Former Opposition leader, who led the Conservative Party in the last general elections, blamed covid and some fancy footwork by the Liberals for the loss.
“We got the popular vote – we got more votes; we just didn’t win the seat count,” he told Durham Post during a wide-ranging interview.
“Our platform had really the recipe that Canada needed. It was only in the last two weeks when the Delta wave of the pandemic really hit Alberta, that people started getting nervous again. And [Prime Minister] Trudeau really played on that nervousness, playing on the vaccine mandate and divided people over vaccines and over different parts of the country – so we have a very divided country now,” O’Toole pointed out.
We really had a great team. It’s very hard from me because we had a move from some in our caucus. They wanted to support the issues that I thought would just divide the country, said the former leader of the Conservatives without elaborating further. He was ousted as party leader in early February.
“We had a great platform; it’s just the pandemic prevented us getting out there,” repeated O’Toole.
He explained that Trudeau called the election for two reasons. “Election was carried out on a Sunday. Three or four days before that, out of the blue, Trudeau announced the vaccine mandate for the federal civil service and for federal jurisdiction. Four months earlier he had said we will never make vaccines mandatory in Canada, we need to encourage people to get it. He reversed his position. There was no bill in the House of Commons, no debate, no explanation, no proposals to make sure people didn’t lose their jobs.
Alberta’s play
“He called the elections because he knew that Alberta hospitals would fill up, and he knew that if he took advantage of that, covid would be back on the radar in the final 10 to 14 days of the election. He saw the polling, people were scared. And if you were worried about covid and unvaccinated, you supported mandates. In Quebec, they were going to even start fining people. People were getting a bit, I would say, irrational because of their fear. Trudeau played on that,” O’Toole said.
Asked if Alberta Premier Jason Kenny had a role in the Conservative loss, O’Toole said: “It was not Jason Kenney. Trudeau saw the modeling…there was going to be a resurgence of the Delta wave”.
He said he felt Justin Trudeau was getting away with divisions and non-answers whereas he was being clear.
“I was very, very pro-vaccination. But, I didn’t think anyone should lose their job if we could accommodate with rapid tests, social distancing, masks as some businesses did. There were options they could have explored,” he added.
Tomorrow: CERB extension a key cause of inflation
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I have no interest in listening to any politician stating their partisan spin about any issues.