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The Current Transcript for January 20, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created. I tell you that. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.

MEGYN KELLY: You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals. Your Twitter account—

DONALD TRUMP: Only Rosie O'Donnell.

HILLARY CLINTON: Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different. They are dangerously incoherent.

MICHELLE OBAMA: When they go low, we go high.

DONALD TRUMP: When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

BILLY BUSH: Whatever you want.

DONALD TRUMP: I respect women. I love women. I cherish women.

HILLARY CLINTON: I made a mistake using a private e-mail.

DONALD TRUMP: That's for sure.

[Sound: Crowd cheering]

DONALD TRUMP: It is time to drain the swamp in Washington, DC. And I'm afraid the election's going to be rigged. I have to be honest. The FBI has just sent a letter to Congress informing them that they have discovered new emails. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: The sounds of Donald Trump on the road to the White House. A journey marked by months of controversy. A seemingly unlikely candidate who disrupted the Republican Party and US politics on the way to victory. And today as he takes over the Oval Office, the world is watching. As the public spaces in Washington fill with Americans both enthusiastic and irritated, we are taking the pulse of the US Capitol. And over the border on the Canadian side, we'll meet people who see in Donald Trump what they want in a Canadian leader. In half an hour, Kristin Nelson takes to the road to hear what is motivating those Canadians cheering for Donald Trump. The ascendancy of Republicans under Trump comes just as Conservatives in Canada are considering their own leadership candidates. Both Kevin O'Leary and Kelly Leitch are being compared to Trump. Can that propel either one forward? We're asking about that in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Trump supporters flock to Washington to watch historic inauguration

Guests: David Common, Steve Franco, Carol Anderson

AMT: Well, the day is finally here. Donald John Trump will become the president of the United States of America at around noon Eastern time today. He will do so with the lowest approval ratings of any new president in at least 40 years. But he can expect to be greeted by a sea of supporters on the National Mall in Washington for today's inaugural ceremonies. The CBC's David Common is there. Hello.

DAVID COMMON: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: What are you seeing?

DAVID COMMON: Well, there are many hundreds of people who are here and many of them are you know wearing Trump flags, have the “Make America Great Again” hats, lots of Trump-Pence signs from the campaign, some people with faces painted using the American flags, some people wearing the American flag. But amidst all of those supporters, there are also some who are here more for curiosity, telling us they don't necessarily support this president—certainly did not during the campaign—but want to see the historic occasion. It's a spectacle to see an inauguration and we're beginning to get a taste of that with the music starting up here—a bit of a prelude to the main show, of course, Anna Maria.

AMT: And what's security like around the event?

DAVID COMMON: Heavy. That's the simplest way to put it. We got here at about 3 a.m. Many hours over all of that time, we just watched bus after bus after bus of police from Washington, Maryland, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, coming from all over the place. This is considered a potential target but not just of say, terrorists—it could also be of protesters and that explains why there is just so much police presence. You know right where I am—at the entrance to the National Mall—there's the mag in bag of the airport security style screening and in fact it is airport screeners doing the screening. People being told what they can bring in, what they can't bring in. So there is quite a bit of security. It's a total clamp down. I think you, Anna Maria, have actually been to a number of these inaugurations so you know how it goes. But post-9/11, it is just that much heavier. Add the extra dimension of potential protesters this time.

AMT: And David, you got there at 3 a.m. Were there already supporters who were there ahead of you?

DAVID COMMON: So we're expecting 800,000 people in the Mall today. I think we had about four of them at 3 a.m. So it was not exactly huge at that point. But we are seeing the build now. Really the only way to get here is either on foot—and even that's tricky—or by metro—that's easier. And the metro only started running at a certain point. People now filtering up to the gates here, of course, trying to get into the National Mall, trying to get a good seat, although for most people there isn't actually a seat. There is a piece of grass.

AMT: And what will they see from the distance? What's set up to help them really connect with this day?

DAVID COMMON: There are loudspeakers. And where I am, you actually have a sight of the US Capitol itself. But if you go back to Barack Obama's first inauguration—that's eight years ago now—you know it went so far back, the entire length of the National Mall ending at the Lincoln Memorial back there. I mean forget about it. You couldn't see anything unless there were TV screens and we were walking past that area. There weren't TV screens this morning.

AMT: And what are people there telling you?

DAVID COMMON: People here are excited to see the spectacle of it all but what they are not is unified. In many ways, the country isn't unified either. They don't want to—some of them are very clear. There's a guy wearing a T-shirt. The T-shirt that he's put himself: #FoxandFriends. He's written Trump on it. Lots of people with those red “Make America Great Again” hats. But just as many we saw earlier stuffing homemade signs: “Not My President” in their backpacks or bags. So I think we'll see a bit of that. And as a result, we might see a bit of confrontation on the Mall itself.

AMT: And they can bring they can bring those signs in there with them, can they?

DAVID COMMON: Well, they can. What you can't do is attach it to a stick and a sign, there are dimension limits to signs. So if you have a large sign, forget about it.

AMT: So there is a mix of protesters and supporters right there.

DAVID COMMON: There certainly is. I'm not sure they've each identified one another. You know how vocal some people are going to be about their protest or their cynicism, what's going on, is another question. Some people may just hold up a sign. I don't know how many of them will be confronted. When we talked to the Trump supporters who are here about the protests that they've seen, about the women's march that's going to happen tomorrow, you hear things like sore losers or well, you know what, I've been in that position and they can protest all they want, but Trump won and he's the president and you need to get behind the president. And some people, even the cynics, are saying you know what, it has happened. We can protest but he is the president for the next four years and we can just try to make our voice heard.

AMT: David, this is a day of celebration and pomp and ceremony and a spectacle. What can we expect to see unfold?

DAVID COMMON: Well, certainly as we get through the course of the morning, there is music and some of it's already started just to try to keep the crowd entertained. It's chilly I must say out here. So you want to be rather bundled up. There’s going to be rain and the last time I looked at the forecast, the rain suggested the worst of it was going to be at noon. That's when the inaugural address actually takes place. So these people should stay dry until Donald Trump starts speaking or we'll see. Maybe that won't happen. I know Donald Trump last night was saying that won't necessarily happen or he hopes that it won't happen. He thinks it's going to be a historic, momentous day with the huge potentially record crowd. But we do know that there will be many Trump supporters and the Trump cabinets who will be on the Capitol watching all of this and all of these people will be watching all of them. For many people, it's a bit of a victory lap. They're very happy to see this and now have great hopes for change. You talk to people in the crowd and you hear the same things over and over again about jobs and changing the way the economy is. I mean one person was just saying to me, this was a familiar line during the election, that we shouldn't be giving illegal immigrants better health care than we're giving to our veterans. Now, there's a debate about whether that's actually true or not, but it's certainly a current that's got through a lot of the election and helped define it and continues to define what these people see of the incoming president.

AMT: And for the people who have arrived to witness this and who are on the Mall, I guess there are celebrations all day long.

DAVID COMMON: Certainly are. You know there will be events throughout the day. But then of course, we move into tomorrow.And that will be the day of protest.

AMT: Okay. David Common, thank you.

DAVID COMMON: Thank you.

AMT: The CBC's David Common on the National Mall in Washington, DC. We will check in with him later on CBC Radio One as the day progresses. My next guest is among those already in place to witness the inauguration. Steve Franco drove in last night from Buffalo, New York. Hello.

