Transcript from a portion of the CBC interview, the 3-minute extended cut version:
Chris Hall: You have talked about protecting fundamental freedoms in your platform including the freedom of expression. And you talked about leadership, I’m going to quote here: ‘that doesn’t flinch in the face of political correctness’. What are you proposing?
Leslyn Lewis: Well, exactly like what we were talking about, this week, you know with respect to the issue of systemic discrimination. We need leaders that are going to stand up and tell the truth about certain issues. And the reality is that Trudeau wore blackface on numerous occasions. And yet I did not hear anybody in the Liberal party say, ‘this is anti-black racism. Let’s have a talk about anti-black racism.’ And he is still the Prime Minister of this country. But yet, Stockwell Day a few days ago made some misstatements about conflating individual racism versus systemic racism and he had to step down from three positions. This is the type of hypocrisy that I want to challenge. Because if we have standards those standard have to apply to everybody. Not just to Conservatives, and just to certain individuals in our society.
Chris Hall: So your view is that the Liberals, the Prime Minister gets an easier ride on this than Conservative leaders would.
Leslyn Lewis: Well that’s obvious, the Prime Minister is still the Prime Minister after engaging in one of the most horrendously racist acts. And his colleagues coddled him. He apologized, and I accept his apology. But why haven’t people accepted the apology of Stockwell Day? Why did he have to step down from his three positions? We should have a society where we encourage people to say things. Where we encourage people to talk, where we encourage people to learn from our lived experiences. And when we do things like what we have done to Stockwell Day we shut down the dialogue and that is political correctness and that is what I am fighting against because it doesn’t allow us to move forward and effect systemic change.
Chris Hall: I haven’t talked to Stockwell Day, but I would point out that his notices were that he offered to resign those positions, just make sure the record is clear in that.
Chris Hall: One last thing...
Leslyn Lewis: (interrupting) he offered to resign because of the pressure obviously, because he didn’t want to negatively affect the reputation of the businesses, but yet our Prime Minister is still Prime Minister, has he affected the reputation of Canada internationally?
Chris Hall: I don’t know, has he?
Leslyn Lewis: I believe he has.
--- End of transcript from interview partially aired June 6th on CBC's The House. ---
