2022 CPC leadership candidate MP Leslyn Lewis's Meet & Greet at Abbotsford, BC

This would be a change.
This would be a very nice change.
I heard a guy say today and I told
him that's not a nice thing to say.
But he said, I found out why we have an oil
crisis in the country and we've got oil in Western Canada,
oil in Atlanta, Canada, oil in Newfoundland, oil in the north.
He said, I know why we've got a crisis. And I said, Why?
He said, "Because of the ditch sticks in Ottawa."
Now, I will never tell that joke because
I can't repeat it, but it underlines the truth.
You want a Prime Minister who
knows what they're talking about?
Leslie Lewis has degrees in everything
from energy policy, environmental policy, business
administration, a doctorate in law.
Folks, she is the most learned person on this tour
in this race, and more so than the Prime Minister.
And she doesn't brag about it.
She just takes what she's learned and puts it to work.
And we like that about her talk
about putting things to work. Again,
I don't begrudge the fact that our Prime Minister
lives in luxury and never really had to work
for it. We really worked hard for it.
Here we have a woman who knows what it is to
build a business from the start, knows what it is to
have to meet payroll for families who will go hungry if
the business isn't successful, to get up early every morning and
go to bed late at night wanting to make that payroll.
Folks, when we talk, when you hear a Prime
Minister who says that business people, especially small business
people, are just in it so they can hide
their taxes? Unfortunately, we can't hide our taxes.
He takes most of them.
But here's a woman who's paid her taxes and paid
her dues and did it the hard and honest way.
Isn't that what you'd like to
see in the Prime Minister's office?
Some people have even said, is she tough enough?
Is she tough enough?
Leslie, I think you've been running that
law firm for just under 20 years.
I think, folks, picture this.
How would you like to get up every
morning and go to work and work with
a bunch of hungry lawyers every single day?
That builds toughness.
We've got a woman here who understands that.
We also have a woman here who is
a woman of faith and is not afraid,
when she's asked about that faith, to speak about it.
Don't you want somebody like that in Ottawa?
She respects all faiths, but she also says
that your faith should be respected, too.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's officially MP Dr.
Leslin Lewis. But she tells us we can call her Leslyn.
Ladies and gentlemen, would you give a hand with
your help for the next Prime Minister of Canada?
Dr. MP Leslyn Lewis!
I had to get that offered.
You'd say I wasn't tough enough, so
I made sure I pulled it off.
This is great.
What an introduction!
With an introduction like that, I don't even
need to really say much about myself.
So I'm just going to delve right into it.
And I'm going to leave some time for questions
because I want to hear what's on your heart
and I'm going to do what politicians don't do.
I'm going to answer your questions.
So I've been traveling around the country, and the
question that I'm asked all the time is, why
are you going to do this again?
You entered the race in 2020, and
here you are doing it again.
And the truth is the reason why I entered
the race in 2020, so many of those reasons
are still there, but now they are magnified.
The fabric of our nation is being torn apart.
Provinces like Alberta are still threatening
to leave our great Confederation.
Debt is piling up to the tune
of $1.2 trillion every single day.
We pay interest payments, interest
payments of $140,000,000 a day.
How many of you have watched Oprah?
Do you know about Oprah?
Do you remember that mean that she has
when she gives a car to everybody?
Well, I'm telling you, you owe 31,000, you
owe 31,000, you owe 31,000, you owe 31,000.
And all of your children have
their share of debt of 31,000.
And this is before they even enter the workforce.
Think of what we have done to future generations.
We have saddled future generations with debt.
We need to turn things around.
We need to create hope for future generations.
And I believe that I'm the person that
can restore hope and prosperity to this nation.
The social divides have been so
wide in the last two years.
I am speaking to people, and when I hear their
stories, you can see the trauma that Canadians have endured.
And the biggest manifestation of that
was seen through the Trucker Convoy.
Now, I don't know where you stand
on that issue, and it doesn't matter.
What we saw happen is symbolic
of a fracture in our democracy.
I lived one block away from where
the truckers parked in front of Parliament.
