‘I want to make Canada a freer country’: Conservative MP Andrew Lawton talks being a newbie in Parliament, patriotism, and Pierre Poilievre’s strategy

The most recent federal election saw a host of first-time members of Parliament joining the political fray, including a number of high-profile candidates from across the parties. This includes Andrew Lawton, a former conservative journalist who’s now the Conservative member for Elgin—St. Thomas—London South.

The Hub’s Elie Cantin-Nantel caught up with Lawton in his new Parliament Hill office during the first weeks of the new session to discuss his transition from media to politics, his priorities in office, freedom and patriotism in the age of Mark Carney, Pierre Poilievre’s campaign strategy, and what’s next for the Conservative Party.

ÉLIE CANTIN-NANTEL: We’re here in your new office on Parliament Hill. How does it feel to have made it here?

ANDREW LAWTON: It’s a tremendous honour. I’ve always been interested in politics. I’ve always covered it. I mean, you and I know from working together [at True North]. At the same time, I didn’t really plan to ever run for federal office. I never planned to be here, so there’s a bit of an adjustment in that sense. But at the same time, it’s exciting. I’m glad to be here.

ÉLIE CANTIN-NANTEL: Things during the campaign didn’t unfold exactly as planned, especially with the unexpected dynamics surrounding Donald Trump.

In the face of calls to pivot, Pierre Poilievre doubled down instead. As you watched the campaign grapple with these new political realities, was there anything Poilievre or his team did that surprised you, as someone who’s written a biography of him?

ANDREW LAWTON: The core thesis that emerged from the biography I wrote about Pierre was that this is a guy who has been saying and talking about the same things going back to when he was a teenager. The core values have remained intact. They’ve obviously become a lot more refined and polished, and the application has changed, but the idea of smaller government, the idea of greater individual responsibility, and the idea of a stronger Canada have stayed consistent.

Throughout the campaign, that message was immensely and incredibly focused, and we won the arguments. The Liberals have adopted almost all of our core economic positions. They haven’t gone far enough with them, but they’ve adopted them. They’ve adopted our position on the carbon tax, they’ve adopted our position on the capital gains tax, and they’ve adopted our position, to some extent, on affordability, on borders, and on crime. I want them to take the whole platform, but I think that is a reflection of how well Pierre sold the message to Canadians.

ÉLIE CANTIN-NANTEL: But the Conservatives didn’t win the election. Why was that? Is there blame on the Conservatives’ end?

ANDREW LAWTON: After every election, you have to look at how you did and where you could have done better and where you fell short. But I cannot stress enough that 41 percent number (the popular vote), and the inroads we made in communities, and winning ridings that people had previously written off for the Conservatives. And again, I realize we didn’t win the election. I’m not going to say that we did, but this was a very, very weird one in terms of the outcome. What we did in any other election would have been a win. And I think next time, we just have to make sure that we cross the finish line first.

ÉLIE CANTIN-NANTEL: What can be done differently to cross the finish line first next time around?

ANDREW LAWTON: These are discussions that will have to happen between now and the next election. But I think that the razor-thin margins in some ridings give us a pretty indication of where we need to go.

ÉLIE CANTIN-NANTEL: There’s a media narrative that the Conservatives under Poilievre ran a campaign that was “too conservative,” and that while that energized the base and attracted new supporters, it also scared NDP and Green voters into voting Liberal. What’s your take on that? And what do you make of claims that Conservatives need to moderate if they want to win the next election?

ANDREW LAWTON: Conservatives need to have answers to the problems that people are facing in the country, and Conservatives were putting forward answers. I mean, we had 41 percent of the vote. That is a percentage that, if you had said to anyone a few years ago, the Conservatives would get, they would have thought, “Oh, that’s really ambitious.” And then if you were to tell them that we would get 41 percent and not win, they would have thought you were insane, because in any other election, that’s a sweeping majority government.

So we have to look at the breakdown of how that manifested in different ridings, but we also have to look at ridings we won that no one would have ever thought the Conservatives would do well in: sweeping Windsor, winning in London—Fanshawe, winning in Hamilton, winning in northern Ontario.

This is a party that has managed to capture demographics that have never aligned with Conservatives or have never seen themselves in the political process before, and I think that’s something that we build off of for the next election.

ÉLIE CANTIN-NANTEL: After you win your first election, what actually happens? What’s the process between election night when the TV anchor says you’ve won, to arriving here on Parliament Hill? Do you get a phone call? Something in the mail? How do you go from being declared the winner to being sworn in, given an office, and officially becoming an MP?

ANDREW LAWTON: That’s an amazing question, because before this, I had no idea how any of that worked. And there’s actually very little information online.

So the day after the election, it was 3 p.m. on Tuesday, I got a phone call from the House of Commons from someone identifying themselves as my liaison officer, and their job is basically just to shepherd me through the transition process from the election to becoming a Member of Parliament. This is a relatively new program called the Members’ Orientation Program. They set it up to basically just help MPs with, you know, what do you need to know to set up an office, how to hire a staff member, how to get your laptop, and how to get your phone and stuff like that.

That process happened really quickly. Then the next week, I had to come to Ottawa for in-person orientation.

