Carney in Trouble! CBC tries to clean up for him!
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
192.50421
Summary
In this episode of Power and Politics, host WYWyatt Claypool takes a look at how the CBC's coverage of the leadership vacuum left by the departure of two Liberal MPs, and what it means for the future of the party.
Transcript
00:00:02.860
One of the very few things I find very entertaining about the CBC
00:00:07.100
is watching their differential coverage of negative news stories for Pierre Polyev's Conservatives
00:00:13.260
and negative news stories for Mark Carney's Liberals.
00:00:17.100
You know if there is a negative story for the Polyev Conservatives,
00:00:21.400
the coverage on the CBC is going to be breathless.
00:00:24.940
Just as an example, when Chris Dontremont and Michael Ma crossed the floor
00:00:29.680
to the Liberals, which is undoubtedly a bad story for the Conservatives,
00:00:34.540
the coverage on the CBC was over the top in how breathless it was.
00:00:43.980
Can he even pass his leadership review in January anymore?
00:00:52.280
Are there 50 more Conservative MPs who might cross the floor?
00:00:55.920
The speculation and all of the coverage of Polyev's leadership was completely ridiculous,
00:01:03.640
especially considering there was so much evidence to prove Chris Dontremont and Michael Ma left
00:01:09.280
for petty personal reasons, and it really didn't say that much about Polyev or the Conservative Party
00:01:17.080
But now, now that Mark Carney has Liberal MPs leaving,
00:01:23.320
suddenly there's all this nuance we need to go over.
00:01:26.300
No, no, no, this doesn't say anything about Mark Carney.
00:01:29.100
Never will anyone actually bring up that this demonstrates that Carney's leadership style
00:01:33.940
may not be good, even though there is far more evidence
00:01:37.240
that these MPs are going to be leaving because they don't like him,
00:01:43.440
because he tends to be really pompous and elitist,
00:01:46.800
to the point where these Liberal MPs want to find a way out of Canadian politics.
00:01:52.280
So, I want to take you guys through a couple of news segments.
00:01:58.200
before Christy Freeland had announced she's leaving on Friday.
00:02:01.840
This is an episode of the CBC's Power and Politics,
00:02:06.540
I don't know why I'm plugging it like I'm officially introducing the show.
00:02:09.200
But they're talking about it back before she had given the specific date.
00:02:13.520
This is when she just said it's going to be the next few weeks.
00:02:15.660
And obviously, pressure mounted on the fact that she's going to go work for Ukraine
00:02:19.340
in the Road Society, but she's not willing to step down right away.
00:02:27.540
We're going to go through this because they do exactly what I said they do.
00:02:31.800
It just turns into people needing to show you all these extra folds to the story
00:02:38.140
to demonstrate this isn't actually not as bad as you think.
00:02:41.400
And at no point, outside of the occasional actual conservative on a panel,
00:02:47.560
does anything about Mark Carney actually get brought up in all this.
00:02:55.880
And the Prime Minister suggested rather strongly today
00:02:58.420
that Freeland isn't the only Liberal MP with plans to resign their seat.
00:03:08.660
And the people in those ridings will decide who they want to send to Parliament.
00:03:15.760
Well, we know Christopher Freeland will step down later this month.
00:03:18.420
And we've been reporting for months that former Cabinet Minister Bill Blair
00:03:21.840
is set to be the next High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
00:03:24.300
While Jonathan Wilkinson is expected to get a diplomatic post in Europe.
00:03:29.580
I actually want to make a quick correction to things I'd previously said in other videos.
00:03:34.720
I've sometimes gotten Bill Blair and Jonathan Wilkinson mixed up.
00:03:38.500
Like, I know who they are and I can put the face to the name.
00:03:41.560
But I've said that Wilkinson was the one taking that UK High Commissioner job.
00:03:46.320
And then I believe Wilkinson wants to be some, like, diplomat in Switzerland
00:03:54.200
But he just wants out of Parliament is the main sort of thrust of what's going on here.
