The Battle River Crowfoot by-election ballot length, Mark Carney and the Liberals, and the post-election debacle involving the Longest Ballot Committee, are all discussed today on the show. Also, we talk about the Canadian government's response to Donald Trump's new trade deal with the United States.
00:00:00.000Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. I want to go over a few stories today on the show with you guys, but I want to start off with the most shocking one of them all, which is that, my goodness, I actually have good lighting right now.
00:00:14.440It's like I'm a real person. I actually invested in something and it got better. Who would have guessed? And we even now have a whiteboard that I will be using in the future when we're talking about stats and polling. I think that's going to be fun.
00:00:29.300But today on the show, the actual main issues are again the Battle River Crowfoot by-election ballot length, as well as Mark Carney and the Liberals, both online Liberal defenders as well as the Liberal Party, starting to front-run the idea they are not going to be getting a trade deal signed with Donald Trump and the Americans on August 1st.
00:00:51.360It's almost like it was a stupid thing for them to promise, considering that they were not actually willing to negotiate fully with the Americans.
00:01:00.000Now, obviously, I don't want Canada to have a tariff applied to its imports into the United States. At the same time, we have to live in reality. We cannot say, I don't like that Donald Trump put a tariff on us. That's not a position.
00:01:14.300That's an emotional reaction to something that happened out of our control. We can only control things that are at our fingertips in this country.
00:01:23.620And Mark Carney and the Liberals are effectively only sitting down with the Americans to say, will you take the tariffs off and then nothing else?
00:01:31.040That's because they're not willing to put up supply management on the table as something they are willing to get rid of or at least soften in order for the Americans to remove tariffs on their side.
00:01:41.260We're going to be getting that story later. People are trying to make excuses for the Liberals, online Liberal activists saying, actually, it's not that bad if we have a 35% tariff applied to us. It's silly.
00:01:51.240So let's start off with our first story. By the way, reminder, like this video, subscribe if you're not a subscriber, as well as leave a comment on what you think.
00:02:01.160This is the Battle River Crowfoot ballot. It's not the literal ballot, but it's the people registered as candidates.
00:02:09.620And as we see, the number of candidates that are being put forward by this Thomas person have increased drastically.
00:02:17.400Let's actually just look up how many candidates right now have Thomas as their official agent.
00:02:24.380Now, I just command F'd it, so I shouldn't be picking up anyone but the guy who is the registered agent because he has a very specific spelling.
00:02:31.460It's not T-H-O-M-A-S Thomas. It's just T-O-M-A-S Thomas. It's like a Polish version.
00:02:37.340And there are currently 199 candidates who Thomas is the official agent for.
00:02:47.400This is not Democratic, but let's take a trip down the ballot to see just how many names are on this thing.
00:02:57.200We're still going. We are still going.
00:10:55.760And I think that I've said this in another video.
00:10:57.920This is becoming me repeating things I said like three weeks ago, two weeks ago, and like just a few days ago all in one video.
00:11:04.000I think back in the day, like the 1970s, 1960s, 1980s, there was a lot more seriousness around elections where if you put your name on a ballot, even not as a party candidate, even as an independent, there was a little bit of a moment where people were like, oh, what's he all about?
00:11:23.520Why did he put his name on the ballot as an independent?
00:11:26.260What idea does he have that he thinks is not being represented right now?
00:11:29.380Now, if you put your name on the ballot as an independent, people probably think you're a loon or a prankster because people have cheapened what it means to run for election.
00:11:38.820Just putting your name on a ballot every single time.
00:11:41.300There's that guy, I think, John or John the Machine Turmel, and all he does is puts his name on ballots for every single election to get a Guinness Book of World Records achievement because he's been on like 122 ballots or whatever for different elections.
00:12:40.680It's probably not going to end up being that long, but the pleb is right that the ballot in Polyev's former riding of Carleton that was 91 names long was a meter long.
00:12:53.040And so a ballot that's 208 names long currently and could expand even further, yeah, if you printed it the same way, the thing would be over two meters long.
00:13:05.280And, yeah, it would be the size of Shaquille O'Neal.
00:13:08.000The difference, though, is now, because it's gotten so bad, Elections Canada, although they're typically mandated to make the names all a standardized size that's legible to the average Canadian,
00:13:18.920they may either have to drastically lower the font size in order to make it fit all on that Carleton-sized ballot, but with even more names,
00:13:29.160or what Ryan at Northern Perspectives has said, which may be the best way of doing it, because most people are just going to be voting for Polyev.
00:13:35.640It's going to be Polyev, the Liberal, the NDP, the PPC, the Green, the Libertarian, or Bonnie Crickley.
00:13:42.600Those are basically the only candidates anyone's even thinking of voting for.