And this is before even being sworn in and before my results were certified. I couldn’t get sworn in until this formal process happened, of Elections Canada results being certified, and then the writs being returned to the chief electoral officer, and then to the House of Commons. So this all happened very quickly, because Parliament was set to come back just four weeks after the election. They only call people whom they know for sure are going to be MPs based on the margins.

ÉLIE CANTIN-NANTEL: In your maiden speech, you criticized the Liberal government’s record on freedom. Mark Carney seems more moderate than Justin Trudeau on economic issues, but we haven’t seen any real shift on cultural or civil liberties so far. Are you concerned that under Carney, we could see a continuation of policies that threaten freedom, such as a reintroduction of Bill C-63 (the online censorship law)? And what are you prepared to do in Parliament to push back against that kind of agenda?

ANDREW LAWTON: Mark Carney is a chameleon, and I think that’s the biggest concern. Justin Trudeau had very dangerous ideas, views, and policies, but we knew what we were getting with him. But with Mark Carney, his positions change. His coalition right now includes a combination of far-left, radical people who voted NDP in the past and decided to vote Liberal this time, and also moderate, centrist, financial types who thought, “Well, he’s going to be a good fiscal manager.” He has to somehow keep all of these people together to continue with his mandate.

We know via the National Post that there has already been discussion among ministers about not knowing who is going to take up the online censorship file. We know from that discussion that it is going to be a file, and they will advance something on that.

My hope would be that they learn the lessons of the last Parliament and don’t try to lump in things that Conservatives absolutely support, like cracking down on online child sexual exploitation and child pornography, and lump that with contentious things like regulating people’s opinions and criminalizing thought. Separate those out, so we can pass the measures that protect children and have a rigorous debate on their online censorship plans.

ÉLIE CANTIN-NANTEL: In that maiden speech, you also criticized the Liberals’ “performative patriotism,” this elbows-up, flag-waving, in-the-face-of-Trump version of being Canadian. But is there something redeeming in this movement? Because it feels like the anti-Canadian, decolonial strain of wokeism is less fashionable, even among progressives.

Do you think this “elbows-up” nationalism has actually dealt a blow to woke ideology? Or is this just a temporary rebrand?

ANDREW LAWTON: I’ve been flying the flag proudly for years, and I never stopped. I never bought into this narrative that Canada was a country we should be ashamed of. I want more people to do that. I want more people to fly the flag, more people to be proud, patriotic Canadians. Whether you’ve come late to the party or you’ve been here the whole time, you’re welcome.

What I don’t support is people who have actively denigrated this country pretending to be patriotic for political gain. That’s an indictment of the Liberals. That’s not an indictment of ordinary Canadians. I want to see Canadian flags on every house, on every single street, when I walk through my neighbourhood.

ÉLIE CANTIN-NANTEL: You represent an Ontario riding, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, that is, both urban and rural. How serious is the urban‑rural divide in Canada right now?

ANDREW LAWTON: It’s massive, and it was actually a topic I almost wrote a book about. You know, I think urban-rural is one of the, if not the biggest, fault lines in Canadian society right now, and it’s not been explored to the same extent that East versus West or French versus English has.

ÉLIE CANTIN-NANTEL: Before politics, you were a journalist and a broadcaster. You hosted a podcast, and you wrote columns. Do you think your experience as a journalist gives you an advantage that others in the House of Commons do not have?

ANDREW LAWTON: It’s an asset. I wouldn’t compare it to the experiences of others because I think the great thing about the House of Commons is that it has to be reflective of the country it represents. So people who come here bring their own skills and backgrounds, and knowledge sets.

When I’m looking at politicians as a voter, not as a member of Parliament myself, I’m looking for, “What have they done that will help me?” And for me, the skills of journalism that I bring into this are being able to communicate, being able to talk to people, sifting through complicated information and trying to understand it, knowing when someone is burying something or obfuscating. And the crucial one is knowing how to ask questions and what questions to ask, and who you need to talk to for the answers.

What I loved about journalism was that if I was writing a story about something, I could just call up anyone in the world who was an expert on that subject and learn about it. I transfer that to how I’m going to behave sitting on a committee, where I get to know who the experts are and bring them to help answer questions [for Canadians].

ÉLIE CANTIN-NANTEL: What is your top priority as a new member of Parliament? Is there anything you hope to personally accomplish in your first term?

ANDREW LAWTON: I want to make sure that the constituents who sent me here are looked after. My riding is really interesting. It has the suburban parts of London, which is a big city. It has St. Thomas, which is the smaller community that has grown into this really incredible city. It’s got rural areas, we’ve got agriculture, we’ve got manufacturing, we’ve got immigration. We have all of these things that I have to keep in mind when I’m representing them, so that, to me, is my first priority.

As for the bigger picture, I, in that maiden speech, talked about my overall vision, which is that I want to make Canada a freer country. I think that freedom has been under attack from the Liberal government over the last 10 years.

I think that it’s incumbent on people that have seen that and understand the stakes to get into office and start yelling ‘Stop!’ It would have been nice to be here in government, and I think we would have had a lot more options available to us, but from the Opposition, we still have an incredible role to play.

This conversation has been revised and edited for length and clarity.

Élie Cantin-Nantel previously worked with Andrew Lawton at the True North Centre for Public Policy.