The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - January 07, 2026


Carney is on shaky ground - Another MP rejects Liberal floor-crossing offer!


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

166.27359

Word count

2,303

Sentence count

111

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

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.

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.
00:00:02.980 Well, Mark Carney's liberals got rejected by yet another MP they were trying to convince to cross the floor.
00:00:10.920 This time, it's an NDP MP from the territory of Nunavut.
00:00:16.320 Mark Carney is very obviously uncomfortable with the minority government position that he's currently in,
00:00:21.820 and it got so much worse when Chrystia Freeland, a couple days ago, announced that she will be leaving office in the next few weeks. 0.99
00:00:30.720 We also have another Liberal MP, Nate Erskine-Smith, very clearly going to run for the Ontario Liberal Party leadership,
00:00:38.200 and 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,
00:00:47.720 thus leaving Carney with another gap in his government.
00:00:51.820 This completely kills off the incentive for MPs to cross the floor and join them,
00:00:56.980 since it wouldn't even be enough for a single individual to cross in order to give Carney his majority.
00:01:03.900 Now, three people would have to cross, and again, a lot of people are starting to reject the Liberals publicly.
00:01:11.280 We talked about Conservative MP Scott Anderson yesterday just leaking the fact the Liberals approached him
00:01:17.000 and his response to their very pathetic offer.
00:01:20.140 But now, in this video, I want to take you guys through a question that was asked to Mark Carney
00:01:25.440 during a press conference over whether he tried to keep Freeland from leaving
00:01:30.400 and how comfortable he is in his current position in government.
00:01:34.720 He says no, but he is very clearly uncomfortable.
00:01:39.160 Let's get right into this.
00:01:40.260 Very clearly not uncomfortable, although he is already taking issue with the question being asked to him at all.
00:01:56.240 The thing is that I could see Carney not actually caring if Freeland left or not,
00:02:01.000 and it's because they actually seem to really dislike each other these days,
00:02:04.220 but it still doesn't make him look good, especially if he did nothing to try and keep her around.
00:02:09.320 He's going to try and just well-wish her in this answer, even though it has really nothing to do with the question,
00:02:14.560 but we'll get into the real question here now.
00:02:17.440 Did you ask her not to quit because of the minority parliament situation right now?
00:02:21.760 No, absolutely not.
00:02:23.320 As 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.
00:02:38.840 He will not actually answer the question about minority government position.
00:02:42.420 He is just going to talk about Chrystia Freeland right here and is going to involve a lot of ums and ahs.
00:02:48.280 Ms. Freeland, Chrystia has served our country for well over a decade in a formal role and as a parliamentarian,
00:02:57.260 certainly in a number of ministerial posts and served with great distinction.
00:03:01.920 She was, I had her as my special envoy after she left cabinet for the Ukraine reconstruction.
00:03:11.440 Judgment became her judgment that she could be more useful for that process as she was leaving, 0.94
00:03:17.320 as she was retiring, uh, as a parliamentarian, uh, as a direct advisor.
00:03:22.580 Uh, my judgment was that, that taking that role would be consistent with resigning, uh, as an MP.
00:03:30.560 Um, and I, I, I welcomed her, uh, doing that.
00:03:33.340 And, uh, I'm pleased that, uh, for, for Ukraine.
00:03:36.920 Um, and again, if I can reemphasize and bring it back to today, there is real momentum.
00:03:43.000 Nothing's assured, but there's real momentum in this peace process and the security guarantees are incredibly important.
00:03:51.380 What does this have to do with anything?
00:03:53.420 He 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.
00:04:02.040 Now, 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.
00:04:10.320 If 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.
00:04:16.880 But as is the reconstruction and the prosperity plan, and she'll be there to work on that.
00:04:21.820 And look, we will, we'll have a by-election.
00:04:24.000 There'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.
00:04:32.840 And, 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.
00:04:42.320 And there is a reason why we now have MPs starting to very publicly reject Carney.
00:04:48.400 Not 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,
00:04:56.640 but it's also because it's not really a great bet to be jumping over to the liberals right now.
00:05:01.460 The floor crossing themselves make the liberals look sleazy.
00:05:05.340 And 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.
00:05:13.960 So here's a story from the CBC and the headline is,
00:05:18.600 None of us MP says she won't cross the floor to join the liberals at this point.
00:05:23.460 Uh, NDP MP, Lori Idlote says she has been asked to consider it by liberal party members and some constituents.
00:05:30.960 The problem, and some constituents is probably doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
00:05:35.340 I really doubt that it's been this big upswell of people asking her to consider joining the liberals.
00:05:42.840 One or two people also does technically count as a substantial amount of people when you're the MP for Nunavut,
00:05:48.200 which is only around 40,000 individuals who live in that entire territory.
00:05:51.860 And she lives in Iqaluit, which is like maybe like several thousand people.
00:05:55.800 It's very, very tiny, as you all know.
00:05:57.500 But 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. 0.93
00:06:07.740 They would be foolish to bring Lori into their caucus.
00:06:11.620 So here it says,
00:06:14.240 None of us MP, None of us MP says she has no plans right now to join the federal liberal party.
00:06:19.460 Quote, I have decided at this point that I can't.
00:06:22.620 Unquote, Lori Idlote told CBC in an interview on Monday.
00:06:26.480 Quote, I've definitely been asked for, asked to consider it.
00:06:29.940 Later 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.