And watching the news, I can tell you that the
first day I had to walk through, I didn't know
what I was going to expect because the news, the
coverage was like our country was under siege.
There were acts of sedition being committed.
These people were.
And so when I walked through, I said, no, I'm going
to stop and I'm going to listen and I'm going to
talk to these Canadians because they are paying my salary.
And it felt good to have a
salary that someone else would pay.
Usually I would say my own salary as a lawyer.
So these Canadians are paying my salary and
I am not going to listen to them.
I said no, and I stopped
and I had conversations with them.
And I believe that that was a missed
opportunity on behalf of our Prime Minister.
These were hardworking Canadians who were
labeled as misogynist, racist, demonized.
And this is what we have done with Cancel Culture.
We have erased what makes us truly Canadian.
When I was growing up in this country, you
were taught to be proud of your country.
You were taught that your Canadian identity is
something that is envied around the world.
We were once the beacon of hope,
of opportunity for everyone around the world.
And now in our schools, our children
are taught to erase their history.
I'm not saying that we have a perfect country.
We don't, and we've made mistakes, but we can learn
from our mistakes and we can build on that.
And if we erase our history, if we erase our heroes,
we are doomed to make the same mistakes in the future.
Now I'm going to talk to you a
little bit about the 2020 leadership race.
Sometimes I would walk in a
room and people would laugh.
At the beginning, people thought, who
does she think she is?
She's not even going to get any votes.
And I said to myself, I knew that
I had a calling to enter politics.
And I knew when I saw Andrew Scheer
running from reporters because he didn't want to
talk about being prolife, I said, there's a
role and I'm going to enter politics.
And I'm going to let everybody know I'm a
person of faith and I am pro-life.
And that I can tell you courage becomes contagious.
People were starting to say that's okay, even
if someone is pro-choice, we can have conversations.
When I entered politics, when I ran for the
leadership, it was always: that debate was over.
And I would say, no.
Any debate in the democracy should be open.
That's what a democracy is.
It's a plurality of voices.
And we can each have our own opinion on
something and still find something that we agree to.
So I eventually won the popular vote.
I got more votes than all of the other politicians.
And I wasn't even an MP at that time.
And I did that by building
bridges, even something like pro-life.
I said, what do we agree on?
Do we agree that pregnancy care centers should be
there for women who make choices, that they may
find themselves in a situation where they have an
unwanted pregnancy and they may do something so compassionate
is saying, I'm going to give this child up
for adoption to a loving family.
When our adoptions list are so long in this country, should
we not be there for women who make those choices?
And guess what?
The majority of Canadians agree with that.
So here we have some commonality.
And I believe that the next leader of this
country should be a bridge builder, and I am
that person that can build those bridges.
I think it's so important that we aspire to
make sure that our children have a future.
I am running to be that hope.
When I think of the fact that the
average home in this country is $1.1 million.
I think of the young people who have their future.
They may never own a home because of
out of control inflation and the un-affordability of ever being
able to secure that down payment.
I want to bring back hope to them.
I want to make sure that when they graduate, they're
not competing with their fathers and their uncles and their
aunts for their jobs, that we have a system of
creating wealth, that we incentivize businesses to one day take
a chance again so that those small businesses who employ
over 80% of all Canadians will take a chance and
employ our youth and create opportunities for them.
I'm here for the nurse who told me that she
worked throughout COVID without any vaccine, and she got Covid.
And even she had to rent a trailer on her
lawn to make sure that her family was protected.
And she worked double shifts and
she slept out in that trailer.
And then after the vaccines came out, they fired her.
They told her that she could not have a job anymore.
And she told me that when she looked in
the mirror in the evening after her shifts, she
had indentations in her face from the mask.
And these are the sacrifices
that some people have made.
And we have to make sure that
when we put policies in place, these
health policies are there to protect people.
They're not based on political science.
They're based on real science and make sure that
people are protected and that we do not create
a system of segregation based on vaccine status.
I'm here for people of faith to make
them recognize that they have a right to
practice their faith, and that faith is entrenched
in our Constitution, in our Charter of Rights.