00:04:00.100
Bill Blair also needs to replace Ralph Goodale, who's, like, 83, 84 years old
00:04:04.200
and is still the UK High Commissioner and probably wants to retire at this point.
00:04:11.720
Oh, and by the way, they also didn't mention Nate Erskine-Smith, who's, like, a first-round
00:04:16.580
draft pick of an individual to be resigning with Christy Freeland.
00:04:22.700
But the man is trying to run for Ontario Liberal Party leader.
00:04:28.140
He came a very close second place the last Ontario Liberal leadership race to Bonnie Crombie.
00:04:34.660
So naturally, he's probably the shoe-in to win this time.
00:04:37.280
And the fact that no one else has actually declared their candidacy yet in Ontario for
00:04:42.480
the Liberal Party leadership probably says that everyone knows that Erskine-Smith will
00:04:46.840
be very difficult to beat, especially because not that many people even want the job in the
00:04:52.020
So people are probably just waiting around to see if Nate runs or not.
00:04:54.920
And if he does, it's pretty much guaranteed to be his, which means he will be stepping
00:04:59.780
Of three in the Liberal seat count in a minority Parliament.
00:05:02.680
So we're going to start there with the power panel.
00:05:06.540
Gary Keller is a former Chief of Staff to Conservative Cabinet Ministers.
00:05:10.520
Cheryl Oates was the Director of Communications for former Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley.
00:05:15.080
And here with me in the studio, Michelle Cadario, who is Deputy Chief of Staff to former Prime
00:05:20.980
Michelle, you have some experience in minority parliaments.
00:05:24.480
Three vacancies, two appointments, one a resignation.
00:05:33.760
Well, let's also, you know, he spoke in the plural.
00:05:36.740
And let's not forget Genereau from Edmonton, where we expect that, you know, he resigned
00:05:48.200
And notice immediately, immediately the deflection.
00:05:52.080
We're not actually going to talk about the implications here for Mark Carney right away.
00:05:56.120
We're going to deflect to Matt Genereau, who, for whatever reasons, whether it's personal,
00:06:03.320
But the Conservative MP for Edmonton Riverbend says he will resign his seat.
00:06:07.780
But he said he'll resign his seat after the spring session, which is probably because
00:06:12.700
everyone already thinks there's going to be a spring or a summer federal election.
00:06:18.420
So it's a safe time for him to step down anyways, because he'll probably be stepping down
00:06:22.380
and then handing the seat off to the next Conservative nominee anyways.
00:06:26.240
But that's a complete non-sequitur that she brought up.
00:06:46.560
The one person who I'd say is a dark horse option, who's probably less likely to leave,
00:06:52.960
more likely to not leave than leave, is Melanie Jolie.
00:06:56.120
The rest of them are more likely to leave than not leave.
00:07:12.140
And by the way, Matt Genereau is still not leaving for a few months at least.
00:07:15.740
So, presumably, they would be only, if Chrystia Freeland was the only one to be leaving on
00:07:21.240
Friday, there would only be one in the foreseeable future.
00:07:24.540
And then maybe a few months later, there would be one for Matt Genereau.
00:07:27.280
He said a few, which means either he's including Matt Genereau in to that group, plus another
00:07:35.720
Because, you know, here's, I'm going to do a quick little numbers lesson.
00:07:40.820
It's not even a math lesson, because it's too basic.
00:07:46.920
So there's a singular, two, which are a couple, three or more.
00:08:05.620
So, but, you know, around town, certainly there's chatter.
00:08:10.720
But also, they have a budget bill that still hasn't made its way completely through the
00:08:15.920
And so I would think that that would be a bit of a timing consideration for whatever
00:08:21.980
Um, and, uh, you know, equally, uh, around town, there's still lots of talk about others
00:08:28.340
who might want to join, uh, join the liberal caucus.
00:08:32.740
Oh, we're, we're, now we're trying to deflect the idea.
00:08:35.180
You only know that, uh, Polioff's conservatives have had a few people who, uh, might want to
00:08:41.480
And it's like, yeah, it was a bad story when Don Trevon and Michael Ma left.
