Why Erin O’Toole wants politics to be less polarized

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Justin Ling This is The Big Story, and I’m Justin Ling sitting in for Jordan Heath-Rawlings. Last winter as the freedom convoy descended on Ottawa from all directions, conservative party leader Erin O’Toole was caught in a bind. First he announced he wouldn’t meet with the protestors heading to Ottawa, the protest vaccine mandates vaccines themselves, and of course the Prime Minister. Then he didn’t about phase, he would meet with the convoy, but then he said, not the organizers, the ones who were peddling conspiracy theories and even violent rhetoric, but just a few days later, a caucus revolt upset over many perceived flip flops over the course of his leadership voted overwhelmingly to oust O’Toole as leader. It was a tumultuous few days and the beginning of the end for O’Toole’s time in the House of Commons.

In a race to replace him the party opted for Pierre Poilievre, who was enthusiastically endorsing the convoy, and he even repeated some of their conspiracy theories about the world economic form and its supposedly malign influence on Canadian politics. No matter how you feel about the new conservative leader, there’s little doubt that he’s a sign of a new type of political polarization in our country. And he’s not the only one. For the past six months, I’ve been working on a report for the public policy forum studying this state of polarization in Canada. And there’s nobody I’ve wanted to talk to more about this than Erin O’Toole. Last month, Erin O’Toole resigned his seat in the House of Commons and delivered an emotional goodbye to his colleagues. And he made an appeal to everyone in politics to make Ottawa less combative, less toxic, and less polarized. So what exactly is wrong with Ottawa and how can we fix it?

This is The Big Story, and I’m Justin Ling sitting in for Jordan Heath-Rawlings. My guest today is Erin O’Toole, former leader of the Conservative Party and outgoing MP for Durham. Erin, hi.

Erin O’Toole Great to be with you Justin.

Justin Ling So, I, I have to say, I, I listened to your departure speech just a couple of weeks ago and it’s funny because I’ve been working on this report for the last six months, but the state of polarization in Canada and I was shocked to learn that you came to a lot of the same conclusions that I did. So, you know, tell me, just for starters, what led you to write the speech you wrote, cuz you certainly could have done a glad to be here. So along to all my friends off. I go into the sunset. But you chose to do something pretty substantive.

Erin O’Toole Well, thank you. And because I wanted to leave a little bit of a message, I think even when you’re saying goodbye and thank you, and I started my speech, thanking my, my wife and kids, of course, and my community. You, you should do that. It’s an honour to serve, but I, I wanted to provide something for people to think about and chew on. And I’ve been reflective as we decided in February that, I was going to, probably not run again. And then an opportunity came up and we, we talked about leaving at the end of the session. And I’ve been very nostalgic looking back and one of the biggest differences for me is the impact of social media and how when I was running in a by-election in the GTA, at the kind of end of fall 2012, you announced you were gonna be somewhere on Facebook or you put out kind of, you know, positive messages. It was a broadcast tool at the time. Now it’s a feedback loop, and we’re now 10 years later understanding the impact of algorithms. And I’ve seen social media change people in my own caucus and in, you know, other parties. And I think the pandemic was an accelerant on that. I think now some of our adversarial nations out there also provide accelerant into it as well. And so I wanted to leave a message on that because I do think each MP, all 338 are leaders in their community. We’re not followers of our loudest followers, and I think that’s what social media is driving politics to on both left and right. So I think there was enough, you know, sort of comment to go around all sides, including my own, including my own performance over time. And how do we ensure that there’s still real debate? How do we ensure we’re not just broadcasting for our existing supporters, making them happy? We’re actually trying to build the odd bridge. That’s the message I wanna leave and it’s resonated fairly well.

Justin Ling You know, there are some people out there who, over the past couple of years, some of whom still say so, will say, you know, we’re not actually that polarized. We’re not the US. We don’t have Donald Trump. We’re not seeing, let’s say, the same level of backlash on women’s rights or LGBTQ rights or, or whatever. And they’re, they could kind of smug about it to be honest, to say, you know, Canada might be immune from that kind of polarization. What’s been your perspective? How have you felt the temperature change over, over your time in office and, and during your time as leader?

