Front Burner - Controversial candidates and big campaign promises

Episode Date: September 17, 2019

Not even one week into the federal election campaign and the major parties are already struggling with controversial candidates. Today on Front Burner, host of Power and Politics Vassy Kapelos and CBC senior reporter Katie Simpson join us to break down how the leaders are reacting and go through the latest platform promises.

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. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. So we're almost one week now into the federal election campaign, and a lot has happened. The Liberal campaign bus hit their own plane. No one was hurt. It was more entertaining than anything else. We were waiting for our luggage to be loaded on board. Now, when happened, our bus pulled away and almost immediately we heard a loud scraping sound. Justin Trudeau was a no-show to the first debate.

I think we can all agree that Justin Trudeau is afraid of his record and that's why he's not here tonight. But today we're looking at two different topics. The slate of candidates who have been dumped or remained despite controversial statements or posts on social media. And the many, many promises made to voters. CBC's Katie Simpson has been on the road covering the Conservative team. And of course, Vashie Capello's host of Power and Politics is here with me. This is FrontBurner. Katie, Vashie, hi guys.

Hi, Jamie. Hi. So happy to have you both here. Katie, you've been on the campaign trail with the Conservatives since the campaign started. Tell me what it's been like. Well, right now I'm on a bus. You're going to probably hear a lot of noise of my colleagues in the media getting on and off this bus. And they're all joking, saying they're not as loud as me which is mildly accurate uh so uh right now the

conservative media bus is on its way to uh andrew sheer's policy announcement right now he's in colonna bc he's expected to make some sort of announcement related to affordability and that of course is part of his overall theme the conservatives are trying to make the argument to canadians that uh you'll keep more money in your pocket if you vote for the Conservatives. We saw that with the policy announcement yesterday or on Sunday. I've actually lost track of the days because all of the days have actually mashed together. It's all blurring together. Yeah, it's all mashed together.

And of course, we're recording this on Monday morning. So we haven't heard that announcement from Andrew Scheer yet. But I know a little bit later in this conversation, we're going to talk about some of the ways that the conservatives have already promised to make your life more affordable. Not to give a spoiler alert. Vashi, I understand you also haven't slept in a week. How are you doing? I'm fine. I'm good. It's just week one. I got to pace myself. Yeah, it's like a marathon. I find just if you have no life, it really helps. You just go home and pass out and you're fine. Yeah, it's good. Just completely neglect your friends and family.

It's great. Or just don't have many friends. Easy either way. Okay, let's get moving here. So candidates have been dropping like flies since the election began. This feels a lot to me like the Hunger Games, you know, just at the beginning when a bunch of people just get immediately eliminated. Let's go through some of them so everyone has a sense of what we're dealing with here. Katie, let's start with the conservatives. Go through a few of the examples with me.

Let's start with Cameron Ogilvie. So Cameron Ogilvie is the one candidate who's been fired by the conservatives. He was running in the riding of Winnipeg North, and there were a number of social media posts discovered by Press Progress. And when Press Progress went to the Conservative Party and said, hey, have you seen these posts? They decided to kick him out of the party. They actually put out a press release and they tried to sort of spin it as saying, hey, we're taking action fast. We're kicking this guy out. Why is Justin Trudeau, when there are controversial comments about other candidates in his party, why isn't he taking action like that? So they tried to spin it as an attack,

even though it is someone who passed their own vetting process, who had comments on social media that were considered anti-Islam and insensitive toward Muslims. Okay, and he was asked to resign by the Conservative Party because of this? Yeah, they fired him. Of course, I'll let the candidate's statement on that issue speak for itself. I have obviously made it clear that I won't have anything to do with that individual. And as I said the other day, we're going to see this from Liberals from now until Election Day,

trying to do everything they can to distract... Okay, so that's one. Let's do Gadda Melek, the Conservative candidate for Mississauga-Streetsville. So when Andrew Scheer went to the Greater Toronto Area, Liberal opposition researchers were pointing journalists to a number of previous articles, one in the National Post, one in Vice News, that had said Gadimalik had tried to run for the provincial Conservatives in 2018 in the Ontario election. However, the party did not give her the green light to run because she had all of this controversial postings on social media. It's mostly a sharing

