The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - July 13, 2025


Carney barred from dealing with 103 companies! The list is revealing


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

178.3625

Word count

2,368

Sentence count

150


Summary

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

Wyatt Claypool breaks down the new measures the government is taking to try and quell concerns about Mark Carney's potential conflicts of interest, and why he needs a full ban on dealing with Brookfield and other companies owned or controlled by them.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here.
00:00:02.860 Recently, Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal government have been attempting to quell concerns around his potential financial conflicts of interest,
00:00:11.580 and all I am noticing is even more red flags scattered around the field.
00:00:17.080 The measures that they are taking feel like they are deliberate half measures or maybe even quarter measures
00:00:23.260 in which there are still obvious avenues for potential corruption around his financial interests.
00:00:30.480 I want to break this down for you guys today, but first I just want to remind you,
00:00:35.080 if you like the channel, make sure to click the like button, subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber,
00:00:40.960 and leave a comment on what you think about this whole situation.
00:00:44.580 Do you think the measures they are taking in conjunction with the Ethics Commissioner are enough,
00:00:49.240 or do you think that there needs to be a full ban dealing with these companies or something else?
00:00:54.440 But now, I just want to get into this National Post article to frame what's going on here.
00:01:00.920 So, it says here, Carney to recuse himself from dealing with over 100 companies in sprawling government conflict screen.
00:01:08.480 And so, it says here, Ottawa, Prime Minister Mark Carney will have to recuse himself from any discussions directly involving Brookfield Asset Management,
00:01:18.840 payment processing giant Stripe, and dozens of companies owned or controlled by them as part of an executive conflict of interest screen.
00:01:25.800 In a disclosure posted Friday afternoon on the Ethics Commissioner's website, Carney said he had agreed with the Watchdog's office to set up a conflict of interest screen between himself and Brookfield Asset Management,
00:01:38.460 Brookfield Corporation, Stripe Incorporated, and any of 100 other companies owned or controlled by them at the time he set up a blind trust to oversee his assets.
00:01:48.100 Now, this feels like I was saying before, like half measures, if not quarter measures.
00:01:56.940 There's a conflict of interest screen between himself and these companies.
00:02:01.060 There needs to be a conflict of interest screen between his government and these companies.
00:02:05.540 Because the idea that any liberal minister doesn't know that he has money invested in Brookfield when they're potentially giving Brookfield a contract feels very foolish to me.
00:02:18.100 Now, what I want to dive into in a second here is the list of companies.
00:02:22.220 But to start off with, this does not feel like enough.
00:02:26.140 Again, this just means that Mark Carney can't personally speak with Brookfield or he can't personally recommend one of its associated companies.
00:02:34.400 That doesn't stop anyone else from basically saying, you know, you'd make Mark really happy if this company got a contract.
00:02:40.660 They should probably set something up, not a full blanket ban.
00:02:45.040 I know some people out there would probably want a full blanket ban that the government cannot give contracts to any of these companies while he is in office.
00:02:51.400 But what you need to have is an extra special burden of, like, proof that this is the best company for any given contract, for any given service that they are going to render for the government.
00:03:04.280 They have to be easily the best bid on a contract.
00:03:08.380 If one of these companies is in contention for a contract, it cannot be sole source, and they must by far have the cheapest price.
00:03:17.260 If it's not that, well, you're benefiting Mark Carney for a company that might not even be the best choice for taxpayers.
00:03:23.100 So, already, from my perspective, this isn't exactly great.
00:03:29.900 Again, we probably need much heavier measures in order to prevent any level of conflict of interest from seeping into government decisions.
00:03:38.400 But, okay, at least Mark Carney cannot, like, directly get involved in giving the contract to one of these companies.
00:03:45.040 But now I want to get to something a little bit more, I guess, down the rabbit hole on this issue.
00:03:50.420 It doesn't have to exactly do with the conflict of interest in terms of Mark Carney's finances, his personal finances.
00:03:57.260 But it does go to, like, an ideological kind of red flag when you read through the companies that are here.
00:04:03.280 I read through this file yesterday.
00:04:05.280 It is the file of all the companies that he is not allowed to work with, all 103 listed.
00:04:11.120 And I went through this thing.
