likely to be charged. When charged, higher conviction rate.

When convicted, higher sentences, less chance to get bail. So these are things within the system that we have to say that we can make better. And until then, we had not really heard any of the candidates be that explicit, offer up a definition. And we know outside of this race, this is a huge topic right now, right? It's consumed political discourse. How did the frontrunners deal with that question or respond to that question? Well, it's interesting because they didn't offer a ton during the actual debate. And because, again, you have a moderator who is a member of the party, it's not like she was saying, you didn't answer the question, right, and pushing back on it.

Certainly, they're both unequivocal, both Peter McKay and Erin O'Toole, that they don't condone racism. They want to stomp it out. But they weren't during the debate as precise, as specific as Ms. Lewis was. And then after the debate, what I found so interesting was that became the focus of all of the questions towards each of the candidates. And there were very different answers from Peter McKay and Aaron O'Toole. Aaron O'Toole's up first, and he would not conclusively say, and our colleague Hannah Thibodeau really pressed exists, the institutions it can exist in. But he would not say in and of itself, racism is systemic. And he was given multiple opportunities to. Do you believe that there's systemic racism in Canada and in our institutions? Well, what I said tonight was, I think we owe it to Canada to make sure we remain the best country in the world. And we stamp out any instances of racism, unfairness, discrimination, and have a commitment to that. I've tried to have a commitment to that as a public official.

And there's got to be a zero tolerance approach. And I will have that approach. I'm not sure if you answered the question, though. Do you believe that there's systemic racism in Canada and in our institutions? I think if something is brought up in an institution, whether it's the RCMP, the military, Transport Canada, any instance, we have to stamp it out. Conversely, Peter McKay was asked the same series of questions, and he did say there was systemic racism,

and then he actually was asked to define it. How would you define systemic racism, and then he actually was asked to define it. How would you define systemic racism? Well, systemic racism is deeply rooted in institutions that perpetrate and allow racism to go on. What we heard coming from the commissioner of the RCMP was an acknowledgement that that institution, amongst others, and more broadly, our justice system that you spoke of, has to improve. He talked about the racist history of his home province, Nova Scotia. I mentioned tonight that I grew up in a town in Nova Scotia that was very segregated, and the province of Nova Scotia has had its own specific issues when it comes to racism.

It was a real contrast. And that's why I say there was much less of a contrast, actually actually during the debate on a whole host of issues, including this one. But after the debate, there was very much a difference in their answers. So the conservatives lost the last election. They did well in the parts of the country that they usually do well in, but they really failed to make progress they needed in Ontario or Quebec or around large urban centers. Do you think that Peter McKay or Aaron O'Toole presented a convincing argument for how they could turn that around in the next election, which we should say could be very soon? They don't have a lot of time to figure this out. Yeah, who knows? I'm guessing there might not be an election around the court like anytime soon, but it could happen soonish. That's

for sure. I think that's a really important question. I think actually it's like the broader context that we should be analyzing the whole debate in, because ultimately this is for the membership. This is to lead the party. But right away, they're going to be the leader of the opposition in a minority parliament. And we have witnessed over the last number of months just how significant that parliament is at this time in our lives. And I think that, you know, in order to convince voters who were unconvinced in the last election, so we're thinking Ontario, Quebec, more urban areas of the country, younger voters, there were a couple of key things that all of the candidates acknowledged to a degree in this debate, but have previously as well, like their environmental plan, like their inability to reach

out to a lot of the various immigrant communities in a lot of the places that I just mentioned. A whole host sort of things that they didn't talk about, basically, in the last election. They focused so much attention on criticism of Justin Trudeau and of the liberals. So the question, I think, is, you know, did they present that vision today? They were asked questions about it. What would you do to expand the party? There is a very specific acknowledgement that they need to do that. I don't know beyond. I mean, they had some disagreements and they put forth some ideas on the environment and they all sort of said to in various places that they knew that the environment is an area that they have to improve on with those voters, but then take a kind of closer look at what they're proposing. And I don't see anything that is much different than what they proposed in the last election. Actually, the conclusion that most of them reached at the end of the day seemed to be, we just didn't sell it right. But the plan in and of itself was good,

was good enough. I mean, ultimately, voters will make that call. But I tried to talk to as many as I could following the election to get a sense. And certainly people were not saying this plan was good. I just didn't really understand it because of the way Andrew Sche going to use technology. I'm not saying you have to go down the route of the carbon tax, but I just think you need something more robust to convince those people that you care seriously about the effects of climate change, because that is an important issue to them. balance this challenge of promising to bring in new voters to really expand this tent without alienating their traditional voters? I'm thinking really, you know, specifically about, you know, social and environmental issues. I don't know. I think what the last two elections have proven, and most especially probably the last one, is that it's probably their biggest challenge. And it's really, really hard to do. You know, they keep talking about being a big tent party. The big blue tent is the perfect analogy, but we need to push those tent pegs out a little further

so the Canadians feel welcome. But within that tent, there are four very distinct corners. And maybe it's not four, maybe it's three, maybe it's seven, right? But there are distinct sort of places along the spectrum of conservatism. And I think that ideology is really important to to a lot of people in that party. And so whereas I'm not saying this is right or wrong, sometimes ideology can be minimized or maybe not prioritized to the same degree because the goal is to win. It's it's not always the case with this version of the conservative party. And so they have really struggled to build upon their

base. I mean, they won the most, the highest number of votes in the last election, but they are so concentrated and they are so stuck at this maximum point that they reach that they can't get enough to actually translate it to the number of seats that they need in order to form a majority, right? So the math is so simple. Like you've got your base on lockdown when it comes to a general election. So what are you going to say? What vision will you present? And maybe it's not just about the environment. Maybe it is about the economy. I don't know. I think it's about a lot of things. What's the sort of positive vision for this country, for getting us out of this pandemic, for the recovery of our economy, whatever you want to call it, that you can present that grips people outside of the ones who reflexively will vote for you because they

pretty much can't stand the other guy and they always have. And I think that it, I don't know what, I mean, the balance seems to be really difficult because especially in a leadership race, the way the voting goes, like if you alienate every single social conservative, that might make it hard for you to win the leadership. But at the same time, if you say things just to appeal to that group or to more extreme people, you know, people who position themselves more extremely within social conservatism and you appeal to them, then that kind of stuff sticks with you after you've become the leader. And then you start getting questions about it. And then the liberals very easily create the same narrative that they did successfully in the past few elections. So I think that's what we're going to be watching over the next two months. Like, that's what we'll be witnessing, right? Them trying to tread that line, trying to be successful within their own party,

but not alienate the people that they're going to need to vote for them in the future. Vashi, thank you so much for your insights into this. Thanks for having me. That's all for this week. Front Burner comes to you from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show was produced this week by Imogen Burchard, Elaine Chao, Shannon Higgins, Ali Janes, and Nahaya Tzouzou. Derek Vanderwyk does our sound design with help from Matt Cameron. Thank you for staying up late, Matt.

Our music is by Joseph Chavison of Boombox Sound. The executive producer of Front Burner is Nick McCabe-Locos. I'm Josh Bloch. Thank you for listening. Back on Monday.