The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - BC ballot situation is crazy - Eby's NDP in denial of the issues

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. So the BC election irregularity situation in the riding of Surrey

00:00:07.400 Guilford has gone absolutely crazy. I didn't expect the Conservatives to actually jump on

00:00:13.340 board this one as much as they have, because it's one of those issues that's very coded

00:00:18.440 in a way where the media will make you seem like you're a conspiracy theorist or just a bad person

00:00:23.460 for questioning the results of the election. The Conservatives are going about this in a very

00:00:28.300 like intelligent way where they are finding evidence and presenting evidence and basically

00:00:33.540 saying, hey, are the BC NDP going to investigate this? And the BC NDP, despite the fact that they

00:00:40.340 were the ones in November, David Eby specifically, saying there should be an inquiry into election

00:00:45.380 irregularities and bad procedures, suddenly this is all a bunch of conspiracy nonsense and denialism

00:00:53.280 or whatever. Here's a video that Brian Tepper posted from the CTV news coverage of this. And

00:00:59.240 you can even tell from the MSN coverage, there's a lot to this. If they had a kill shot angle on the

00:01:05.380 Conservatives being out over their skis, they'd take it. And both the media and the BC NDP are not

00:01:12.040 taking it right now. Here's the video that Brian Tepper shared.

00:01:15.500 The Conservatives have gathered sworn affidavits, including from residents of Argyle Lodge,

00:01:21.420 suggesting they didn't request mail-in ballots and were coerced. One statement noting,

00:01:26.900 I marked the ballot where they pointed it, and I was led to believe that I had no choice but to

00:01:31.240 mark the ballot. Otherwise, I feared that I would be kicked out of the House. The Conservatives have

00:01:36.780 gathered sworn affidavits. What's really disgusting about people feeling intimidated at this Argyle

00:01:41.940 Lodge, literally across the street from a polling station in Surrey, Guilford, is that this is a 0.88

00:01:46.980 housing situation for people with slight mental limitations. Like they may be able to hold down 0.90

00:01:51.460 jobs and whatnot, but best for them to be able to live around other people. And so the manager of this

00:01:58.120 housing project was supposedly intimidating people into letting her be able to request ballots for them 1.00

00:02:04.980 and then getting them to fill them out. And in some cases, a ballot was just filled out for them

00:02:09.420 because there were 21 residents of this housing project. There were 21 ballots requested and there

00:02:15.680 were 21 ballots sent in. That's really sketchy, especially because these people are able-bodied

00:02:21.560 and able to go and vote for themselves if they wanted to. And these affidavits even said that many

00:02:26.980 of them didn't even know an election was going on. But again, the idea that people would be fearing that

00:02:32.160 they'd be kicked out is pretty insane considering that it's not like these individuals can go and

00:02:37.160 easily find housing themselves. It would be quite difficult for them. But it's not just individual

00:02:42.060 conservative MLAs sharing content about this. The BC Conservative Caucus is actually sharing stuff

00:02:48.740 about this case and they're doing a really good job presenting it. There is no half measures being

00:02:53.360 taken on investigating these election irregularities. To be clear, the person who is suing right now to have

00:02:59.920 the election basically overturned and then have a by-election held is Han Virundawa, the candidate

00:03:07.120 for Surrey Guilford for the Conservatives, who is the competitor to Gary Begg, the BC NDP current MLA,

00:03:13.680 but maybe he won't be the MLA in a month. You never know. But he's the one taking them to court,

00:03:19.840 but the BC Conservatives are specifically wanting a legislative inquiry by an independent investigator.

