Juno News - April 15, 2025


Carney refuses to fire staff behind button-planting scheme

Topics
Polyev blue-collar support
Mentioned
Pierre Poilievre Mark Carney Donald Trump Preston Manning Brian J. Porter Michelle Rempel-Garner Chris Workington Jonas Parker Hillary Clinton Von Finkenstein Stuart Schaefer Peter Gilligan Alex Spencer Peter Clark Jay Hennick Prem Watsa Dan Muser Sault Ste Hamilton Justin and 3 more
Carney CANCELS campaign, won’t say where he pays taxes, vows censorship, radical WOKE policies Violent pro-Hamas thugs are being violent all over the country

Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

140.02

Word count

2,330

Sentence count

112


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Lib Dem Leader Mark Carney won t fire staff behind a secret scheme to brand conservatives as election deniers. He s apologized and quietly reassigned them instead. Preston Manning has asked Canada s ethics commissioner to review Mark Carney s campaign promises, calling them unethical bribes tied to CBC funding boosts and taxpayer rebates. 33 Canadian business leaders have thrown their support behind Pierre Polyev, backing his economic plan in a joint letter under the banner of Friends of Free Enterprise Canada.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Liberal leader Mark Carney won't fire staff behind a secret scheme to brand conservatives
00:00:10.740 as election deniers. He's apologized and quietly reassigned them instead.
00:00:17.020 Preston Manning has asked Canada's ethics commissioner to review Mark Carney's campaign
00:00:22.480 promises, calling them, quote, unethical bribes tied to CBC funding boosts and taxpayer rebates.
00:00:30.000 Before the election, 33 top Canadian business leaders have thrown their support behind Pierre
00:00:35.320 Polyev backing his economic plan in a joint letter under the banner of Friends of Free
00:00:41.460 Enterprise Canada. Hello, Canada. It's Tuesday, April 15th, and this is the True North Daily
00:00:46.960 Brief. I'm Cosmin Georgia. And I'm Clayton Demain. We've got you covered with all the news you need
00:00:53.000 to know. Let's discuss the top stories of the day and the True North exclusives you won't hear
00:00:58.440 anywhere else. Liberal leader Mark Carney indicated he won't be firing campaign staff responsible for
00:01:07.480 a covert operation to plant campaign buttons meant to portray the conservatives as election deniers
00:01:14.280 at a recent conference in Ottawa. Instead, Carney has apologized for the incident and said he has
00:01:20.320 shuffled the responsible individuals into different roles. Carney was asked by a reporter how much such a
00:01:27.440 trick might, quote, undermine the trust in the way that the Liberals operate and what he's done since
00:01:34.020 to reprimand his staff. The incident took place at the Canada Strong and Free Network Conference at the
00:01:40.220 West End Hotel in Ottawa last week. Members of the Liberal War Room, so the central campaign,
00:01:45.340 distributed stop the steal buttons at a conservative event. Given the anti-democratic implications of
00:01:50.540 this phrase, how much does this event undermine the trust in the way that the Liberals operate? And what have you
00:01:55.780 done in response to these revelations? Thanks for the question. Look, this is totally unacceptable, to be
00:02:02.680 absolutely clear. And I on behalf of my campaign, I'm I was unaware of this behavior. But on behalf of my campaign, I apologize
00:02:12.400 for it unreservedly. Okay. I've made it absolutely clear to my campaign that this behavior or anything
00:02:18.980 approximating it or in that in that spirit is is unacceptable, cannot happen, cannot happen again.
00:02:25.540 Carney went on to say that he's made it, quote, clear to his campaign that such behavior was unacceptable
00:02:31.960 and cannot happen again. Carney then indicated that staffers involved had been, quote, reassigned.
00:02:39.080 The plot was first reported by CBC News. Two Liberal Party staffers planted campaign buttons designed to echo
00:02:47.300 controversial slogans by U.S. President Donald Trump at a conservative rally to tarnish the party's image
00:02:54.500 by linking it to MAGA-style politics. Several attendees noticed the buttons appearing during the event,