STEVE FRANCO: Good morning.

AMT: How long have you been on the Mall?

STEVE FRANCO: We've been here for about 15 minutes. We left Buffalo last night about seven o'clock, got into Virginia around one in the morning and we’re waiting in line and we’re ready to go into the Mall right now.

AMT: And why have you gone to Washington? What's important to you?

STEVE FRANCO: I think it’s about the confidence level coming back. I think the American people finally have the security that we need and bringing jobs [unintelligible] are the big issues facing America and I think America's starting to see the confidence come back for the first time in a long time.

AMT: Have you ever been to an inauguration before?

STEVE FRANCO: No. It’s my first.

AMT: Have you been to Washington before?

STEVE FRANCO: Oh yes.

AMT: Yeah. Why did you want to go to this one?

STEVE FRANCO: It’s so important. It’s the pivotal time in the country. Everybody says that every election, but more importantly, we doubled our debt in the last eight years and we’ve been heading the wrong direction for more than eight years, but severely in the last eight years. And our country finally has woken up and moving in the right direction.

AMT: Were you always a Trump supporter?

STEVE FRANCO: No. He was not my first choice by far.

AMT: And when did you turn?

STEVE FRANCO: Just because he really connected with American people and the values with what's happening in the country right now. And I just felt that being a successful independent businessman—obviously he’s done good for him. If he can do half what he's done for himself for the country, we'll be back to where we should be.

AMT: So what are you most looking forward to under President Trump?

STEVE FRANCO: Security of the country and the economy of the country. And immigration is a big issue with me.

AMT: And why is that?

STEVE FRANCO: Because we have a lot of undocumented people in the country that should not be here. We have laws that have not been enforced. It’s been selective enforcement and the last administration has been very poor in representing what the people really want.

AMT: So do you expect changes that will make a difference in your own life with Donald Trump?

STEVE FRANCO: I think it’ll make a difference in everybody’s life within this country. It's already made a difference and he hasn't even taken office yet.

AMT: What do you do for a living?

STEVE FRANCO: I’m an independent businessman.

AMT: What kind of business?

STEVE FRANCO: Real estate.

AMT: Uh-huh. And so what are you expecting in terms of what independent businesses will benefit from?

STEVE FRANCO: Deregulation would be positive number one and then taxes would be number two.

AMT: Does it give you any pause that Donald Trump is the least popular American president when he takes office?

STEVE FRANCO: No, absolutely not. He can be the most effective. He’s done more in the last eight weeks not being elected than Obama's done the last eight years in office.

AMT: Do you have any concerns about healthcare changes, anything like that, or are you looking forward to them?

STEVE FRANCO: Looking forward because the lies that Obama gave us about keep your doctor, keep your healthcare, your premiums will go down $2,500 per family—a lot of people don't realize our premiums went up $2,500, we couldn't keep our doctor and we couldn't keep our healthcare. It was a complete lie to the American people and I think we're looking for some honesty and integrity and I think he’d bring that to the table.

AMT: Did you ever like Obama?

STEVE FRANCO: I thought he'd be good for the diversity, when he brought change and hope, but he didn't bring any change or hope to the country in eight years. Again, he doubled our debt in eight years. From all the presidents combined, all their debt, he’s doubled it, what we had in the last eight years. So think about that. Our children and our grandchildren are going to have to pay that back.

AMT: Who did you come with?

STEVE FRANCO: I came with one of my friends from college in New York and my wife and my son-in-law.

AMT: And what will you spend the day doing?

STEVE FRANCO: After the inaugural ceremony, we're going to watch the parade and maybe we will see [unintelligible] seen around Washington. It’s going to be a beautiful day here.

AMT: And so what do you hope the United States will look like under the presidency of Donald Trump?

STEVE FRANCO: I hope it looks like it did 40 years ago because what we've had happen in the last 30 or 40 years has not been good. It didn't happen overnight but it’s been very progressive over the last eight years. And we’re looking to get back to where we were before, in the world as far as our respect, and at this point, I think this is the best election we’ve had since Ronald Reagan.

AMT: Okay. Well, thank you for speaking with me.

STEVE FRANCO: Thank you. Have a good day.

AMT: Steve Franco, a Trump supporter on the National Mall. Drove in last night from Buffalo, New York. My next guest will not be on the National Mall in Washington for today's festivities. Carol Anderson is Charles Howard Candler professor of African-American studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. Carol Anderson joins us from Atlanta. Hello.

CAROL ANDERSON: Hello. How are you?

AMT: Well, I'm curious to know: first of all, what will you be doing during the inauguration?

CAROL ANDERSON: Actually, I will be teaching my civil rights movement class at noon.

AMT: You won't be watching with them?

CAROL ANDERSON: Oh, God no. God no. I think that we are headed into really dark, dark days. And I am going to be focused on how do we begin to restore American democracy after this horrific debacle of an election?

AMT: When you say dark, dark days, what do you mean?

CAROL ANDERSON: I mean so, one of the things that becomes very clear is how Trump's rise to power has so weakened the institutions of American democracy so that we see the kinds of checks and balances that should be there. In terms of questioning about ethics being absolutely eroded so that when there are questions about how extensive his holdings are and what that means for conflicts of interest, you have Jason Chaffetz, who heads the house ethics committee, oversight committee, saying that really doesn't matter. Of course ethics matter. We have the president of the United States banning major news organizations, saying you know I'm kicking out the White House Correspondents’ Association or I don't want the Washington Post in here for the press. And so it's those sorts of things where you begin to be erode freedom of the press. You begin to erode ethics. And also with Trump, one of the things that we saw was the call for voter suppression and so we're going after the right to vote. We're going after icons. He's using Twitter. And finally, the big one is his relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia and where he has been under investigation for a while for those connections.

AMT: And yet, you just heard another view from a fellow American. What were you thinking listening to Steve Franco talk about his hopes for the US under Donald Trump?

CAROL ANDERSON: I am so sorry they are going to be dashed eight ways to Sunday. Because part of it is that we have a false narrative going on and that false narrative is that Obama lied and tanked the economy and things are worse. I mean you heard that kind of dystopian view there. But in fact, unemployment—when Obama took over in 2008—the American economy, as well as the global economy, stood on the abyss. Now we have an unemployment rate of about four point nine per cent, which is as low as it has been in well, over a decade. Personal income has gone up over $5,000 in this past year alone. He has reduced the deficit from where it was under Cheney-Bush.

AMT: So given the fact that there is that disconnect, how do you expect that to play out over the next four years, away from the beltway, amongst Americans?

CAROL ANDERSON: And I think what's going to happen is—we saw a hint of it—when Congress went after the Affordable Care Act as its first move and you had people who had benefitted so that a lot of the states that voted for Trump actually have a large number of their population on the Affordable Care Act so now they have access to healthcare. And they thought—I mean there was this wonderful article where they thought that you know the Republicans didn't mean it, Trump didn't mean it, they liked his message of making America great again but they didn't think that they would mess with their health care.

AMT: Right. So I know what you're saying. You’re saying that there is that disconnect but I'm asking how do you think that will play out elsewhere? Not in the specifics of the policy but in terms of how actually Americans confront each other on this.

