Wyatt Claypool takes a look at what Mark Carney has to say about Chrystia Freeland stepping down as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defence, and what it means for the future of the minority government he's currently in.
00:00:02.980Well, Mark Carney's liberals got rejected by yet another MP they were trying to convince to cross the floor.
00:00:10.920This time, it's an NDP MP from the territory of Nunavut.
00:00:16.320Mark Carney is very obviously uncomfortable with the minority government position that he's currently in,
00:00:21.820and it got so much worse when Chrystia Freeland, a couple days ago, announced that she will be leaving office in the next few weeks.
00:00:30.720We also have another Liberal MP, Nate Erskine-Smith, very clearly going to run for the Ontario Liberal Party leadership,
00:00:38.200and even if he stays on as an MP during that process, he's obviously not going to be in Ottawa very often in order to vote and participate in committees,
00:00:47.720thus leaving Carney with another gap in his government.
00:00:51.820This completely kills off the incentive for MPs to cross the floor and join them,
00:00:56.980since it wouldn't even be enough for a single individual to cross in order to give Carney his majority.
00:01:03.900Now, three people would have to cross, and again, a lot of people are starting to reject the Liberals publicly.
00:01:11.280We talked about Conservative MP Scott Anderson yesterday just leaking the fact the Liberals approached him
00:01:17.000and his response to their very pathetic offer.
00:01:20.140But now, in this video, I want to take you guys through a question that was asked to Mark Carney
00:01:25.440during a press conference over whether he tried to keep Freeland from leaving
00:01:30.400and how comfortable he is in his current position in government.
00:01:34.720He says no, but he is very clearly uncomfortable.
00:02:23.320As soon as he says, just to be clear, you know this is going to be a very unclear answer with a lot of deflections in it.
00:02:38.840He will not actually answer the question about minority government position.
00:02:42.420He is just going to talk about Chrystia Freeland right here and is going to involve a lot of ums and ahs.
00:02:48.280Ms. Freeland, Chrystia has served our country for well over a decade in a formal role and as a parliamentarian,
00:02:57.260certainly in a number of ministerial posts and served with great distinction.
00:03:01.920She was, I had her as my special envoy after she left cabinet for the Ukraine reconstruction.
00:03:11.440Judgment became her judgment that she could be more useful for that process as she was leaving,
00:03:17.320as she was retiring, uh, as a parliamentarian, uh, as a direct advisor.
00:03:22.580Uh, my judgment was that, that taking that role would be consistent with resigning, uh, as an MP.
00:03:30.560Um, and I, I, I welcomed her, uh, doing that.
00:03:33.340And, uh, I'm pleased that, uh, for, for Ukraine.
00:03:36.920Um, and again, if I can reemphasize and bring it back to today, there is real momentum.
00:03:43.000Nothing's assured, but there's real momentum in this peace process and the security guarantees are incredibly important.
00:03:51.380What does this have to do with anything?
00:03:53.420He just starts talking about his stance on Ukraine after, like, this doesn't have anything to do with Chrystia Freeland resigning and your current position in the minority government.
00:04:02.040Now, he eventually kind of answers it in just a second here when he starts talking about by-elections, but that still is the big elephant in the room question.
00:04:10.320If you can actually hold a government together long enough in order to have by-elections to replace all the people who are likely to leave.
00:04:16.880But as is the reconstruction and the prosperity plan, and she'll be there to work on that.
00:04:21.820And look, we will, we'll have a by-election.
00:04:24.000There'll be a few by-elections coming up and we'll run great candidates and the, the people in those writings will decide, uh, who they want to send to parliament.
00:04:32.840And, but, but again, the problem for Carney is every time he has to fill one of these, uh, slots, that means he doesn't have a majority during that time.
00:04:42.320And there is a reason why we now have MPs starting to very publicly reject Carney.
00:04:48.400Not only is it a good tactic to make sure the rest of your people aren't going to leave by shaming the liberals for having even asked,
00:04:56.640but it's also because it's not really a great bet to be jumping over to the liberals right now.
