The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - January 11, 2025


David Eby doesn't want to look in BC election irregularities - Conservatives push inquiry


Episode Stats

Length

12 minutes

Words per Minute

178.2233

Word Count

2,255

Sentence Count

116


Summary

British Columbia Premier David Eby has come out to mock the BC Tories for calling for an inquiry into election irregularities in the 2024 BC election. This is ironic since Eby was the first politician in BC to call for a review of election procedures. Now that the inquiry has teeth and could uncover enough problems that might require a new election, and Gary Begg loses his seat, now it's all very nasty and terrible that the Conservatives are looking into this.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. So British Columbia Premier David Eby has come out to try and mock the
00:00:06.820 BC Conservatives and their leader John Rustad for calling for an inquiry into election irregularities
00:00:12.820 in the 2024 BC provincial election. This is all very hypocritical and ironic on David Eby's part
00:00:20.960 since he was literally the first politician in BC to call for a review of election procedures
00:00:27.320 because of all the issues that there were in the provincial election. They were finding ballot
00:00:32.640 boxes like a week and a half after the voting. They were having ballots go missing. Random ballots
00:00:37.960 didn't actually get counted the first time. It was a mess. David Eby understood it. But now that he
00:00:44.280 realizes that there's enough irregularities in the riding of Surrey Guilford that could actually upend
00:00:50.060 the election and require a new by-election, suddenly David Eby is literally just calling what Rustad
00:00:56.720 and Hanvir Randhawa, the BC Conservative candidate from Surrey Guilford, what they're doing is now
00:01:02.140 cringe. It wasn't cringe when Eby was asking for the inquiry, but now that the inquiry has teeth and
00:01:09.200 could actually uncover enough problems that might require a new election and Gary Begg loses his seat,
00:01:15.680 now it's all very nasty and terrible that the Conservatives are looking into this.
00:01:20.160 Anyways, I want to take you to an interview clip right here with David Eby where he says these things.
00:01:26.400 In just a second, but before I do that, guys, remember to like this video, subscribe to the
00:01:31.440 channel, leave a comment, do all that great stuff, help support the show, make sure the videos get
00:01:36.860 distributed to more people. Liking, subscribing, and commenting does all that for me. So thanks in
00:01:42.860 advance if you are able to do those things. Anyways, so here is David Eby's spotlight on the CBC where he
00:01:49.080 is asked about the inquiry issue. We're going to stay with our coverage of British Columbia because the
00:01:53.540 premier David Eby joins us now. Premier Eby, it's really good to see you again. Thanks for being
00:01:57.080 here, sir. Yeah, good to see you too. Before we get into the discussion of Canada-U.S. relations,
00:02:02.300 I wonder what's your reaction to what John Russ said is raising there today, wants an inquiry based
00:02:06.860 on what he considers to be irregularities. What's your response to the allegations he's making there?
00:02:12.580 Yeah, I mean, it's all a little bit cringe, I've got to say. Okay, a little bit cringe. So I'm guessing
00:02:17.980 that means you're not too concerned about these alleged irregularities. It's a bit like a Leafs
00:02:23.000 fan who says, you know, if we only scored enough goals, we would have made it through the playoff
00:02:27.280 round. Like, okay, one, let's just start off with any politician, especially the leader of a province
00:02:34.780 saying cringe. It is the most hello fellow children kind of a thing to say. Also, again, you can't really
00:02:42.280 say it when you were the one who approved of the idea of an inquiry. The one little point on the
00:02:49.700 inquiry that he called for, though, was he wanted it done by one of his own MLAs. So the best that
00:02:55.620 would be done is that problems would be identified and maybe solved later, but not actually retroactively
00:03:01.700 solved for elections they might have affected. Now, in Surrey-Guilford, this is the main battlefield
00:03:08.920 when it comes to the inquiry. Hanvir Andawa, the BC Conservative candidate, is filing a lawsuit
00:03:14.580 with the courts to try and have the election result thrown out because he has found 45 irregularities
00:03:21.900 in a riding where Gary Begg, the BC NDP candidate, only won by 22 votes. And so I think there is some
00:03:28.880 standard that if you can find like double the inquiry irregularities and you can prove they are in
00:03:33.760 fact irregularities, you must have the election like somehow solved, like somehow fixed, and you
00:03:40.720 have 90 days to be able to challenge the results. So they are within the amount of time it is required
00:03:47.920 to file a challenge. I think the deadline was on January 17th. So Hanvir is in early and they could
