The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - November 22, 2024


David Eby bribes BC NDP MLAs to not cross the floor!


Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

168.43079

Word count

2,005

Sentence count

101


Summary

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

Wyatt Claypool talks about the new BC NDP government and how it's going to affect BC politics in the near future. He also talks about David Eby's cabinet and why he may not be able to hold on to this government for another term.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. It's been a while since I made a video on British Columbia provincial politics, but seeing as I am currently in Vancouver and Premier David Eby has just announced his new cabinet, there's no time better than right now to discuss how this is probably going to affect BC politics into at least the near future.
00:00:23.440 I think David Eby severely overplayed his hand. The man's not very good at bluffing, and I think the fact that pretty much every single BC NDP MLA was either made a minister or a legislative secretary or is like the house leader or whip, every single person has a role.
00:00:42.800 And that at least indicates to me that David Eby is not secure in thinking that he's going to be able to hold on to this government for a full four-year term.
00:00:53.500 Yes, the BC NDP have a majority, but it's a bare majority, just 47 seats, the exact number he needs for the majority.
00:01:01.200 And even then, he technically doesn't have a majority since the BC NDP are going to have to put up who the speaker is going to be, and so they'll only have 46 seats, so either the Greens are going to have to vote with them to pass stuff,
00:01:14.440 or they're going to have to go through the far more onerous process of having every single MLA vote, have it end in a tie, and then having the speaker break the ties in favor of the NDP.
00:01:25.640 Obviously, an NDP speaker is always going to pretty much break ties in favor of his own party, but it is more of a process to getting this stuff done.
00:01:35.620 Anyways, I want to get into some more of the issues here in just a second, but I do want to remind you guys, if you are not currently subscribed to this channel,
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00:01:56.800 But I just want to go to the announcement post that David Eby had made about the cabinet.
00:02:05.120 I think it's very defensive, the way he's presenting how he's doing things here.
00:02:10.120 So David Eby says,
00:02:11.160 I guess it kind of does reflect the diversity and experience of the province, because it seems like everyone and their dog is currently in David Eby's cabinet.
00:02:33.260 Think about it this way. When John Horgan had won the election back in 2020, I think he got in with like 55, 53, I'll check, how many people did he have?
00:02:45.860 Yeah, he had 57 people in his majority government in 2020. I'm not sure I was lowballing it there for a second.
00:02:53.020 He had 57 NDP MLAs in his government, and he had far fewer people in his cabinet and taking senior roles, legislative secretaries to whatever minister.
00:03:08.360 But Eby seems to be very insecure that his own people might abandon him.
00:03:12.820 So apparently he's like giving every single person a job. Doesn't matter who you are, you get to be the minister of like, you know, anti-racism.
00:03:23.600 You're the parliamentary secretary of like dog catching or whatever.
00:03:28.240 I read some of these and they are getting really thin about what this person actually does.
00:03:33.680 And guess what? Each one of these people, and I know it makes sense for ministers, but other roles get extra pay on top of their MLA pay.
00:03:41.640 And in fact, this cabinet, this NDP government is costing just in the senior roles alone, not staffers and or any of that other stuff.
00:03:51.900 With just the MLA's extra bonus pay alone, this government is going to cost BC residents more than $490,000 more than Horgan's government.
00:04:04.500 That's a little bit of a tell that David Eby is not going to do the slightly conservative things that he had promised during the campaign.
00:04:12.360 Because obviously Eby was extremely concerned that he was going to lose to the conservatives, which he basically barely won.
00:04:19.100 He only won by like 150 votes in like a couple of ridings.
00:04:22.240 And if those had swapped the other way, it would be a conservative government.
00:04:25.140 He barely won. And instead of holding to the promises that, yeah, maybe we'll cut the provincial carbon tax, maybe we'll do involuntary drug rehab, maybe we're going to try and lower taxes here or there.
00:04:39.280 We'll put in some affordability measures that aren't just the government throwing money at people.
00:04:43.040 Instead, he's already signaling to everybody that he's not going to do any of that because he can't even keep the spending lower in his own cabinet.
00:04:51.880 And I think the real motive is here and why it's such a big tell on David Eby's part, it's a big bluff, is because it seems like he thinks he has to bribe his own MLAs so that they don't cross the floor.
00:05:03.580 Because the idea is if you cross the floor, if you're a parliamentary secretary, you're going to lose a lot of money.
00:05:09.160 I do like this comment by Anthony Kosher, 42 out of 47 MLAs are either ministers or parliamentary secretaries.
00:05:20.080 I thought he was legislative secretary since it's the legislature, but I guess they're still parliamentary secretaries.
00:05:26.660 And even then, it's not that five don't have roles. The other five are like caucus chairs, party whips, and those people also get more money.
00:05:33.500 But Anthony Kosher goes on to say, it's like the Oprah Winfrey show. You get a fake job with an overinflated title and pay raise, and you get a fake job with an overinflated title and pay raise.
00:05:43.580 And that's absolutely correct. This is a bribe.
00:05:47.440 Some of the BC NDP MLAs who are going to have a lot of pushback from their own communities over the things that they're going to do over the next two to four years,
