The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - February 04, 2026


3rd Liberal MP resigning - Carney's government on Shaky Ground!


Episode Stats

Length

22 minutes

Words per Minute

179.65627

Word Count

4,014

Sentence Count

236

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

Nate Erskine Smith resigns his seat in the Ontario legislature to run for the Ontario Liberal Party leadership, which is good news for PM Mark Carney because he needs a solid candidate to replace Bill Blair, who is now in the United Kingdom.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here and welcome back to the National Telegraph YouTube channel.
00:00:06.140 It was just yesterday we were talking about Bill Blair, Canada's former public safety minister
00:00:12.540 and former defense minister, resigning his seat to go to the United Kingdom to become Canada's
00:00:18.520 new high commissioner to the UK. And today we are talking about Nate Erskine-Smith
00:00:25.080 also resigning his seat to go run for an open seat in the Ontario legislature so then he can also run
00:00:33.100 for the Ontario Liberal Party leadership. A lot of things are really popping loose for Prime Minister
00:00:38.660 Mark Carney right now at a time when he probably wants to look as stable as possible because he
00:00:45.380 just had his big Davos moment where he brought in a lot of the anti-American Canadian voters over to
00:00:51.680 the Liberal Party. He just had his big GST rebate announcement and his signing of a trade deal
00:00:58.240 with China. And now he has all these people leaving, which makes him look very unstable.
00:01:04.300 And the truth is we have Freeland leaving and Bill Blair leaving and now Erskine-Smith leaving
00:01:09.780 because secretly they don't like him very much. That's the thing with Mark Carney. Although his
00:01:15.940 government is somewhat stable, he actually is going to have a lot of people leaving, not because
00:01:21.120 they disagree with the ideology of Mark Carney. He's basically the same as Justin Trudeau. They
00:01:26.540 don't personally like Mark Carney's favoritism that he allows to go on inside of the Liberal Party.
00:01:32.780 Like Erskine-Smith, who we're going to be talking more about here, was only basically coaxed back into
00:01:38.440 running for re-election again under the promise that he was going to be the housing minister under
00:01:43.760 Mark Carney's government. Well, he got to be housing minister for about three weeks until the last election
00:01:49.800 happened, in which case he was replaced by Gregor Robertson, who was an extremely bad former mayor
00:01:56.460 of Vancouver. That's got to hurt for Erskine-Smith, who is very much more on like the green-orange left
00:02:03.680 of the Liberal Party. Although Gregor Robertson is more of like a liberal liberal, there's nothing that
00:02:09.740 would say that he would be better as a housing minister than Erskine-Smith. So Mark Carney randomly
00:02:15.500 ticked off Smith for no reason other than, I guess, he thought that Gregor Robertson fits more
00:02:22.140 into his sort of country club aesthetic liberal party. Erskine-Smith being more of a downtown hipster
00:02:28.500 liberal, and Gregor Robertson more so being that country club liberal. In just a second here, I want
00:02:34.400 to get into more of the details of what is going on here. But first, I just want to remind you guys,
00:02:39.160 if you like the channel, make sure to leave a like on this video. Subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber.
00:02:44.420 And as well as join the channel membership, if you want to help support the channel financially,
00:02:49.420 it makes it more stable and makes me less reliant on the YouTube algorithm if you join and make a
00:02:55.320 small monthly contribution. Of course, you don't have to do that. I don't actually require people
00:03:00.560 to do that. I love you all the same. Although I love you a little bit more if you contribute money,
00:03:05.280 because it sounds rude that I also don't care if you do that. Regardless, if you also don't want to
00:03:09.720 join, make sure to leave a comment because it does help us on the algorithm. And I do like to scroll
00:03:14.040 through and see what people are saying. But now let's get to the news about Erskine Smith.