Erin O’Toole It’s interesting. Interesting you say that, Justin, because, I used to think that a little bit too in the first time I ran for Leader in a Race, I think there was 150 people in our race for conservative leader. I’m joking, but I came third in about 14 I think, in that and before our first debate in Saskatoon, Donald Trump was elected the night before we arrived, and Kelly Leach changed her entire campaign based on that. And it really didn’t resonate. She didn’t resonate. She got some news coverage, but and I said at the time in some media interviews, saying Canada is not experiencing the same economic turmoil that, that the US did with the Great Recession, we did better. So I don’t think there was the levels of dislocation that can be seized upon in, in sort of a populist campaign, but I think that changed with the pandemic. I also think it changed over time, as you might say, globalization and other forces have really led to this sense of, people feeling cut out of conversations and now they can find camaraderie online in groups and in Facebook groups. And Facebook changed its algorithm because groups were doing well and other, other regular accounts weren’t doing well. So I think I. We are not immune and the, the wave of the Trump election in 2016 has caused ripples into Canada, and we’re seeing the impact of some of those ripples now.

Justin Ling I find it really interesting that you picked up on the fact that a lot of performance in the House of Commons, and you use that word performance in the House of Commons, seems geared towards social media. So it’s no longer about the debate being had in the chambers, but how you can clip your little, participation in that debate. Put it on Twitter, Facebook, wherever, and rack up views, comments, attract donations, build a profile for yourself. Talk to me a bit about that. I mean, you, and to be honest with you, the conservative party is hands down the best at this. So you were really calling out your own colleagues, and I think you to some degree, acknowledge that you had done the same thing over the course of your career.

Erin O’Toole I think we all have, like, I’ll never forget one time, Christopher Freeland always used to avoid me at committee and I went down to Washington, let the ambassador know. And so my deputy Garnet Jennis filled in at committee when finally we’d been asking for the minister for a year to talk NAFTA, important things in foreign affairs. She knows I’m outta town. Town. She slips in and garnet rather than talk about NAFTA, started talking about overseas funding of abortion services and the liberals had a fundraiser out that night from a committee hearing, so I do think we are guilty. Justin, I, I think all parties are increasingly just broadcasting to their following and sort of saying, Hey, are you with us? Give me five bucks. Knowing that by the time somebody logs in, they’re gonna give probably more than five bucks. And it is changing the tenor. People have always complained about question, period, being a bit of theatre. Years ago it was to try and get that clip on the national or on CTVs broadcast. Well, no one’s watching that stuff anymore. So now it’s, you’re getting your own clips, but, what I’ve seen changing in the last few years is we’re now preparing the clips in advance. So rather than highlighting a real stumble by the Prime Minister or something, we’re, we’re really just playing tee-ball. We’re teeing up our own stuff to say what we think the, the sort of most generous donors or the, the loudest voices on our channels will like, and we’re ignoring the real issues of the country. And so, I do think there’s a bit of blame to go around, including to myself sometimes when, when I would’ve been performing. But I think as we now know what algorithms are doing, and there’s been some good all party work looking at this with, you know, Bob Zimmer, Nathaniel Ursman Smith, other parliamentary democracies. I think we have to have, talk about transparency, but also talks about education for young people, but also for politicians that. In some cases don’t even realize they’re being played by algorithms or even sometimes foreign influence.

Justin Ling Yeah, I, I mean, there’s no doubt that algorithms play a role in this, but it’s also, you know, people themselves are polarized. I mean, they have become so divided along party lines of party identification that they want politics to be a bit more of a blood sport. You know, there, there was this really interesting metric. I, I went and looked at some of the, videos that got uploaded. from the debate around the emergencies act when the trucker convoy was still happening, you know, there was still blockade of Ottawa, Scotty, one of your colleagues got up and delivered this really fantastic speech, speech about, you know, it’s, he struck a conciliatory tone. He says, you know, we have the right to disagree with those who have chosen not to get vaccinated, but we do not have the right to call them racist or misogynist. He was calling for more kind of conversation and bridge building. And it had like 30,000 views and like, you know, a smattering of comments and it didn’t do very well. Chris Workington, another one of your former colleagues, uploaded a video where he called the government, attacking our freedoms. Said that, that the Prime Minister was going after his political adversaries was this really high rhetoric speech, and it had like 10 times as many views and infinite more comments. Your colleagues, everyone in the House of Commons must be realizing what works and must be playing into it, right?