of content, a lot of transphobic content, things like videos from The Rebel that talk about protections for LGBTQ students in Alberta and, you know, trying to spin it as, well, this is an attack on girls, this is an attack on students. And, you know, posting things like, this transgender person regrets their transition and those kinds of comments, those kinds of articles. And Andrew Scheer, as he has said, if a candidate apologizes and takes ownership of their mistakes and promises to be supportive for all Canadians, that he's still willing to stand by the candidate

and that's what he's doing with Gad Amalek. All I can tell you is that Gad Amalek has acknowledged that some of the comments that she had retweeted were insensitive, and that she has taken responsibility for that, and I'm glad that she has. Okay, and we're going to talk about Andrew Scheer's response a little bit more in a minute, but let's just do two more. So the way this has been working is that the Liberal Research Bureau has been compiling all of these old, whether it's social media posts, and then they've been giving the content to Liberals to tweet, so it's out there for everyone to see. And Arpanana is one of the targets that they took aim at, because Andrew Scheer, when he was in Brampton North,

had a campaign event where they were going to go door-knocking together and have a rally at his campaign headquarters. And so on that day, the Liberals knew that was going to happen. So they dropped that post online showing that back in 2010, Mr. Khanna was a teenager at the time, had called someone a homophobic slur on social media. And again, Andrew Scheer said that his candidate has apologized, taken ownership for his words, and that he's going to stand by him there. And Vashi, the strategy for the Liberals dropping this information on the day that Andrew Scheer is going to campaign with these candidates, it's essentially so that they're forcing him to talk about this and not something else, right? Yeah, basically they're just hoping that reporters ask more of their questions

on that than whatever Andrew Scheer wants to be talking about. It's just a strategy designed to get the Conservatives off whatever message they hope to be getting across that day. You know, I want to talk about one more Conservative candidate, a star candidate, who is also part of the story, Justina McCaffrey. Some people may know her as a pretty famous wedding dress designer. She's running for the Conservatives in Ottawa. And the Liberals released a video over the weekend of McCaffrey pitching a reality show about herself and Faith Goldie.

See, Justina and myself, we go back a couple years now. First time we met, we clicked. See, I believe in a little thing called the girl mafia. If you're hot, you're smart, you're pretty, you roll in the right crowds, I basically want to become your friend. For those who might need a refresher on who Faith Goldie is,

she was fired from the rebel media after she appeared on the neo-Nazi podcast The Daily Stormer. In the U.S., she's made very controversial comments about immigrants. She's been banned from Facebook. Scheer says he wants nothing to do with her. Katie, I know you were with Justina McCaffrey over the weekend. How is she responding to this? So there were actually two posts that the Liberals came forward with on Justine McCaffrey.

She also made some comments that people in Quebec and French Canadians took some deep offense to. And it had to do with her saying that Justin Trudeau seems to be preoccupied with the French. And that, my colleague from Radio Canada that I'm traveling with on this campaign bus, he pointed out that that's something that obviously would not go over very well. So there was that video. We reached out to the party and they put out a statement on behalf of mcafree at saying listen uh the video that you guys posted when we were trying to pitch a reality tv show is from 2013 there were some photos of them that surfaced from 2017 that were put out there again by the liberal research team it gets into strange territory where can you be held accountable for being friends with someone, you know, before they really sort of shifted and turned?

It's such strange territory. And I'm not quite sure what Canadians are going to think about that. Anyway, we tried to talk to Justine McCaffrey. And the first question I was actually going to ask was about the French comments. But at her own campaign event on Saturday in Ottawa, she was hosting Andrew Scheer. It was like a little barbecue outside of her campaign headquarters. She introduced Andrew Scheer. And then when Andrew Scheer finished speaking and took questions, she left the event. And we, I'm not going to lie, we expected her to leave the event because

she's in an uncomfortable situation. And, you know, there's a chance that candidates sometimes don't answer questions but when I went with a camera I'm working with a pool team here we went to go talk to her and she would not stop for questions. Can we just ask you a really quick question? Can we just ask you really quickly? And then she got into a car and sped off and anytime there's an image of that yeah she sped off anytime there's an image of that it's never good because this is someone who wants to be the voice of their community and represent constituents.

And when you speed off from a situation, it looks bad. And not to make light of this situation, but for those listening, you might want to Google that video. It is quite entertaining, too. It's something. Vashi, of course, the conservatives are not the only party who have found themselves in hot water here. Let's talk about the liberals. They disqualified a candidate actually before the campaign started. Hassan Ghia. It's almost a different to look at who they're hanging out with and what that constitutes. And the conservatives right away were saying, well, hey, Justin Trudeau's been hanging out with some shady people, too. And they pointed right away to that picture of Justin Trudeau with Joshua Boyle. Right. Who you remember was someone who was in Afghanistan.