I want to make sure that every parent
in this room knows that they have a
right to raise their children in accordance with
their values without government interference.
As I said before, I don't know where you stand on
the Trucker Convoy, but what I can tell you is that
the coverage of it erodes our trust in the media.
When we heard about acts of sedition, and later
on, we saw that only charges of mischief were
laid that undermines the trust in our institutions.
When the Emergencies Act was enacted, was utilized to
confiscate people's property, to freeze bank accounts, it erodes
our trust in the institution of government, and we
must work to restore that trust.
I had a young woman in my riding of Haldimand-Norfolk,
which for those of you who don't know,
it's a rural community right beside Niagara Falls.
And this young single mother had bought a trucker
T-shirt for her daughter because she really
wanted one, and her bank account was frozen.
She couldn't pay her bills. She had no
food. And this was a $20 T-shirt.
When our government acts in such a
manner, it really erodes our confidence.
And I've had people report to me that they are
thinking about even leaving our country, this beautiful country, because
of the lack of trust in our democracy.
We need to make sure that the next
leader rebuilds that trust in our institution.
And one way of doing that is to make
sure that our media is no longer an arm
of the Liberal government and to make sure that
our media is no longer used as a propaganda
tool, because that is what happens in dictatorship regimes.
As you can see, I'm not your usual politician.
I come from industry.
I've taught at university.
I've taught at Osgood Hall Law School.
And I've owned my own business.
So I know what it means to sign the front
of a paycheck rather than the back of a paycheck.
I know what it means to create wealth.
I know what it means to look at that two week
period and say, how am I going to make payroll?
I know what it means in 2009 when the
recession was coming and I had to make sure
that my employees got paid before me.
And I had to make sure that I use the line
of credit on my home to keep their jobs alive because
I knew that they had families that were dependent on me,
making sure that I give them a paycheck.
So I know the realities of what it takes
to create wealth, to create prosperity in this country.
And right now, I see international pressures being
put on this country that will change the
face of what we are as Canadians.
It will change the face of our
meritorious society to become a socialist
nation state that Justin Trudeau envisions.
I'm here to fight against that.
So I made the tough decision that
I thought actually I could have both.
I thought I could have my law practice
and be a politician because I trained lawyers.
There were lawyers in my law firm.
But as many of you know who have
or if you know somebody who is a
small business owner, your business becomes your brand.
And many people, they still wanted to hear from me.
They still wanted me to work on their case.
And so I had to make a decision to sell my
firm and even the building that my law firm was in.
I owned the units in that building and I sold it because
I did not want to be double minded in doing this.
I wanted to give every fiber of my being to saving
my country because I know that my country is in peril.
My dream for Canada is that we can bring
back a Canada where we could have a diversity
of opinions, where we are not afraid to show
that we are people of faith or someone.
If you're not of faith, that you have
the equal right to raise your children in
accordance with your values and practice your faith
where we can have a dream of prospering
developing our natural resources while protecting the environment.
Every day we import over 500,000 barrels of oil a day.
Yet we have the third largest
accessible oil reserves on the planet.
We have the capacity to be self-sufficient During Covid,
we should not have had to depend on
foreign countries to send us masks and gloves.
We have the capacity to
produce those products ourselves.
We need to bring our supply chains home.
We need to start producing more than we're
consuming, and we need to become an independent
and self sustaining and free nation.
Thank you.
Very good. Thank you very much. Dr. Lewis.
We now want to enter a
session of questions and answers.
I'm sure a lot of you have burning questions
on your heart that you'd like to ask Dr.
Lewis, and I'm sure she'd be happy to answer them.
So I know a lot of you probably have questions,
so I will be moderating this Q and A.
Please just raise your hand.
Hopefully you'll have a chance
to get your question asked.
And if you don't get a chance, then you
will have an opportunity to meet her afterwards and
hopefully be able to ask her question in person.
So without further Ado, we'll just
start with this individual right here.
Happy two.
Doctor Lewis, we're so excited you're running again.
In the current world and procedures for the leadership race. As every
electoral district will be allocated 100 points.
At that stage, whichever is less.