00:08:45.240
If anything, with Michael Ma's case, it's more of an indictment of whoever appointed that
00:08:54.580
Whoever, whichever lower level person decided Michael Ma was a great choice, you know, slap
00:08:59.400
that person on the wrist and make sure they're never in charge of picking people again.
00:09:10.420
Oh, well, you know, Polioff's conservatives or someone else, some other people might be leaving
00:09:17.340
Well, we just had another story today that we're going to talk a bit more about.
00:09:20.740
Uh, one of the other top prospects for the Liberals was an NDP MP from Nunavut who just
00:09:29.260
They've gotten so desperate, the Liberals, in trying to find people to cross the floor.
00:09:32.980
They were asking Scott Anderson, who very clearly was not going to cross.
00:09:37.240
That doesn't mean, like, I know people like David Cochran, who's the host of the show,
00:09:41.160
have thrown kind of shade at the idea that they would have ever
00:09:44.440
approached Scott Anderson because he seems too conservative for them to approach.
00:09:50.140
He obviously was approached because he has all the details that he's been telling people
00:09:55.700
And it just proves how desperate the Liberals are.
00:09:59.040
The fact that it's a stupid person to approach just ends up proving that their strategy right
00:10:06.960
Um, it will be interesting, Matt, as they kind of go forward.
00:10:10.680
Um, but I think the job number one for them has got to be getting this budget bill going
00:10:16.380
And I can't imagine risking, unless they are so sure about some other crossings, uh, that
00:10:23.760
they would risk that, um, by, by triggering by elections beforehand.
00:10:36.300
Ask her what this actually means for Mark Carney.
00:10:38.500
Does this say anything about his leadership style?
00:10:40.360
Does this say anything about the stability of his government?
00:10:45.820
And Gary, I hadn't considered that maybe the plural was Matt Jenneru because, uh, we,
00:10:50.300
we've not seen or heard or anything, uh, for the MP for Edmonton Riverbend, I believe
00:10:59.340
Even the loss of Freeland though, uh, it does reduce the seat count by one at a time when,
00:11:03.680
as you know, someone who worked in the house leader's office, you don't really want to be
00:11:08.460
Again, that wasn't a good point that she made though.
00:11:12.520
The specific plural was a few, which means it's more than two at the very least.
00:11:16.160
So it may be Freeland, Matt Jenneru and another person, or it could be Freeland and two
00:11:21.120
other liberals because Matt Jenneru is not going to step down for a few months.
00:11:26.340
And, uh, I thought the statement by the prime minister was interesting.
00:11:29.400
It did set tongues wagging a bit in auto by elections.
00:11:35.180
Although if you take a step back and if you, if you were to say by elections, plural,
00:11:39.380
Christopher Freeland, university, Rosedale, a pretty safe liberals and Matt Jenneru, if
00:11:44.100
you did at the same time, a pretty safe conservative seat, you're kind of going one for one.
00:11:48.740
So you're not really, uh, messing with the math too much, but it is, it is an interesting
00:11:53.940
turn of events, uh, and, uh, these rumors have been going around for so long in Ottawa
00:11:58.980
about who might be going, when people waiting for October 19th of last year to kick in so
00:12:03.560
they could get their, uh, their six year parliamentary pension.
00:12:09.840
The main item of business is to get the budget and limitation act passed.
00:12:15.600
This is what frustrates me about the, the CBC to the point where it becomes funny.
00:12:20.520
So we have a conservative on the panel, not saying, Hey guys, remember how you guys were
00:12:25.680
breathlessly covering after Donchmont and Ma crossed the floor about how this has all
00:12:30.440
these implications about pure poly of his like leadership.
00:12:34.380
You know, it went down to like, what does this say about pure poly of soul that these two
00:12:40.260
individuals left more, more individuals are just flat out resigning from office on Mark
00:12:49.120
Apparently even the conservative on the panel, the supposed conservative on the panel
00:12:53.200
is not bringing up what this might mean about Carney.