00:03:02.020 which said things like, quote, stop the steal, a reference to Trump's claims that the 2020 U.S.
00:03:09.080 presidential election was stolen from him by the Democrats. Another button read, quote,
00:03:15.300 lock Justin up, referencing a popular Trump campaign chant, lock her up, from the 2016 election about
00:03:23.660 former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. In comments given to the CBC conference,
00:03:30.420 spokesperson Alex Spence called the scandal, quote, unfortunate, but said it wasn't surprising
00:03:37.040 that the liberals would seek to misrepresent the views of attendees of the conference. Spence said,
00:03:43.720 quote, these divisive gimmicky tactics say more about the liberals than they do of the united and
00:03:50.500 growing conservative movement. So I wonder if Carney would be singing a different tune had the liberal
00:03:57.480 operatives not been caught by boasting about this plot, so to speak, at a bar in Ottawa where journalists
00:04:06.540 were present. But Clayton, how have the conservatives responded to this incident? Has Pierre Polyev commented
00:04:15.280 on it yet? Well, Polyev hasn't posted anything on X as of yet about the incident. But Michelle
00:04:22.820 Rempelgardner, a conservative candidate, took to X calling out the liberals and saying the incident was
00:04:30.220 just one example of the decades long liberal party approach to divide Canadians in an attempt to make them fight
00:04:37.960 each other for their own political gain. She also noted that the liberal staffers were so cocky about their deceitful tactics that
00:04:45.360 they bragged about it in a bar with an earshot of a CBC journalist. I believe that they knew the journalist was there and
00:04:52.440 everything. If you read the article there, another conservative candidate, Chris Warkington, said that the incident shows the
00:05:00.180 lengths that the liberals are willing to go to for their own partisan ends. And he noted that the blame can't be laid solely on those two liberal
00:05:08.180 staffers that Carney decided to move to another department rather than fire because the distribution of the buttons also would have involved planning, designing, and manufacturing the false flag buttons.
00:05:21.440 Dan Mazur, another conservative candidate, called the incident a calculated smear campaign. And the incident showed the hypocrisy of the
00:05:31.120 liberal party who often lecture Canadians about the dangers of disinformation. He also called on Carney to apologize and denounce his team for, quote,
00:05:41.260 importing American style politics into Canada. And I would assume there's other, those were just the ones I found, but I'm sure the
00:05:49.740 conservatives will continue to seize on this. In a memo written to Canada's ethics watchdog, former reform party leader Preston Manning accused liberal
00:06:02.760 leader Mark Carney of offering unethical bribes in the form of boosts to CBC's funding and taxpayer rebates while on the campaign trail.
00:06:12.420 Manning wrote to conflict of interest and ethics commissioner Conrad von Finkenstein asking for an official opinion on two of Carney's latest spending promises. The first issue raised was Carney's pledge to increase CBC's annual budget by $150 million.
00:06:28.420 The second concern involved a proposed $4 billion carbon rebate payout to approximately 13 million Canadians, potentially landing in voters bank accounts just before the April 28 election. In his response, the commissioner did not denounce the programs.
00:06:46.420 Von Finkenstein wrote, quote, the conflict of interest code for members of the House of Commons does not apply during an election period, as incumbents are no longer considered MPs for the purpose of the code once Parliament is dissolved.
00:07:02.060 Mark Carney will be subject to the code after the election if he is elected as an MP.
00:07:07.760 Manning has warned that a failure to address such political tactics could erode public trust in Canada's democratic institutions.
00:07:16.420 Manning told True North, quote, unethical practices are one of the main reasons why citizens are so skeptical about elections.
00:07:25.600 I doubt that the public will be willing to overlook the unethical nature of the Carney Liberals' bribes as the ethics commissioner.
