Leslyn Lewis visits Cathay Wagntall’s riding
August 14, 2020, 11:12 am
Kevin Weedmark
Dr. Leslyn Lewis, a candidate for the Conservative leadership who has the support of Yorkton-Melville MP Cathay Wagantall, visited Wagantall’s riding last week and met with supporters from across the riding.
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, three sessions of 30 people each were held.
Lewis was born in Jamaica and immigrated to Canada at the age of five.
She earned her Juris Doctor degree from Osgoode Hall Law School, her Master of Environmental Studies (MES) from York University, her MBA in Business and the Environment from the Schulich School of Business (Trinity College), and her PhD from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University in 2019.
In 2018 she became a Harvard Law School Institute of Global Law and Policy global scholar.
Following is the transcript of an interview Kevin Weedmark had with Dr. Lewis.
Votes must be received by the Conservative Party by August 21.
Are you on a cross country tour right now, trying to get out the vote?
Right now we are doing Saskatchewan and Alberta and then we’re going back to Ontario then over to Quebec.
What sort of reception have your received on the Prairies?
Overwhelming support.
The support here is very, very strong and so I really—although I know my support is strong here—I really just wanted to come here and just say thank you to the people.
I know our MP for Yorkton-Melville Cathay Wagantall is supporting you. Do you have quite a bit of support from the caucus in the region?
Yes we have Rosemary Falk, Cathay Wagantall, Jeremy Patzer, three MP’s from Saskatchewan, and we met with former MP Brad Trost. He also organized an event for us.
What do you see as some of the issues that are resonating with people on the prairies from your platform?
I’m hearing from people that they are very, very concerned about regional representation and just to make sure that the country is kept together and issues that are relevant to sectors such as farming and trade—that those issues are brought to the forefront.
They’re very concerned about the federal government treatment of small business owners and farmers.
They are really concerned about the environment, the economy. The concerns are really the same as other parts of the country especially when it comes to issues around the environment and the economy.
The conservative message in general seems to resonate with a lot of people in our area, the local MP’s in southeast Saskatchewan and southwest Manitoba often winning with 70-80 percent of the vote. What’s the difference here? Why is it the Conservative message resonates here more than some other areas of the country?
Well I think the issue is in larger cities, urban centers, a lot of people have bought into the narrative that conservatives are a certain way and that they don’t care about diversity and they want the country to look a certain way and they’re not inclusive. I think that false narrative has been pushed in larger urban centers and it’s just something that I think as conservatives we have to work on erasing and changing.
How do you feel that your campaign has gone so far?
We are doing very well. I think that of course we were very much underestimated at the beginning and people were watching to see if we would even meet certain milestones, and after we were able to do that, then people started to look at our message and the value and the policies that we are putting forth and I think that people were very, very pleased with the type of campaign that we’ve run and the policies that we were able to put forward.
What do you think it is that sets your campaign apart? What’s the main message that you were trying to get across?
Well I think that the main message is one of unity within the party and unities in the country and because of that my campaign has had a very, very different feel to it, it has been one that we’ve taken the high road.
We haven’t attacked any of the candidates because we’re pushing forward the message based on party unity because I believe that in order for us to unite the country we have to start by uniting our own party.
You’re seen as one of the more socially conservative of the different candidates. Do you think there is a real appetite for social conservativism in Canada at this point?
We live in a democracy and there are millions of people who have values that would pigeonhole them as social conservative.
I myself identify more as a fiscal conservative and it’s other people that have labeled it social conservative largely because my life is informed by faith and so people have decided that’s a proper label.
I think there are millions of people in this country that think like me. We’re not on the fringe.
I believe that if people respect democracy, people respect people that think like us and we will respect people that have different opinions than us.
I just think it’s who people are and because we have a democracy I think that we just learn to live with people who share different opinions than us.
How much of a challenge has Covid-19 been in this campaign? I know in Yorkton-Melville you had to break your session into three different slots to try to keep larger crowds from gathering. Has Covid-19 and the restrictions made it more difficult to campaign?
In some ways it’s made it more difficult and other ways I think made things easier. Yes we had to break it into three different slots in order to accommodate the rules, and ordinarily we would just have one meeting and be able to move on to the next location, but on the flip side of that I could have held a zoom meeting with 1,000 people in Alberta and then an hour later hold one in New Brunswick and it is now acceptable to hold these meetings through Zoom and electronic technology, so in one respect we could do things very differently than we did before, and with more people.
Now that I’m on the road many people have already gotten a taste of my message and heard me speak through Zoom calls than would have probably known who I was had we not have that type of practice having those Zoom meetings.
What have you learned as a person through the whole process of being a candidate?
What I said to a few of the staffers today is that it is actually really hurtful for me to travel the country and see how kind and loving people are out in the prairies and how these very same people were labeled as racist, but they are so warm and loving and embracing and supportive of my candidacy.
I just think that the labels that we’ve used to create identity politics and to divide us is destroying our nation. That is something that came to me today. I just think that we need to do better in finding things that bind us together and unite us instead of finding ways to separate us and to divide us.
What is the plan for the rest of the campaign?
What we plan to do is we’re going to be going into Alberta and then we are just going to be going around and doing some ballot parties and trying to get those ballots in on time by the 21st because at this point in time if people don’t mail them right away they will probably get there late and not be counted. So we’re going to try and collect as many ballots as we can and then have them couriered to the party and just get the word out there that if you haven’t voted to consider my candidacy and what I stand for, and to get their ballots in.
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