CAROL ANDERSON: Oh, how we confront each other? I think that what's going to happen is that you're going to see the massive protest of course. I think for those who have that sense that this is going to make America great again, Trump is, is that they're going to get a rude awakening. As it begins to really hit their very lives, as they confront what a deregulated world looks like, we're going to have the Cuyahoga River on fire again. We're going to have massive spread of water that's not drinkable again. And then it's going to hit them where the real lives are. And I think that this is going we're getting ready to hit dark days. We’re in a nation that is fissured. We're operating from two separate evidence bases so that one group is really dealing with what the facts are, and another one is dealing with the kinds of myths that have been spun all over the years. And this call to make America great again is also understood by—

AMT: Carol Anderson, we have to leave it there. I wanted to get to that point with you but now we have to go. So I'm sorry, we're out of time. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler professor of African-American studies at Emory University. The author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. She joined us from Atlanta, Georgia. Stay with CBC on radio, television or the web. We will have coverage of the events here on CBC Radio One. Susan Bonner of The World at Six hosts and I will be hosting the inaugural special that begins at 11:30 a.m. Eastern. And stay with us. The news is next. And then we're going to talk to Canadians who say they're hungry for a Trump-like leader in this country. This is The Current.

Trump supporters in Canada speak up

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, businessman and TV personality Kevin O'Leary is now in the running to lead the Conservative Party. But his former fellow Dragon Arlene Dickinson says buyer beware.

SOUNDCLIP

One of the first questions I ever get asked when we talk about the show is whether Kevin is the same person off the show as he is on the show. The answer to that question is yes. And that should put enough fear into Canadians right there.

AMT: In half an hour, we’ll convene some Canadian political watchers from across the country for their thoughts on whether a Trump inspired candidate could take over the Conservative Party. But first, putting our ears to the ground.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Crowd chanting “USA”]

Thank you. Thank you very much. Sorry to keep you waiting. Complicated business. Complicated.

AMT: The very first words from US President-elect Donald Trump in the early morning hours of November 9th. And well, it was complicated. Virtually every poll pundit and prognosticator had called the election for Hillary Clinton. In fact, the upset victory appeared to surprise even Donald Trump, but it also appeared to prove something—that there was a vast underrepresented cohort of Americans who connected with Mr. Trump's ideas on immigration, security, trade—no matter how heretical they seemed to the so-called “liberal elites”. In Canada, the US election upset has sparked some backroom discussions. Could a politician or anti-politician follow the same path to parliamentary power? Already in the conservative leadership race, we've seen candidates praise Mr. Trump and seemingly try to position themselves as Trump of the North. The Current’s producer Kristin Nelson set out to find Canadians who want to see a leader like Trump in Canada. Here's what she found. And just a warning: this documentary includes material that some people may find offensive.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We begin, of course, with the day after the US election. Hillary Clinton just spoke to a crowd—

VOICE 2: It looks like his appearl to that disenfranchised middle class, working class, white male—

VOICE 3: This is unbelievable. There was something going on beyond that was beyond what the Washington elite or any political commentator could have foreseen.

KRISTIN NELSON: It was not even three months ago that Donald J Trump stunned the world with his surprise victory in the US election. And a lot Canadians were feeling like this Ottawa woman.

SOUNDCLIP

I can't believe the American people would vote for somebody with those attitudes, those ideas.

KRISTIN NELSON: But not everybody on this side of the border had that reaction. I woke up late after staying up all night to cover the election. One of the first things I did was tune into CBC's lunchtime call-in show. Many of the callers that day were celebrating.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Rob, you’re in Barrie. Tell us your reaction. Donald Trump, president-elect. Can you believe it?

VOICE 2: Yes. I'm absolutely elated that Donald Trump won.

VOICE 3: He really, I believe, wants to help the country.

VOICE 4: I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled to pieces because there's a lot of us out here who don't believe in multiculturalism.

VOICE 5: My family and I are Trump supporters for sure."

VOICE 6: He's stating a lot of things that people are afraid to say. Before you help people that are not from your country, that are in different countries, you should help the people that are at home first."

VOICE 7: Go Donald, go.

KRISTIN NELSON: Pollsters and the media misjudged the extent of Trump's support—the same way they misjudged the outcome of the Brexit vote. And many of us at The Current, we began to wonder if we were missing a similar political undercurrent in this country. As Trump is about to take office, we wanted to know now more about what is going on in our own backyard. How much appetite is there for a Trump-like politician in Canada? I don't have to look far. Two people I know who were rooting for Trump to win are my cousins, Darcy and James Craigen.

SOUNDCLIP

This is just the calving barn here right now. So we've got a couple new calves.

[Sound: Cow mooing]

A lot of heifers here too.

KRISTIN NELSON: I met Darcy on a cold January day at his family’s beef farm in Newburgh, Ontario.

SOUNDCLIP

DARCY CRAIGEN: It's a cold day for the calves though, for sure. That one is just born today.

KRISTIN NELSON: Where?

DARCY CRAIGEN: Over there.

KRISTIN NELSON: Let's go see.

KRISTIN NELSON: My aunt and uncle bought the farm in 1982. And Uncle Carl has been farming his whole life.

SOUNDCLIP

KRISTIN NELSON: Is that the placenta?

DARCY CRAIGEN: Yep. We'll move this calf into a—

KRISTIN NELSON: Darcy loves farming and the lifestyle that comes with it. He hunts and makes maple syrup every year in the spring. But earning a living as a beef farmer is tough.

SOUNDCLIP

DARCY CRAIGEN: See, it's just trying to get up. Looks like it's actually a steer calf there, bull calf.

KRISTIN NELSON: Oh, he's so shaky.

DARCY CRAIGEN: Yep.

KRISTIN NELSON: I suppose on paper, I'm firmly a member of the downtown media elite. But having the Craigens as cousins has exposed me to another perspective. James, Darcy and I are part of a large Irish-Catholic family and the Craigen farm holds a special place in the hearts of everyone in it. I have great memories from my summers in childhood—riding in tractors, finding brand new kittens nestled in the hay in the barn, watching the poor bulls meet their fate on castration days. CBC Radio is always playing in the background at the farm and there's always talk of politics around the dinner table. At a recent family gathering, Donald Trump became a topic of conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

KRISTIN NELSON: Why do you think that so many people voted for Trump?

DARCY CRAIGEN: I just think—sure, there were some crazy ideas that might have got some people on board, like building the wall and stuff like that. But what really was drawing people is just the fact that he was coming out right and saying he's had enough of the elites lying to the people and pocketing the money. There's a few things that he's chimed in on lately, like the big Ford scandal there, with them building the new plant down in Mexico. A lot of people got out and voted for, these middle-class guys that had plants shut down on them. And that's been happening up here as well. He's going after these companies and putting ultimatums out on them and making them accountable for it so they're not allowed to just go down there, get these jobs at five bucks an hour down there—which would be a 28-dollar unionized job up here—and then sell it back to us.

KRISTIN NELSON: Darcy's older brother James joins us. He moved off the farm to go to university and now has a white collar job in Ottawa. But he drives his truck back to the farm almost every weekend to help out.

JAMES CRAIGEN: Who has really benefitted from this so-called recovery that we've undertaken? The recovery that apparently has been lauded through Obama's presidency and his administration really hasn't reached them. And people are realizing that hey, we're sick and tired. Put in the clown, is what it kind of came down to. It was a middle finger to the establishment class of corporate America. They said we’re sick and tired. He could’ve said anything and that’s a reality that happened. This guy made some incredibly off-colour remarks. People were willing to overlook all of that because here was a chance at somebody that wasn't an establishment politician.