00:07:33.680 So, Cosman, on the subject of the ethics commissioner and conflicts of interest, has Mark Carney followed all disclosure requirements?
00:07:43.400 Are there any flaws in the rules as they exist currently?
00:07:47.640 Yeah, so Canada's ethics laws are not as strict and stringent as people may assume.
00:07:55.020 There's actually a lot of leeway, and they're more general than you would think.
00:08:00.000 As it stands, Mark Carney is technically following the rules.
00:08:04.860 He's not required to disclose all of his assets publicly.
00:08:09.260 Obviously, it's going through a review period, and once he becomes elected, or if he becomes elected as an MP, then that triggers that disclosure process.
00:08:20.740 But as it stands, our current prime minister has not had to publicly declare what assets he holds.
00:08:27.220 Now he's claimed that all of these things that he used to be invested in have entered into a blind trust.
00:08:33.000 But the conservatives have pointed out that Carney probably knows exactly what's in that blind trust, and it's not like he's going to wipe his memory of what he used to own when he's making decisions as the potential next prime minister in that position of power.
00:08:49.680 But the way that the ethics laws are written right now, they don't apply to a lot of government decisions that are made, because ministers can make decisions that affect entire industries and sectors.
00:09:05.760 But the way that ethics laws work is that when you're making decisions that benefit specific entities or companies, then it's viewed as an ethics violation, potential corruption, insider trading, etc.
00:09:21.980 But when you're making decisions that affect an entire sector, it's so general that you're not really able to pinpoint and call out an ethics violation with the way that the law is currently written.
00:09:36.460 Additionally, Canada doesn't have any mandatory free office tax disclosures.
00:09:42.780 So anybody running for public office, like I said earlier, does not actually have to disclose that as a candidate.
00:09:49.620 They only have to disclose it when they've taken up the office and undergo that month-long or longer period of discussing with the ethics commissioner, disclosing your assets, and then eventually that gets made public.
00:10:05.580 But even when it is made public in Canada, it's not a very detailed list of exactly where our elected officials are, what companies they're invested in, etc.
00:10:15.940 It's sort of a summarized little blurb that's posted online or accessible by the public.
00:10:23.300 Whereas in the United States, for example, it's a very detailed list of exactly what these elected officials are invested in and what investment decisions they've made while they're holding that public office.
00:10:36.640 Canada's business leaders have united behind Conservative leader Pierre Polyev's economic agenda.
00:10:46.200 33 current and former executives of some of Canada's largest companies under the banner Friends of Free Enterprise Canada have signed a joint letter outlining some of Canada's economic challenges and expressing their support for Polyev as the next prime minister.
00:11:02.140 The letter laments stagnant productivity and slow economic growth, urging political leaders to embrace a free enterprise agenda.
00:11:10.500 It also outlines five key priorities for the next Canadian government, supporting free enterprise, eliminating regulatory barriers, restoring fiscal discipline, reforming the tax system, and developing Canada's natural resources.
00:11:24.400 Specifically, the signatories urged the government to reduce red tape and outdated regulations, control government spending, lower taxes to boost competitiveness and attract talent, and develop Canadian oil and gas.
00:11:38.040 The business leaders wrote, quote,
00:11:39.600 The letter concludes with a call for Canadians to support Polyev and his party endorsing his plan to restore Canadian prosperity in light of U.S. President Donald Trump's recent measures to impose tariffs on Canadian goods.
00:12:01.180 The letter reads, that is why we are supporting Pierre Polyev and the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:12:08.000 They have a clear plan to address these issues and to get Canada back on track.
