From Rebel Media - Interview
Part of the Interview
Ezra Levant
One of our favorite people is throwing her hat in the ring and talking about Doctor Leslyn Lewis. The MP for Haldimand Norfolk who did so well in the last leadership campaign. What a delight to welcome her back to the show. Doctor Lewis. It's great to see you again. You can see I'm a fan and I don't even care who knows! I'm not hiding it. Great to see you again. I'm delighted that you're running in the leadership campaign. Tell me a little bit about your strategy, what you're going to emphasize is your issues. What do you hope to accomplish?
Dr. Leslyn Lewis
Thanks for having me here. As you know many people would ask, well, why are you doing this again? And to be honest with you that not much has changed since last time. I'm still concerned about the direction of the country. I'm still concerned about our $1.3 trillion debt now with the war in between Russia and Ukraine.
I'm concerned about some of our environmental policies that we have where we didn't develop our pipelines. And looking back we can see that that was a great mistake. And so I want to report the platform that will get Canadians on track, make sure that we're developing, developing our natural resources. And also that we also have a plan to protect the environment. I don't believe that those things are mutually exclusive.
I also want to see people, businesses have hope again and as you know, 80% of all Canadians are employed by small businesses. And so we have to find a way to get them back, get hold back to them so that we could rebound out of covid and get people employed. Start building up and pay down that debt. Those are interesting points, so of course I I agree with, I mean the pipelines Canada could so obviously be a supplier of what I call ethical oil to the world. So we could displace Russia and OPEC nations. I believe in the economic issues. I think those are very important.
Ezra Levant
But Doctor Lewis, one of the things that has come home clear over last two years is that sometimes we take our civil liberties for granted because yes, the debt is important and yes, pipelines are a solution. And yes, helping small business, that's all important. You can't buy groceries. You can't pay the rent if you don't have those things. But there are some other intangibles, civil liberties, freedom of speech. But I think that lockdowns in the last few years have really showed us the importance of those age-old principles. What do you have to say about freedom of speech and freedom of protest? The recent civil liberties inferno of the Emergencies Act. Can you talk a bit about those? Not the pocketbook issues, but more the heartfelt issues a bit.
Dr. Leslyn Lewis
Absolutely. I think it's very important that in a democracy that we uphold those liberties and many Canadians and many immigrants came to this country because we were the beacon of hope of democracy. And when we have policies and practices that undermine that it really erodes confidence. I was very, very concerned during the convoy protests because I was just two blocks away from Parliament and so I had to walk through that protest every day and I was able to speak to people, people who came all the way from BC and they just wanted to be heard.
And it's not as if they wanted to be there. Some of them had reached out to their MP's, they weren't getting answers. Some of them, they did whatever they could, but they wanted answers as to why the government wasn't listening to them. And they came all the way to Parliament so that they could be heard by the government and nobody wanted to listen. And it was very, very sad to see that the approach that Justin Trudeau took, that he refused to meet with these individuals, and then he labeled them racist, demonized them, and it was very, very disconcerting to see that how fragile our democracy is and our rights in revoking of the Emergencies Act is something that I also wasn't very pleased with because it suspended their liberties and people were very, very concerned that if this could be done so easily, what could the government do? Could they freeze our bank account for other issues that they disagree with us on?
Yeah, I'm really worried about that actually. It really accelerated cancel culture. Cancel culture is bad enough when it's some woke mob on Twitter, but when the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister and the Justice Minister are directing it. And there's no court process. The banks are going along with it. I think that's really terrifying.
I, I remember when you and I last met, it was actually on that very chilly day on Parliament Hill at the trucker protest. It was quite something not all Conservative MPs and Senators went down there, I think. If I had to guess why, some disagreed with them, but more, I think we're scared of getting off side with the mainstream media and I think that's frankly why Erin O'Toole, what happened to him is I think maybe his instincts would have been sympathetic, but he was just too afraid to defy the media was such a strong player in this drama. They weren't just a neutral observer. They were a team.
Ezra Levant
Let me ask you about that, because I think that should you become a leader, obviously Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party machine, they're going to be nominal polling. But I think that in Canada, the toughest opponent for any conservative is the mainstream. I think they first they ignore you, then they mock you. Then they lie about you. And I think in the case of Erin O'Toole, that I'm not asking for you to defend them or to condemn him. I just say when I look at his tenure as leader, I think he was terrified of being devoured by the media. So he sought to please them. How will you handle a hostile media who hate the very thought of a black woman being a conservative. I mean, I think they would hate you triple because of that.
Dr. Leslyn Lewis
Yeah, I I've seen them really misstate positions that I've had in the past and try to make it seem like if I was anti LGBTQ plus, which is really ridiculous because I worked as a refugee lawyer worked in refugee law and defended people who were being persecuted because of their because they were a member of the LGBT Q Plus community. And so I defended it. those people in court. And so far I could see the media has even taken something like that and not recognized it. So I know that they're not my friends, but I'm not here, to make friends with the media. I'm here to serve the Canadian people, and I understand the costs and I'm prepared to pay the cost of that and as you said, on that day that whole day that I interviewed with you at in front of the convoy, it was because I believed that these individuals came here and they needed to be heard. These are people that were traumatized, that were locked down for two years, that many losing their jobs may have had family members loosing their jobs and they want it to be heard and I am being paid by these individuals, some of them making fifteen, twenty or twenty five dollars an hour, and politicians are making hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour. So I don't understand why a politician wouldn't want to hear from their constituents. I think it's very, very important to the part of our democracy. And it's something that I felt that I had to do or else it would be meaningless.
Dr. Lewis website