00:05:01.460The floor crossing themselves make the liberals look sleazy.
00:05:05.340And so it's actually, in my opinion, at the least, probably hurting the liberals more than it's helping them trying to get people to cross in this manner.
00:05:13.960So here's a story from the CBC and the headline is,
00:05:18.600None of us MP says she won't cross the floor to join the liberals at this point.
00:05:23.460Uh, NDP MP, Lori Idlote says she has been asked to consider it by liberal party members and some constituents.
00:05:30.960The problem, and some constituents is probably doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
00:05:35.340I really doubt that it's been this big upswell of people asking her to consider joining the liberals.
00:05:42.840One or two people also does technically count as a substantial amount of people when you're the MP for Nunavut,
00:05:48.200which is only around 40,000 individuals who live in that entire territory.
00:05:51.860And she lives in Iqaluit, which is like maybe like several thousand people.
00:05:55.800It's very, very tiny, as you all know.
00:05:57.500But I want to read a few quotes from this article because I'll start off with her rejection and then I want to go into why the liberals can't really even take her in.
00:06:07.740They would be foolish to bring Lori into their caucus.
00:06:14.240None of us MP, None of us MP says she has no plans right now to join the federal liberal party.
00:06:19.460Quote, I have decided at this point that I can't.
00:06:22.620Unquote, Lori Idlote told CBC in an interview on Monday.
00:06:26.480Quote, I've definitely been asked for, asked to consider it.
00:06:29.940Later on, she says, quote, it's definitely weighed heavily on me and I've been so, had so many conversations with people and I just appreciate everyone who I've talked with.
00:06:39.820Quote, what they've all said is that whatever I decide, it will be what I think is best for Nunavut, that's probably just a word for people who live in Nunavut.
00:06:50.400She says, whatever I decide, it will be what I think is best for us.
00:06:54.960It's like, well, that's always great when the MP just decides it's best for their constituents, that they just leave the party that they got elected under to the liberal party.
00:07:03.380Not for any principled reasons, not because, you know, your own party broke a promise to you or the liberals changed substantially in such a way where you can go over for them.
00:07:13.620If I decide to do it, it's inherently for the best interests of people who live here.
00:07:18.420But anyways, I want to talk a little bit about why this is such a stupid thing for the liberals to be doing.
00:08:02.960Idlote said she couldn't do a good job.
00:08:32.960This was an extremely desperate individual for the liberals to be reaching out to, to try and get to a majority.
00:08:46.920This person is obviously very left-wing.
00:08:49.920They want indigenous consultation to not just be something that you should do as like a friendly measure to, you know, reach out to nations within a major projects area.
00:09:03.840Like, they're, they're citizens like everybody else and we should treat them like citizens like everyone else.
00:09:08.520Everyone in the area should either be consulted or nobody should be consulted.
00:09:12.580But even she takes issue with the idea of even it just simply being consultation, that the government should have to come to like a consensus agreement or sign something or give some sort of assurances, legal assurances, to indigenous bands for major projects to be built.
00:09:32.080That's just the insanity of DRIPA in British Columbia on a federal level.
00:09:57.500It's hard to go and start a farm or start a tech firm up there.
00:10:00.560So naturally, a lot of government services are required, but it's not somebody that you exactly want having heavy influence over policy.
00:10:08.860It was a really scary time when it looked like Carney was going to start relying on the advice of Elizabeth May in order to get her to join the government.
00:10:16.860But she has since been the one to reject them for being not green enough.
00:11:26.400There is a wide variety of individuals who, whether it's for stylistic reasons or for policy reasons,
00:11:32.900don't like working with Carney and want to go.
00:11:35.600The hilarious thing is, like, Stephen Gilbeau doesn't like Carney because of the memorandum of understanding he signed with Alberta's government
00:11:42.000to potentially think about one day thinking really hard about building a pipeline.