I think this change is really going to help you.
Can you comment on that?
Yes, that's a great question.
So I'm just going to repeat the question.
Every electoral district is allocated 100
points or one point per vote.
In the last leadership race, it didn't work like that.
So if there were 5000 people in a riding and 20
people in another, even if I won the riding with 5000
people, I would only get 100 votes and the person who
won with 20 people would still get 100 votes.
Now things will change.
The 5000 member riding will get 100 votes, but
the one with 20 will only get 20 votes.
So what happened is in the last leadership
rate, I won the popular vote, but I
didn't win the leadership because of that allocation.
So this gentleman is right that the
new rules will benefit me more.
But are you running to be the leader of
the opposition with this attendant perks or the PM?
One entails preaching to the choir, and I'm one of
the members and a few other members are here.
The other involves going out to a
nation waiting for the good news.
Now, I believe, and I'm one of them
as well, like yourself, an immigrant, I think
there are a lot of unreached natural Conservatives.
So unless you or whoever is going to be the
leader of the party reaches them and not just the
choir, and I understand you need to reach the choir
to be the nominee but unless we reach them, you
will be comfortably sitting in a seat of the opposition.
And this isn't perhaps the right venue, but I would
like to hear your plan, not your vision, not your
dream, because that's a what I'm interested in the how.
And maybe that's a little too broad here,
but perhaps you could touch on it. Thank you.
No offense taken.
It's a great question, actually, a
very real and relevant question.
I didn't come here for a comfortable job.
I had a very comfortable, successful life
as a lawyer with my own firm.
I didn't want for anything.
So this is really not something
that I'm doing for comfort.
Absolutely not.
And I am prepared to do what it
takes to be the next Prime Minister.
And what you have stated is
exactly what needs to be done.
We do not need a leader to
be in Parliament and make fancy speeches
and watch themselves afterwards on question period.
No, we need a leader to go into the grassroots, to
go into those large urban centers that we have not made
inroads in to reach out to people like yourself.
Like myself, like many people in this room
whose families immigrated here, who took chances, who
took risks, and who have those conservative values,
they have faith values, they have family values.
And our party has not done a good enough
job in reaching those individuals in those urban centers.
I'm going to be out talking to those people, meeting
them, having coffees, knocking on doors, and making sure that
we make inroads in those centers that will win it
and will make me the next Prime Minister.
Hi.
Thank you for coming.
I'm just like the previous guy.
I'm immigrant and coming to this country
and really enjoy the liberty that I
enjoyed the past eight years here.
I'm also voted conservative all the
way until the last election.
I reside in the Langley area, and the MP was...
I can't remember her name.
The reason was that.
Sorry about it.
I have to tell you that in the last
election I didn't vote for you. Yeah.
You lost about a thousand votes, and one
of them who mo from Conservative to PPC.
I'm a member of PPC as well.
And one of the reason I'm here, I just want to
see how the next leader of the conservative can win us
back, because I think that is a big part.
And another reason I'm asking this question is that in
the Truck Convoy, one of the things they ask is a
platform to debate the vaccine and everything about this pandemic.
I want to ask a question.
Is that when you have a chance, can you provide
this platform so the science can be openly debated?
Absolutely. Great question.
To be honest with you, Maxime Bernie is a friend
of mine, and we have a lot in common.
So I don't have anything bad to say about him.
I do find him to be a courageous person.
And I have spoken out against
unfair mandates from the very beginning.
I'm one of the few in the party that really
took the chance, and I paid a price for it.
I wasn't given a shadow cabinet position, and it
was largely because of the things that I saw.
And one specific thing is when they
were contemplating vaccinating six year olds, and
I believe that's a parental choice.
And I think that they were talking about
make it mandatory to go to school.
And I said, you know, with all
With all due respect, I believe in science.
I respect science, but this is a parental decision.
And I came out and I spoke out against that.
And because of that, people were upset with me.
And it was a very courageous thing to do.
And I've always believed in the fact that any kind
of procedure that you endure and that you take into
your body, it should be a free volition.
It should be free choice to do that.