00:03:20.300 Ellie Canton Nantel, a good conservative independent journalist, put together a bit of a breakdown of
00:03:25.560 what happened here. He said, new Nate Erskine Smith will be running to become the next MPP for the
00:03:32.840 Ontario Liberal Party. Quote, I will continue to support PM Carney as an active member of our federal
00:03:39.140 caucus in the meantime. Now, really, that just means that he'll be a liberal MP until the time
00:03:45.760 that he becomes a liberal member of provincial parliament. The funny thing is that all of this
00:03:51.120 basically is happening because Bill Blair resigned is creating a domino effect right now, where basically
00:03:57.500 Bill Blair resigned his seat in Scarborough. And so the Scarborough area NDP MPP resigned is going to
00:04:05.780 resign her seat in order to go run as the Liberal Party MP in that area to replace Bill Blair. But
00:04:14.500 that opens up a provincial seat for then Erskine Smith to go run for. It's all kind of funny how
00:04:21.580 this is coming together. And so I'll get to the person that they announced a little bit later. They
00:04:25.820 are a big, radical progressive from the area. So the Liberal Party is, in fact, not more moderate under
00:04:32.420 Mark Carney. He, again, is more of just has that country club aesthetic that to certain people looks
00:04:37.700 more moderate. At the same time, he's perfectly willing to surround himself with crazy people
00:04:42.100 and make deals with the CCP. So I just want to go over to the statement that was right here,
00:04:49.420 because this was something I'll bring up a cleaner looking post of it. Although that's not to slag,
00:04:55.360 Mr. Kelly Canton Nantelli did a good way, a good job of formatting this. I just want to get to
00:05:01.040 Erskine Smith's own posting of it. So here is what we have. Erskine Smith posted this just a few hours
00:05:10.200 ago after it was known that he will be trying to run for this open provincial parliament seat. In his
00:05:16.520 post, he says, when it comes to Ontario, I'm all in. Join our growing team, teamnate.ca. And let's be
00:05:23.540 very clear. He is both running for Ontario Liberal leader and this MPP slot at the same time. The MPP
00:05:29.680 slot opening up just made his decision easier for him because he won't be a seatless leader. And the
00:05:36.380 thing is, the Ontario Liberal Party is just going to give it to him. He's pretty popular in that party.
00:05:40.760 And remember last time, last Ontario Liberal Party leadership, he only barely lost to Bonnie Crombie,
00:05:47.120 who obviously had a lot of big advantages over him as a much more well-known politician and the mayor of
00:05:52.400 Mississauga, where at the time Erskine Smith was a backbench Liberal MP behind Justin Trudeau's very
00:05:58.340 unpopular government. But let's read some of the statement. We can just read the whole thing. He
00:06:04.060 says here, the goal is to make the biggest difference we can when we have an opportunity to
00:06:09.120 serve. Dolly Begum has been a strong progressive representative. She's going to make a great Liberal
00:06:15.120 MP for our East End community. And I have no doubt that she'll make a bigger difference as a member of
00:06:20.660 our federal team. I'll continue to support Prime Minister Mark Carney and our federal Liberal team.
00:06:25.620 At the same time, I know that the biggest difference I can make is rebuilding our provincial Liberal Party
00:06:30.620 to deliver for Ontarians. We've been working hard to build a provincial team that's ready to run,
00:06:35.880 win, and govern together. And the rules for the leadership race will be announced soon.
00:06:39.600 When it comes to Ontario, I'm all in. To that end, I'll seek the Ontario Liberal Party nomination
00:06:45.720 to run in the Scarborough Southwest by-election. I've communicated this to Interim Leader John
00:06:51.000 Fraser, and I will continue to support Prime Minister Mark Carney as an active member of our
00:06:56.340 federal caucus in the meantime. We deserve better in this tiring, incompetent, and self-dealing
00:07:01.460 conservative government. We deserve smart, fair, and honest leadership here in Ontario, blah, blah,
00:07:05.680 blah, team Nate, or whatever. But again, this is putting a bit of an awkward hole in Carney's caucus