He's now charged with domestic abuse, among other things. So the argument goes both ways. Right. And like Katie said, I can anticipate that that's going to be a little bit of a gray zone in this election. As far as candidates for other parties go, there's Hassan Ghia, as you mentioned. This is someone who was disqualified prior to the start of the campaign. He had made a number of anti-Semitic comments on social media, which were unearthed by B'nai B'rith. Now, B'nai B'rith says, and he says also, the liberals knew of this at the beginning of August.

And they were actually, he claims, working with him on a PR strategy. B'nai B'rith then a few weeks later actually sent all that information to the media, and very shortly thereafter, I think they sent it out in the morning, and by a few minutes before our show went to air at 5 o'clock at night, the Liberals had disqualified him as a candidate. He insists that they had no intention of doing that prior to the media getting a hold of it, and Mr. Trudeau has been asked some questions about that. They won't really confirm or deny whether they were working on that kind of strategy or anything. They just said once they knew of the comments, he was immediately disqualified.

We will not accept a candidate that has intolerant or unacceptable anti-Semitic remarks. And that's why we asked this candidate to step down. And that's why we asked this candidate to step down. I just also want to note, Hassan Guyay has responded on social media by saying, there's more to the story, quote, this is not the whole truth, it's not the end. He has also addressed the controversy by saying he's not anti-Semitic and campaigns against all forms of racism.

We've also got the New Democrats. They have dumped one candidate over domestic abuse allegations. Also another over, quote, problematic social media engagement. This is Doc Curry, a candidate running in the interior of B.C. Yes, essentially he admitted that he made comments against pro-pipeline activists, I guess you could call them. And both of those candidates, I believe, actually ended up withdrawing themselves or they were also asked to resign. And then the Green Party has disqualified Eric Shoman because of social media posts that talked about sending pig meat to Muslims. So for anti-Islam comments, he was disqualified. They're also dealing with a number of other, they're not the only party to stay away from disqualifying everyone. They're dealing with

a couple other candidates, one primarily who has spoken out in the past about holding pro-life beliefs and very ardently, specifically through the Campaign for Life Coalition, in which he filled out a questionnaire. He's apparently being revetted. And then, of course, they've got the whole issue around Pierre Nantel, their star candidate in Quebec, and what he said about being a separatist and how it jives or doesn't jive. There's a lot of people, you know, asking them to sort of reconsider his candidacy as well. I guess like there are obvious questions that pop up here about whether or not these parties are vetting these candidates properly in the first place. Like, I guess not. You know, as you just talked about, Vashie, the Greens, the Liberals, the New Democrats have all gotten rid of candidates.

The Conservatives have gotten rid of one candidate. But, you know, Andrew Scheer, he also explained himself over the weekend at a press conference he held in the aisle of his plane. And he essentially said that he would still stand behind candidates' past behavior as long as they apologize. I think we all have to acknowledge the fact that people can make mistakes and people can own up to that. Although he went on to say that it would depend on the context. And Katie, can you tell me more about that press conference and what Scheer said? Well, it was certainly unusual because Andrew Scheer had already held a news conference

earlier that day, but that event had kind of gone sideways because that was the day that Justina McCaffrey had bolted from reporters. So I suspect that the war room saw, okay, there's an issue here, and they were heading out to B.C., and they had a major policy announcement the next day. And when you have a major policy announcement, you don't want to be bogged down in questions about, you know, something that went wrong the day before. So it appears a decision was made, a strategic decision was made,

that Andrew Scheer was going to go to the back of the plane. He stood and took questions until reporters ran out of questions. It was a 22-minute scrum where we asked multiple, I think I got like five or six questions in there, so there was no sort of shying away from, you know, the questions. He knew he was going to get some tough questions. And, you know, he was asked, okay, what are you going to do about this? And he said that, you know, if a candidate, he thinks that Canadians understand that people make mistakes, that in the past, if you make a comment that in 2019 you wouldn't make,

if you apologize for it, if you recognize that it was insensitive and you commit to supporting all Canadian people and not be discriminatory moving forward, own up to your mistakes, that Andrew Scheer and the Conservative Party will be willing to stand by you. Now, it's not a blanket policy. It's not for everyone. Decisions are going to be made on a case-by-case basis. I'm just sort of trying to get that out of the way, get that dealt with, and move forward.