00:12:12.920 It's because of President Trump's threats that Pierre's plan makes so much sense.
00:12:17.720 Notable signatories include Fairfax Financial's CEO and COO Prem Watsa and Peter Clark,
00:12:26.180 Collier's Canada CEO Jay Hennick, former Scotiabank CEO Brian J. Porter,
00:12:33.940 Sleep Country Canada CEO Stuart Schaefer,
00:12:37.860 Mattamy Home CEO Peter Gilligan, and more.
00:12:40.880 This is quite the endorsement for Pierre Polyev when he's running against a candidate, Mark Carney,
00:12:47.820 who touts his own economic expertise being this sort of finance guy who has overseen economies, etc.,
00:12:57.880 as the governor of multiple world banks.
00:13:02.100 But here we have Pierre Polyev receiving the endorsement of some of Canada's largest and most successful businesses,
00:13:10.860 and we don't see the same from Carney.
00:13:12.760 Now, we know that Polyev has this support of business leaders now,
00:13:17.980 but have any workers groups or unions endorsed the Conservative leader, Clayton?
00:13:24.520 Absolutely, yeah.
00:13:25.620 So right at the early onset of the election,
00:13:28.780 the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers who endorsed Polyev,
00:13:34.680 the Boilermakers union said that Polyev gets it.
00:13:38.700 The group praised Polyev's proposals to achieve a cleaner environment
00:13:43.420 by cutting taxes for low-emitting companies rather than the liberal approach of, quote,
00:13:49.680 dismantling energy sectors, raising taxes, importing energy from other nations,
00:13:55.640 and shipping Canadian jobs abroad.
00:13:57.820 They also promoted Polyev's boots-not-suits policy,
00:14:03.240 which plans to train and add 350,000 Canadian workers to job sites over five years.
00:14:11.240 United Association Local 67 endorsed him as well.
00:14:16.720 Local 67 is a union of welders, steam fitters, and plumbers.
00:14:21.700 That union announced its support for the Conservative platform during one of Polyev's rallies in Hamilton, Ontario.
00:14:28.880 The business manager of the union, Nathan Berggrand,
00:14:32.560 said that Polyev's plan to lower inflation by cutting government spending deficits,
00:14:39.220 his commitment to making housing more affordable,
00:14:42.200 and the certainty that his policies would bring to job security
00:14:45.620 were all policies that align with the needs of the union members.
00:14:50.400 And not quite a blue-collar group,
00:14:53.900 but the three Ontario police unions,
00:14:57.240 Peel, Durham, and Sault Ste. Marie Police Associations,
00:15:00.960 have also thrown their hats in with Polyev.
00:15:04.040 They said his tough-on-crime approach,
00:15:06.380 his commitment to ensuring violent repeat offenders stay behind bars
00:15:09.880 rather than being released to re-offend repeatedly,
00:15:13.660 and his commitment to ensuring police are well-equipped to serve their communities
00:15:17.100 were all policies that would ensure the safety
00:15:19.940 and the efficacy of the work that police union members do.
00:15:24.160 They also liked his plan to go after illegal gun smugglers
00:15:27.840 by imposing life sentences for serial offenders
00:15:30.860 rather than using police to enforce new gun laws against legal firearm owners.
00:15:36.160 And although not an official group, like you asked,
00:15:38.740 but it seems like Polyev enjoys a lot of support from blue-collar workers.
00:15:43.980 You see this at his rallies.
00:15:45.660 When I was at the Canada First rally in Oshawa,
00:15:48.540 there were loud calls from the audience
00:15:50.540 when Polyev asked if anyone worked in the trades.
00:15:53.240 Some of them even were still wearing their work clothes.
00:15:56.220 Also in Hamilton, for one of Polyev's conferences,
00:16:00.960 some of the blue-collar workers who were standing behind him
00:16:03.700 were very happy to see Polyev and to support him,
00:16:06.480 and several of them even had Polyev stickers on their work helmets.
00:16:11.180 And I know that it's just anecdotal,
00:16:12.800 but we've seen videos online showing a similar story
00:16:15.600 of just regular blue-collar workers
00:16:17.500 who appeared genuinely excited to see
00:16:19.880 and support the Conservatives in this election.
00:16:21.700 That's it for today, folks.
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