00:06:39.820 Quote, 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.
00:06:50.400 She says, whatever I decide, it will be what I think is best for us.
00:06:54.960 It'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.
00:07:03.380 Not 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.
00:07:13.620 If I decide to do it, it's inherently for the best interests of people who live here.
00:07:18.420 But anyways, I want to talk a little bit about why this is such a stupid thing for the liberals to be doing.
00:07:24.960 So, she is now a two-term NDP MP.
00:07:30.420 And obviously, she's an indigenous woman from a territory and that tends to come with some baggage when it comes to policy things. 0.54
00:07:39.660 Not inherently, it's like, oh, baggage because she's indigenous. 1.00
00:07:42.460 I mean it in terms of the obvious policy position she has as an indigenous NDP representative.
00:07:48.540 You can tell the person's going to be an environmentalist, going to be very beholden to what I would call the reconciliation industry.
00:07:56.180 So, down here is where the article gets very interesting that the liberals even considered bringing her over.
00:08:00.780 The article here says,
00:08:02.960 Idlote said she couldn't do a good job.
00:08:32.960 This was an extremely desperate individual for the liberals to be reaching out to, to try and get to a majority.
00:08:46.920 This person is obviously very left-wing.
00:08:49.920 They 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.
00:09:01.580 Even I think that's so overwrought.
00:09:03.840 Like, they're, they're citizens like everybody else and we should treat them like citizens like everyone else.
00:09:08.520 Everyone in the area should either be consulted or nobody should be consulted.
00:09:12.580 But 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.
00:09:32.080 That's just the insanity of DRIPA in British Columbia on a federal level.
00:09:37.240 That's effectively her stance.
00:09:38.900 And all these stances are very easy to have when you're the MP from Nunavut, where there's not really big industry out there.
00:09:46.420 It's a very sparse population that mainly lives on government service benefits.
00:09:51.320 That's just the reality.
00:09:52.440 And I don't blame anybody up there.
00:09:54.380 It's the North. 0.74
00:09:55.580 It's the Arctic North.
00:09:57.500 It's hard to go and start a farm or start a tech firm up there.
00:10:00.560 So naturally, a lot of government services are required, but it's not somebody that you exactly want having heavy influence over policy.
00:10:08.860 It 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.
00:10:16.860 But she has since been the one to reject them for being not green enough.
00:10:21.080 But, like, really?
00:10:23.780 Carney's reaching out to these left-wing radicals in order to try and get a majority?
00:10:28.960 And it just makes them look foolish when they keep being rejected by Scott Anderson and now this NDP MP.
00:10:35.720 Laurie, or, like, this is not exactly looking like Carney is going to secure a majority.
00:10:42.580 Maybe he does.
00:10:43.420 I am siding against it at this point.
00:10:45.360 Even if he adds another MP, he's going to lose Freeland, so he'll be out of a majority very quickly.
00:10:50.360 Lee Erskine-Smith is probably a shoo-in to win the Ontario Liberal Party leadership, and he'll probably end up resigning.
00:10:56.640 And even while he's campaigning, he's not exactly in Parliament able to vote on stuff.
00:11:01.080 And then you'll have Stephen Gilbeau probably leave, Jonathan Wilkinson probably leave,
00:11:05.680 and there's even other names that have been thrown around of people who are at an older age who may just be leaving for health concerns
00:11:12.640 or because they're just sitting as backbenchers or low-level parliamentary secretaries and they don't really like their jobs anymore.
00:11:18.980 People like Melanie Jolie have been cited as individuals who may go.
00:11:25.200 Bill Blair may go.
00:11:26.400 There is a wide variety of individuals who, whether it's for stylistic reasons or for policy reasons,
00:11:32.900 don't like working with Carney and want to go.
00:11:35.600 The hilarious thing is, like, Stephen Gilbeau doesn't like Carney because of the memorandum of understanding he signed with Alberta's government
00:11:42.000 to potentially think about one day thinking really hard about building a pipeline.
00:11:46.800 It's never going to build a pipeline.
00:11:48.060 But even that MOU was too far for Stephen Gilbeau, who probably already had his own personal reasons for disliking Carney,
00:11:55.180 and he used that as, like, you know, the straw that broke the camel's back and now I'm going to have to go.
00:12:00.400 And although Carney is saying that he's going to replace these people with Liberal MPs,
00:12:04.160 obviously he's going to put up candidates there and fight hard for the ridings.
00:12:07.560 Some of these ridings can indeed be won by other parties.
00:12:12.200 Remember, the NDP leadership race is just wrapping up.
00:12:15.900 If they pick somebody who is not a current Liberal, not a current NDP MP,
00:12:21.340 although Heather McPherson, the MP for Edmonton Strathcone, is likely to win,
00:12:25.860 if it's Rob Ashton or Avi Lewis, whatever urban riding opens up first, they'll be running there.
00:12:32.860 As long as it's maybe not in Montreal, if they're not a strong enough French speaker,
00:12:37.100 you'll see Rob Ashton or Avi Lewis running in downtown Toronto riding to replace Freeland
00:12:41.740 or in Beaches East York to replace somebody like Nate Erskine-Smith.
00:12:46.740 So Mark Carney right now is, in fact, in an uncomfortable, awkward position.
00:12:52.260 He's not getting a majority, and all of these gaps opening up in his government
00:12:56.340 keep allowing more opportunities for his opposition,
00:12:59.500 which is unified on wanting a new election to trigger one.
00:13:03.000 And they get to now pick the best timing for themselves
00:13:05.340 because there's going to be a lot of opportunities in the year 2026
00:13:08.320 where Carney is not going to have the votes to protect himself.
00:13:11.840 But anyways, with that all being said, thank you guys for watching the show.
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00:13:32.940 Anyways, with that all being said, see you guys all later.
00:13:36.220 We'll see you guys later.
00:13:37.960 We'll see you guys later.