The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - January 14, 2025


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


Episode Stats

Length

14 minutes

Words per Minute

183.11671

Word Count

2,705

Sentence Count

156

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

The BC election irregularity situation in the riding of Surrey Guilford has gone absolutely crazy. The Conservatives have gathered sworn affidavits, including from residents of Argyle Lodge, suggesting they didn t request mail-in ballots and were coerced into filling them out. The BC NDP, despite the fact that they were the ones in November asking for an election inquiry, suddenly this is all a bunch of conspiracy nonsense and denialism or whatever.


Transcript

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