KRISTIN NELSON: James and Darcy's point of view has absolutely been shaped by growing up on the farm. And they say it's not a point of view that's generally reflected in the media.

SOUNDCLIP

JAMES CRAIGEN: It's kind of a different outlook. Things for us, like we're on a beef farm, so maybe from the get-go there was a lot of inherent skepticism with the government and how things were operated because for a long time after mad cow, during a lot of those years, there wasn't a whole lot of money in beef farming.

KRISTIN NELSON: In 2003, an Angus cow in Alberta came down with Mad Cow Disease. The US quickly slammed its doors on Canadian beef exports and so did 40 other countries. Cattle prices here crashed. The Craigens remember getting terrible prices for their cows at the sales barn, but that price of beef at the grocery store barely changed. They had to put their own money into the farm and find off-farm jobs. Here's the lesson they learned.

SOUNDCLIP

JAMES CRAIGEN: That you're on your own. What came out of that for us is that there's really no one looking out there for you.

DARCY CRAIGEN: The bottom feeders are the first people that are going to be out. And that's why our cow numbers are down right now from—I don't know what it was.

JAMES CRAIGEN: Well, in Ontario in the last few years, it's gone—from 2004 'til now—it's gone from 450,000 to 220,000 cows. So I mean this is an industry that's been largely decimated on the back of not really a whole lot of government intervention. Perhaps a lack of intervention is what has allowed this to continue and perhaps there's where a lot of the scepticism comes from.

KRISTIN NELSON: So it's not surprising that my cousins would like a leader in this country to sound a little more like this.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: Companies are not going to leave the United States any more without consequences. Not gonna happen.

[Sound: Whistling sounds, dog barking]

DARCY CRAIGEN: We luckily came from a bit of a land base and the old man's got most of the machinery. But if we didn't have that and it was just me and him starting, you know maybe our great-grandchildren might make a paycheque out of it. I'd much rather be farming more than pretty near anything, but I can't really do that at this point.

KRISTIN NELSON: It's no wonder that people in the political establishment can feel so far removed. When Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters "deplorables", that really rubbed James the wrong way.

SOUNDCLIP

JAMES CRAIGEN: I think that kind of goes back to what we saw with Brexit as well. The tone in Europe was, is that a lot of Nigel Farage's support was made up of this racially-motivated, anti-immigration movement. And I think that marginalized and missed a big portion of what the movement really was. And the attempt to reduce it to a racially-motivated ideal was a lot of what we saw in the Trump election as well.

[Music]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I was rooting for Obama in the previous election. Traditionally I've leaned to the left, but I see what's happened under the Democrats and I can totally understand why Mr. Trump came along.

VOICE 2: There's a lot of us out there that are quiet. We work away every day. We try and get through. But we don't believe in this. We're not drinking the Kool-Aid.

VOICE 3: People who say he has no policies, he certainly does. So I don't know. I guess if you listen to mainstream media, that's the message you got, but if you listen to alternate news sources, you'll get a different message. And that's the message we followed.

KRISTIN NELSON: It's tough to know how much support Trump has on this side of the border. An Ipsos poll from back in November found that up to three-quarters of Canadians would consider voting for a candidate promoting Trump-like policies. But at the same time, another poll found that most Canadians were dissatisfied with the outcome of the American election. As we've learned, polls can be wrong. One of the reasons the media and pollsters may have missed the extent of the support for Trump is that people seem to be reluctant to talk. I reached out to dozens of people for this story, but very few agreed to be interviewed. Administrators for the most popular "Canadians for Trump" online groups either didn't get back to me or said they wouldn't talk. There's a lot of distrust towards the CBC and the media in general. But one Trump supporter, who’s very active on Twitter, did agree to an interview.

MOE BHATHA: My name's Moe. I was born and raised in Vancouver. I come from an immigrant family.

KRISTIN NELSON: Moe Bhatha is an Indo-Canadian. And he doesn't buy the idea that Trump's election is evidence of a so-called "white-lash". We caught up with him at the Vancouver Public Library.

MOE BHATHA: My parents came here with nothing. They worked their butts off to provide a life for us and for themselves. They never, never, ever got a handout. They never wanted a handout. And I think they instilled some good values in us that in life you don't expect handouts. You work hard for what you want.

KRISTIN NELSON: Moe Bhatha is fit-looking with a bic-shaved head and tattoos on his arms. He's married, has two kids and works in sales. While his values may have come from his parents, his partisan political views are quite different from theirs. Especially when it comes to his support for Conservative leadership contender, Kellie Leitch.

MOE BHATHA: My mom and dad have always supported the federal Liberal Party of Canada. But after listening to Kellie, I think it's time to support a person like that. She's very well-educated. She's smart. She's a woman. And I think she understands what a person like me wants and the things that are important to me.

KRISTIN NELSON: Bhatha has never been involved in a political campaign, but now he's volunteering for Kellie Leitch. It was actually the recent US election that motivated him to get political.

MOE BHATHA: Donald Trump's the one that really inspired me. Over the years, I've watched politicians and media basically telling us how we should think, how we should feel. And here comes along a guy that basically says no, you matter. So that’s why I started supporting Trump. And that’s one of the reasons why I'm supporting Kellie Leitch here because she gets it.

KRISTIN NELSON: In case you missed it, Kellie Leitch has captured a lot of media attention for saying things like this.

SOUNDCLIP

Whether it be the elites or the insiders, or some of the left-wing media, they’re really out of touch with the average Canadian. And what two-thirds of Canadians agree with me on, which is that we should be screening immigrants to Canada for Canadian values.

KRISTIN NELSON: She hasn't been entirely clear about how screening for values would work or what those values are. But Moe is drawn to the idea.

MOE BHATHA: I'd like to see better screening of people coming into this country. There was screening back when my parents came to the country, but now we're just letting in people by the thousands into the country without doing a proper interview or nothing. And a lot of them aren't contributing back. And I think the working class are just being hammered with more and more taxes and more and more burden to take care of people. There's people here we can take care of. If you walk 10 seconds from here, you'll see people dying on the streets here. So why are we bringing in thousands of people from other countries? Why are we handing out hundreds of millions of dollars to other countries when people are dying in this country? Why are we trying to look after the world? We need to look at our own backyard first.

KRISTIN NELSON: Moe Bhatha doesn't trust the media and he's especially upset by the way Kellie Leitch's campaign has been covered.

MOE BHATHA: I think the media here is pretty corrupt here too—I don't mean you in particular—but I think it's pretty corrupt. I look at the last election, how they downplayed so many things for the Liberal party, and now CBC got a nice big payout because they're getting bailed out again. And so they reduce a mountain into a little mole for Justin Trudeau and anytime someone else, they're out there trying to paint them as racist or whatever it is, labelling them as bad people. But I think Canadians are starting to wake up and just like the CNN is a Clinton news network, CBC, they're considering that as the federal Liberal Party of Canada's news network. I know a lot of people are basically not even paying any attention to it anymore.

KRISTIN NELSON: All I’m going to say here is that CBC does have clear journalistic standards when it comes to accuracy, fairness and editorial independence. But regardless, Moe’s is not getting his news from us anyway. And he says Canada is ripe for a Trump-style politician.

MOE BHATHA: You see people's frustration on social media and I think people are waking up. They're hoping one day there will be a serious change in politics here.