Erin O’Toole Well, I said that in my speech, Justin. We’re now, framing our political impact by the number of likes we get on social media, not the number of lives we change in the real world. During that debate, there were, there was coverage by some of the US bloggers and some of the, the US media personalities on the right, and some of our members got amplified by, by being talked about or, or commented on or retweeting. People seem to sort of get vindication if, Hey, Elon Musk saw my tweet, rather than saying, are you winning the argument? I would rather us sort of try and win the arguments and win over that discriminating, swing voter who actually does think about casting their ballot and is probably open to the conservatives on a range of fronts, but concerned about us on other fronts. So we are not going to win over those, you know, smart, thoughtful swing voters in urban and suburban areas unless we’re winning the argument if we’re just performing to get thousands more views and likes we’re, we’re falling victim to this, you know, social media, you know, dumbing down of politics.

Justin Ling Talk to me a bit about the Freedom Convoy. I mean, your the end of your tenure as leader overlapped with the arrival of the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. You know, this tumultuous like 72 hour period where initially you weren’t gonna meet with any of the truckers and then you were going to, but not the organizers, just the participants. And it’s, you know, we watched you in real time trying to navigate how to come up with a policy that could sort of be, attractive to the public, but also, you know, goodbye your party and, and clearly it, it didn’t a hundred percent take. I know it was more complicated than that, but, looking back, I mean, would you have done anything differently over, over that, you know, that week period when the Freedom Convoy was, was descending on Ottawa?

Erin O’Toole No, because I went about as far as I could and it was becoming a little you know, I remember John Ibbotson said, Erin O’Toole embraces the convoys. Said, actually, no, most of the caucus aren’t happy that I won’t endorse law breaking. And, you know, I, I saw a lot of MPs in my caucus kinda lose perspective. My leadership bid, my successful leadership bid was driven up heavily when I proposed a solution to blockading bridges and pipelines, during the Shutdown Canada movement where primarily indigenous, Canadians or environmental protestors were blockading things shut down Canada. And I said, you can’t in the public good blockade, critical public infrastructure, it resonated so well. Jason Kenny introduced a bill on it in the Alberta legislature. So I said to a number of people, okay, we’re not okay if people on the left do this, but we’re gonna give a pass. And I was upset because, I had advocated for the truckers longer than anyone, longer than Miss Lich and all these, you know, people that really came from protest movements, or Benjamin Ter and Tom Wiggan. These are divisive people I’ve encountered for many years charlatans in some cases they seized on that. When I met with some of the truckers, outside of Ottawa trying to sort of hear their concerns and saying, you don’t have to break the law. I saw the PPC organizers there. It was a political, you know, breaking or, or you know, fraudulently, you know, flaunting the law, I should say. And that’s not conservative in my view. So I think that was a tough time. You know, the tire marks are gone off my, off my head now. But I wouldn’t have done anything differently because I ran an entire election trying not to demonize unvaccinated people. I was very pro-vaccine. But I said nobody should lose their job. And we had advocated not just for truckers to be able to drive into the US, which we’re only 50% of that decision, but Mr. Trudeau was gonna cut off Interprovincial Trucking in January of 2022. And a lot, not a lot of people saw that. We did. And I did a press conference on January 6th. I remember the date. Well, for other reasons, it was a year after the riots, on Capitol Hill where even the media when I was saying, look, we have to accommodate people. We, you know, this has been a year. People aren’t gonna get vaccinated. Yelling at them, jailing and fining them aren’t realistic options. And you saw the Quebec government exploring that. We have to try and find solutions and I just think. My approach was the right one, in my view, Justin, but at the wrong time. And people were emotional and on both sides of the issue. And so the 80% that supported the mandate were mad at the 20, and some of the 20% showed up in Ottawa, the convoy. So I think Mr. Trudeau created those environments by running a campaign on that. So do I have regrets? Yeah, I had a regret that we don’t, we had a campaign almost entirely based on vaccine politics rather than on, you know, other issues. But I was fortunate to have a window to put some ideas forward. Just wasn’t the best window an opposition leader could have asked for.