00:07:12.840 right now, because although Scarborough, the federal riding Bill Blair is leaving, is a pretty
00:07:17.820 safe one, the problem is this does add to an air of instability around Carney's government. Like,
00:07:23.360 don't all of these people want to be part of the new Liberal government being led by Mark Carney?
00:07:28.800 It's like, well, not really. And isn't it so telling, again, that the Liberal Party is willing
00:07:33.500 to take on an NDP MPP? You know, the party led by Merit Stiles, who openly endorsed Zora
00:07:39.980 Mondani running for the New York City mayorship. These people are radical progressives, and Mark
00:07:46.220 Carney is absolutely willing to cut cards with them when it benefits him. So I wanted to bring up the
00:07:51.560 Liberal Party making the posting of their new candidate here. And so right here we have the
00:07:58.500 Liberal Party announcing, for years, Dolly Begum has fought for the people of Scarborough Southwest as
00:08:04.400 their MPP. As our Liberal candidate in the upcoming federal by-election, she's ready to bring their
00:08:09.960 priorities to Ottawa and build a strong future for her community and all Canadians.
00:08:14.880 Now, obviously, this isn't a great look for the federal NDP, that Dolly Begum is perfectly fine
00:08:21.380 jumping over with the Liberals. I'm not sure really what this is also going to do to the
00:08:25.680 provincial NDP, because they basically signaled that they're perfectly willing to go work with
00:08:31.580 the other side, that the NDP provincially isn't that big of a deal. And so, you know, their provincial
00:08:37.620 MPPs will go work for the Federals. It's just a big mess for everybody involved here. I think I have
00:08:43.200 a video here of specifically the current interim NDP leader, Don Davies, reacting to all this,
00:08:53.280 because obviously, this is a bad look. Again, that provincial NDP doesn't want to run for the
00:08:57.960 federal NDP. You know, when Canadians see politicians betray the values and policies that they claim to
00:09:05.260 believe in, I think it damages our democracy and it breeds cynicism in our politics. I'll leave it to
00:09:13.740 Ms. Begum to explain to the people of Scarborough Southwest why she's abandoning the progressive
00:09:18.520 policies she claimed to believe in to run for a party that is clearly governing like a Conservative
00:09:24.120 Party. Well, one that's not true. In fact, it's more so that the Liberal Party and the NDP are
00:09:30.020 very difficult to make a differentiation between because both of them are so left-wing and progressive
00:09:35.860 these days. Honestly, if I was Don Davies, or if I was the new leader of the NDP, if the by-election
00:09:41.980 happens after they become leader, I would move heaven and earth to try and punish the provincial
00:09:48.480 liberals in that by-election, try and get an NDP MPP re-elected and have Nate Erskine-Smith be without
00:09:55.980 a seat provincially. And in that federal by-election, you got to throw everything at the wall in order
00:10:01.900 to pump up the NDP numbers. So in the Scarborough, in Bill Blair's riding, let's just pull this up just
00:10:07.520 for some context for you guys at home. I guess everyone's at home right now, or you could be
00:10:12.300 driving your car, who knows? I want to just quickly go find his electoral record here.
00:10:17.820 So Bill Blair, in 2025's federal election, let's get this thing of Don Davies off screen, I don't
00:10:26.260 need that here. So Bill Blair, in this last federal election in Scarborough Southwest, ended up getting
00:10:33.100 61% of the vote with the Conservative, Asim Taran, coming in behind with 30% and the New Democrats,
00:10:40.320 Fatima Shaban only getting 4.98%, which was an 11% fall since the last election. In this by-election,
00:10:51.880 if you are the NDP, you got to kind of get back to your roots in this riding and be above that 16%
00:10:59.280 number. If the NDP does not recover in some of these by-elections, I think that actually could
00:11:03.920 potentially kill the party. If it's just seen that this party is like limping along like the Greens and
00:11:09.460 the PPC getting their 3% or 4% in these ridings that they're lucky. And so I do think actually
