The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - December 19, 2025


Carney gets cold feet about floor-crossings - Liberals look bad!


Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

182.17691

Word count

2,293

Sentence count

137

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Wyatt Claypool talks about the Liberal government's policy of encouraging Conservative MPs to cross the floor and vote with them in order to avoid an election that they could lose, and how that actually hurts them in the eyes of the Canadian public.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. This whole floor-crossing situation is putting Prime Minister
00:00:06.500 Mark Carney and his Liberal government in a paradoxical situation. On one hand, they want
00:00:13.680 Conservative MPs to cross the floor and join their caucus because it helps them avoid an election
00:00:19.180 that they could lose. At the same time, these floor-crossings are actually making it more likely
00:00:24.960 that the Liberals will lose an election if one happens to come. The Canadian public doesn't
00:00:31.140 actually like these floor-crossings at all. They don't think it reflects well on Mark Carney. It
00:00:37.100 doesn't reflect well on the Conservative Party either, but Carney looks like the sleazier one
00:00:41.880 in this whole situation because obviously people elected Conservatives and they wanted them to sit
00:00:48.460 as Conservatives and nothing has happened that would make any reasonable member of the public
00:00:54.060 think that their MP should go and cross the floor. And so while Carney is trying to stave off an
00:01:00.160 election, if that election does happen, it has become far more likely that he will lose. We are
00:01:06.900 now up to four pollsters showing that during this time, the Conservatives have been making gains on
00:01:12.660 the Liberals, and specifically, the Liberals have been losing quite a bit in the polls. Not only have
00:01:18.120 the Conservatives been bumping up a bit, but the Liberals have been losing even more than the Conservatives
00:01:22.960 have been increasing, throwing a lot of their vote back over to the NDP and the Bloc Québécois. Now, I want
00:01:30.060 to show you this interview, this little clip of an interview that Mark Carney did with Rosemary Barton,
00:01:36.140 where he seems to be attempting to run away from the whole floor-crossing strategy now. Now, do they still
00:01:42.080 want Conservative MPs to cross the floor? Sure, but he's almost acting completely indifferent to the whole
00:01:48.180 situation when before he was bragging about bringing people like Chris Dontremont and Michael Ma over.
00:01:54.280 They're Conservative MPs you would not accept into the Liberal caucus.
00:01:57.280 Look, if people come to me, I make a judgment. Someone who is pro-life or anti-trans, would
00:02:04.380 you accept that person into your caucus? I mean, we're in multiple hypotheticals.
00:02:09.380 Obviously, Rosemary Barton, because she's awful, is also basically trying to smear people because, 1.00
00:02:16.380 oh, would you let someone who is pro-life or anti-trans into your caucus? What do you mean by anti-trans?
00:02:22.380 You just mean that, you know, like Daniel Smith, they want girls' sports to be for girls?
00:02:26.980 Uh, that's just something I had to comment on here because it just annoys me. But Carney is acting
00:02:32.480 immediately like, no, no, no. We have not been approaching anyone. We have not been making
00:02:35.680 offers. They approach us. They just come over to us. Oh, of course. Yeah, sure. Michael Ma approached
00:02:41.680 you guys. That's why he was still at the Conservatives' Christmas party the day before he ended up crossing
00:02:48.080 the floor to the Liberals. No pressure from the Liberals. No bribery from the Liberals. No,
00:02:52.980 zero offers were ever made. These people just naturally ran into the room and gave Mark Carney
00:03:00.080 a big hug. I mean, it's not a... So is that a no? It's a neither. It's a non-answer to a question.
00:03:08.080 Is there an active recruitment of MPs from other parties happening? I think that there is a spectrum of MPs
00:03:16.080 with varying degrees of recognition of the serious situation the country is in.
00:03:23.080 Mm-hmm. That means nothing. And then we get a big mm-hmm from Rosemary Barton as if Mark
00:03:29.080 Carney said anything there. He said, like what he previously said, it's a non-answer
00:03:35.080 to a question. That is a non-statement he just made right there. You know, there's a variety
00:03:42.080 of MPs and they understand the serious nature of our situation.
00:03:49.080 I'm sorry, what has changed in the last seven months that make them think that you're the guy who should be in charge?
00:03:55.080 You've literally failed on your only big campaign promise to get a trade deal with the United States.