Justin Ling What do we do about those folks who came out for the freedom convoy or who supported it? You know, actually biking on the way to the studio today, I passed a car with a big bumper sticker that said I’m part of the, the fringe minority, and I hold unacceptable views. You know, one of the kind of slogans of the trucker convoy, they’re still out there. They’re still angry. They’re frustrated, whether it’s because they were talked to down by the, down by the Prime Minister, or they lost their job because of vaccine mandates, or because they have bought into some of the conspiracy theories and misinformation around it. How do you bring them back? Right. You know, Pierre Poilievre the new leader of your party, has clearly tried to kind of bring them in the tent. Maxine Burnier, leader of the People’s Party has tried to whip up that fervor even more aggressively. Some other organizers from the Freedom Convoy are still trying to build a movement off of those people. Is there a way to bring them back in the fold? Maybe, you know, agreeing to disagree on some things, but trying to get them back into, you know, into trusting government again.

Erin O’Toole I think there is, but it will be not a quick exercise. I’ve used the comparison of society being a bit by like an elastic, and we’ve been stretched through the pandemic through this uncertainty, exacerbated by rising interest rates, cost of living, social media, we’re stretched to the max and there’s a risk that some. Parts of the, the elastic is fraying. I think it can come back, but it’s gonna take a little bit of time. This is why I’m agreeing to do longer form discussions when people ask for them. We need more of that. We need actually less of the performance politics and more of the, you know, thoughtful speeches of Scott Aitchison, as you said they’re not sexy. I used to say years ago if I, if I talked about, a Beavers or a Cub Scout event, my riding, I’ll get 20 likes. But if I said Justin Trudeau is, is destroying the country, I’d get a thousand likes cuz it’s from people all over the country. That creates a model that incentivizes outrage. And so how can we incentivize longer form discussions, podcasts, YouTubers? I think that’s a bit of the future, but it’s, it’s gonna take some time to take root.

Justin Ling I think you’d agree with me that at least for your party, I think increasingly for the other parties, you can’t win a leadership election amongst party members by promising to do conciliatory politics and build bridges and have long forward conversations, right? You win elections by demonizing your opponents, and I think you take some responsibility for doing that in when you ran for a leader and when you were a leader. There’s no positive reward for, for doing what you’re talking about until, frankly, you leave politics. So how do you incentivize people to do it while they’re still sitting in the House of Commons?

Erin O’Toole By having these conversations. And I don’t think I ever demonized Mr. Trudeau. in fact, many times I tried to show the respect for the office that was due. I look at it in the same way I was in the military, the chain of command, you’re, you’re not on top. But you have to respect the chain of command. Was I perfect? Absolutely not. But I ran, ran to try and capture some of that frustration. But knowing that they were gonna be voting for a, a relatively socially moderate suburban dad who had some strong feelings about the military Canada’s role and the world pipelines. Each time though we lose our base now, sorts of seems to think that moderation or building bridges is, didn’t work under O’Toole, so we need to try something else. This is what parties are gonna have to grapple with because I think with social media, there’s gonna continue to be an incentive to go further. That said, you could change the way leaderships take place. Parties have done that. You could change question, period. You could change debate in the House of Commons. Now that we realize social media is going to change how parties are approaching debate, maybe we changed the rules in France. Macron created a party with kinda reasonable socialists and reasonable Republicans. If it keeps getting worse, I could see that on the horizon where people just kind of say, enough, we need some bridge buildings. You know, there’s not a ton of ground between a a Stephen Harper and a Paul Martin really, economically and on a lot of social issues. So should we really get to a point where we seem that we’re so far polarized that the country’s at risk? I think hopefully the next few years we’ll see that elastic come back to, to normal a bit, and that’s why I, I’m speaking about it as I’m leaving.

Justin Ling And absolutely appreciate that. But just to poke at you a little bit, you know, when you were leader of the opposition, you know, you, I think actually it was during the last election, you recorded a video in toning that the Prime Minister was covering up what may have been a lab leak at a Winnipeg lab that, and you heavily hinted that it could have been the origins of Covid-19, which was playing into a conspiracy theory that was incredibly prevalent online. Particularly amongst the right, particularly amongst those were skeptical about the nature of the pandemic. do you think that that sort of thing feeds in to some of that divisiveness, some of that distrust, some of that animosity?