Science requires debates, thesis, synthesis, antithesis.
That's the scientific the dialectic order.
Without that, it is propaganda. it is dictatorship.
It is not science.
And so when we do not have an
open debate for science, that is problematic.
I believe that all the data should be there.
All of the information about the vaccines, everything
should be open so that people can make
a free and informed consent about their decisions.
And that's what I stand for.
Leslyn, I really appreciate what you've been saying.
I've been a fan of yours for a long time.
There's a couple of issues.
Even though everything you said is really
important, there's a couple of issues that
I think perhaps are more important.
And I'm very concerned about.
And I'm sorry, I don't remember the exact
number, but the bill to sort of put
control on the Internet, I think it's Bill C-11.
C-11. Okay.
That really troubles me because really it looks well, I
spent a lot of time studying this, and there's a
lot of people that seem to think that it's really
a way of controlling us and taking away our freedoms.
The other one I'm really concerned
about is the vaccine passport.
The vaccine mandates have been taken
away, but the passport hasn't.
And again, the passport.
The end of that, as I'm sure you probably know, is
really control to be able to know where we're going, what
we do, and they're not going to let that go.
There's going to be a real battle there.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on those two things. Yes.
So the first issue remind me what the first issue was.
Vaccine passport. C-11. Great.
So, C-11.
Have you seen my speech on C eleven?
I did a speech in Parliament on C-11.
And I concur with everything that you're saying.
When the government tells us what we can see
in the media, it is a form of control.
When you are punching in algorithms you're punching
in search engine search codes and words and
algorithms are popping up that the government dictates
what you can see, what pops up.
That is a form of control.
And that is not freedom of the press.
Even your Charter Rights, freedom of speech, which is
entrenched in the Charter, freedom of association, all of
those things, they're controlling what you can see.
And it's very, very dangerous.
I do not support Bill C-11.
With respect to the vaccine mandate,
I always use the example: sitting in this room,
we don't know who's vaccinated and who's not vaccinated, but if
we went to an airport, the same group of people, some
would be able to get on a plane and some would
not be able to get on a plane.
And so it is not based on science.
It's based on political science.
And we cannot have public policy that's based
on political science and not science. Passports.
You're absolutely right, because that's tied into
they at some point in time will
be advancing a universal identity. Right?
And that is tied into the digital
identity and even the universal basic income.
It is something that once you have young, able
bodied people that are sitting at home and collecting
a universal basic income, it's going to be a
lot easier to control what they do.
And all of this is tied in together.
I can't stand here and deny what you're
saying is not true, because it is true.
The only way that we can oppose all of this
movement towards this global system is by making sure that
you vote for the next leader, making sure that that
next leader has the capacity to win a majority government
so that we can turn things around.
Hi. Okay.
My question is also about the vaccination.
Also, I'm again, I'm from South America.
They try the three kind of vaccinations,
like Johnson Moderna, and whatever.
My country is to be the most country being vaccinated.
And my question is that now, I don't agree
with that because it's like Africa and Chile.
There are those two countries that are most important
and they are doing big clients in them.
Like part of my family.
They are already having t
side effects of the vaccinations.
Some of them.
My grandma passed away from that vaccination.
My cousin, she's three years old and
she was isolated when she was ill with vaccines
And now, like I heard, like they want
to give the vaccine to kids in school.
Like, I'm panicking because it's like
you say, we have freedom.
We decide if they have to run or not.
Well, I believe in personal responsibility.
So I think it's important for people
to do what they need to do
to protect themselves, to protect their neighbors.
That's a personal responsibility issue.
With respect to the child vaccinations, I
don't believe they're going to be mandatory.
There are a lot of people who believe that
that should be a choice of the parents.
And so you'll have a lot of support in that.
But as I said, with respect to whether
or not you're vaccinated, I believe it should
be based on full and informed consent.
The second question is, I don't know
if you got to be aware.
This situation happened in 1918, 100 years ago
about the Spanish Flu. What happened at that time?
the technology was not like now. People were panicking.
at that time, but they say 100 year.