00:11:15.860 we'll see a bit of a bloodbath in some of these ridings. Not that they're going to flip away from
00:11:19.960 the Liberals, but just that all the other opposition parties are going to throw everything they've got
00:11:24.760 at these ridings as a show of force. They don't win, but the NDP wants to be at 20% or something
00:11:30.940 like that. And the Conservatives want to be at 35%. And if the Liberals win, they want to make sure
00:11:34.880 it's as poor of a showing for the Liberals as possible. Although in that case, then Mark Carney
00:11:40.920 might think twice about going for a federal election. Although by that point, he might have
00:11:46.260 to because then the Conservatives could call a non-confidence vote while he's missing one of
00:11:49.960 these various MPs. And it's much easier to call a non-confidence vote. And now I want to end this
00:11:55.740 video off. Let's just go back. I want to go back to some Liberal Party propaganda that they were
00:12:00.120 releasing during the Conservative Party, I guess, like the convention that was going on. I find it
00:12:09.020 quite telling that at the same time that the media and everyone is acting like the Liberal Party means
00:12:15.520 nothing or the Conservative Party is no threat to them. They've been dumping a lot of attack ads on
00:12:20.600 Pierre Polyev over the last few days or so. So here on January 30th, the same day that Pierre Polyev
00:12:28.940 was delivering his speech. We have the Liberal Party with this post that says affordability,
00:12:34.180 affordability, affordability, with a 19-second clip of Polyev on Rosemary Barton's show.
00:12:40.140 What are you doing now to make sure other caucus members don't leave? What are you saying to them?
00:12:44.440 Affordability, affordability, affordability.
00:12:58.940 And now if you read any of those things that they brought up on screen, I think it's rather
00:13:02.440 telling. Many of these things are like old Justin Trudeau attacks on Pierre Polyev. I actually don't
00:13:07.900 think the Liberals have a really great record to be running on right now. The economic growth is
00:13:12.120 terrible. Food inflation is terrible. The deficit is terrible. Even the GST rebate stuff is sort of
00:13:18.240 insulting to Canadians. Like here's a few hundred bucks to leave us alone. You know, go back and sit at the
00:13:22.780 kids table. We got important adult things to talk about with all the Brookfield insiders. Here's
00:13:28.020 another one of them. Liberal Party, 20 years of divisive politics. Pierre Polyev's still the wrong
00:13:34.360 choice. And here's a 57-second clip of him.
00:13:36.800 I would just encourage people to judge me on what I've said for my entire political career.
00:13:41.700 The meaning of the term marriage ought to be preserved as a union between one man and one woman
00:13:49.560 to the exclusion of all others. It's not the Americans' fault. It's our fault. We're stupid.
00:13:54.560 Are you going to give your MPs the freedom to vote their conscience on issues of life?
00:13:59.620 I do believe in free votes. So there's your direct answer. I introduced the Fair Elections Act.
00:14:04.080 My biggest concern is that at the end of the day, Canadians will be denied the right to vote.
00:14:08.540 The leadership. Oh my, that's one of the dumbest talking points against Polyev that
00:14:11.680 there is this Fair Elections Act that just asks people for like their citizenship or whatever,
00:14:16.380 or asks people for like extra verification at a polling station. It's like, goodness,
00:14:21.760 like, are the liberals actually basically claiming that the elections are rigged? Or
00:14:25.860 they were like that Polyev tried to rig the elections? But this is all just microwave stuff.
00:14:31.060 I'm sure those are frankly just despicable. Canada is broken. Assurance d'Anterre,
00:14:37.100 gardez-vous ça? That didn't exist or pas. Polyev's official YouTube videos included a
00:14:42.360 controversial hidden take. Pierre Polyev is among the top trends today after video surfaced that
00:14:48.460 shows him visiting demonstrators who seem to be associated with a far-right extremist group.
00:14:53.300 That seemed to be associated as in there was a diagonal on Sharpie symbol on the door of a