00:13:45.640Maybe there's a few Grant Abraham, United, Canada Party voters, but for the most part, you could basically turn the ballot into, like, eight names,
00:13:52.720and you'd pretty much capture 99.9% of who people are voting for.
00:13:57.200But what they may do, and this is why I'm saying it might be a good way of doing it, people might just be able to write down the names.
00:14:02.180Because what maybe you can do is you can ask for a sheet of some of the names where you know your candidate's on if you need to copy it down, and that would be it.
00:14:10.720If you don't know how to spell their names, you know, some people don't have the easiest names to spell compared to, like, a Bob Smith, you know,
00:14:16.820if your name is, like, the Thomas Hugh Czech guy, or I don't know how to pronounce his last name.
00:14:22.320Yeah, that could be a little tougher, but that may be the thing we need to do at this point.
00:14:26.800And then ban these people, fine them, they're obviously running what effectively acts like a party, but also is acting as an unregistered third party,
00:14:35.760but is also, again, basically violating the law by getting people signed forms where they don't even know who the candidate is, and they're lying to you.
00:15:22.400He was the economic advisor to former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, not for five minutes, not for five months, not for a year, for five years.
00:15:32.360Since 2020, up until Trudeau stepped down, Mark Carney was advising Justin Trudeau on finance and economic policy.
00:15:39.860And now Canada has a household debt rate or household debt as a share of GDP of 103%.
00:15:47.780All of the household debt in Canada combined is 103% of our GDP.
00:17:34.320And when Mark Carney kept saying meaningless things like that, you'd hope the average person would catch on and think, he doesn't have anything.
00:17:40.800Even some of the other people he was running against in the fake liberal leadership election actually had some ideas.
00:17:47.840Maybe not good ideas, but they actually detailed out what they would specifically do if they became prime minister.
00:17:53.540Maybe Mark Carney was smart because he played coy and said absolutely nothing about what he would do.
00:18:14.920Here we see Prime Minister Mark Carney said Monday trade negotiations with the U.S. are an intense phase ahead of Friday's deadline to reach an agreement.
00:18:24.160Quote, Canadians don't deserve the uncertainty that's been thrust upon them.
00:18:28.160They want the right kind of resolution.
00:18:29.740They want a deal that makes sense for Canada, Carney said during a news conference in Prince Country PEI.
00:18:36.780Quote, the negotiations are in a tense phase.
00:18:44.240Here he goes on to say, quote, we have really had a lot of luck with, oh, this is what Trump says.
00:18:49.620We haven't had really had a lot of luck with Canada, Trump told reporters Friday outside the White House in response to a question about the state of tariff talks with U.S. trade partners.
00:18:58.000Quote, I think Canada could be one where there's just a tariff, not really a negotiation.
00:19:04.180And again, people can moan, people can complain that the tariffs from the U.S. are unfair.
00:19:11.480I even have liberals in the comments of these videos saying, well, Wyatt, you're Maple, Mega, whatever, you're supporting Trump's tariffs.
00:19:21.880Go to the White House and tell him what for?
00:19:24.060Or are we going to have an actual coherent, mature trade position on what we are willing to do if they do something back?
00:19:32.520We're not putting some stuff on the table to be sacrificed and nothing happens.
00:19:36.760We would be saying, hey, we will get rid of the supply management system or we will heavily soften the rules if you lower tariffs.
00:19:43.740And now we have liberals actively saying, well, it wouldn't be that bad if we had a tariff placed on us.
00:19:50.220I'm going to bring up a tweet I made earlier today because it was just, I think I at least put it in a succinct manner on why this is actually kind of a big deal as much as people are trying to pretend otherwise.
00:20:00.640I'll first start off with what one of these liberals was saying, trying to defend the current state of play with the U.S.
00:20:10.680Basically saying, if tariffs are put on us, no biggie.
00:20:14.280Don't blame Mark Carney because it actually doesn't hurt us that bad.
00:20:17.820This Robert Glasgow person says, this is disingenuous for two reasons.
00:20:23.240One, the 50% steel and aluminum applies to everyone.
00:20:27.100He's saying that the aluminum and steel tariffs the U.S. has are applied to everybody.
00:20:34.100And he's just responding to Kevin Wong, the former MP, pointing out that right now Canada is going to end up with a much higher tariff than countries overseas do.
00:20:44.820But Robert Glasgow in his second point says, two, once proper preferential rates are claimed, you're looking at about 60 to 80% of trade going to be USMCA compliant.
00:20:55.9202024 levels are massively understated for administrative reasons.
00:21:34.980Because U.S. firms that produce steel in Pittsburgh don't have to pay for it.