00:12:59.040
If I need to rely on the NDP person to bring this up, I will quit the show.
00:13:07.220
If it takes the NDP person to finally bring up the big question in the room, what does
00:13:14.180
And maybe it doesn't say anything about Mark Carney, but they always do it to poly of
00:13:20.180
I actually do believe it actually does say something about Mark Carney because Mark has
00:13:26.440
He has very clearly been like at odds because he's demoted them or they ended up leaving cabinet
00:13:32.540
or he ended up making them a cabinet minister in this case of Nate Erskine Smith.
00:13:36.760
And then kicking them out or sticking somebody who's a veteran, even if I think he's a bad
00:13:42.540
But sticking someone like a veteran minister like Bill Blair in the back, that says something
00:13:47.920
about his leadership style and his sort of like dismissiveness of people with experience.
00:13:54.220
And currently it looks like they would get that done in some way, shape or form would
00:14:01.580
And so you don't want to be messing around too much until you get that bill, at least
00:14:07.900
very close to passage, if not all the way through.
00:14:10.900
But, you know, Cheryl, the parliamentary issues aside, you do need diplomats in countries like
00:14:16.320
the United Kingdom and in places like the European Union, especially with all the things that
00:14:24.740
So incisive analysis right there, David, with all the things that are happening, you
00:14:32.260
Thank you, David Cochran, for that comment as a minority government facing all of these
00:14:38.520
I mean, it's interesting because what should be like the next step in Chrystia Freeland's
00:14:42.900
story, which should be, you know, an honorable and important position that she's just taken
00:14:46.700
is totally overshadowed by the fact that she has not resigned her seat.
00:14:51.380
And that tells, you know, us political watchers that there is a real political calculus going
00:14:57.920
Well, this woman also hosts another podcast about politics.
00:15:05.700
Well, you know, that really tells us something as political watchers.
00:15:15.080
To what Michelle and others have said about, like, of course, you need to make sure in
00:15:18.860
this minority situation that you have the votes in the House that you need to pass important
00:15:23.920
pieces of legislation or pass confidence votes.
00:15:27.460
In addition to that, just from a just logistically a by-election standpoint, if I was working on
00:15:33.340
by-elections, I would want them to all happen at the same time.
00:15:36.180
And so, you know, you want you want one person to be able to run whatever it is field for
00:15:42.060
And once you have by-elections happening on different timelines, that becomes really complicated
00:15:48.680
So that could be another political calculus here.
00:15:51.020
But yeah, I mean, we need people in these important posts overseas now, perhaps, more
00:15:56.100
And now she's just repeating what David Cochran said.
00:16:01.020
These people don't know what they're talking about.
00:16:07.400
But the thing is, I can like, you know, see the elephant in the room, which is as implied
00:16:12.960
by it being an elephant, is not that hard to see.
00:16:15.780
What is this saying about Mark Carney's government?
00:16:18.340
What does this say about his floor crossing strategy?
00:16:20.940
Because Michelle, at the beginning, when she starts talking about, well, there might be
00:16:24.640
some more people crossing the floor, that ended up turning out not to be true at all.
00:16:28.640
Because another NDP MP just said, no, I'm not crossing.
00:16:36.220
And this is probably one of their top prospects.
00:16:38.580
How does that strategy even play out at a time when Mark Carney can't even hold on to
00:16:47.620
How is he going to now start enticing other people to cross the floor when the gap in
00:16:53.480
At the very least, he's going to have to fill in all these gaps, run the table, win back
00:16:59.240
And yeah, they might be safe seats, but by-elections can play out a bit wonky.
00:17:03.240
You may end up having that in a riding like Chrystia Freeland's riding of University Rosedale,
00:17:13.620
And you could say, well, that's when the Liberal Party only got like 18% of the vote under
00:17:20.260
But again, that was in a general election, which is really difficult for the NDP to typically
00:17:25.440
Yeah, they had Jack Layton at the helm, but if they get Heather McPherson in as their
00:17:30.440
new NDP leader and she just puts all of her chips on University of Rosedale to replace
00:17:35.960
Freeland with an NDP MP, she could pull it off.