Right. You know, I am interested in hearing both of your perspectives on this. Vashi, I'll start with you, because when I was listening to Scheer talk during this press conference, I wondered if this was a strategy onto itself, right? I think that what's important is, I mean, the reason that he sort of drew some backlash for that comment was because it appeared, even though he did say, and Katie's right, that it was context dependent, it still sort of seemed like he was saying, you know, writ large, my baseline is, if you apologize, if you show that you've moved on, then I'm okay with that. And I think that it has, I think for a lot of people, it has to be more nuanced, right? Like, it depends on the candidate. It depends on the content of what they said, because surely, you know, extensive homophobic or racist comments over a period that was just a year ago, let's say,

is not the same as one tweet that you sent 10 years ago. Right. We're talking about R-Pod Kana, that example. Yes. And I think it also depends on the apology. Like the candidate that Katie referred to in Mississauga, I looked yesterday all over for the apology. And it was kind of like one statement that acknowledged that some of her retweets were inappropriate and she regrets that. But it wasn't specifically acknowledging the total substance of what she had tweeted or what she had said on social media before. Whereas that other apology was, you know, I really recognize how wrong this was. I've really changed in this way.

Like, it depends how you apologize for it. It depends what you said, and it depends how long ago this was. I've really changed in this way. Like, it depends how you apologize for it. It depends what you said. And it depends how long ago it was. So I think that's why it drew the reaction it would. At the same time, I would point out that Jagmeet Singh said the exact same thing. He said that he'll judge any potential incidents on a case-by-case basis, but he believes that people can change. If someone apologizes and commits to changes, he would keep them.

People can grow. He said, that's how you build a better world. 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. So, you know, we've dealt with some problem candidates, although I think we could talk about it for the next hour, but we got to move on. There were still a lot of other

things that happened this week. And Vashi, when you and I spoke the other week, you know, you said one of the big things to look out for come election season or come the election call is all the promises. So in that vein, let's go through some of the most recent ones. And just a note to say this is definitely not all of them. But Katie, the Conservatives have announced a universal tax cut. And how substantial is it? It's one of the bigger policy planks that we've seen so far in the entire campaign. And this is going to be one of the real big ones that Andrew Scheer is going to talk about as much as he can. And what it is, it's lowering the tax rate on income under about $47,000. From 15% to 13.7575 over the next four years.

More disposable income for voters, less revenue for Ottawa, eventually amounting to a loss of about $6 billion a year, says the parliamentary budget officer. Andrew Scheer is arguing that for a single individual, they'll save about $440 on their taxes. If you're an average two-income earning couple, it'll be a savings of about $850 per year. And Vati, what are experts saying about this tax cut? Well, it depends on who you ask. There's different analysis, like Katie said. The question is really the sort of

test that it will be held against is the claim that the conservatives are making, that it will most benefit those in the lower income tax bracket. Because I've seen various economists on Twitter sort of point out that as your income grows, you might benefit more from it. And this is always with every tax cut, whether it be this proposed one or ones that have already come in, there's a lot of scrutiny over who ends up benefiting the most and if tax cuts even work for those in the middle class. And there's also a lot of scrutiny and there should be a lot of scrutiny about the hole that it leaves in the federal government's coffers, right? You're foregoing billions of dollars in revenue. Right, six billion. Yeah, six billion. So where do you, does that mean that you have to cut spending in order to aggregate your position?

Or does that mean that you'll raise revenue through another means? And if so, what is it? Those are definitely questions that the conservatives will be getting persistently with every kind of cut or credit, anything that ends up costing the coffers money. Okay, let's do the liberals. They made two big promises this week. You know, both seem very targeted to millennial voters. The first is the elimination of the swipe fee. So this fee that merchants have to pay when you or I swipe our credit cards. And the second is committing to an expansion of the first time home buyers incentive. Owning a house should be a realistic life goal. It's where you set down roots, where you raise a family, where you grow old. But young people hoping to buy their first home, just like their parents did a generation ago,

are facing a tough housing market. Basically, they're saying that the government will chip in on a certain percentage of money, so up to 10% to help you get to that down payment. But then they own up to 10% of your house. So when you sell that house, they get 10%. Although, to be fair, if the price of your home goes down, they lose money. They make it if it goes up, though. Yeah, they do. Which we all hope our homes do in value you know, they lose money. They make it if it goes up, though. Yeah, they do. They do.