Erin O’Toole No, because now we’re having a conversation about it. I welcome it. We clipped John Stewart, in that video to show he was asking the exact same questions and no one would suggest that John Stewart is a raging right winger. The government was covering up espionage and we had responsible questions in the house that we asked on it myself, Michael Chong, others. At a time that people were worried about the infiltration of scientists with links to the Chinese military, to critical labs and sites in our country. All they could have done is, is release those documents. They, they were forcing the speaker to go to court. They brought the most senior public health official in Canada. To the bar of the House of Commons, Justin, that hasn’t happened in a century in this country. So I think they’ve made it worse. There are questions about the, the lab leak from Wuhan. We were not playing to conspiracies, we were playing to open questions, and there’s been two agencies of the United States government have suggested that’s possibly the most likely origin. I think hiding these conversations is not the way to go. Approaching it in a, in a dedicated way. You know, I’m not suggesting every tone element of it was perfect, but whether it’s cancel culture, whether it’s interference by Beijing, I’ve tried to approach all of these important discussions in a serious way, and when I’ve screwed up, I’ve tried to acknowledge that. But I think we now have a government that if you look at the Globe’s reporting on access to information, how many times has Justin Trudeau said, the story in the Globe and Mail is false. Like, we now have Minister Mendocino being caught lying on several occasions. A bunch of, ministers don’t check their emails. Like it is really a litany of incompetence. And I, I, I think that’s gonna drive more and more questions. How do you do that without, playing to some of the fears in a conspiratorial way. That’s the balance I think all politicians have to strike.

Justin Ling Yeah, and in your speech, in your departure speech from the House of Commons, you even single out some of the conspiracy theories that have bubbled up around the world economic forum. This idea that there’s a sort of foreign master in Europe who’s really pulling the strings, and it’s become incredibly prevalent in a lot of these communities, whether they’ve supported the Freedom Convoy or other kinda conspiratorial movements and the new leader of your party is openly playing into them. I mean, it’s become one of his most frequent talking points about the World Economic Forum. Maybe extrapolating that out a bit, you know, what is the end result of this? If we keep playing this game, where do we get to as a, as a political culture?

Erin O’Toole Well, I’ve, I’ve told Pierre my concerns about what is said online with the World Economic Forum and Davos. It’s fine if you’re gonna say you’re not gonna participate, that’s fine. How are you gonna make up for not having access to the global capital markets that are there every year? Are you gonna do more outreach to Wall Stree to Canary Wharf, to Singapore? Canada needs to build pipelines. They’re not free. We need LNG facilities. They’re not free either. So when Stephen Harper gave his, Canada’s an energy superpower speech at Davos, it was not because he was the Pinocchio puppet of, of the Davos elite. I think all politicians have to say, push back a little bit on these things. And I’ve told a number of people in my caucus, I think that particular issue is a bit of a cancer in our party right now, and it has to be extracted. And that’s not easy. But when I’ve had people at Maple Fest in Bowmanville ask me about, Davos or 15 minute cities if you’re actually respectful to them and talk about Stephen Harper’s approach there. Talk about, hey, if you don’t like the parties with celebrities and some of the sort of very left causes there, go there and advocate like we did in the past for energy or benefit reformed. Harper talked about changing old age security. Not exactly sexy, but he was there to sell our country as a place to invest. I said in the speech, you know, Lester Pearson helped draft the NATO charter. Like we are a founding member of these multilateral organizations. If people aren’t gonna like them online, we can’t suddenly say, okay, we won’t participate. Let’s reform the UN or modernize and expand NATO if there’s issues. Or go to Davos and advocate for responsible energy production. Don’t avoid multilateral events because of what people are saying online. So I, I would like to see a much more intelligent discussion on some of this stuff because we’re seeing now in the US Black Rock is not gonna use the word ESG, environmental social governance because ESG is now some Senator sinister plot. And I’ve spoken to members of the Jewish community, they get very concerned, you know, the Davos, George Soros, all of this is one or two steps away from antisemitism. So let’s, let’s push back a bit. I, that’s where I think every MP is a leader in their community, and that means, you know, informing and elevating the debate.