And what happens now, 2019 again, when another pandemic
is to control and to get rid of people.
That's what they were trying to do
in the world, in the whole world.
Well, let's hope that we get through it.
It's been a very traumatizing two years, and I think that
we have to be on a path to healing and to hope.
I'm a social conservative, and you are, and I really
appreciate what you're bringing to this leadership race.
You have my vote. Thank you.
But I know a lot of other social conservatives
who are considering voting for Pierre Polliever because they
feel he is more electable in the general population.
So my question for you is, what
would you say to that person?
And maybe you can give me a couple of
reasons why you are more electable than Pierre.
Thank you.
I ask this as your supporter. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Well, I remember speaking to Pierre before I decided
to put my name in, and I said to
him, I just want to hear about your platform.
And he was great on the
financing aspect, on other issues.
He just didn't have a lot
of concern about those issues.
And I feel that in order for us to win
and in order for us to keep our conservative family
together, we're going to have to appeal to the fiscal
conservatives, the social conservatives, the libertarians, and the PCs.
Everybody has to have a voice within the party.
And based on what I've seen and Pierre is
a good man, but he believes that in order
to win, you cannot be a social conservative.
I want to prove him wrong.
I believe you can win as a social conservative.
No only that, we have different life experiences.
Pierre has been in Parliament his entire life.
I have a history of working my
way up, building a business, creating wealth,
employing people, teaching at University.
I have a diverse education.
I have a master's of environmental
studies, a PhD in international law.
And I only say these things so that
you can understand the wealth of experience and
education that I will bring to this role.
I have had people come up to me and say
I'm pro-choice, and I can't believe that I can
identify with you even though you say you're pro-life.
And that is because I start from
the perspective of building bridges and uniting.
If you notice the differences in our campaign
style, you've never heard me speak ill of
any of my colleagues in this race.
It is one thing for a conservative to vote
for you, but it's another thing to be able
to go in the urban centers to speak to
Liberals who like my parents, my parents were ultra
conservative in their values, but they voted Liberal.
And that is the reality.
There are many Liberals who have conservative values.
What you have to ask yourself about electability, do you
see that Liberal person voting for Pierre, or do you
see that Liberal person voting for someone like me who
is a unifier and a bridge builder and who has
the education and the experience that can elicit that level
of confidence in that person?
One of the aspects of your plank, if I
can call it that, really interested me when I
first heard of you, was your climate expertise.
Now this is a major issue for the population,
for the world internationally, particularly bearing in mind the
United Nations report that came out just last year
on the impact of climate change.
Now we're recognizing through the Ukraine war the
absolute present need yet of fossil fuels.
We have a lot of it.
You've talked about it. We know it.
We know where it is.
We're not using it because we're holding off
because of the climate ideology that is out
there saying we cannot use it.
How can you bridge that gap, which to me
is one of the major hurdles between the people
not only in this country, but throughout the world?
Well, I think it's very important that we
speak about the climate and the environment in
a manner that it's truthful and not just
from the state of virtue signaling and propaganda.
Because of my master's in environmental studies,
I actually have concrete facts and information.
Much of our policy is based on hypocrisy.
If we are importing 500,000 barrels of oil
a day, then that means that we still
have the need to use that resource.
If we have the need to use that resource,
why is our resource less than a foreign resource?
That's the question that we have to ask.
Why is our oil inferior?
Why do we have legislation
to penalize companies in Canada? Bill C.
48, Bill C.
69 actually favors foreign oil and
foreign investment over our own.
It's illogical.
It doesn't make any sense.
And if we actually care about the environment and if
we're not using fear, because this is what I'm seeing,
is that our environmental policy is based on conjuring up
fear so that we can impose unjust taxation on people.
And that falls on the back of the least able
to afford it falls on the back on the average
Canadian who has to go to the pump and pump
gas, who has to heat their homes.
And this is not a sustainable environmental policy.
A sustainable environmental policy will have
confidence in businesses to incentivize them
to find innovative solutions.
Many of these businesses, they will
discover technologies that will reduce emissions.
