I want to talk a little bit about that leadership vote on Sunday night, Kris, 'cause there were a couple of things that just don't add up to me when it comes to what happened.
Let's just do a comparison between the Liberals and the Conservatives. So, first thing, We were told that the convention the Liberals held on Sunday evening in Ottawa had fewer then 2,000 people in attendance. Compare that to Pierre Poilievre, who did a rally in London, Ontario, a much smaller city, and this is just a rally, and there were an estimated 2,500 attendees, this is according to Juno news. And so, just even the idea that they are electing selecting a new leader for the Liberal Party and there are fewer people who go to just your run-of-the-mill Pierre Poilievre rally, that's not even during a campaign...you had two former Prime Ministers in attendance in Ottawa and they couldn't even pull out a crowd of more then 2,000 people.
And then when it comes to the number of people who voted. So, we have been told that there were 400,000 registered Liberals that were going to be voting in this race. And remember that in order to be a Liberal member you don't have to pay any money, unlike in the Conservative Party you do have to pay. For the Liberals, you don't even have to be a citizen of Canada, which to me is just so outrageous. And they open the membership to anybody over the age of 14. So you could have a 14 year old who is a foreign national and not a Canadian, who didn't pay any money, has nothing invested, and you can go ahead and you could vote. So you were told that that was 400,000 and yet the party said that 151,000 voted in the race. Interestingly, they said that 163,000 people successfully went through the authentication process. So, out of 400,000 only 163[,000], it seems, could be confirmed to be real people. And of those, only 151[,000] persons voted. So the Liberals are running around today saying that 93% of their party voted in this race but only if you take that smaller number. And 163,000 people, I mean, it seems kind of like a lot but, in the world of politics, this is significantly smaller then the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party had 417,000 people vote in their leadership race... Not a very large percentage of Canadians and so we're told, sure, Mark Carney got 80/85%, I believe, of the vote, but again, that's of that smaller number. This isn't any kind of resounding mandate from Canadians. And it raises so many questions, Kris, about the authenticity or how secure this process is. If 400,000 people were on the list and only 150,000 of them actually voted, what happened to the others and why weren't their votes counted?