00:03:26.640 The BC NDP previously wanted to just make an MLA, one of their own MLAs in charge of looking up

00:03:32.480 irregularities, but that is obviously not super kosher. But the BC Conservatives say here,

00:03:38.240 David Eby won Surrey Guilford by 22 votes, giving him a one-seat majority. We've uncovered some

00:03:44.400 serious inconsistencies about the vote in this riding. The RCMP need to figure out what is happening at

00:03:49.920 Argyle Lodge, because there are a lot of fingers being pointed back and forth right now between the

00:03:54.800 person who runs the lodge, the manager of the lodge, who I have seen evidence has literally

00:04:00.880 donated a maxed out donation to the BC NDP last year, 2023. And now BC elections is saying,

00:04:08.320 we didn't just dump off the ballots. You requested them. She's saying, I didn't request them. They

00:04:12.160 just sent them to us. It's a mess. The NDP candidate, Gary Begg, has won the riding of Surrey Guilford.

00:04:20.160 He's won it, though, by 22 votes. It is still a win, though. No matter how narrow that majority

00:04:25.840 might be, that will give the NDP what they need for a majority government.

00:04:31.200 Twenty-one residents of a mental health and addiction recovery home,

00:04:34.720 Argyle Lodge, cast mail-in ballots despite living across the street from a voting station.

00:04:40.320 A third party told residents how to complete their mail-in ballot packages, including who to vote for.

00:04:46.400 In the statement, the resident alleges they were rushed into marking the ballot.

00:04:51.280 I do not know who I have voted for, the statement reads. I marked the ballot where they pointed it,

00:04:56.240 and I was led to believe I had no choice but to mark the ballot. Otherwise, I feared I would be

00:05:00.960 kicked out of the home. The BC Conservative Party also noting the manager of Argyle Lodge's apparent

00:05:06.880 $1,400 donation to the BC NDP in 2023. This is the same way our clients have been casting their

00:05:14.400 votes for over the last 30-some years. NDP donor and facility manager Baljeet Kandola told the Vancouver

00:05:23.200 Sun, every time there's an election, the commission, they contact us, and they've always delivered

00:05:28.960 their ballots here. Elections BC disputed Kandola's statement that mail-in ballots just appear at the

00:05:34.640 lodge, stating voters must individually request ballot packages.

00:05:38.800 I'm Steve Kooner, Conservative MLA for Richmond-Queensboro and Official Opposition Critic for the

00:05:45.680 Attorney General's Department. Look, this doesn't add up. Election BC doesn't deliver ballots to

00:05:51.920 addictions and recovery facilities. Voters must individually request ballot packages. It's time

00:05:58.720 for the RCMP to get to the bottom of this. We must protect our democracy. We must protect our votes.

00:06:04.800 Justice must be served.

00:06:08.800 Now, I just wanted to let that entire thing play just so you get a full context for what's going

00:06:14.720 on. But yeah, it is now just this ridiculous situation where the manager is saying, well,

00:06:19.760 we've been doing this for the last 30 years. I'm not even sure if there were very accessible ways

00:06:24.720 of mail-in voting 30 years ago, but I'm not sure if that makes it better that you've potentially been

00:06:30.320 committing voter fraud for three decades and nobody noticed. And she even tried to come out, 0.97

00:06:35.840 Baljeet Candola and say, well, I'm not an NDP partisan when not only do they have a record of her

00:06:42.400 donating to the BCNDP, that seems pretty firm that that was her, could always be someone with the exact

00:06:47.680 same name. I don't really think so in this situation, maxing out a donation to the BCNDP,

00:06:53.280 probably because the House gets funding from the government. And then she also had supposedly

00:06:58.560 donated like $500, close to 500, to Jagmeet Singh's 2017 leadership election fund when he was fighting

00:07:07.760 Charlie Angus and Nikki Ashton for the federal NDP leadership. That's a true partisan. If you're

00:07:13.280 donating to a leadership campaign, that's a very partisan thing to be doing. And also she then,

00:07:20.080 I saw in a CBC report that was done, she then claimed, well, I spoiled my own ballot. It's like,

00:07:26.720 yeah, sure you did. Sure you did. You're one of the maybe five or a couple dozen people to have

00:07:32.400 accidentally spoiled a ballot or done it on purpose. I don't believe you, that you actually

00:07:38.000 showed up to spoil a ballot. It sounds like that's the most convenient thing to possibly say,

00:07:42.880 because if you said you were a conservative voter, everyone would think, no, you're lying,

00:07:47.200 because you donate to the BCNDP. And saying you donate to the BCNDP would obviously increase the

00:07:53.280 suspicion that that's probably who you were getting all the lodge residents to vote for as well.