00:15:00.300 trailer. The thing is that I will also say like we, I just did a polling video. Are the liberals
00:15:06.300 ahead in the polls right now? Yes. They're ahead by anywhere from two points to about five points,
00:15:12.000 six if they're really lucky. That doesn't mean it's going to hold. The liberals just got through
00:15:15.780 announcing a bunch of stuff, trying to get into a fight with Donald Trump, signing a deal with the
00:15:19.000 Chinese, GST rebate, all this other stuff. Whenever a government does anything, unless it's
00:15:24.000 strictly hyper unpopular, it gives them a little bit of a boost in the polls. It looks like, oh,
00:15:28.920 look, stuff's opening up, stuff's getting done. But the thing is that stuff doesn't typically last.
00:15:34.380 And if this is your pitch against Pierre Polyev, that he was at a trailer, that a very poor diagonal
00:15:40.780 symbol on it, get better talking points. That's all I can say to them. Here's another one. I'm just
00:15:47.560 going through all of these. We have this video that is entitled, Empty Slogan, Serious Leadership.
00:15:54.600 United for our common home. Your home. My home. Our home. Let's go.
00:16:01.280 Since we were elected, the Canadian economy has created over 180,000 jobs. The unemployment rate
00:16:07.060 has fallen sharply. Wages have grown faster than inflation every single month. And we are just
00:16:13.020 getting started. He had to use the December numbers or the numbers from November because that's when
00:16:18.900 you actually do see a big job boost, no matter how bad a government's performing. Because you get a big
00:16:24.480 inflation of holiday time jobs being created. Retail jobs, people at Christmas tree lots,
00:16:32.120 all that sort of thing. The actual job numbers suck. Our fourth quarter GDP growth is negative
00:16:38.540 0.5. I think our overall GDP growth in 2025 is like well below inflation. Like inflation was like two and
00:16:46.100 a half percent or something like that. And our job growth or overall GDP growth is going to come in at
00:16:50.640 like 1.5. It's embarrassing. Lots of things. We're at the bottom of the G7 on. And I think that's,
00:16:57.200 and I think the conservatives really need to be running on some bold economic reforms if they
00:17:02.840 want to be able to poach the business liberals I've been talking about in previous videos, as well as
00:17:07.920 what I would call as innovative research defines them, the pay-as-you-go moderates. That doesn't
00:17:12.660 mean milk, toast, mild, not wanting anything like even slightly controversial said. The pay-as-you-go
00:17:18.720 moderates are the sort of people who maybe are a little less engaged in politics as other factions of
00:17:24.700 voters. It's a quite a large faction. It makes up a lot of people who are non-voters, people who
00:17:30.640 sometimes vote but also switch their votes a lot. And what they do is they stick their finger in the
00:17:34.820 air and they say, how do I feel about the current government? This is not people who, again, are
00:17:39.140 want mild policy because they're these sort of crippled centrists who can't actually make up their
00:17:44.280 mind about anything. No, no, no. These people, if they feel like the economy is bad, either they're
00:17:48.640 going to go NDP left or they're going to go conservative right. They're not ideological voters.
00:17:53.800 They'll simply see this isn't working and if the conservatives offer a big tax cut, let's go do
00:17:59.140 that. That is what the pay-as-you-go moderates will do. Business liberals the same way. They voted for
00:18:04.140 Carney because they don't really care about the social issues. They're not cultural or social
00:18:08.100 conservatives, but they see that the liberals provide a lot of stability. They appreciate social
00:18:13.300 programs and all that stuff. But if the economy starts just really underperforming, the gears are
00:18:18.340 pretty rusty. If you offer a big tax cut, they'll start moving over there. They may not be vocal
00:18:24.360 about it because these people might be hopeless downtown progressives, but a lot of them will
00:18:28.920 start shifting over subtly. It's kind of like the silent Trump voter in the United States. I think
00:18:34.080 there is quite a big market for a silent poly of voter if the poly of conservatives are offering a 20%