KRISTIN NELSON: Although he's a person of colour, Bhatha doesn't worry about Trump appealing to people who hold racist views.

MOE BHATHA: I attended a couple of rallies for Trump and I seen black people, Hispanics, Natives, Indo-Americans. None of those people felt the racism. All those people aren't racist. This was a negative narrative created by the media and the other politicians. When I look at Trump, I look at him as an average man, an average guy that I could have a beer with. You could relate to him. And sometimes when someone gets under his skin, he does say some things that some people may not like. But guess what? Don't poke the big bear and he won't say anything.

[Music]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I've worked with many in a sales field, in high tech field. All the guys were, sorry to say, were like that. They had comments about women like that. It's just something that's still in our genre. The guy made a mistake.

VOICE 2: It is locker room talk. We call that shop talk. And he's a guy. Guys talk like that. It's just the way we are. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just normal. I know some women get very offended by it and I know the CBC—

VOICE 3: Some men too.

VOICE 2: Some men do too, I guess.

VOICE 3: A lot of men.

VOICE 3: Well, I wouldn’t say that. Some might say that to you. But as soon as they walk away, as soon as they get a look of you, they say, “Yeah. She’s got a nice butt.”

VOICE 4: It’s a culture clash difference. And we’re seeing it here. I know they’re going to build a huge mosque. If me and my daughters went there in shorts and a tank top or T-shirt, let's see what's going to happen to us. I don't think it would be very good.

KRISTIN NELSON: So we've been to rural Ontario and downtown Vancouver. Our final stop is just outside of Fredericton, New Brunswick. And just a warning: this next section does include content that people might find offensive.

ALLEN LINGENFELTER: My name is Allen Lingenfelter. I am from Waasis, New Brunswick, formerly from BC.

KRISTIN NELSON: I came across Allen Lingenfelter through a posting of his on Facebook. He spends a lot of time online posting comments and articles about everything from Canadian politics to his feelings about Obama.

ALLEN LINGENFELTER: Let’s go to one of my favourite pages: Facebook.

KRISTIN NELSON: We caught up with him last week as he was monitoring the confirmation hearings of one of Donald Trump's cabinet picks. In 2014, Lingenfelter and his wife moved to New Brunswick where they have retired with their cat, Tekka.

[Sound: Cat meowing]

KRISTIN NELSON: Allen worked as a line cook for 30 years in many restaurants throughout British Columbia.

ALLEN LINGENFELTER: I can fry an egg, yeah. I can boil water too. [chuckles]

KRISTIN NELSON: Now that he's retired, Allen has a lot of time to keep up with politics. He gets his news from many websites—everything from Facebook to CBC, to Fox, Breitbart and The Rebel. That’s Ezra Levant's conservative news and opinion site.

ALLEN LINGENFELTER: I’m not an angry person. I may sound like one. I’m not an angry person. I’m just fearful for my country. I believe in Canada. I want Canada to stay a nation within itself. I don't want to be part of a global thing. I don't want to be part of the new world order. I think we're being taxed to death. I feel that our rights are being minimized.

KRISTIN NELSON: One of Lingenfelter's primary concerns is immigration.

ALLEN LINGENFELTER: I have a problem with the refugee system right now. And I feel that if we say anything against it, our government calls us names. I agree with immigration. I just don't agree with how they're doing it right now. And it seems to me that they come over here and they make demands of us and all that kind of stuff and we can't say Merry Christmas, we can't do this, we can't do that. But if we say anything against them, like I don’t like that, then we are labeled and I think that's wrong.

KRISTIN NELSON: His main concern is with the immigration of Muslims.

ALLEN LINGENFELTER: I'm not Islamophobic. I'm not afraid of it. What worries me is, like I say, I watch the news. I look at Europe, I look at Britain, and I see what's going on over there and I'm so afraid that's what’s going to happen here. We're going to have all these refugees coming in from Muslim countries. They're fine when they're in a few number. But as you see in Europe and in Britain, once they get a lot of people, then they start attacking our ways, our laws, our constitution. That I don't understand. If you want to come to my country, accept my ways. Accept my country. You can keep your religion. That's fine. I don't have a problem with that. But don't diminish my rights because of your religion.

KRISTIN NELSON: Lingenfelter is also a fan of Conservative leadership contender Kellie Leitch.

ALLEN LINGENFELTER: I think she's great. Everybody's comparing her to Trump. She's not Trump at all. I just think that myself, I will vote for anybody that puts Canada first. And you see, that's what happened in the States. The Americans voted for a person that wants to put America first. And I think Kellie, she's not saying stop immigration. She's not saying that at all. All she's saying is let's have an interview. It's like a job interview. I mean I go to a job and I'm a total jerk, the guy's not going to hire me. It's the same thing with immigration. If you come here, you apply to come into my country. If you're going to be a jerk coming into my country, I don't want you in my country. It just makes sense. Why would you just allow somebody to come to our country that hates us? That's silly.

KRISTIN NELSON: But have you ever met or are you friends with any Muslims? I mean, how do you say that?

ALLEN LINGENFELTER: No, I've met Muslims. Again, on a personal level, I'm not a racist. The problem I have, like I said, is this mass immigration from a country that has terrorists.

KRISTIN NELSON: Now Allen is just one of many voices who like politicians like Trump and Kellie Leitch. It’s clear they don't all come from the same perspective. The desire for a Trump-like politician in Canada seems to mirror the same range of support that brought him to power in the US. Some people are so drawn to his economic ideas, they are willing to overlook his offensive comments about women, or Muslims, or Mexicans. For others, it is those unsavoury comments that won their favour. If you're not a fan of Trump, it might be tempting to disregard these differences—to stop listening altogether. But not listening, we've learning, is a risky proposition.

AMT: That documentary was produced by The Current’s Kristin Nelson. Our documentary editor is Josh Bloch. Thanks to Anne Penman in Vancouver and Joe McDonald in Fredericton and to CBC's Ontario Today for its tape of callers. Now over to you. Do you think a Trump-like politician could succeed in Canadian politics? Why or why not? And be in touch on Facebook, Twitter @thecurrentCBC. Send us an email through our site. Head to www.cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. Stay with us. In our next half hour, we're going to keep the discussion going around the race to become the next leader of Canada's Conservative Party where candidates—some—appear to be taking cues from Mr. Trump's campaign. And a reminder: beginning at 11:30 Eastern, join us here on CBC Radio One for the Presidential Inauguration Day special. I'll be joined by Susan Bonner, host of The World at Six. We will bring you everything that's happening in Washington. We'll be joined by reporters Keith Boag and David Common in the US Capitol. And we will bring you of course, Donald Trump's inaugural address. We have a great panel of guests from across the US standing by with their thoughts on the day when the inauguration special begins. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

[Music: Sting]

Kevin O'Leary, Kellie Leitch, test out Donald Trump-style tactics in Canada

Guests: Campbell Clark, Jason Markusoff, Nora Loreto

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

You know I'm not a politician. I don't owe anybody any favours. I've never been involved in politics. And if you're watching what's happening all around the world, it's not politics as usual anymore. People want different kind of leadership. They want someone who's actually got a track record in managing something, not just the same old politicians. So I'm facing off against good men and women but they're all politicians.