00:17:38.860
If the narrative's right, if a lot of public sector union workers don't show up for the
00:17:43.400
Liberals and they go back over to the NDP and people are mad who voted for Freeland that
00:17:47.680
she just up and left for no reason, you could have people reflexively go and vote for the NDP.
00:17:52.280
I'd almost encourage conservatives to go vote NDP just to screw over the Liberals in that
00:17:58.000
But the going to the whole idea of like, oh, well, this doesn't really matter because they
00:18:03.600
Well, not anymore, because nobody's going to cross when they don't currently have that
00:18:10.920
They are not one seat away where you crossing doesn't benefit you as an individual.
00:18:14.940
You just look petty and stupid in the next federal election for like just ignoring your
00:18:22.980
This is now yesterday's CBC Power and Politics panel.
00:18:27.880
And I wanted to talk about it because now we've jumped ahead where Freeland has made it clear
00:18:32.440
she is now resigning on Friday and that NDP MP is not going is not going to be crossing.
00:18:38.400
They are going to introduce the NDP MP story at the start, and then they're going to go into
00:18:46.400
And I find that they do a bit of a sneaky maneuver here in forgetting what they had said just a
00:18:54.900
An NDP MP says she doesn't plan to cross the floor to the Liberals, at least not right now.
00:18:59.400
None of its Lori Idlaut spoke to our CBC North colleagues, saying she has been asked to consider
00:19:04.300
crossing the floor by both Liberal Party members and her own constituents.
00:19:09.740
I've definitely been asked to consider it more than usual.
00:19:19.440
It's definitely weighed heavily on me, and I've had so many conversations with people.
00:19:26.980
Now, if Lori Idlaut did end up crossing the floor, it would bring the government to a majority
00:19:32.960
Okay, except she's not crossing the floor, so I don't know why we're talking about that.
00:19:38.400
But we know there will be by-elections coming up just this hour.
00:19:42.200
Yeah, and who is being affected by those by-elections?
00:19:46.760
It's potentially Freeland and other Liberals who are leaving on Friday.
00:19:51.700
So the by-election is taking them down to 170, and if another person leaves, it's 169, and
00:20:01.620
Yes, Matt Gennaro could be replaced by a Liberal in Edmonton Riverbend.
00:20:07.360
The Liberals had a high-watermark election result in Alberta in this last race.
00:20:13.260
They usually don't do nearly as well as they did, and since then, they've been not doing
00:20:19.340
I don't think they're going to do even better than they did in the last election.
00:20:25.480
Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland announced she will be resigning her seat this Friday.
00:20:30.020
This after she took a new job working for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
00:20:35.120
Freeland posted a statement on social media just now.
00:20:37.520
On Monday, I announced my intention to leave the House of Commons in the coming weeks.
00:20:41.700
Today, I have written to the Speaker to confirm that I will vacate my seat effective this Friday,
00:20:46.940
One of the roles I will be taking on is as an unpaid advisor on economic issues to the
00:20:52.720
This is a volunteer position, and I have consulted throughout with the ethics community.
00:20:56.160
I think you'll forgive me if I just skip ahead to the actual panel part of this,
00:20:59.580
because I don't care that much whether I'm reading this.
00:21:04.000
Had agreed to do an interview with the show today, two to three minutes before we were
00:21:08.820
She cancelled, said she would be issuing a statement, which I've received on my phone,
00:21:16.740
We talked a little bit about this before the Christmas break, and I was even told there
00:21:20.580
was a meeting scheduled where it would very likely happen with the Prime Minister.
00:21:23.700
What do you make of all of this drama that's unfolded here?
00:21:26.440
Yeah, well, I'm certainly not surprised that she's being assertively approached by Liberals.
00:21:43.560
We can jump over and see what she says about Chrystia Freeland stepping down.
00:21:46.580
I think obviously she was forced to make this statement today based on some of the criticism
00:21:52.180
that she was receiving from the Conservative Party, which I thought was...