00:04:01.080 And they understand the serious situation these conservative MPs they're wanting to cross?
00:04:06.080 Very clearly, the Liberals are trying to court people. And the Canadian public doesn't like that.
00:04:11.080 Because it feels kind of off. It kind of feels undemocratic.
00:04:16.080 Now, I'm not saying that floor crossing should be illegal. It's literally impossible to make floor crossing illegal.
00:04:22.080 Because guess what? Someone could just not cross the floor and keep voting with the Liberals anyways.
00:04:27.080 If you banned Michael Ma from changing his party affiliation in the House of Commons from conservative to liberal,
00:04:33.080 he could just still sit there and keep voting with the Liberals.
00:04:36.080 He could just do that. Or he could sit as an independent and vote with the Liberals.
00:04:39.080 It doesn't actually mean anything to ban floor crossing.
00:04:42.080 So I understand that floor crossing is a thing.
00:04:45.080 But at the end of the day, parties should be have a very deft hand with who they choose to bring in.
00:04:51.080 If you bring somebody in who's doing it for purely opportunistic reasons,
00:04:55.080 you look like an even bigger opportunist because you're bringing someone over who doesn't even care about you.
00:05:01.080 And you're completely fine with that. You don't even care about the ideology.
00:05:05.080 Varying degrees of recognition that we need action, not slogans, that we need cooperation with the provinces.
00:05:12.080 We need to come together and work together.
00:05:14.080 Then those individuals face their own decisions about how they can best support that agenda.
00:05:22.080 This was purely meaningless.
00:05:25.080 But you can tell that the CBC had basically gotten the memo that they have to pretend like there has not been an operation going on to try and bring Liberals over.
00:05:36.080 Because again, the Liberals know this is making them look bad.
00:05:40.080 And so now they have the CBC and one of their favorite spin doctors, Rosemary Barton, out there, who again is supposed to be a neutral host, 0.96
00:05:48.080 but saying like, oh, there's no evidence the Liberals are offering them anything.
00:05:52.080 I believe this is the right clip.
00:05:54.080 It's surprising to me that there was no, that at least for him,
00:05:59.080 there doesn't seem to be an active recruiting team out there trying to get other MPs to cross the floor in spite of the things that we may have heard.
00:06:07.080 Yeah, because you can see they're just they're sweeping it under the rug.
00:06:10.080 He is effectively saying, you know, Mark Carney's mouth to my ear.
00:06:14.080 He said so. And now we know that that's not we have heard way too many rumors.
00:06:19.080 And if you're in the political landscape of Ottawa, you know that the rumors are connected to truth.
00:06:25.080 But because Carney has mildly denied they've even been attempting to recruit MPs,
00:06:30.080 Rosemary saying, oh, well, it turns out it wasn't true because Carney said so,
00:06:34.080 even though he is obviously incentivized to say that they're not actively recruiting anyone right now.
00:06:39.080 But I'll just play that again. And then let's get to David Cochran's loop comments.
00:06:44.080 Also surprising to me that there was no that at least for him,
00:06:49.080 there doesn't seem to be an active recruiting team out there trying to get other MPs to cross the floor.
00:06:55.080 There clearly is. Do they think Michael Ma just left?
00:06:59.080 Obviously, he was offered something or else he's just delusional.
00:07:04.080 And he just decides to do random things by like a magic eight ball shake in the morning.
00:07:08.080 Out of the things that we may have heard.
00:07:10.080 Yeah, the conservatives have been pushing back saying that the liberals are pitching this
00:07:13.080 when really he uses sports metaphor that liberals are like, we're catching it.
00:07:17.080 They're coming to us. I mean, we'll see when people write their tell all books.
00:07:21.080 Oh, yeah, guys, we'll see when people write their tell all books.
00:07:25.080 In a few years, maybe we'll correct the record.
00:07:27.080 Like, guys, clearly the liberals are recruiting.
00:07:31.080 That's what Carney's team had been bragging about.
00:07:35.080 They keep talking about, oh, yeah, we have conservatives we have been going to.
00:07:39.080 And they're upset.
00:07:40.080 And we we talked to them about what we could do with them.
00:07:43.080 Like, obviously, they are discussing things.
00:07:46.080 If you have ever been in politics for more than five seconds, people don't just do things for no reason.
00:07:52.080 It's either principle or it's some sort of power.
00:07:55.080 They either want something for a principled reason, which is totally fine, obviously.
00:07:59.080 Or they want something because they really want the power recognition, money, whatever.
