Roundup: First attempts to define O’Toole

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It was not quite ten o’clock Eastern when the Liberals fired their first salvo across Erin O’Toole’s bow. Liberal MP Pam Damoff put out a press release highlighting three of Derek Sloan’s most egregious comments – questioning Dr. Theresa Tam’s loyalties, comparing women’s bodily autonomy to slavery, and calling banning conversion therapy “child abuse” – and said that if O’Toole didn’t repudiate those claims that he was condoning them. It seems the Liberals took a cue from the Conservatives before them and are trying to define the party’s new leader before he can define himself – payback for Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff (tough Justin Trudeau proved resilient to those attempts).

A short while later, O’Toole had his first press conference as leader, where he told people to ignore the Liberal spin, and reiterated parts of his victory speech where he welcomed all kinds of Canadians into the Conservative fold, before he took questions for a whole 15 minutes. To wit, when pressed about how concretely he wants the prime minister to address “Western alienation,” he blustered about support for getting resources to market, as though Trudeau controls the world price of oil. Asked about the social conservatives and Sloan’s comments, O’Toole shrugged them off as an attempt to highlight differences in the context of a leadership but said that he would “have a talk” with Sloan, but gave no indication that Sloan was on thin ice. O’Toole also called himself pro-choice – but in the same breath defended voting for a bill that would give rights to foetuses by claiming it was a “public safety” bill about sentencing, which was the weaselliest thing I have seen in ages. He also said that he supported trans rights more than Trudeau did because he was one of 18 Conservatives that voted for one of the private members’ bills and Trudeau had missed that vote – ignoring of course that said bill died and that Trudeau revived it and passed it in government. He also intimated that it was Trudeau who was trying to force an election, not him, for what that’s worth.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1298277863297298434

Meanwhile, here’s a look at some of the raw feelings inside the Peter MacKay camp as the “co-founder” of the party has been repudiated, while O’Toole is rushing to try and unify the party behind his leadership in spite of the things that were said during the campaign.

Good reads:

  • The government is sending the provinces another $2 billion – on top of the $19 billion already agreed to – to help with school restarts.
  • Marc Miller announced $82.5 million for First Nations mental health funding as it relates to pandemic fallout.
  • Well-placed sources say that the government has effectively blocked Huawei from Canada’s 5G network, but won’t come out and say it for obvious reasons.
  • The Canadian Forces are investigating far-right actors in the same unit as the man who rammed into Rideau Hall’s gates uttering threats against the prime minister.
  • CRA plans to launch a pilot project of audits related to the emergency wage subsidy to ensure that there aren’t fraudulent claims being made.
  • Meng Wanzhou lost another case at Federal Court around CSIS documents related to her arrest, the judge saying they weren’t the “missing piece of the puzzle.”
  • Here’s another look at the rise of Leslyn Lewis in the Conservative leadership race; Lewis says she’ll run for a seat, but hasn’t said where that will be just yet.
  • Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column looks at what’s on Erin O’Toole’s to-do list, and disabuses the notion that he has to negotiate with the government.
  • Susan Delacourt notes that O’Toole didn’t bash the media in his opening press conference, even though bashing the CBC is a revenue-generator for his party.
  • My column looks at the resurgence of social conservatives in the leadership race, and the fact that O’Toole has made himself beholden to them.

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: First attempts to define O’Toole”

  1. There is no reason for Canadians to fret about how Mr. O’Toole is perceived. All anyone needs to do is examine the Tory playbook, before their “new” iteration through the Harper years to the present period. first they lost the last election, not solely because of a lack of leadership on the part of Mr. Scheer, but the failure again to bring about a social compact with Canadians that would be more aligned with the people of this era. That failure remains to this very day. I watched carefully through the CPC attempt to find a new leader. What I and I’ll wager many Canadians didn’t see was a social roadmap outlined by them for our future after Covid 19, for the environment, any discussion on how to create jobs in any form of “new” economy, for the elimination of child poverty, the support of women with children who have been abandoned by deadbeats, the issue of childcare, any viable solution to address drug addiction, a redistribution of wealth from the paltry few who control the vast portion of our national wealth. The new leader never said a word about our aging and many times crumbling infrastructure and how his Party would be addressing that problem. Of course, in addressing it the topic of good paying jobs never once were uttered by any candidate for the job. No, O’toole is amply defined. The Tories will trot out their shop worn sops to their corporate friends, their tacit support for those who still after all this time refuse to accept the woman’s right to choose, the continued erosion of our secular political system by subtly and increasingly invoking the name of the christian god into our political life, while quietly denying other faiths the same privilege. Indeed, he has nothing to tell that we don’t already know. What we do know is that the CPC will continue as in the past, spreading misinformation, fomenting distrust of anyone else through fear, they will continue to appeal to their “old stock” white base and those indoctrinated into believing that they have a divine right to tell “others” how to think, live, bring up their families, worship or not, who they should and can love.
    There is no big mystery about Erin O’toole . That will be made even more clear as the days move forward.
    Wayne Underhill

  2. I can define him easy peasy even as the media is intent upon gaslighting the public yet again just like they did about Scheer: He’s another angry white male Republican, this time Stephen Harper with no hair instead of Stephen Harper with dimples and a shxt eating grin. As for MacKay drowning his sorrows again in a potato patch with someone else’s dog, hey buddy, you reap what you sow. You broke it, you bought it. David Orchard says hi.

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