00:05:55.780 at least he can keep them in line by saying, if you leave, you're going to lose the extra $16,000, especially ministers or other more senior roles than just parliamentary secretary.
00:06:05.300 We're making $40,000 more than other people.
00:06:08.920 Actually, maybe you want to bring this up on screen right now, since it gives the breakdown of how much more of these people are paid.
00:06:17.100 And there are conservative roles that also pay more, but it's way more when you're actually on the government side of things.
00:06:22.460 This is how much more the additional salary is for each of those positions on top of the basic $119,000 income.
00:06:31.380 Premier makes $107,000 ministers, $59,000 minister of states, portfolios, whatnot, speakers, deputy speakers.
00:06:39.320 The parliamentary secretaries generally don't get paid as much more.
00:06:43.540 You get an extra $17,929.
00:06:45.860 But, you know, considering a lot of these people probably aren't qualified for much more than just sitting there and putting up their hand to vote, that's a lot of money to some of these people.
00:06:55.400 And so another thing we have to think about here is that, especially when it comes to BCNDP MLAs in Surrey, who have been lying to their communities saying, no, no, no, I'm not in favor of SOGI-123.
00:07:09.140 Oh, don't worry, I'm against the carbon text.
00:07:11.280 Oh, don't worry, I'm against all this socialist nonsense that David Eby has been talking about in the past.
00:07:16.300 I'm against the drug injection sites, that this money is probably just to keep them in line so that they don't cross the floor.
00:07:22.380 Because there are a lot of NDP MLAs in some areas like Surrey, who I would define as non-ideological.
00:07:30.180 They are not people who will really buy into the NDP program.
00:07:36.720 They're more so just community figures and you run for the party that can actually win.
00:07:40.360 And so what we have is a bunch of guys who are now being just their only real incentive to keep betraying their community, keep voting for SOGI, keep voting for drugs, keep voting for all like, you know, the soft on crime laws, is the fact that they might be getting an extra $17,000.
00:07:58.000 And again, that's actually good for the conservatives, that they know what kind of headspace Eby is in.
00:08:04.840 He is not confident.
00:08:06.080 He thinks that people might abandon him.
00:08:07.640 And I thought this was a very good comment from Macklin McCall, one of the newly elected BC conservative MLAs in Kelowna said,
00:08:16.620 David Eby and the BC NDP have spent more money than any previous government.
00:08:20.860 And their first order of business is to spend $1.9 million on pay increases for the BC NDP caucus.
00:08:27.100 A part of that is standard increase in pay like the premier's pay.
00:08:30.640 So it was basically a half a million more than Horgan would have spent.
00:08:34.720 So Horgan would have spent something around, you know, like $1.4 million or so, $1.3 million.
00:08:42.300 So he says, is spending $1.9 million more on pay increases for the BC NDP caucus with the seats 46 to 46 after the speaker is in place.
00:08:51.100 I wonder if...
00:08:52.240 Sorry, I'm messing this up a bit.
00:08:53.740 I always like when everything gets unsorted while I'm doing this.
00:09:01.920 He says, I wonder if this pay increases to stop any NDP from crossing the floor.
00:09:07.380 And I absolutely agree.
00:09:09.140 And in fact, I think a great strategy for the BC conservatives should be to put pressure on non-ideological, non-socialist, non-hyper far-left trade unionist members and say, you're going to keep betraying your community.
00:09:25.360 Well, we're going to keep running ads in your area, telling everyone every time you vote for SOGI, telling everyone every time you vote for the carbon tax, you vote for drug policies, safe supply, whatnot.
00:09:35.520 We're going to hammer you day in and day out, or you can cross the floor and actually stand with your community.
00:09:41.440 We're not saying just join the conservatives because we want your vote.
00:09:44.300 We want you to cross the floor so that you can survive the next election because your own community isn't on side with you.
00:09:51.080 Your own community, the South Asian community, especially in Surrey, very socially conservative, fiscally conservative.
00:09:57.240 They want the stuff to end.
00:09:58.640 And so I think that that is really the move for the BC conservatives is to keep the pressure up, keep hammering these people every day.
00:10:07.320 There's this kind of decorum rule in politics that generally if one MP or MLA from the current government goes on vacation, someone from the opposition will go on vacation too to keep the numbers about right.
00:10:21.460 I don't think the BC conservatives should be doing that.
00:10:23.900 Things are really bad right now in the province of BC.
00:10:27.620 They should just be there all day pushing for votes, fighting on the floor for things, and not letting any of these BC NDP MLAs go on vacation because they don't deserve it.
00:10:38.480 Yes, we can all go on vacation during the summer when the legislature is out of session.
00:10:42.560 But if it's in session, you're there fighting for your constituencies, and we'll see how long these self-interested BC NDP MLAs will actually last.
00:10:51.040 If they're supposed to be doing eight hour, you know, eight hour days, five days a week, then maybe they'll actually cry uncle and agree to maybe, you know, start voting against some of the more radical elements of the BC NDP's program.
00:11:03.300 That's it for me today, I guess.
00:11:06.060 But so really, I think if I was to sum it all up, yeah, the NDP is not fiscally conservative.
00:11:10.960 They're nervous about any other people leaving.
00:11:13.140 And I think there's a good chance that the BC conservatives can exploit this.
00:11:17.220 So that's it for me today, guys.
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00:11:22.660 And I'll see you guys all next time.
00:11:24.260 Thank you.