00:21:40.040And so U.S. firms seeing a massive spike in the cost of steel and aluminum are going to start basically biting the bullet and buying more expensive U.S. steel because it's at least still cheaper than buying cheaper Canadian steel that has a massive tariff placed on it.
00:21:57.320Saying it applies to everybody does not explicate, I think that's the right word, Mark Carney from actually getting a deal done that gets us out of this nonsense.
00:22:06.060But on the other point, it's like, yeah, okay, a lot of things are going to be exempt under USMCA.
00:22:33.840Can we stop trying to convince Canadians this is okay?
00:22:36.620I just went on to say, also, 85% to 90% of exports are USMCA compliant in part because we are trying to adapt to the tariffs.
00:22:45.720In 2024, only 35% of goods were USMCA compliant since the added cost of border duties was less than what it would cost to become fully compliant with USMCA regulations.
00:22:56.680Now companies are eating the regulatory costs to dodge the tariffs.
00:23:00.400So this Glasgow guy, Robert Glasgow, can say all day, well, you know, it's undercounted in 2024.
00:23:06.800Okay, let's pretend the 35% USMCA compliance rate is an overcount.
00:23:21.420Is it okay now that we're going to have a 35% tariff applied to us because Carney will not touch supply management?
00:23:28.540And by the way, even as goods are coming under compliance, they're only doing so to dodge the tariffs.
00:23:36.460It costs money to fall in line with regulatory regimes like the USMCA.
00:23:41.140Hey, there's duties on non-USMCA goods right now.
00:23:44.740But before Trump implemented the 15, 20% tariff that he's now going to try up to 35%, the thing is that you still had to pay a small tariff on things that were not USMCA compliant.
00:23:56.780That would include, you know, if you were producing textiles or T-shirts that were not made in Canada.
00:24:02.260If they were shipped into Canada and then shipped into the US, you'd have to pay a tariff on that of, you know, like 10% or whatever.
00:24:07.740You could get out of it if your, you know, your cotton or your wool or your other materials were produced in a USMCA country.
00:24:19.140Or, and it would have to be produced here and the materials would have to be made here.
00:24:23.340A car, an automobile would, if it was made 60 to 70% within Canada, the US, or Mexico, it would also be exempt of tariffs under that plan.
00:24:34.380So with a lot of products now becoming USMCA compliant, that one probably means some companies just stop shipping into the US so they, because they just couldn't do it anymore.
00:24:45.520Or what it is, is that they're looking at the 35% rate and then they're looking at the cost of doing all the extra paperwork, trying to source materials from within the country and all this other stuff.
00:24:57.240And they're seeing that as the lower cost option.
00:24:59.800That doesn't mean it's a good option. That doesn't mean it's good for Canada and especially the Canadian consumer.
00:25:05.240It's just the slightly less bad way of doing this.
00:25:08.760In fact, I'd rather push that we have free trade and you can trade stuff into America freely,
00:25:13.720as long as it's maybe not coming from a hostile third country like China or Iran or somewhere like that.
00:25:20.720That's fine with me, but I'd like free trade.
00:25:22.820But everyone pretending like it's actually not that bad because it's only applying to like 15% of our products.
00:25:30.820Even if those products all become USMCA compliant, it still means the products are going up in cost because it costs more to become compliant.
00:25:40.380Because regulations also add cost to products, not just taxes.
00:25:52.720I want to jump over to Mark Carney's social media account because at the time that he's saying things are intense and they're very complex.
00:26:00.240These negotiations, they're so difficult.
00:26:02.920You walk in there and you assume you're just going to go and shake the guy's hand and say, let's have a deal.
00:26:07.960And it turns out people have stipulations and demands.
00:26:46.920But this ain't exactly the big achievement you want to be ballyhooing right now when it's July 28th and the deadline for the trade deal is August 1st.
00:26:57.580Maybe they pull a rabbit out of the hat.
00:26:59.220Maybe they finally do slash supply management at the end of the day.
00:27:01.920Maybe Trump gets cold feet and it's all been a negotiating tactic from Mark Carney that he's going to sit there stoically not doing anything.
00:27:08.920And Trump's going to be like, I give in.
00:27:21.280He usually waits a couple months, tries to get a win, and then he moves on.
00:27:25.920And even if he just moves on without us doing anything, we still ended up having our businesses get really damaged for two months in the year 2025.
00:27:33.120But going down, it's a lot of stuff where he's like, effective August 1st, we're cutting tolls on the Confederation Bridge from $50 to $20 and cutting the fares on the interprovincial ferries in half in Atlantic Canada.
00:27:47.280Canada's new government is bringing down costs and building one strong Canadian economy.
00:27:51.540Except British Columbia is now going to have CCP-built ferries because this is actually an area where I agree with David Eby on.