Many of our farmers are planting crops that
sequester carbon, but they don't get credit for
it, but yet they still have to pay
an increase carbon tax on drying their crops.
That cost trickles down to us in food costs.
So a lot of what we're doing doesn't make sense.
Many of the regimes, many of the
jurisdictions that have the highest carbon tax
have not seen reduced emissions.
Donald Trump came out of the Paris Accord, completely
came out of the Paris Accord and met all
of the targets, all of the environmental climate targets.
We were in the Paris accord, and
we did not meet our targets.
So a lot of this is virtue signaling.
I think the environment is far too important to
play partisan politics and to virtue signal and to
not have strong concrete policies that allow us to
develop our natural resources while protecting the environment.
Thank you, Dr.
Lewis, for your answers.
I've been a pastor in the region for 24 years closer.
Okay.
I know there's a lot of pastors. Okay. Yeah.
As you're aware, many of the rumor where there's been
about four or five pastors arrested in the last year
and a half, two years now we have legislation criminalizing
our beliefs and hindering actually making criminal our faith and
what we believe, what we stand for, telling us who
we can actually talk to and who we can't talk
to and what we can share and what we can't
share with our congregations and with people of faith.
How would you respond to the new legislation?
C-4 and these things that are
really making a big impact on the
faith community, but in particular Christians? Yes.
First, I want to say that with C-4,
as legislators, I think our job is to
make sure that the best law is passed.
And we did not do that, because what you
need to do is you actually should take the
law through every level, every step to make sure
that whether you're for the piece of legislation or
you're against it, to me is irrelevant.
What we need to do, what we're elected to do,
what we're paid to do, is scrutinize that legislation and
to make sure that when it's enacted, it is the
best law and we did not do that.
And for that, I offer my apologies to that.
There's a whole process of what transpired.
I don't want to go into it right now, but
what I can do is look to the future.
I have been communicating with pastors.
I've had conversations with Stockwell Bay about this, who introduced
me, and that was one of the first things that
he spoke to me about to clarify what happened and
how we're going to make sure that pastors are not
targeted and also to make sure that parents don't face
a five year jail term if they have conversations, loving
conversations with their children.
We have to remember that adolescence is one of the
toughest times for children and the hallmark one of the
most important things to a parent is to be able
to usher their children through to that stage of adulthood.
And they do not need any deterrence on them.
They do not need a law hanging over them
that could really bind their hands to the point
where they are walking on eggshells and making sure
that they're there for their children and they're offering
them loving advice to assist them with their problems.
So I will let you know that I am
committed to making sure that there are no inadvertent
consequences and unintended consequences from C-4.
And I will work with Pastors to make
sure that this law does not limit their
ability to pasture over their flock.
Hi, Leslyn, it's good to be here and hear you speak.
My question is about the CBC and the media.
Should you win the leadership of the party,
Rosemary Barton and friends will try to torrent
feather you, will misrepresent, you, will lie about
you, as will most of the mainstream media.
So my question to you is one,
how will you deal with that?
And secondly, will you dare to speak to
Rebel Media or will you run away?
Well, I think history answers that question.
There was some sort of lock between our party
speaking to Rebel a few years ago and last
year in 2020 when I ran for the leader.
To be honest with you, Ezra was the
person who came out first for me.
And that's where I did my
very first interview on Rebel Media.
And surprisingly, like I said, courage is contagious.
After that, other Conservatives started to
do interviews with Rebel Media.
So Rebel Media has actually been a friend to me.
Rebel Media had the courage to feature me when
I was not known in the conservative circles.
And I credit that to one of the reasons
why I was able to get myself out there
and known and with the popular vote.
So, yes, I would continue speaking with
Rebel Media because they're my friends.
And with respect to the CBC, you're right.
We're giving them $1 billion a year.
And it's not just the CBC.
A lot of legacy media is adopting this
propaganda narrative and not really covering the news.
They're giving their opinions on certain issues.
And it's always a radical left opinion.
And so, yes, I would defund it.
I would defund the CBC.
Yes, Dr.
Lewis, it is a delight to have hear
any politician speak as candidly as you do.