00:04:12.900 Obviously, there's a lot of different Brookfield subsidiaries and whatnot.
00:04:17.080 You go through the thing.
00:04:19.500 Guess what?
00:04:20.420 This guy who is saying that he is going to put any money into oil and gas, that he's going to approve oil and gas pipelines.
00:04:27.180 The man does not own a single stock or he has no financial interest in a single stock that does traditional oil and gas.
00:04:38.480 It's all renewables.
00:04:40.600 Yes, I can even go in here.
00:04:42.020 Guys, let's just type in energy.
00:04:44.720 What are you going to do?
00:04:46.640 I-V-I Energia.
00:04:48.300 That is a renewable energy company.
00:04:51.460 InterEnergy.
00:04:52.220 Renewable energy company.
00:04:54.020 Global battery energy portfolio.
00:04:56.040 Obviously, an EV battery, you know, green energy company.
00:05:00.460 Brookfield Renewable Energy Marketing.
00:05:02.720 Go down a little bit more.
00:05:03.600 South Plains Wind Energy. Go down a little bit more. Inver Energy. Looked it up. Green Energy
00:05:09.200 Company. Green Energy Fuels. I wonder what they do. Green Energy Brazil. Inver Energy UK. Another
00:05:16.360 one. The same ones. Let's go to renewables. Brookfield Renewable Partners. India Renewables.
00:05:25.460 Brookfield Renewables. Brookfield Renewables. Brookfield Renewables. Banks Renewables. Banks
00:05:33.580 Renewables. Brookfield Renewables. Banks Renewables. These are all obviously a bunch of subsidiaries
00:05:38.060 of the same companies. But I've gone through it. There's no coal. There's no oil and gas.
00:05:43.420 And so in government, it might be, I don't know, a problem if we don't see enough oil and gas
00:05:50.840 projects being approved under him. Because even if all this is stuck in a blind trust, and unless it
00:05:56.480 gets stuck in a blind trust and they sell everything and then they reconsolidate it with a bunch of
00:06:00.540 random companies in areas where he's not usually the type of person who invests there,
00:06:05.000 he knows he's invested in tons of renewables. He knows that he's invested in tons of these companies
00:06:10.600 that tend to lean a little bit more left on the ideological scale. So if he starts giving out more
00:06:17.440 green energy subsidies that presumably any company could apply for, well, he knows he's giving money
00:06:24.540 to companies that he is invested in. He just has to have blanket benefit packages that end up benefiting
00:06:30.500 all the EV companies, battery companies, wind and solar companies that he has money in. It's not that
00:06:36.820 difficult for him to figure out how to get himself more money even with a conflict of interest screen
00:06:41.760 because I'm saving the planet. I'm just trying to prevent global warming from killing us all. And
00:06:47.440 that's why I gave another $10 billion in subsidies to the solar, you know, industry in which I have a
00:06:53.900 lot of money invested in. You know, we actually need maybe because we have a bunch of assets in Brazil
00:06:58.820 in renewables, maybe we should go and, you know, give a bunch of foreign aid into renewable energy into
00:07:05.540 Brazil. That's the reason why the conflict screen is really not good enough. It's very like, and this is
00:07:12.940 why Pierre Polyev and the conservatives, I can probably go and find his tweet about it, but there's
00:07:18.080 a reason why Pierre Polyev and the conservatives are basically saying he needs a real blind trust
00:07:21.980 where he genuinely cannot know what he has invested. It is not good enough that he just can't deal with
00:07:29.920 the companies. We already know there's easily ways around that. He could just go and have somebody
00:07:34.220 else, like people bought low. Mark Carney know what he's invested in. It's not that difficult,
00:07:38.800 but yeah. And this is what Pierre Polyev said. I'm not sure if he was, he was specifically saying
00:07:45.520 anything about having to sell it all off. I've seen other conservative MPs saying that, but at least
00:07:50.040 this was his tweet about it. He said, Mark Carney must explain why he kept these conflicts secret from
00:07:55.820 voters until after the election. Now he will be in a position to profit from big decisions or, or will be
00:08:01.860 forced to sit out those decisions altogether. Either way, Canadians will pay the price. And yes,
00:08:07.780 this was a major federal election issue. What did he have conflicts of interest in? What was he
00:08:15.220 invested in? Because when he was pushing a big green agenda during the election, when he was pushing for
00:08:20.920 modular homes, he didn't say in the same breath, by the way, I have like 14, I have like 16 companies.
00:08:28.000 I have a financial stake in, in the renewable sector. By the way, Brookfield helps invest in companies
00:08:34.180 that make modular homes. By the way, you guys want a modular home. That is a problem. And maybe it's
00:08:40.440 just a personal bias that he thinks these are great investments. He thinks they're fantastic assets. And
00:08:45.660 so he thinks that Canada should be involved in it. Maybe it's purely innocent. That's fine. But that's