AMT: Well, that's businessman and TV personality Kevin O'Leary making his pitch to lead the Conservative Party of Canada in an appearance on US television, ABC's Good Morning America. The former Dragons Den star has drawn a lot of comparisons to the incoming American President Donald Trump. They are both businessmen with a penchant for publicity and the talent for reality TV. The similarities don't end there.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. If it goes down, I’m going to buy you. I'm a businessman. That's what I'm supposed to do. That's what I'm supposed to do.

KEVIN O’LEARY: What I do is business. Canada’s biggest business is business. The reason the country is grinding to a halt is poor policy.

DONALD TRUMP: I'm not a politician. Thank goodness. I have no special interests and I have no special interests telling me what to do. I have no lobbyists telling me what to do. I'm going to do what's right for you.

KEVIN O’LEARY: I don't owe anybody any money. I owe no political favours. I've never been a politician.

DONALD TRUMP: Our country is in serious trouble. We don't have victories anymore.

KEVIN O’LEARY: I now have two children in their twenties. I can't believe what's happening to this country.

DONALD TRUMP: Working together, we will begin the urgent task of rebuilding our nation and renewing the American dream.

KEVIN O’LEARY: Canada is open for business again.

AMT: Well, if you heard our documentary earlier in today's show, you know we've already been talking about whether there's an appetite in Canada for a Trump-like leader. We’ll narrow the focus now on the Conservative Party's leadership race where Mr. O'Leary and some others appear to be working from a similar playbook. And we're asking whether it's a potentially winning strategy for them. We have three guests joining us now from across the country. Campbell Clark is the Globe and Mail's chief political writer. He's in Ottawa. Nora Loreto is a freelance writer and editor of the Canadian Association of Labour media. She's in Quebec City. Jason Markusoff is an Alberta correspondent for Maclean's magazine. He's in Calgary. Hello everyone.

MANY VOICES: Good morning.

AMT: Campbell Clark, let's start with you. It sounded like Kevin O’Leary was taken Donald Trump's lines there.

CAMPBELL CLARK: I think stylistically he is. I mean he's looking for the outsider view. There is a resentment of career politicians. It's not all that new but it's certainly more pronounced now. I'm not sure that he is taking the whole Donald Trump playbook there. If you look at what that last line was—Canada will be open for business again—the part of Donald Trump that he's not adopting seems to be you know the protectionism, the we’ll put Canada first and close down the border. But in terms of persona, style, appeal as an outsider, I'm a business person—yeah. That's the Donald Trump playbook.

AMT: Jason Markusoff, to what extent do you see Kevin O'Leary as a potential frontrunner in this race?

JASON MARKUSOFF: He certainly has a chance. The best thing that he has going for him is that this is a pretty boring race. I mean this is a membership selling contest. The more tickets you sell, the better you’ll do. And if nobody's really been able to sell a lot of memberships so far, he can swoop in. Of course the challenge he faces is that we're coming up to a membership deadline shortly. The leadership race is in May. He's coming into this very late, skipping the Quebec City French debate. That's going be a challenge. But if he can really whip up a frenzy of excitement—we saw Donald Trump come from utterly nowhere to crush the competition in a very relatively low-enthusiasm Republican contest—so if he can pick that up, he has a chance. But I agree with Campbell that he's kind of half a Trump. He's not playing on the immigration issues that we heard in the last segment. Kellie Leitch is trying to do that. It's this almost interesting experiment that Canada is having. Which half of the Trump appeals to people more? The immigration and border issues or the loud, brash businessman?

AMT: Nora Loreto, what do you think? Do you see Kevin O'Leary as a serious contender?

NORA LORETO: Well, honestly I don't see him as a serious contender. I think that there's a lot that can happen between now and May that could launch him into being a serious contender. But there is a third dynamic from Donald Trump's experience that we don't talk about very much in Canada. And that was the role that Ivanka played and I think that she was critical to reach out to white women and convince them to vote for Trump. And O'Leary has given us pretty much nothing so far. His entry into this race was awkward—it was an announcement on Facebook. And if he can't speak French, if he can't outline what his policies are beyond “I want to be the one to confront Donald Trump,” then he's going to have a very difficult time convincing conservative voters that he is the one to beat. The thing working in his favour of course, is not only is this conservative leadership race boring—which I agree with.

AMT: You're all bored by this. I’m sorry. Keep going.

NORA LORETO: But they've narrowed the debate field. So the debate in Quebec City the other night—the politics—there is consensus on a lot of really important issues. There's consensus on tax cuts of course, creating jobs, which is—actually we could debate about that, whether or not that's not even true. There is consensus on national security issues and then there's very minor kind of debates about you know Kellie Leitch wants to interview people, supply management from Maxime Bernier. And if Kevin decides to make a show of this and try to put something forward that is totally different, maybe. But if he comes in and then says and I'm a businessman and I'm going to lower taxes and basically give conservative voters the exact same thing as everyone else in the field, I really don't see how he's going to be successful in this leadership race.

AMT: Campbell Clark, how much of an upside is there to use that outsider businessman image to attack Justin Trudeau on the economy?

CAMPBELL CLARK: I think there's a pretty big upside. It starts at the fact that Kevin O'Leary is famous and you know we have to remember this is not an election. This is a leadership race and it works according to the mechanics of a leadership race. You're not trying to win the broad support of the public. So he has an appeal that sort of reaches conservative voters. He's famous and people know him and he has sort of a vivid style. So what he needs first in a leadership race is to be able to raise money because a leadership race is about organization. It's not about you know being popular and doing well in polls. It’s about first of all, contacting the existing conservative members but signing up new ones. And it's the way you sign up new ones that matter in this conservative race because each riding counts equally. So you’ll do a lot better you know signing up members in Gaspé or Beaupré, Quebec—where there aren't that many—than you will trying to sign up members in Calgary. So you have to think of it that way. This is an organizational battle. And Kevin O'Leary because he's well-known, because he has that sort of persona that connects with a lot of conservatives, will raise money. He’s going to jump into the fundraising race pretty heavily and he's going to do well there.

NORA LORETO: He's well known but he's not that well known in Quebec, which I think is an important thing to mention.

CAMPBELL CLARK: He’s not.

AMT: What’s the Quebec reaction to him deliberately waiting for the French debate to be over?

NORA LORETO: Well, so he didn't come up at all during the debate. He had kind of floated it just before and during the debate. And because of the capacity that so many of the candidates have in French, there is no opportunity to go away from their notes. So it was really in the scrum after the debate where the candidates were able to react. The reactions ranged from frustration, deep frustration, from folks like Raitt and Chong to Maxime Bernier saying okay, fine, welcome to the race, which says to me Bernier knows that that O'Leary is not going to be able to cut it in French. There is a consensus, a strong consensus, obviously in Quebec City that the next candidate needs to speak French. And I think that you know we can also talk about whether or not that even disqualifies Kellie Leitch because Quebec City had about 450 people in it at the debate. And it's the only place for the conservatives—the province is the only place the conservatives advanced in the last election. It's a province where they can pick up a lot of votes and it would make for good strategy to try and topple Justin Trudeau. So if the conservatives look at it in that perspective, you know well, O'Leary hasn't said almost anything in French. You know he said the words “Francais” and “Anglais” to Good Morning America which was very bizarre. And so that is really a big question in this. I think that's as important as the fundraising question because we just don't know how he would do in French. I think that suggests he's not going to do that well.

AMT: Jason Markusoff, Alberta represents the conservative heartland. How do you think Alberta conservatives would respond or will or are responding to an O'Leary candidacy?