00:08:04.080 Chris Dontremont, in his case, he was extremely upset that Tom Kamek ended up becoming the deputy speaker instead of him, which comes with another $50,000.
00:08:14.080 Now, this wasn't something where Pierre gave it to Tom instead of Chris.
00:08:18.080 Chris was previously the deputy speaker.
00:08:21.080 The Conservative Caucus voted for Tom Kamek to become the deputy speaker.
00:08:26.080 So he just lost out.
00:08:28.080 And it's not like anyone hates Chris Dontremont.
00:08:30.080 They previously let him do it.
00:08:31.080 Now they're letting another guy do it.
00:08:32.080 And in Michael Ma's case, his letter that he put out, which, again, friend from the channel, Nahan Azam, literally ran through an AI checker and it came out 100% AI.
00:08:43.080 He couldn't even come up with a solid reason why he was leaving.
00:08:46.080 He was like, oh, Cardi is a steady, unifying figure.
00:08:49.080 Like, that is pablum.
00:08:52.080 That means nothing in politics.
00:08:54.080 I want to get to one more comment here.
00:08:56.080 It's just actually from a pollster, David Coletto, who runs Abigail's Data.
00:09:00.080 We will be actually getting to another polling video probably tomorrow on some of the issues and which party people trust for different issues in Canadian politics.
00:09:09.080 But David Coletto, who runs Abigail's Data, he put out this post that I found very interesting.
00:09:14.080 Yeah, it's an anecdote, but I have tons of anecdotes that line up with stuff like this as well.
00:09:19.080 He said, my swing voter boomer parents, my two person focus group in the GTA, don't like the floor crossings.
00:09:28.080 They don't vote conservative.
00:09:30.080 They like Cardi, but think it was unethical.
00:09:32.080 Based on polling and convos with normal people outside the bubble, liberals shouldn't be cheering this openly.
00:09:38.080 Don't treat these floor crossers like some trophy after a hunt. 1.00
00:09:41.080 And I think this is exactly why we are seeing Cardi start to act like, well, I don't know who we'd want to cross the floor.
00:09:50.080 We're not looking for anyone.
00:09:52.080 We don't.
00:09:53.080 Maybe people just thought I was really good and they left.
00:09:56.080 And that kind of gave lie to him, bringing the two floor crossers into caucus meetings and cheering and, oh, here's our brand new liberal MP. 0.94
00:10:05.080 Like, how do you know when the day before Michael Ma was at the conservative Christmas party that you were going to have to introduce Michael Ma at your Christmas party?
00:10:14.080 It's almost like the things were already in the works to the point where you actually had a little moment carved out in your speech in order to invite the new guy on stage.
00:10:24.080 It was all very obviously planned, and it makes the liberals look like they're scared of the Canadian public, that they don't actually want to face a new election.
00:10:33.080 They simply want to try and steal power by getting a couple unethical MPs to cross the floor, making it so that they can pass legislation themselves without the need of the NDP, the bloc or the conservatives to help them do it.
00:10:46.080 And again, even if, and when I say again, I haven't said in this video, but I've said in previous videos, again, if the liberals even get a majority government, I don't think that they are actually going to be able to stay in power until 2029.
00:11:00.080 There are multiple liberals likely to resign their seats soon, and the thing is, as soon as the liberals get a majority government, if they do get it, and there's been rumors other conservatives may cross the floor, who knows if that's true or not, even if the liberals get a majority government this way.
00:11:16.320 The conservatives will immediately tear up their pairing agreement with the liberals, and if a liberal can't make it to parliament one day, the conservatives are not going to oblige them by having one of their own conservative MPs sit out some votes.
00:11:28.960 That's usually how it works, especially if one party has a majority and they can already do whatever they want, or it's a minority government situation and we're not trying to be too contentious.
00:11:38.160 What you do is if a liberal had to take a step away from parliament for a few days, a conservative will agree to do the same in order to try and keep a balance of power to try and reduce the amount of brinksmanship that goes on.
00:11:49.720 But if the liberals are unethically getting a majority by getting floor crossers, the conservatives will immediately go into brinksmanship and fight the liberals tooth and nail, proposing amendments for everything, trying to stop the flow of parliament, and make Mark Carney's political world a living hell. 0.88
00:12:05.160 But anyways, we will see what happens with all that. Thank you guys for watching this episode of the show.
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