00:08:50.920 the problem of the conflict of interest. You have a bias that ends up benefiting you inadvertently or
00:08:57.160 like, like, like intentionally or unintentionally. The problem is, we don't want it to be anything.
00:09:02.220 We don't want it to be intentional, unintentional, because we don't want it to happen in the first
00:09:06.520 place. And that's the problem. He has been basically dragging his feet on declaring if he has a conflict
00:09:12.820 of interest up until the last five minutes, because he thought probably he could just get away with not
00:09:18.100 actually mentioning it to anybody. It was such a big deal. Like the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois,
00:09:24.600 the Conservatives, the Greens, everyone attacked Carney for this. And it was just never considered
00:09:29.500 that big a deal by the media. Like, yeah, he had that weird moment with Rosemary Barton where he
00:09:34.880 told Rosemary, look inside yourself because she was asking a question about the about his conflicts
00:09:39.900 of interest. But that lasted as long as a as a dry popcorn fart. We didn't really hear that much
00:09:47.180 about it after a little while. It just turned into one of those, you know, it was the issue of the
00:09:53.220 week, issue of the week, that election when that should have been constantly being brought up for
00:09:58.300 the entire election. You won't disclose. This is kind of like the highest office in the land.
00:10:04.280 He was already prime minister even before he was running in 2025, of course, and he still didn't
00:10:08.860 have to mention it. There was no ethic. This is honestly where I get a little annoyed with the
00:10:13.020 ethics watchdog, the ethics commissioner. Why wasn't this like something they were like demanding
00:10:19.600 he disclose before he even ran for reelection? You know, he was already in a decision making
00:10:25.380 position and he was just allowed to not have to do it until July. He's been in since March and it's
00:10:33.000 July and only in July does he have to put out a list of 103 companies. By the way, do you really
00:10:38.240 think he only has 103 companies he has financial stake in? I feel like there's a probably a little bit
00:10:42.760 more there because, you know, the man has a lot of money. I'm sure he has money in a lot of
00:10:47.840 different things, especially like I'd like to know houses that he owns in Canada. I don't need
00:10:52.620 to know the addresses or anything like that, but I want to know, you know, is this he's just appointed
00:10:59.320 one of the most incompetent people he could possibly find as the new housing minister. I was like,
00:11:05.020 was it like Michael Bryant or whatever or something like that? The former Vancouver mayor. He was like
00:11:10.340 terrible, has a terrible record on housing. You know, it bears asking, do you want someone who's
00:11:16.920 intentionally bad on housing because it's going to make sure that your house doesn't lose value
00:11:21.080 by not building as many houses? But whatever. Everything is so tiring in government these days.
00:11:28.580 It's also stupid, but that's just Canada for you. Anyways, so that should be it for me today, guys.
00:11:36.020 Again, just a reminder, you like the show, like the video, subscribe to the channel, you're not yet,
00:11:40.560 not yet a subscriber, and leave a comment on what you think should be done in this, I guess,
00:11:46.560 ethical quagmire that the government may be in with his assets. Again, it's insane that it's just
00:11:52.260 he only has to recuse himself. The government should set up special procedures that no sole source
00:11:57.860 contract can be given to any of these companies. No sole source contracts for any company that a
00:12:03.840 minister or the prime minister has a conflict of interest in. It must always be a competitive bidding
00:12:08.320 process. And that company can only be chosen if it is the cheapest option, or can easily show that it
00:12:15.160 provides more value, even if it's not the like the lowest bit, it's close to lowest bit and provides
00:12:20.760 more value maybe, but should basically always be the lowest bit. Again, the companies don't need
00:12:26.160 government contracts to survive. So it's always sketchy when anything that the government has, like
00:12:31.940 anything that the liberals have staken suddenly start getting tons of sole source contracts. And this
00:12:36.960 isn't like a, well, you're being paranoid why. This happened all the time with Justin Trudeau. You'd
00:12:41.440 have liberals leave the government, go start up a company, and then that company would start taking
00:12:46.020 sole source contracts up the wazoo. It was, it was dumb. We had even had a guy run for the liberal
00:12:51.880 leadership, Frank Bayless, who did this. He stopped being an MP after 2019. He could have kept going, but
00:12:57.620 he was in government, probably networked around, got a lot of people liked him, left government,
00:13:02.140 started up like a ventilator company during COVID and got millions of dollars, despite the fact that
00:13:07.500 he was a glorified middleman, a middleman that did not need to exist. Anyway, so that's it for me,
00:13:15.180 guys. See you later.