JASON MARKUSOFF: One of the funny things about the way the conservative race is set up is that each riding has equal stance. So if there are 1,700 voters in a riding in Calgary and there are 17 voters in a riding in Gaspé, they get equal weight. So Alberta with only 34 ridings is actually only half the power of–or less than half the power of Quebec. So it's not this giant prize that it normally is. That said, there's a lot of money, Conservative money, in Alberta. So people definitely want to cork that. It's a bit of a mixed bag. Andrew Scheer, the candidate from Saskatchewan is doing very well. Kevin O'Leary may do well. He was in the Calgary Sun this morning and the first half of the column was him bashing Rachel Notley as though he's running for Alberta premier. I think Jason Kenney might want something to say about that. But he's trying to really hammer on the idea that you know Albertans don't want a carbon tax and that unemployment is very high here. And I think you know it's interesting. Alberta is where the acute message that Donald Trump and sort of Kevin O’Leary were bringing this real anger about the economy could really take hold. So if he can really get it to hold here, this could be a successful place for him.

AMT: And now Jason, Stephen Harper has been critical of Mr. Trump. How will his supporters and the party that he created take to people using Trump's style tactics?

JASON MARKUSOFF: I don’t know if people heard—it’s worth watching—Stephen Harper, there's a video out yesterday of him talking in New Delhi and he's expressing some concern about Trump, certainly some concern about Trump's style. Trump’s style was not Stephen Harper's at all. But then you know when you leave a leadership, you lose control of your party. What's quite fascinating is that the three people that we've been all talking about—Maxime Bernier, Kellie Leitch and Kevin O'Leary—they seem like they're the frontrunners. And each of them would suggest a very, very different path forward for the conservatives, a very different you know [unintelligible] style and certainly in tone, much more so than some of the establishment lane candidates like Lisa Raitt, Erin O’Toole, Andrew Scheer, who don't really seem to be getting any of the pickup. So conservatives could wind up picking somebody who takes the party in a very, very different direction, possibly leaving new routes for Justin Trudeau and the NDP.

AMT: Interesting. Is there a place on the party for an anti-establishment candidate?

JASON MARKUSOFF: There’s certainly votes out there. You know there are people who like what Trump is doing, as you heard in that documentary. There's an excitement out there for something new and different. And you know this is a party that has voted Stockwell Day in the past, embraced Preston Manning. They like somebody who can get very, very anti-Trudeau. The people who are really, really thinking “anti-Trudeau, anti-Trudeau” might pick somebody to really shake things up.

AMT: Nora, what do you think?

NORA LORETO: I’m really stuck on the idea as to whether or not O'Leary even projects an anti-establishment. He kind of comes across as like the angry dad that won't let you have money to go to the movies because you didn't do a good enough job like shoveling the driveway. Right? He comes across as mean. And I think Trump certainly has a meanness to him, but I think he also has a bit of a charm. Like clearly. He won the election. And so with O’Leary, you know I'm sure that there's people right now across the country searching through Dragons’ Den back tape to find him being really mean to people on Dragons’ Den. We're going to see those kinds of images. And one of the themes that arose at the debate the other night was this idea that the meanness was part of why the Conservatives lost against Trudeau. And certainly Trudeau's brand of being a nice guy is popular, is very popular. So I think conservatives are going to have to have to really reflect on the idea that do you want a Kevin O'Leary on stage—let's even imagine, in French—against Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh and Elizabeth May? Like at what point is he just going to start like saying nothing. Like literally going blah… to try and get her to stop talking in the debate.

AMT: You're talking about clips from Dragons’ Den. Actually, his Dragons’ Den former co-host there, Canadian entrepreneur Arlene Dickinson was speaking out this week about Kevin O'Leary. Listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

Listen. I had the opportunity to sit beside Kevin for several years and watched him day in and day out and weekend and week out and watched as he dealt with everyday Canadians who had aspirations to build businesses and to do great things with their lives. The only filter Kevin ever applied was whether or not he was going to make money. And unfortunately, that's not a filter that you want to see or the Conservative Party should want to see or Canadians would want to see in terms of their leader. I mean you have to have compassion, empathy and these are two things that I never saw him use. And a great example of that was Hope Blooms, a story that many Canadians know about where you had underprivileged inner city kids trying to do something for themselves and for their community. And he couldn't get past the fact that he wouldn't make money at it and be able to understand that this was just something that he should do because it was the right thing to do.

AMT: Campbell Clark, are empathy and compassion qualities that the Conservative Party’s looking for in a leader?

CAMPBELL CLARK: Yeah, of course they are. You want to be able to connect with people. But look, this is—two questions that we raised here. One is about the election and whether Kevin O'Leary can win a federal election and conservatives will think about that. But there's also this sort of, anger does drive people to you know remember a candidate and Jason was noting that the three candidates that we've noticed in this leadership race—Maxime Bernier, Kellie Leitch and Kevin O'Leary—are you know out there. They're different from what Stephen Harper and the conservative feeling was before. And there's sort of a vividness bias in a race where there's no major candidates and there's 14 people that haven't sort of grasped the attentions of Canadians. So there is an advantage to being an angry man at the moment. But of course things will change when they start to think—I think things will change—when conservatives start to think about who can win a federal election. Mr. O'Leary's lack of French—that's a problem, a big one—and so is the idea that he might be too much of a Dragons’ Den, Mr. Wonderful, you know the sharp hard edged numbers guy for a Canadian.

AMT: It's interesting because you have Donald Trump, the rich man who seemed to be on the side of the little guy and Kevin O'Leary the rich man, is he seen to be on the side of the little guy?

CAMPBELL CLARK: It's hard to say but you know Donald Trump's appeal wasn't just—it wasn’t at first that he was at the side of the little guy right. It was the success and the willingness to sort of—at least the perceived willingness—to speak frankly, like ordinary people do. You know it was as much the style of Donald Trump that made people think he was on their side as it was what he was saying. You know? And you hear a lot of people talking about it. I think some of the people in the piece that you had before were talking about you know these people aren't politically correct. They won't just you know sort of say what they're expected to say. They're not speaking for somebody else. So I'm not sure that people see Kevin O’Leary as being on the side of the little guy yet, but that sort of blunt talk convinces a lot of people that he's at least frank, you know? That he is what he is. Now whether that holds up in the next couple of weeks because we've seen little of Kevin O'Leary as the politician yet. We don't know.

AMT: Well, let's keep on with the idea of people who like more blunt talk. Because of course, before Kevin O'Leary entered the race, another conservative leadership candidate was being compared to using some Donald Trump style rhetoric and that of course is Kellie Leitch. Here is Kelly Leitch explaining her thoughts on immigration in the media.

SOUNDCLIP

The discussion of Canadian values and screening with face-to-face interviews for immigrants is not racist or xenophobic or anti-immigrant. In fact two-thirds of Canadians want to have this discussion. Every country in the world is having this discussion. And just because the media and the elites don't want to have this discussion, doesn't mean we should be afraid of it. Many of my colleagues on this stage I know are intimidated by the media but I'm going to continue to talk about this because this is common sense. This is what Canadians want to talk about.

AMT: Okay. Campbell Clark, do you want to start? What do you think of that?

