Carney undermining democracy because he fears a new election!
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Summary
Wyatt Claypool breaks down the latest polling numbers and discusses why Prime Minister Mark Carney does not want to face a new election. He also discusses the current makeup of the House of Commons and why he does not need another election.
Transcript
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Ahoy, everyone. Wyatt Claypool here, back again to break down some Canadian polling numbers.
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And today we will also be discussing the current makeup of the House of Commons
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and why Prime Minister Mark Carney does not want to face a new election
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and would rather do what he is currently doing and trying to entice Conservative MPs
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to cross the floor and join his Liberal government.
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You can already see in the chart right here, the numbers aren't fantastic for Mark Carney.
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They're not terrible, but him going into another election is a coin flip at best.
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And if anything, Paulia probably has the advantage because Trump has left the public's mind as a top issue
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and Carney hasn't been able to deliver on a lot of the promises he made during the last election.
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Yes, we are less than a year into this government,
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but still, a lot of the promises he made were things that he should have been able to achieve immediately
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or that should have shown up in the budget and absolutely did not.
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But before I get into it all, I just want to plug the fact that I have started a membership program for the channel.
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There are no real special benefits yet to joining the program.
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It just helps sustain the channel, making it so that the channel doesn't live or die
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depending on who the algorithm shows the videos to, because that's a big problem on YouTube.
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You'll see like super popular channels just hit the floor because the algorithm just stops recommending them ever
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and their videos just like absolutely make no money at all.
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And this just basically helps make all the months far more smooth and I don't need to be chasing viral topics.
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I can just talk about things that are interesting.
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I think the lower tier is like $4 and I think the higher tier is $10.
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For some reason, it displays the numbers differently to me than it does to the public
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based on some formula of like a YouTube cut or whatever.
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The second tier is in fact called the Ahoy Club because that's what my mind wanted to make it for some reason.
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It currently has the Conservative Party of Canada and Pierre Polyev at 41%.
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I didn't bother adding the PPC because they are at 1%.
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And I think that's even generous for them these days.
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The PPC is not going to exist in the next election.
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If a 2026 election triggers, do you think anyone's going to be significantly voting for the PPC?
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I think that 0.7% would be a bit of a tall order for them at this point.
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I think that they may not even actually exist as a party come that time.
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But since the last poll, the Conservatives have actually gone up by one point.
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The NDP had fallen and everyone else has been in a stagnant position.
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But you have to remember, the Liberals only barely won the last election by 8,000 votes.
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Yes, they won a significantly higher amount of seats than the Conservative Party did.
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But considering the fact that the Conservatives would have had a minority government if 8,000 votes in the closest riding had flipped,
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And the Conservatives, in fact, have a more efficient vote right now than the Liberals do.
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The Conservatives got really close despite losing by like 2.3% to the Liberals or like 2.1%.
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If it was a tie ballgame, 41-41, the Conservatives wouldn't have a majority,
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but they'd probably have around 150 to 160 seats, and the Liberals would have around 130 to 140.
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The thing about Carney compared to Trudeau is Trudeau, I didn't find, could get like restless.
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He doesn't like there being question marks around decisions he's making.
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He is used to just ordering something to be done, and it gets done.
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And so he is extremely uncomfortable in this minority government situation.
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And at the moment, after the floor crossing of Chris Dontremont and Michael Ma,
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two traitor Conservatives who apparently didn't actually believe in the things they were running on,
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the Liberal Party in their government currently has 171 seats.
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And how many seats do you need in order to have a majority government?
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He literally only needs one more Conservative, of which I think there is 139, 138 right now.
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Only one more has to leave in order for Carney to at least have a bare majority.
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Now, technically, he wouldn't have a majority still, but it can still work,
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because even if he has 172 Liberals, you end up taking one off who ends up becoming the Speaker.
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And then, although he can still technically vote with whatever the government does,
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It slows down the process of being able to actually pass stuff.
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And it means absolutely nobody can be away from Parliament at any time if you want to pass things.
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There's always been this pairing tradition in Parliament that if a Conservative or an NDP is away from Parliament,
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then a Liberal will also be away and agree not to vote on things.
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If this actually happens where there's 172 Liberals because another Conservative crosses,
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I think what Pollyov honestly should be doing is saying we are no longer pairing MPs.
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Your MPs are either always here or we're not sending someone on vacation just because you're guys on vacation.
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Our people are always going to be here and you guys don't get to leave.
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Because I think that would be a good way of trying to raise the temperature.
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Because we're in a situation where it's pure brinksmanship.
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the problem is, and this is why an election matters,
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although we're thinking, okay, it's any day now that another Conservative
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who probably should have never been a Conservative candidate could cross the floor
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and it's all over and the next election is not until 2029.
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The problem, though, is there is approximately five to six Liberal MPs planning on resigning soon.
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Now, are those people likely to have a Conservative take their place
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if they resign from office and there's a by-election?
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At the same time, there are some of the ridings out there that are actually pretty close,
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even if it would be something where the Bloc Québécois or the NDP would win.
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Most of them are safe ridings, but if one of them flips back Conservative,
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we are in a very different ballgame, especially if it was considered a safer Liberal seat and it flips blue,
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you're probably less likely to then leave the Conservative Party and join the Liberals
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knowing that the atmosphere of the country is moving more towards the Conservatives
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and by joining the other team, you're actually just shredding your chances at re-election.
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We even went over this when it came to Acadianapolis with the MP Chris Dantremont.
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I don't actually suspect that that guy's going to be able to win re-election as a Liberal.
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He was complaining, oh, I only won by 1% this last election.
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So apparently, the logical step was for him to join the party that lost that election
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and now he's ticked everybody off because even if you voted Liberal,
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I think it is kind of annoying as a non-partisan.
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Like, you know, you vote Liberal, but you're not really a hyper-partisan Liberal.
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And maybe he's not even exactly the guy they would want to vote Liberal for.
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They want somebody more progressive and Chris Dantremont isn't progressive enough.
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But in a second here, I want to show you a couple of the ridings that may be opening up
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because the MPs that they think may end up actually leaving are Nate Erskine-Smith,
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Jonathan Wilkinson, Chrystia Freeland, Stephen Gilbeau,
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and then we also have Melanie Jolie, Mark Miller, and a couple others that are kind of maybe kind of chances.
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I kind of consider a bunch of those number six because so many of these are guaranteed to leave.
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And I think with people like Jolie and Mark Miller and some of those other names that have been floating around,
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People know that they're disgruntled and they don't like this government that they're in,
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but that doesn't exactly mean that they're going to leave overnight to go pursue something else.
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Anyways, I'm going to clear the board and come back with some of that information
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regarding those ridings potentially up for a by-election.
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And now I want to emphasize when I show you a couple of these ridings
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that these are obviously pretty safe liberal ridings,
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by-election results can be wildly different from general election results,
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but I'm just highlighting two ridings that have not always been consistently liberal.
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The first is less of a chance of it actually being won by the Conservatives,
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but Nate Erskine-Smith's riding of Beech's East York has been won previously by an NDP
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in the election where the Liberals collapsed in 2011 and Jack Layton was on the rise.
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although I think if the Conservatives really threw everything at the wall in that riding,
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they could actually potentially win it if they just get their base out,
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because in by-elections, turnout can be as low as like 10%, 20%.
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So if you make sure that your base shows up like it's a general election,
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a federal general election, you could actually still pull off a win anyways.
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And now here is the one that's more interesting.
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It's Jonathan Wilkinson's riding of North Vancouver Capilano.
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Now, the boundaries have changed a little bit in this last election,
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but as you can see, the person who held the riding before Jonathan Wilkinson
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was conservative Andrew Saxton, and the boundaries really haven't moved that much.
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That's why they've just kind of slightly relabeled what the ridings were before and what it is now.
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Before Andrew Saxton, it was Don Bell, and before Don Bell,
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it was Ted White for Reform, Alliance, and the Conservatives.
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So that is, in fact, a fairly old-school conservative riding that has just gone liberal more recently.
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Now, did he win by a pretty decisive margin in this last election?
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That doesn't really matter, though, because the Conservatives probably eyed up that riding,
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said Jonathan Wilkinson is an incumbent, he's going to have a big war chest,
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and we already have enough ridings that we're fighting over anyways,
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just throw some random candidate in there, be done with it,
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give him, like, you know, $10,000, like $45,000, $50,000,
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just some small amount of money compared to other candidates,
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and let him lose gracefully or something like that.
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In a by-election scenario, when the incumbent is gone,
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especially when your own base just put you into office
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and they don't exactly want to have to show up for your replacement,
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then you actually have the ability to try and tap into those old conservative alliance
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Stephen Gilbeau is not going to sit as a backbencher until 2029.
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You're not going to have Chrystia Freeland sitting around,
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especially since she has to go and take her job in Oxford, England in the summer,
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and I don't think she's going to resign and then fly out there to start working right away.
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She'll probably want some time with her family before she actually has to start her new gig.
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has to take over or has to run for the Ontario Liberal leadership,
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so that's something that he can't really let drag on too long.
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And Jonathan Wilkinson wants to be Canada's High Commissioner to the UK,
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I forget the name of the guy who's currently at,
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but the guy who currently has that job is like 83, 84,
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so naturally he can't wait another three or four years
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and just make sure that that person hangs on for it forever.
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Jonathan Wilkinson is going to have to take that job fairly soon.
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So even if, in a scenario where Mark Carney gets another conservative to cross the floor,
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There are ways for the Conservatives to try and beat the Liberals in a by-election.
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And some of these other by-elections where Conservatives have no chance,
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yes, just give all your resources over to the Bloc Quebecois.
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because in Montreal, the Conservative Party is literally a fourth-place party.
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It goes Liberal, Bloc, NDP, and Conservatives at usually below 10% of the vote.
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and Scarborough is like, you know, Scarborough Southwest, his riding.
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No, but again, it's one of those ones where if you just throw enough stuff at the wall
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in a by-election and you really rip the doors off the thing,
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So we are in what I would consider to be a very kind of like dreary time in Canadian politics.
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The fact that we're just sitting here knowing that Conservatives may just leave
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and join the Liberal Party for no reason in particular,
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that they want the bigger title, that they want, you know, to be the champion or something like that.
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They want all the fanfare of having been the guy to cross the floor
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At the same time, we have to focus on the silver lining
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of what we can actually do to still fight back,
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because I've heard some Conservatives throwing in the towel and saying,
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well, it's probably going to be an election in 2029,
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because it's inevitable someone's going to cross.
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And even if they do, there are ways of actually fighting back and winning anyways.
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I want them to throw every single thing they can at this riding,
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partner with every single organization that you can to get voters out there,
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and you may actually be able to pull off an upset.
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I just wanted to do that overview of the situation.
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and that's why he's trying to get a majority any way he can,
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and that involves even potentially just cheating democracy
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and trying to get people who are obviously elected as Conservatives
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to just change their colors for no particular reason.