00:07:58.240 And, but so it's just, oh, I spoiled my ballot. Oh, I spoiled my ballot. Uh, I don't, I don't even

00:08:03.200 know what politics are. I just kind of send money around for fun. This is serious. This doesn't mean

00:08:09.520 that the conservatives were defrauded and tons and tons of ridings. No, it means that when a

00:08:14.800 riding is this close, small scale shenanigans that have to do with a dozen votes here, three votes

00:08:21.600 there, two votes there, or in singular votes does matter quite a bit. They say the conservatives have

00:08:28.080 45 voter irregularities in this riding, 21 from Argyle Lodge. And then the remaining ones are

00:08:35.360 people who are voting in Surrey Guilford, who either don't have addresses that match up where

00:08:40.640 they currently live and they might live outside of the riding. And in one case, somebody who actually

00:08:45.600 ended up voting twice that their voting record had two votes basically registered underneath it,

00:08:50.800 or literally the exact same name of the same person voted two different times because they happen to

00:08:56.000 have a double registration at their place of residence. This matters because Gary Begg is

00:09:01.680 currently the MLA for a riding that he might have not actually legitimately won. This doesn't mean

00:09:06.160 that Gary Begg is involved. I really doubt that the NDP would end up coordinating with somebody

00:09:12.400 like this from Argyle Lodge, but it demonstrates that partisans do have incentives to potentially cheat.

00:09:18.720 Do we know full well that this is 100% cheating? Not at this point. Still needs to be investigated.

00:09:24.640 Do not jump to conclusions. If you know anything that's gone on in Surrey Guilford or you know people

00:09:29.920 who are going around trying to mass mail in ballots for other people, go and check that out. I don't think

00:09:35.520 we're going to get thousands of bad votes in this riding, but I think if there's a good public inquiry,

00:09:40.640 we might get up to a couple hundred of votes that are suspect. And again, it's not like,

00:09:45.760 oh, it's just a couple hundred. What percentage is that in the grand scheme of things? Well,

00:09:50.160 it determines who the MLA is in the grand scheme of things. And on top of that, it might determine

00:09:55.120 if the government is a majority or a minority as a minority government is going to function

00:09:59.920 far less smoothly for David Eby than a majority government. And it's so telling the way that the

00:10:05.200 NDP has been treating this whole situation. So you guys probably already know about David Eby

00:10:11.840 calling this whole thing cringe. I want to play more of an interview that he did on the CBC that

00:10:16.400 I didn't show last time. This is just telling that this is his response to this whole situation,

00:10:21.680 because again, he was literally the guy in November saying that we should look into issues

00:10:27.520 with the election, with ballot boxes being taken home by poll workers, ballots going missing,

00:10:32.080 ballots not being counted properly. But now this is what he says now that it's serious and it could

00:10:37.040 overturn a rioting. Claims. Yeah, I mean, it's all a little bit cringe. I've got to say,

00:10:43.360 if that's how he wants to spend his time, it's okay. It does have echoes of American-style

00:10:50.400 politics that he's been trying to bring to our province. And I think it's unfortunate. But there's

00:10:54.960 lots of safeguards. If there's anything to the allegations, Elections BC and the courts will do that

00:11:00.000 review. I note, of course, that he is unwilling to put his own name to those allegations in the court.