CAMPBELL CLARK: Well, I think you know that's a bold naked appeal that I'm the outsider and there's lots of people that want to stop me like they want to stop conservatives and you know I speak for you. And you know there really is a vein in the Conservative Party. Stephen Harper went after that. You know Stephen Harper would talk about the elites and the outsiders in the media. Rob Ford did. That is you know a vein of Canadian sentiment and it pretty much sits in the Conservative Party. But Kellie Leitch is a strange candidate for that because when you listen to her talk, you see an interview, she is not the most blunt speaker. She doesn't sound like a frank talker. She sounds like somebody who's practised her lines over and over again. And I think that's probably going to be her biggest problem. She's adopted some of those Trump echo policies in terms of screening immigrants but she doesn't at all have the persona and style the way Kevin O’Leary does. So you know she's half a Trump too. And I think that in the end, that's probably going to be her biggest problem is that when she gets into you know sort of more high profiled campaign where people are talking to the candidates all the time, her personal style is not going to seem all that Trump-like and the people that want that aren’t going to get it.

JASOM MARKUSOFF: But it's because she's the only one saying these things that it's taking traction. If there were—you know I actually wonder in this weird thought experiment world, if Kevin O’Leary were to adopt some of those policies although he says it's not who he is, there can be a really potent force, if you kind of combine those two halves of Trump.

NORA LORETO: Yeah. The thing about Kellie Leitch is that she's taking a strategy that is—it's kind of important to be a guy to be able to be that straight talking politician that worked so well for Rob Ford and that worked so well for Donald Trump. I don't think that works as well for a woman.

AMT: Why not?

NORA LORETO: Well, because if you're going to be a straight talking woman, like you have a different kind of straight talk. Right? You can't be aggressive. You can't be angry because it turns off an average conservative voter who doesn't want to see a woman who is angry and giving you straight talk and telling you like it is. Right? There are some pundits that can get away with that, like the Ann Coulters of the world. But it's a very strange strategy for a doctor from you know Southern Ontario to employ to try and mimic the Trump phenomenon. But I think it's also important to remind ourselves that she is being compared to Trump by a lot of journalists because she is comparing herself to Trump. This is part of the strategy. And so I think that we might see Brad Trost try to do something similar. Like he was certainly talking in a very similar way kind of—if you can understand him in French—in Quebec City. And so what I actually think is going to happen is a polarization of the, I guess we can say perhaps right wing of this party against the Lisa Raitts and Michael Chongs of the campaign who are saying no, no, this is why we lost the last election.

AMT: Well, it's interesting too because her campaign manager is Nick Kouvalis, who was the campaign manager for Rob Ford. And we certainly saw with the rise of Rob Ford, a whole bunch of conservatives look at that—again somebody who people didn't think could win an election—and look at that and want a piece of that. So is there not a continuum there, Campbell Clark?

CAMPBELL CLARK: Yeah, there's a sort of continuum there but Canada’s a much broader, bigger country than Toronto's city hall is. There really is an easy election for, sometimes, for a anti-waste candidate in city hall. You know? I don't want to pay higher property taxes but when it comes to leading your country, people tend to take a far more complex view because there's so many more things at play. So I don't think—that always is rich terrain, right, for the conservatives—the sort of resentment of the elites, resentment of taxes, you know too much waste. That's what Kevin O'Leary is going after. But is there a winning coalition across that you know encompasses Quebec, Alberta, the Maritimes, that is strictly about you know that kind of outsider resentment? I’m not entirely sure.

AMT: When she announced her candidacy, Lisa Raitt actually talked about both Kevin O'Leary and Kellie Leitch and how they could actually keep Trudeau in power. Jason Markusoff, what did you think of that?

JASON MARKUSOFF: Well, one thing is that whenever you talk about your candidates and—she almost made more noise about her candidates than she made about herself in that, in a funny way. So I think she drew a lot of attention to anybody but them and that well, may not necessarily mean her. It certainly pointed to this anxiety that you saw in the establishment of Republicanism in the States. That there were a lot of people who said no, this could never happen in our party. But then those candidates like Donald Trump and say, Ted Cruz, found a whole bunch of new Republicans who those establishment Republicans didn't recognize and that same thing could happen. I mean that's almost a big part of the strategy of Kellie Leitch. The people who are in the conservative establishment who've been working with Jason Kenney and Stephen Harper to not do such high demagoguing against immigrants, have been convincing themselves that people don't want that. Well, there is that group of people out there that listen to The Rebel, that listen to Fox News, that want that. And it's not a huge portion of Canada but a huge portion of candidates not voting for the Conservative Party leadership. So that's why Kellie Leitch has a chance here and to Nora’s point about a woman not being able to do this, look at Marine Le Pen in France.

NORA LORETO: Yes, although I think it's still quite different. In North America, we're not used to seeing women in those roles. And I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm saying with the current group of candidates, it's not Kellie Leitch.

AMT: You're saying there are two rules when it comes to candidates.

NORA LORETO: Oh, absolutely. Like she's difficult to listen to. She doesn't make any sense in French and she doesn't go anywhere beyond the face-to-face interview thing which you know gets old. So you know, are the candidates going to pull out any strategy they can that they think will win? Of course. Donald Trump just won, so of course they're going to look at him.

AMT: Okay. We have to leave it there. But thank you, all of you. It’s going to be interesting political watching. Thank you.

NORA LORETO: Thank you.

CAMPBELL CLARK: Thank you.

JASON MARKUSOFF: Cheers.

AMT: Campbell Clark, chief political writer for the Globe and Mail. Nora Loreto, freelance writer and editor of the Canadian Association of Labour Media. And Jason Markusoff, Alberta correspondent for Maclean's magazine. That's our program for today. Time to recognize the people who put this show together.

INES COLABRESE: Hello. I'm Ines Colabrese, one of the producers here at The Current. This week, the show was produced by Idella Sturino, Howard Goldenthal, Lara O'Brien, Shannon Higgins, Ashley Mak, Sam Colbert, Sujata Berry, Liz Hoath, Karin Marley, Kristin Nelson, John Chipman, Pacinthe Mattar and Willow Smith. Special thanks this week to our network producer in Halifax, Jack Julian. The Current’s writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Transcriptions are provided by Eunice Kim and Rignam Wangkhang. Our technical producer is Gary Francis. Our documentary editor is Josh Bloch. Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. The executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar.

AMT: Stay with Radio One for full coverage of today's US presidential inauguration. I'll be hosting a special broadcast with Susan Bonner, host of The World at Six. It begins at 8:30 Eastern. We'll have all the happenings from Washington, DC and a panel of guests from across the United States for their analysis. Stay with Radio One now. q is next and we will give the last word today to Barack Obama, who as of about noon Eastern, will have his two-term presidency come to a close. We're going to leave you with some of his final remarks in his final press conference as president from Wednesday of this week. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

I believe tragic things happen. I think there's evil in the world. But I think that at the end of the day, if we work hard and if we're true to those things in us that feel true and feel right, that the world gets a little better each time. That's what this presidency has tried to be about. And I see that in the young people I've worked with. I couldn't be prouder of them. And so this is not just a matter of no drama, Obama. This is what I really believe. It is true that behind closed doors, I curse more than I do publicly. And sometimes I get mad and frustrated like everybody else does. But at my core, I think we're going to be okay. We just have to fight for it. We have to work for it and not take it for granted. And I know that you will help us do that. Thank you very much, press corps. Good luck.

[Music: Theme]

January 20, 2017 full episode transcript

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