Which we all hope our homes do. Oh, do we ever. If we can even buy one. Vashi, thoughts on this announcement? That is truly emblematic, I think, of what we will be and what we have been hearing from the liberals, which is we've, you know, the argument that we as liberals have created this baseline of proposals that have made your lives, let's just say I'm picking a number, 20% better. And if you vote for us, we're going to expand on those to make it 30% better. So this is a prime example of that, right? That's why they keep saying choose

forward. It's helping you afford a house in markets where the price is astronomical and nobody essentially can buy a house. So what you pointed out, though, is key that you get the loan and then you have to pay it back when you sell your house. If they loaned you 10% of what you ended up putting down, then you have to pay that back 10% of the equity of the house when you sell it. If your house has gone up by a lot of money, that means that you're going to give the government more money. However, it's interest free and it helps you make that purchase in the first place. So that's definitely targeted at those millennial voters in big urban centers and meant to appeal to them. Let's move on to the NDP.

Jagmeet Singh is making some interesting announcement. He's made some promises to Quebec, including the expansion of language laws. And as we talked about last week with you and Eric, the NDP is flailing in Quebec. So that makes sense that these promises are coming. But he's also talked about a price cap on smartphone and internet services. And Vashti, I want to talk to you about this today as well as someone who hates to pay their cell phone and internet bill. And so what is the NDP signaling here?

This again, just talking more strategically is what you talked about with Quebec and this essentially defines the NDP in this federal campaign. So they are looking for people who are having a hard time with cost of living. And just like the Conservatives are, but in a different way, their message is, we have your back. There is some debate about, I mean, the industry says it's just going to drive up our costs, you'll end up paying more.

But the NDP obviously contends that it would have the opposite effect. Where Quebec is concerned, that's also, I mean, that is so key, as we've talked about many times, to their electoral fortunes. There's a strong appeal to, quote unquote, the unique identity of Quebec. Those are words that Jagmeet Singh said when he was unveiling his platform. A lot of very interesting proposals there. You mentioned the language laws, also basically a veto over infrastructure projects that go through that province, more money for immigration integration. A lot of messages there meant to appeal to the Quebec base that they used to have. I wonder how it plays out in the rest of the country. That is to be seen. All right, let's end today with the Green Party, who unveiled their platform.

And Vashi, top level Coles notes. What are we hearing from Elizabeth May's camp right now? A couple of things that I would point out. First of all, we don't know how much it's all going to cost because apparently the parliamentary budget officer is combing through the numbers. And I think Elizabeth May said within the week they would release the costing. I think Elizabeth May said within the week they would release the costing. Costing is a big issue, again, because of the narrative that the NDP is trying to get out about the Green Party, which is that they're conservatives on bicycles. The Green Party has also promised that they will balance the budget within five years.

Like that's how they were sort of planning it, at least at the outset. So I'll be interested to see how on earth that's possible, because there are a lot of expensive things that Miss May and the party are promising. The other sort of stuff like universal basic income, free tuition. Yes. Yeah, that's not cheap. Yeah, it is not cheap. It's crazy expensive. Yeah. And you know what? This is something that we will absolutely be talking about in future pods with you. For sure. I'm super interested to see how I'm just fascinated to see how they end up costing that out and still look towards balancing the budget. Perfect. Okay, and so before we go, just on one last note, most entertaining thing you both have seen this week. Is it the liberal campaign bus hitting its own plane? I don't know.

Most entertaining moment, that's a tough one. Pretty much anything that involves Katie. She's just the best. She's so entertaining. I love watching everything she does. And the plane was pretty funny too it was it was pretty funny and again i will point everyone to the clip of katie chasing mcafree's car out of a parking in fairness i forgot that happened i know that happened like 24 hours ago i completely forgot that was kind of that was a thing that was entertaining i would say that yeah i don't know

there's so much happening you're just forgetting that it's happening. Both of you. Thank you so much. This was a pleasure. Thanks, Jamie. All right. So after Vashi, Katie and I spoke some news from the debates commissioner, Maxime Bernier of the People's Party of Canada has now been invited to participate in the leaders debates. The debates commissioner said he was doing this because, quote, based on our further evaluation, I'm satisfied that more than one candidate endorsed by the party has a reasonable chance to be elected. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and see you all tomorrow.