Byline: ROBYN URBACK, Staff

Lead

The strangest thing about the remarks Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole made to a group of Conservative Ryerson University students over Zoom last month was not his erroneous suggestion that the residential school system was created with the intention of educating (and not separating and extinguishing the cultural ties of) Indigenous children. No, that misconception is fairly widespread - one that wouldn't be out of place in your average Facebook thread or one particular Senator's office.

Rather, what made Mr. O'Toole's comments particularly weird was the way he framed them for his campus Conservative audience, teaching them how to score points against their "woke" contemporaries, as if Mr. O'Toole was playing the role of a catty, partisan Yoda.

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"Here's a nugget you can say that when I say it in Parliament, it silences the Liberals like you wouldn't believe: 'You know who opened more residential schools than Egerton Ryerson? Pierre Elliott Trudeau.' "That shocks the hell out of the woke crowd," he continued.

The would-be prime minister also told his listeners that "Most of the lefty radicals are also the dumbest people at your university," and asked why the "woke left" hasn't been calling for the renaming of the...