Justin Ling But, but where we’re at now is that, if you as a politician on the right center right, say anything, even, even trying to reject the conspiracy theories around the world economic form, let’s say. You get piled on so aggressively. And you saw this actually just recently, the by-election. your party was putting out mailers attacking Maxine Bernier for, for going to, to to Davo, Switzerland when he was foreign affairs minister. And it became this sort of competition to see who could appeal to the conspiracy theorists the most. That strikes me as a really dangerous sign that we’re going in the wrong direction. Not kinda heating the advice you’re suggesting and, and trying to speak earnestly to people. Not talking down to them, not necessarily fighting with them, but, but trying to bring them back into the side of reason. It seems like your party is, is hastening the decline into that sort of anxiety.

Erin O’Toole Well, I think, you know, Maxine running in that by-election kind of set a completely different tone. You know, Candace won that by-election with 53-54% of the vote. Sure the PPC got high, but most Ontario MPs would, would do back flips to get 53% of the vote Justin. What we see in the US, a little bit with the Freedom Caucus and some of their antics now, even in some of our writings in Canada, that are the safest in the country. We’re having MPs not push back one iota to these people. They, they think it’s a tragedy if they lose five points and go from 75 to 70% of the vote. We have to represent all Canadians. And so that means not, allowing some of these, you know, myths and conspiracies to circulate. Literally when I got to the Harper government, I was one of the only young members of cabinet that had never been to Davos or never been a young global leader. Because I had a real life. I was not elected till I was almost 40, and you had to be under 40. So Andrew Shear, a bunch of these people were listed as young global leaders because they’d achieved something. Does that mean you’re beholden to this global cabal? No. It means you were highlighted for being in public life early on. Now people are scrubbing their histories and, it’s comical. Stand up for our energy, stand up for Canada and say any place in the world where we’re gonna be competing against the Americans, the Mexicans, the Germans for investment, Canada should be there and we should try and win, not, not hide from these debates.

Justin Ling One of the elephants in the room here that is often not talked about is fundraising. Right? You know, part of the reason you never want to contradict. some of the most engaged, energetic, in some cases, conspiratorial and paranoid online is because oftentimes they’re the rank and file of the donor base who give you $5, $10, $20 every other month. And the pressure for each individual MP to raise money is enormous. I mean, can you talk to me a bit about the pressures of constantly having to fill the party coffer so you can go fight the next election. And kinda what that does to your relationship with your voters, and particularly your most engaged party members.

Erin O’Toole Well, I think all parties have struggled with fundraising, under the new system, taking away the public subsidy in Canada. We don’t have anything like the US where they have to raise like a million dollars a week. It’s, it’s kind of crazy there. But, the Bernie Sanders campaign really showed how speaking to certain passionate folks can free up 25, 40, 50 bucks and they’ll be back in four months if you know, if you talk to an issue that they may not heard, you know, anyone else talk to. So I think we’ve seen it on the left. We’ve seen it on the right. That’s essentially how Maxine Bernier has you know, paid for his nice suits over the last few years has been soaking people for money. Max is a particular unique beast in that he has literally done 180 flips on literally every position. He was a socially progressive conservative in the past, you know, marching in pride and, you know, and supporting rights. Now he’s not. He was, you know, at Davos, the photos of him with Bono and all that sort of stuff, he decries now. I think that fuels cynicism about politics. I. But you do see the clip approach. The memification of politics is largely rooted at making that active part of the quote unquote base happy. I’ve done it. A number of other people have done it, but if you’re letting that active base tell you what to do, that’s where the problem is. And I think in some cases we’ve seen people cross over that Rubicon and really just start echoing what they’re hearing online.

Justin Ling You know, part of the conservative party strategy going forward, and I, I know, I’m sure you’ve heard this because I’ve heard it from, from a ton of people in the party, is to go to Maxine Bernier’s base and try to win over some of his supporters. Right. You know, there’s an expectation that Justin Trudeau has managed to lock down the center, maybe even a bit of the center right. And the conservative party’s path, the victory is winning over those 850,000 people who voted for Maxine Bernie last time. Where does that get you? I mean, you know, we’re talking about the sort of the ways in which he’s kinda energized his own base, if you’re trying to pull them into your party. Does that sort of create a new toxicity inside the conservative party?