I'm a semi retired professor of political science.
There's a question and a suggestion.
The question is this.
As you know, in Canada, the
federal government has responsibility for canals,
Railways, pipelines that are interprovincial.
We do not have a pipeline to Eastern
Canada because the Quebec government didn't like it.
That's one reason we cannot now
supply oil and gas to Europe.
So I'd like you to comment on that.
Would you be willing to use the federal
power and then I have a suggestion.
You probably have many slogans.
I'll give you another: Trudeau must go.
I agree with you.
Yes.
So I think that we must always look to act
in the best interest of our national growth and prosperity.
And so if it came down to it, yes, I would do
whatever it takes to make sure that I put my country first.
And that includes building the pipeline.
But we also have another route.
We could actually go up through Churchill
to Hudson's Bay, and we could get
our products to tide water that way.
So that's another option instead of going
through Quebec that we could entertain.
Dr.
Lewis, thank you for coming.
And good to hear everything.
And I would just like to
say that I'm also an immigrant.
We are all immigrants to Canada.
And the thing about that is it
wasn't me, it was my parents.
But we all came for a new chance at prosperity.
And that's why we love this country,
at least the country, before 2015.
What I'd like to know is, if you become leader
and will you push for free votes in Parliament?
Because MPs represent their community, in their
community, let's say chilliwack or Abbotsford.
Those people were put them in that office
and they cannot speak what their constituents
want because of the party whipping.
If they would just get rid of the
whip except for financial or fiscal reasons, then
they could speak their mind and say what
their constituents actually voted them in for locally.
Absolutely.
That is the cornerstone of our democracy.
No MPs should have to vote
against their conscience or their constituents.
And so, as you said, on politics, for
fiscal issues, you vote with your party.
But on issues of conscience, there
would be absolutely free votes.
And even some fiscal issues are borderline
because the carbon tax is something that
could be deemed a fiscal issue.
And I can tell you that in my
writing where it's a rural riding with farmers.
If I voted for the carbon tax, they
would make sure I am out of there.
So that would be voting against my constituents.
And even though it's a fiscal issue, I
wouldn't have been able to do it.
Very good.
So unfortunately, we do have to wrap it
up there because we do want to leave.
Sometimes you'll be able to ask her in person.
So we want to leave some time for people to be
able to meet her in person and take pictures with her.
I will be playing a job of bad
cop just because generally people swarm her.
So we'll try to cycle people
through as fast as possible.
But before we do so, I do want to make a
pitch and encourage everyone here to get a conservative membership.
You can do that by scanning this IQ code.
They're both becoming a member and
donating tours are very expensive.
Running a leadership campaign is very expensive.
And there's a lot of people here.
I'm sure some of you have some
extra dollars there to help Dr.
Lewis become the next Prime Minister.
And with regards to membership, it was told to me
recently that it's 0.02% of Canada's population that determines who
the leader of a party is and it will logically
follow who will be the next Prime Minister.
So there's a lot of people in this room,
probably close to 600 people, probably not quite 0.02%
of Canada's population, but probably quite close.
So if you like what you hear today from Dr.
Lewis and I think you have and it sounds
like you're very concerned with the state of our
country as well and you want to affect change.
This is the one place you can get involved in politics.
You can make a difference.
You can go home tonight, sign up five of your friends
and family, and we can get this person as leader of
the conservative party who can clean up the mess there and
then clean up the mess that is our nation right now.
So please do your part.
Please become a member.
We have some lovely people at the back who would
be happy to sign you up, but you can also
do that just by getting this QR code.
You only need to be 14 years of age
to be able to become a member and you
only need to be a permanent resident.
So I see some Gray hairs here.
You probably have lots of grandchildren as well.
So we really have an opportunity here to change the direction
of our nation and we all know we need it.
Please do that.
And with regards to donations, once again,
the maximum you can donate is.
1675 and once again, I would be lying if
I would not like each of you to donate
Max so that we can win this thing.
So thank you very much.
And please take a moment to
come introduce yourself to Dr. Lewis.
But like I said, keep it
quick, get your photo and then get out. Thank you.