00:27:58.580It's kind of silly that British Columbia, like Alberta, now actually sends transfer payments to other provinces.
00:28:05.060I know people say they don't actually send transfer payments.
00:28:07.280It's just taking another portion of federal taxes.
00:28:11.400That BC is sending transfer payments to the federal government, but the federal government doesn't actually fund the ferry system in BC, but they do fund the ferry system in the Maritimes that put $0 towards their own ferry system.
00:28:23.220Or I think they do put money towards it, but the whole point is that they get lots more money in transfers, and then the federal government also sponsors the ferry system.
00:28:34.680Here's him announcing it, cutting costs.
00:28:37.100Look, he's hanging out with some guy from whatever, New Brunswick.
00:28:42.340I don't know why he needs to go to a heritage site or whatever and talk to reenactors.
00:28:51.220Apparently, this is deeply necessary for getting a deal with Donald Trump.
00:28:54.520He's very impressed that he's making smoothies in the Northwest Territories in a place that he used to grow up in.
00:29:04.560I wish there was just seriousness from the government.
00:29:07.040And I don't like the friendly fire from some more moderate conservative saying, you shouldn't be saying that, like, you should just be sitting around criticizing Trump all the time.
00:29:23.260We are an economy less than a tenth of the size in the United States, even though we should be bigger than the tenth because we have more than the tenth of their population.
00:29:34.760We do not have the position to fight back.
00:29:37.920I've said it before, but Carney in the election made it sound like he was going to ride down to Washington, D.C. in an Abrams tank, jump out of it, and just slap Trump across the face while standing on the turd of the tank.
00:29:51.900There's no, like, pounding on the desk saying, I'm Mark Carney, hear me roar.
00:29:56.360You know, I know how to deal with men like Donald Trump.
00:29:58.880No, you don't, because apparently you're not negotiating.
00:30:00.960By the way, getting rid of supply management would be good for Canada in general, even without doing anything else, because it's actually restricting the agricultural sectors in other provinces.
00:30:11.860It buoys the sectors in Quebec and Ontario, making them less efficient, because when you're farming on quota, you can afford to be more inefficient.
00:30:20.260But in Alberta, where 12% of the population is, there's only 7% of the quota given to it.
00:30:28.140Different, more favorite states have higher amounts of wheat that they have to hand into the government, and other ones don't have to hand as much over.
00:30:34.800So some areas do really well, and some areas are basically forced into poverty.
00:30:39.360So that should be it for me today, guys, with this video.
00:30:45.220I'm probably going to be back later on with reviews of some of the other stuff the Liberal Party is doing.
00:30:50.540I also want to make more videos comparing Pierre Polyev and Mark Carney's approval rating.
00:30:56.480There's this interesting abacus data study where they were going over what different people think about Mark Carney.
00:31:03.040You know, what qualities they value in a leader, and do they think Mark Carney has one of those values?
00:31:08.400It was telling that, like, the lowest value that people rated Mark Carney is having is the ability to change his mind if proven wrong on a policy.
00:31:17.760Even 22% of Liberals actually agree that they don't think that Mark Carney changes his mind easily when presented with new evidence.
00:31:26.240And that's at a time when he has a honeymoon bump to his approval.
00:31:31.560He just became Prime Minister, he's up against Trump, so a lot of people are willing to think nice things about the guy.
00:31:37.180But still, nearly a quarter of Liberals are saying, yeah, if he's wrong about something, he's not going to admit it or change his mind.
00:31:43.860And I think that's what we've effectively seen on pipelines.
00:31:46.680He made some noises about how he may want to prove a pipeline, but he really just set up the social infrastructure for somebody else to say no for himself.
00:31:54.240And then he can say, oh, someone said no, I guess we can't do it, and then he runs away.
00:32:01.940They say yes on the surface, but they say, well, but the whole pipeline has to be privately funded, even though the government has made doing something a complete boondoggle.
00:32:10.200Nobody would ever put private money into this because the government constantly pulls the rug out from under your feet.
00:32:15.540So you'd have to have certain government guarantees for people to put money in.
00:32:19.060Or you'll have Wab Canu saying, no, we need to consult with First Nations bands first.
00:32:22.740And then Carney says the same thing as Wab, and then he also says, oh, but we also are going to do the same environmental inspections.
00:32:28.440So basically, Bill C-5 doesn't mean anything.
00:32:31.160The whole Get Stuff Done Act, which is what I call it, is not actually meant to get stuff done.
00:32:35.580It's meant to pretend he wants to get stuff done while never getting stuff done.
00:32:39.040But this is why the Conservatives voted with the Liberals for it, because they were giving Mark Carney the keys and saying, then do it.