Erin O’Toole That is a loser strategy, absolute loser strategy. There are some people advising Pierre to do that, that I think is wrong. Maxime tapped the anti-vax sentiment and I spoke to all the experts and they always said, you know, there’s gonna be about 10% of the population that will not get vaccinated. Half of them because of hesitancy, half of them because they’re stridently, anti-vax. Max is never going to have those numbers again because we’re. Hopefully never in a pandemic election again. And so for us to try and occupy his space because he, he might have taken 15, 18 seats from us. The much wider group of voters, Justin, is the people in the middle center center, right, that live in the four 16 and the 905 and the Vancouver region. The suburban Canadian voters that get very scared of Max’s extreme rhetoric on rights, on, on, you know, environment and a whole range of things. So let’s let him take that position and talk to people about the cost of living, the fact their kids can’t find homes in the GTA or the Vancouver region. I think we will win the next election and it will be a rejection of the Liberals. But if we’ve become, you know, the PPC light. We may not be able to hold government for very long. What other party is gonna vote, with us on budgets and things like this? So we, we have to have a plan to win a strong, stable, majority conservative government, you know, Harper’s old line. To do that, you have to win the suburbs and the suburbs are, are, are not in to going back on old debates. They’re also not into a conservative party that doesn’t want to ever talk about the environment or reconciliation or other issues. So, I think we will win because it’s a vote the bums out scenario, Trudeau looks weak on every single file. His cabinet you can shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic, but it’s going down. If we want stable, conservative government for the next few years, workable minorities, or even a majority, we’ve gotta forget the PPC and go after reasonable, smart, concerned middle class suburban voters.

Justin Ling And it seems like part of Pierre’s strategy for doing that is to talk about, things that actually are of course top of mind, you know, rising crime, rising homelessness in, in major cities, perception that things are kind of falling apart, things aren’t working. But a lot of the time that comes down to a pretty negative appeal. I mean, there’s videos of Pierre Poilievre, you know, standing in front of encampments, saying some pretty outlandish high rhetoric things about, about drug users. And on the flip side, you know he’s still campaigning against any sort of carbon pricing against any sort of serious climate policy. Does that form a winning strategy? I mean, it is a pretty negative campaign and it’s one that doesn’t speak to some of those anxieties around climate change that you were, you know, you were trying to, I think, bring your party along on.

Erin O’Toole Well there’s two things there. Let me unpack both. First climate, I don’t think the will matter next time. With interest rates going up with cost of living, voters will want to punish the Trudeau government. It’ll be tossed the bums out. We knew from 2019 the large reason Andrew Shear lost in the suburbs. I knocked on tons of doors here in the GTA. We were wrongfully accused of being climate change deniers. People aren’t sold in the carbon tax, but they want to say, what are you gonna do if you’re gonna throw that out? All my kids talk about is climate change. What are you gonna do? So I can tell my kids I’m doing something. You know, our policy was great had it not been for the pandemic election. So we’re gonna have to come up with something there. The city’s issue, the encampments. My next podcast, Blue Skies, for those listening, is featuring the mayor of Oshawa who was homeless and had had an addiction himself. He’s struggling with these issues in South Oshawa. I’ve seen it and, and gone to some of the sites to see some of the measures. They’re trying to, to balance public safety and, and support for those with addictions. I put out a very comprehensive addiction strategy in the last election. I think people are scared with what they’re seeing in the cities, and I think they’re seeing the encampments of a sign as a sign that the cities are falling apart. And it’s easy to play to that fear. And I think what what Pierre is gonna have to do is say, these are unacceptable. Here’s a path to help a bunch of people out. I think you’re gonna see him adopt some of the policies we ran on, which is a mixture of harm reduction and treatment. But right now a lot of the cities do look broken Justin. And I, I think you see Kennedy Stewart lost in Vancouver largely due to that, and new Canadians, especially who came to Canada looking at, you know, our cities and our suburbs as, as pillars of stability, they’re scared by the violence and, you know, the open drug use and, and you know, the sort of fear that they might have in some shopping areas. So you’re gonna see people that maybe have traditionally not voted conservative, voting against the status quo. So, as I said, our, our challenge will be, I think we’ll form the next government. We have to make sure that government lasts more than nine months because we’re gonna have to get support from the NDP or the block. Or maybe the Liberals will give us support while they do a leadership. Who knows? But if we actually want a stable, long-term government, we have to find a few more allies in the center, center right.