00:11:04.480 Because Hanvir is a lawyer, and he already put his name to it. And Rusted literally did a press

00:11:09.920 conference alongside Hanvir. So what's his point? He's trying to do this whole like, oh, Rusted knows

00:11:15.360 he's wrong. But now he's being far more diplomatic a day after. He just called it all cringe. The next

00:11:21.600 day he's like, well, we have proper ways of investigating the stuff and they can do that,

00:11:25.440 whatnot. I thought you were calling them sore losers and they're like Toronto Maple Leafs fans who

00:11:30.400 think, oh, if only we scored three more goals, we'd have a Stanley Cup. He's not doing that anymore.

00:11:35.440 Now he's trying to be diplomatic about it because it could end bad.

00:11:37.840 Or applications. But his candidate will bring that forward and they'll be looked at as they should be.

00:11:44.080 Anyways, but I want to jump over to what one of his other MLAs had said about the situation. I believe

00:11:50.400 it is the current justice minister for the BC NDP government. It is Nikki Sharma. And again,

00:11:56.560 this is not back on the 9th, but it demonstrates the kind of attitude the BC NDP are trying to take

00:12:02.960 the situation, trying to shame the conservatives to not talk about it. Nikki Sharma here says,

00:12:07.440 our elections are independent with safeguards to ensure they are free and fair. John Rusted is free

00:12:13.200 to raise his concerns with elections BC. That's his right. We are focused on addressing the issues

00:12:18.640 facing the people of our province, like the threat of tariffs from the US. By the way,

00:12:23.120 now how do you avoid the threat of tariffs from the US? Stop letting fentanyl run free in the

00:12:28.720 province. Stop letting, stop like, like end the stupid decriminalization of drug program. 1.00

00:12:35.040 Because that is what Trump is able to harp on right now, because there's a lot of drugs entering the US 0.99

00:12:40.880 from British Columbia and Canada in general, originating mostly out of BC. They keep shutting

00:12:46.000 down drug labs that are not that far away from the border, out in rural areas and small towns of

00:12:51.120 British Columbia. Seems like a big deal. We literally have 10 times more people on the terror

00:12:56.480 watch list entering Canada through entering the US through Canada than they do from Mexico.

00:13:02.560 It's actually kind of a problem. Like, I don't think that the Americans are guiltless in all of this,

00:13:07.600 because a lot of illegal guns enter from into Canada from the US. But at the same time, EB and the NDP

00:13:15.120 are the last people in the in Canada that should be talking about how we need to like have retaliatory

00:13:22.000 tariffs, which is what David EB and his other boss, Jagmeet Singh, have taken the position on when

00:13:27.520 they're literally the problem anyways. So this is a crazy situation. It will keep developing. I'll keep

00:13:33.920 bringing updates. One thing I want to remind you guys about, if you live in British Columbia,

00:13:39.200 make sure you buy a membership to the BC Conservatives. The AGM for the party is in March.

00:13:44.880 I want to make sure that the executive board of the party is as firmly conservative as possible.

00:13:51.520 So purchase a BC Conservative membership. Do that right now if you can. And make sure you go to a

00:13:56.960 delegate meeting and try and get elected as a delegate to show up to the Nanaimo AGM. Really,

00:14:02.080 what you should do is buy a membership, show up to a delegate meeting. Usually you get a chance to say who

00:14:06.960 you are. Each riding is going to send 10 delegates to the AGM. And I would say, because I assume you're

00:14:12.080 this way, portray yourself as I'm an orthodox conservative, reform-minded conservative,

00:14:16.720 an anti-SOGI conservative, anti-drug conservative, any of those things. And it'll probably be a good 0.91

00:14:21.920 way of being able to portray why people should send you to the AGM. Again, it matters a lot. I don't

00:14:27.600 want any united people like coming from that dead party and trying to scatter over here and trying to

00:14:33.280 get themselves lodged in. It's a threat that happens to every party, so I want to make sure this first

00:14:37.760 AGM after this big election is done well. We have good people in good places. Anyways,

00:14:43.840 so that's it for me today, guys. See you later.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - January 14, 2025

BC ballot situation is crazy - Eby's NDP in denial of the issues

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript