The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - May 28, 2025


Carney’s throne speech was an embarrassment to the crown


Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

159.3382

Word count

1,894

Sentence count

126


Summary

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

Wyatt Claypool breaks down the Queen s Throne Speech and why it was a terrible idea. He also explains why the King should have been the one to deliver the speech, and why we should have had a British tourist read it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. Before I get into the main topic of this video today, I just gotta say, isn't it absolutely insane that it is currently late May in 2025, and this is the first time Canada's Parliament has been brought into sitting during the entire year so far.
00:00:21.320 We're almost halfway done the year, and we are only getting our representatives back into the House Chambers now.
00:00:30.000 Whatever, I digress. So yesterday was the throne speech that opened Parliament back up, and right off the bat, I am going to say Mark Carney was smart, it was politically smart, to have King Charles deliver the speech.
00:00:45.080 Now also, it was very politically stupid for him to have King Charles deliver this particular speech.
00:00:52.760 This is a speech the Governor General should be delivering. It's partisan, it's really kind of bureaucratic and tepid, and you have King Charles reading it, makes it just seem like all the cheaper.
00:01:06.840 Having someone like that, the literal King reading this thing, makes it seem kind of dumb?
00:01:12.480 Why would you have him show up here and just start listing off liberal partisan priorities?
00:01:18.240 Like, let's get to the worst part of this speech right off the bat here, which is King Charles doing effectively a land acknowledgement.
00:01:26.900 I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the unceded territory of the Algonquin and the Shinabeg people.
00:01:37.700 This land acknowledgement is a recognition of shared history as a nation.
00:01:43.280 While continuing to deepen my own understanding, it is my great hope that in each of your communities, and collectively as a country, a path is found toward truth and reconciliation in both word and deed.
00:02:01.940 Well, that's not going to happen anytime soon, because apparently it's still considered bad to point out things like the Kamloops grave hoax is in fact a hoax.
00:02:12.360 We always end up skipping out on the truth part, and then we want to cut over to the reconciliation part.
00:02:17.240 But there's never really true reconciliation, because you always have to stay on the treadmill of always having to do something extra.
00:02:22.860 But let's just digest that for a second.
00:02:25.760 We had the King of Canada, I know he is the King of England, but he's also the King of Canada, comes and talks about unceded territory.
00:02:36.020 Territory that is not really ours.
00:02:38.760 Why would you have King Charles read this pablum?
00:02:43.200 Maybe he believes it and he wanted to read it, but that's just boo on him.
00:02:47.900 Don't read that.
00:02:48.940 It's stupid.
00:02:49.820 It's so dumb that we're basically undermining Canada's sovereignty in a speech from the King.
00:02:57.300 Like, here's a 20-second clip, then I'm going to get to something a bit longer.
00:03:01.560 The whole speech just did not come off like something again, as I'm saying, that the King should be reading.
00:03:07.840 Listen to this part.
00:03:08.560 Yet this moment is also an incredible opportunity.
00:03:12.700 An opportunity for renewal.
00:03:15.820 An opportunity to think big and to act bigger.
00:03:19.820 An opportunity for Canada to embark on the largest transformation of its economy since the Second World War.
00:03:29.300 Like, the thing is, it's so strange having someone who doesn't live in Canada.
00:03:33.800 They visit Canada once in a while reading this thing.
00:03:38.320 Let's listen again.
00:03:39.360 Here's a longer clip that I think makes my point quite well here.
00:03:43.020 Many Canadians are feeling anxious and worried about the drastically changing world around them.
00:03:52.980 Fundamental change is always unsettling.
00:03:55.660 Yet this moment is also an incredible opportunity.
00:04:01.820 An opportunity for...
00:04:03.140 An opportunity for...
00:04:07.140 Act bigger.
00:04:11.820 Embark on the largest transformation of its economy since the Second World War.
00:04:17.060 The government is guided by its conviction that the economy is only truly strong when it serves everyone.
00:04:28.540 Many Canadians are struggling to get ahead.
00:04:32.620 The government is responding, reducing middle class taxes and saving two income families up to $840 a year.
00:04:42.540 That's what I mean.
00:04:43.640 He's like now listing specific like promises and it's weird to have him getting up here and being like,
00:04:51.740 they're going to save the average middle class family $840.
00:04:57.180 We're going to build modular homes.
00:05:00.320 We're going to make our streets safer.
00:05:03.480 It's like, the thing is, it's so...
00:05:05.420 It feels like a British tourist showed up and we just gave them a script.
00:05:10.620 It will cut the GST on homes at or under $1 million for first-time homebuyers.
00:05:19.140 Delivering savings of up to $50,000.
00:05:23.560 And it will lower the GST on homes between $1 million and $1.5 million.
00:05:31.160 Even with him sitting there with it in his hands, it looks like, again, we had a British tourist show up and we just stuck a panful in his hand.
00:05:39.740 He said, can you read that for us?
00:05:41.660 And he's just like, well, they're going to reduce taxes on homes, first-time homebuyers.
00:05:47.620 They're going to have $50,000, say $50,000 on first home under $1 million.
00:05:53.080 So they have this other plan for...
00:05:57.400 It's like, what...
00:05:58.220 Again, I'm going to keep going back to it.
00:06:00.360 Why are we having the king read this?
00:06:03.100 All the people who are like pro-monarchy, if you're cheering this thing on, you're undermining the crown in general.
00:06:10.380 This looks stupid.
00:06:15.080 The government will protect the programs that are already saving families.
00:06:22.440 Thousands of dollars every year.
00:06:26.240 Apparently, he can actually speak French if he's swapped into that.
00:06:28.800 I give him credit.
00:06:30.400 The government has recently expanded the Canadian dental care plan.
00:06:35.400 Oh my goodness.
00:06:36.620 The king is having to show up and in French talk about the dental care plan.
00:06:41.060 Have him do something ceremonial.
00:06:43.800 Like, have him make a speech after the governor general about why government's important and why we all need to be unified and whatnot.
00:06:50.560 And yeah, like, was the speech necessarily terrible?
00:06:54.260 No, but it should have been delivered by the governor general.
00:06:57.420 Is it smart politics by Mark Carney for bringing the king and associating himself with the monarchy, which especially a lot of eastern Canadians are very warm to?
00:07:06.360 Yeah, it is smart.
00:07:07.520 At the same time, I think over time, a lot of people are not exactly going to be looking back on the speech very fondly, especially if the liberals fail to deliver a bunch of promises.
00:07:18.260 You just have the king read a bunch of lies that you didn't want to have to read yourself.
00:07:22.860 You didn't want to have to put your own name to.
00:07:24.460 So Charles is saying the government's going to do this, not us.
00:07:28.020 Not that they would obviously actually try and present it that way.
00:07:30.420 But the whole thing just seems very hollow.
00:07:33.640 And like, again, it's a show.
00:07:35.240 It's just trying to make them, they're just trying to make themselves seem, I don't even know what you'd say about it, like more patriotic because we brought the king in.
00:07:45.260 But here's Pierre Polievre's response to the speech.
00:07:48.920 Melissa Lansman, we join today in thanking His Majesty for coming to Canada and delivering the throne speech, reinforcing our ancient great British liberties, a parliamentary system that goes back 800 years.
00:08:04.640 A system that has served Canada well and has been the foundation of what I love to call the Canadian promise that anyone who works hard gets a great life in a nice, affordable house on a safe street.
00:08:17.320 And that's kind of the effect that I think Carney's like meant to have.
00:08:20.800 It's harder to criticize the speech when it's the king doing it if you're in parliament and frankly, you come from circles that are very pro-monarchy.
00:08:28.420 Like, here's even the NDP reacting to it, who I always thought was supposed to be like the anti-monarchy party.
00:08:35.940 Good afternoon.
00:08:36.920 Bonjour tout le monde.
00:08:38.960 I've had a chance to review the throne speech and I have some preliminary remarks to make about it today.
00:08:45.940 I must say that there's nothing really new in the throne speech.
00:08:49.420 It's essentially the policies that liberals have announced for the past several months and broad platitudes.
00:08:55.900 And see, this is the problem.
00:08:58.800 So I do give Don Davies credit that he's not doing the I'm thanking the king for coming and doing the speech thing.
00:09:04.280 Maybe he'll get to that later.
00:09:05.640 But like, now you're having, maybe this is again the intention of Mark Carney.
00:09:10.500 Now it's the NDP attacking the king for delivering a speech.
00:09:14.140 Well, yeah, it's a partisan speech.
00:09:15.540 You guys gave him a hacky partisan speech he had to read.
00:09:18.140 And so naturally, he's going to be the messenger that people are going to shoot when they think it's full of platitudes.
00:09:23.460 Like, obviously, I don't think an NDP speech would be any better.
00:09:26.900 It would just be whatever the liberal said plus extra dollar signs.
00:09:30.660 I will say there are some positive indications in that throne speech that new Democrats can support.
00:09:36.800 For example, we have long been supporters of building a strong, independent Canadian economy
00:09:44.200 and supporting Canadian companies making Canadian goods and services and becoming champions on the global stage,
00:09:52.300 creating good jobs here at home.
00:09:54.440 And we also are very much in favor of building a diversified trade relationship
00:09:59.640 so that Canada can take better advantage of exporting our goods and services with reliable trade partners
00:10:06.900 and reducing our reliance on the United States.
00:10:10.620 We also are also pleased to see a commitment to promote more internal trade between Canadian provinces and territories.
00:10:20.920 Okay, well, he's just going to list everything, apparently, that he likes in that.
00:10:25.840 But I got to give him, at least he's not flipping Jagmeet Singh.
00:10:28.800 At least the new NDP leader, Don Davies, is not actually, like, somehow worse.
00:10:35.060 Like, he's not a worse politician than Jagmeet Singh, which is very, very difficult to pull off.
00:10:41.100 But Jagmeet Singh somehow achieved it being, like, easily the most politically incompetent person in Canadian history.
00:10:46.780 But that should probably be it for me today, guys.
00:10:50.000 I just wanted to do that cursory kind of overview.
00:10:52.680 There really wasn't much to cover in terms of substance.
00:10:55.900 In the speech, there was just the snafus of having him read a, you know, a land acknowledgement
00:11:01.160 and then in the same speech basically just give out partisan liberal drivel that makes him seem partisan.
00:11:08.020 When, again, the whole point is you have a governor general do it
00:11:10.460 because nobody has love and affection for the governor general.
00:11:13.240 Let them do the partisan speech.
00:11:14.780 Don't make it the king.
00:11:15.820 Like, what else are you going to do?
00:11:17.740 Have, like, Pirapaliev's mother read it?
00:11:19.780 Like, the thing is that it doesn't work.
00:11:21.920 It feels like it's wrong for this person to be having to read this.
00:11:25.520 But that's, I guess, that's it for me today, guys.
00:11:28.720 It should be a crazy day here in Victoria.
00:11:30.620 That's why I'm having to dress up every day.
00:11:32.060 I got to go to the legislature and I can't exactly be wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt.
00:11:36.400 But if you guys like this video, make sure to drop a like on the video,
00:11:40.400 subscribe to the channel if you're not yet a subscriber,
00:11:42.360 and then leave a comment on what you thought about the king's speech.
00:11:46.020 I always like to go through and read what people also thought about the same events that I covered.
00:11:50.960 And so with that, I'll see you guys later.