Justin Ling Moving past just party politics. I mean, you ended the speech in the house on a pretty optimistic note. Some cautious optimism, I’ll call it and a hopeful one. What are things that could be done reasonable, tangible things that could be done that would make the electoral process better or democracy better, the house of Commons better? That could actually be done either by Liberal government, a conservative one, or whatever in the near future that would maybe try to stave off some of this decline.

Erin O’Toole You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. It’s a good question, and I think groups like Samara and others, I’ve, I’ve suggested this to them before. Put things out there that, that politicians will commit to doing when they’re not in government because once you get the levers of power, no one wants to change the power of the PMO or the the, the way question period is run. But I think if we actually went back to some of the Westminster traditions, longer responses to questions, let the speaker dictate who takes part in debates, I would much rather hear from. John McKay on, on arctic sovereignty. Then somebody who’s gonna be reading the speech given to them by the minister’s office. And it’s the same on my side. The speaker would get to know over time who should participate in debates. drop so many of the committees we have. Have a few standard committees and then maybe a couple specialized committees and make MPs attend debate more so that the House of Commons becomes more than just clips and question period. And I’ve said on a couple of occasions, I’m revisiting my views on proportional representation. Not because you’d be interviewing the Prime Minister right now Justin. And I would’ve won under that system, not because of that, because I think these entrenched unwillingness to find common ground that social media is driving may require us to, to experiment with the brokerage approach that, you know, so you would see some rural Alberta or Saskatchewan seats maybe being, you know, PPC or, or further, right? But if, if people could galvanize support on economic issues. Like I think these entrenched differences are gonna stay. So we now have a Prime Minister that has lost the popular vote in two elections, but formed government this time in a coalition that he didn’t run on. So maybe we have more debates, mandatory voting. I think social media has changed the game so much. We have to be willing to say, how can we adapt our parliamentary to democracy to keep the best elements of free speech and debate and opportunity, but with the reality that there’s going to be less brokerage in parties than there was in the past.

Justin Ling So, what’s your role in that gonna be going forward? You know, you’re, you’re exiting the House of Commons, what comes next as you take on, I suppose, your elder statesman role?

Erin O’Toole Well, I’m 50, please don’t call me elder statesman quite yet. Justin. I’m, I’m going to help essentially where I can. I’m gonna fade out. My time has passed, in terms of the limelight a lot. I’m gonna be working on international trade and global risk for companies and investment funds for a European company named Adit. And so I will probably comment on war in Ukraine on some of the tensions we see in the Taiwan Strait with ESG and supply chains. I actually think if we don’t give into some of the rational voices on Twitter, on ESG we could use these things to change global trade. A country that takes rights, takes the environment, takes, you know, governance. Seriously, those should be the resources sold, hydrocarbons, uranium, not resources from dictatorial, dictatorial countries. So if we actually have smarter discussions about trade, about human rights, about global security, our role in NATO, I think, I think I can add to that a little bit. So I’m gonna be doing that from the private sector, but it, it’s been an honour to serve, I think Pierre, Scott, runway that he deserves to, to have unencumbered by the old guy kicking around and grumbling from the sides. And when I have advice for him, I give it whether he takes it or not. That’s, that’s each leader’s prerogative. But I, you know, I’m, I’m so blessed that I’ve had the opportunity to, to take the shot and to put ideas out there. And for me, there’s a joy in, in picking up the globe each day and seeing arctic sovereignty, seeing defence, and NATO spending, seeing mental health, talked about new ways. These are things I’ve worked on for 10 years and. It shows a healthy democracy. Sometimes the opposition sets the agenda. They don’t get to implement the agenda. But I think some of these issues that are very important to me and I think very important to the country will, will ripple for years to come. And if, if I can help the country, I always will.

Justin Ling Well, Mr. O’Toole, thanks so much for coming on.

Erin O’Toole Thank you, Justin.

Justin Ling That was Erin O’Toole, former leader of the Conservative Party and outgoing MP for Durham. I’m Justin Ling and that was The Big Story. For more head over to TheBigStorypodcast.ca. Or if you want to send us any kind of feedback, congratulations, notes, ideas, we’re @TheBigStoryFpn on Twitter. You can also email us at hello@TheBigStorypodcast.ca. Or leave a voicemail at 416-935-5935. We’re also available wherever you get your podcasts. You can also talk to your smart speaker and just say, play The Big Story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Justin Ling in for Jordan. He’ll be back next week.