00:21:56.300
And she's referring to Freeland having to say that she's going to leave earlier than
00:22:00.560
later because she was getting criticism for trying to get this new job while still sitting
00:22:07.740
Chrystia Freeland had said on a number of occasions.
00:22:10.220
She had consulted with the Ethics Commissioner.
00:22:12.980
You know, you look at the Conflict of Interest Act and the rules, and they're pretty clear.
00:22:17.480
And I think this becomes such a challenge, right?
00:22:19.700
Because you can do everything that you're supposed to do.
00:22:25.500
And at the same time, you can come under a flood of attack because optically, it was
00:22:37.580
People don't like the idea that their MPs are like, you know, trying to look over the
00:22:43.320
person in front of them and see what new job they can get.
00:22:46.480
People don't like the idea that someone has revealed that they really weren't focused on
00:22:50.520
their actual job as a member of parliament over the last several months.
00:22:53.880
And they've been basically looking for wherever their soft landing is going to be, whichever
00:22:58.780
I don't care that Freeland is not being paid working for President Zelensky.
00:23:07.000
But it bothers me when people are not doing their actual jobs as MP and they're office
00:23:13.760
They are shopping for different opportunities, different positions.
00:23:16.720
She's also going to go work and be the president or CEO or whatever of the Road Society.
00:23:23.860
I understand how that really presented an opening for the Conservative Party, and they leapt
00:23:27.680
on it, and then it became obviously too challenging for her to stay in that seat.
00:23:38.720
It's not that it was a bad idea for her to do that.
00:23:41.340
It was bad because the Conservatives jumped on her and made an issue of it, or it was an
00:23:46.060
actual issue and the Conservatives just simply pointed out the issue.
00:23:52.860
Nobody, I can guarantee you from watching them myself, you can watch the whole thing.
00:23:58.580
Nobody ever brings up the angle of what does this say about Mark Carney?
00:24:10.060
Now, it's subtle, in part because it's really boring.
00:24:13.600
But if a Conservative issue pops up, it's the worst thing that's ever happened to Pierre
00:24:17.700
Polyev, if something happens to Mark Carney, it's nuanced.
00:24:21.580
Well, it's just, well, Chrystia Freeland just really wanted to go and work for Vladimir
00:24:30.340
Is it that she got kicked out as finance minister and replaced, and then she was given some other
00:24:35.620
crappy job around job growth or whatever, and then she ended up resigning from cabinet
00:24:40.060
because she didn't like it, because she had been thrown under the bus as finance minister?
00:24:46.540
But Chrystia Freeland objectively got thrown under the bus as finance minister for many
00:24:51.380
things that she was forced to implement by Justin Trudeau.
00:24:54.320
That was Mark Carney's idea as the economic advisor.
00:24:57.600
So obviously, they have bad blood between each other.
00:25:02.780
He made Erskine Smith housing minister for three weeks before the April election, and then
00:25:08.660
Bill Blair, sitting in the back benches, obviously doesn't like being there as a veteran minister,
00:25:17.100
Jonathan Wilkinson, also an old guard Trudeau guy who's been also heavily sidelined.
00:25:22.340
That's why he wants to leave and go work in Europe, because the thing is that Carney
00:25:25.960
basically came into the prime minister's office and just surrounded himself with people he
00:25:31.440
personally likes in a way that I think ended up jarring a lot of people, making them feel
00:25:37.560
And now there's this tension within the Liberal Party that the media is really not picking
00:25:44.040
Anyways, that should be it for today's video, guys.
00:25:48.280
Make sure to like the video, subscribe, join the YouTube membership for the channel below
00:25:52.960
at the join button if you want to help financially support the channel.
00:25:56.800
And of course, leave a comment if you think anything about all this.
00:26:03.140
I feel like I already know the answer to that question.
00:26:07.160
Did you even make it to this point in the video or did I completely kill off your interest
00:26:13.180
But anyways, with all being said, thank you guys for watching and I'll see you all later.