00:18:41.380 across the board tax cut, including corporate taxes, including taking a point off the GST.
00:18:46.460 If you run on massive regulatory reform, if you run on basically cutting bad government spending,
00:18:53.340 you will bring more of these kind of hidden fiscal hawks onto side, even if they maybe are not
00:18:57.900 social conservatives. But running on some mild social conservative policy would also help bring
00:19:03.980 in conservatives from the Maritimes. Because the Maritimes are a weird place. Let's look at it this
00:19:09.540 like British Columbia voters. And I mean, as a whole, like the entire province, not just the
00:19:15.280 lower mainland, but it all kind of averaged together. The average British Columbian voter is
00:19:20.880 somewhat socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Same thing kind of goes for Ontario, although I think
00:19:27.180 Ontario is so big, you almost have to cut it into micro regions, but somewhat socially liberal,
00:19:32.780 fiscally conservative. Depends on who's in power, you know, don't look at the Ontario provincial
00:19:38.520 elections for any guidance because all the party leaders are pretty much the same out there. And I
00:19:43.220 don't say that frivolously, like Ford, Crombie, and like Merritt Stiles in that last election,
00:19:48.160 borderline ran on the same stuff. But maritime voters are kind of odd. And I love them for being
00:19:53.980 this way because it's kind of unique and fun. They are socially conservative, fiscally liberal,
00:19:59.300 because it is more of an economically deprived region. You can't blame them for maybe being more
00:20:04.720 reliant on social programs, for being reliant on transfers. But it is a big church going population.
00:20:10.840 They are very culturally conservative, not in like the progressive anti-Trump way. Many of them are
00:20:17.140 actually very much just socially and culturally conservative in an old style Anglo kind of a way.
00:20:23.260 There's a reason why in New Brunswick, you ended up having like the People's Alliance Party being led by
00:20:30.340 a Baptist pastor, winning three seats and then two seats in the two elections that they contested.
00:20:35.120 They eventually merged into the Blaine Higgs PC party. I hope Chris Austin ends up becoming the
00:20:40.280 new PC party leader. I'd love to see that. But it is a part of the world where the parental rights
00:20:47.540 movement in Canada originated in New Brunswick a couple of years ago, because it's just a really
00:20:52.460 big deal out there. And more people should probably take notice of that being the culture.
00:20:56.140 But I'm rambling on quite a bit here, but I'm trying to make my point about how the
00:21:00.920 conservatives can get some momentum. There's a reason why they ended up winning new seats in
00:21:05.440 Newfoundland. Run on big regulatory reform. They ran on bringing back the seal hunt and they ran on
00:21:12.060 eliminating the crazy low fishing quotas. And that opened up two new seats in Newfoundland.
00:21:18.560 You run on major crime reform, major criminal justice reform, locking up criminals for longer,
00:21:23.700 deporting criminals, deporting illegals from the country, cutting off non-citizens from social
00:21:29.480 programs. You will do very, very well in a federal election. Big tax cut and big reform on all these
00:21:35.860 other things is how you beat Carney, because you want the election to be a referendum on big policy
00:21:41.980 proposals by Polyev, not a referendum on do you like Mark Carney or do you like Donald Trump? Because
00:21:48.460 that's what Carney wants to turn it into. But anyways, with that all being said, thank you guys for
00:21:53.320 watching this video. We'll probably no doubt in the next couple of weeks have even more liberal MPs
00:21:58.520 at the very least rumored to be stepping down from their seats, because it seems like it's go time if
00:22:03.580 you're a liberal MP looking to go do something else in life. And so we should still be looking for
00:22:08.480 for Stephen Gilbeau and Jonathan Wilkinson leaving, and maybe even Melanie Jolie. But until next time,
00:22:15.920 thank you guys for watching the show, like, share, and subscribe, and we'll see you everyone later.