00:03:53.580 easily find more irregularities, more people whose ballots either weren't counted or were counted and
00:03:58.560 they shouldn't be. So I'll just quickly break down what the actual irregularities are in Surrey-Guilford
00:04:04.080 because it's actually serious. This isn't somebody saying, well, I saw some guy do something and I'm
00:04:10.060 spec he be lying about who he's voting for and all that. I mean, like we're talking about like a care
00:04:17.180 home for people. I don't even think it's a senior home, but it's a care home for people who are recovered
00:04:22.260 from addictions or they're used to be homeless or whatever. Some people might need like other like
00:04:27.520 living assistance support, mental health type stuff. But there's this lodge that is 80 meters
00:04:35.260 across the street from a school where there is a polling station. And somehow there were 21 ballots
00:04:41.920 mailed in from this place just across the street. And they've already basically found that the guy
00:04:48.380 running the site is not only an NDP partisan, but has been doing this election after election, which is
00:04:55.160 sending people's ballots in on their behalf and basically forcing their hands to vote. They have
00:05:00.140 affidavits to at least evidence this. So let's look at this. I want to just quickly look, read this
00:05:08.800 article from the Vancouver Sun. I don't usually like to read too much, but I think this is important.
00:05:15.840 So I'm just going to go over it for you guys here quickly today. He says, this writer, let's give him
00:05:21.180 credit, Alec Lazenby. Wasn't that one of the James Bond actors, the guy from Australia? My head's full
00:05:30.180 of references to movies I haven't even watched. But it says here, the writing's conservative
00:05:36.280 candidate, Hanvir Singh Randhawa, says he has received three affidavits from residents of Argyle Lodge,
00:05:42.220 redacted copies of which were provided to reporters in Victoria Thursday, stated that they did not request
00:05:47.780 the mail and ballots provided to them, and they were forced to rush through their choice of whom
00:05:52.120 to vote for. In the affidavits, the residents also said they did not even know a provincial election
00:05:56.820 was occurring, much less what the variation of various parties in their candidates stood for.
00:06:03.360 Valjeet Kondola, the manager of Argyle Lodge, said the allegations by Randhawa and the conservatives
00:06:08.080 are mind-blowing, baffling, and absurd. On October 19th, there was 103-vote leads, said Randhawa,
00:06:13.480 referring to his poll position on the election night that was eventually erased as remaining votes,
00:06:19.380 including mail-ins, were counted over the following days.
00:06:21.660 And so Kondola has basically tried to, you know, ride the line of like, I'm just helping people
00:06:29.640 fill out ballots. I'm not a partisan. I have no party affiliations at all. And the lie is usually
00:06:36.160 more telling than the actual truth, the fact that somebody chose to lie, because Kondola is a
00:06:42.400 partisan. Like, again, he's not exactly like a big donor. Most Canadians do not max out donations every
00:06:49.080 year. But this was uncovered by Brad Zubik here, who has pointed out, like, you can even see
00:06:56.180 Kondola Valjeet, and I believe that even his address that was along with it lined up, or, yeah,
00:07:04.260 like, lined up with his real address, but it doesn't really matter. He said, Brad Zubik said,
00:07:09.680 we never contact, we have no invested interest in any political agenda, any parties. And he was
00:07:17.780 literally donating to Jagmeet Singh's leadership campaign in 2017, and gave almost $500. That
00:07:25.860 doesn't feel like a donation that like an average person makes a single year donation of $459.
00:07:34.060 That's a lot of money for a Canadian donating in politics. Since back in 2017, I believe the limit
00:07:39.940 for how much you could donate was 1600. So it's not even like he was only giving like a fraction of what
00:07:45.460 an average donor gives. He's probably giving multiple times more what the median donor to the
00:07:51.020 NDP was giving. Anyways, so yeah, this is all pretty strange. The other irregularities, so first we have
00:07:58.600 those 21 from Argyle Lodge. We have another 22 from people whose addresses do not actually line up with
00:08:05.380 where they live, and there's a good chance that they do not actually live in the riding, but maybe,
00:08:10.020 and this could have been an honest mistake. Obviously, people are driving to the polling station
00:08:13.900 that they always voted at, even though they've moved five blocks away, and now they're in a
00:08:18.040 different riding. That's still a problem. It can't just be like, oopsie doodle, doesn't matter,
00:08:22.100 so let's just let Gary Begg be the NDP MLA, because it's difficult and stuff to go back and fix this
00:08:28.760 stuff. In tight elections, there needs to be more scrutiny than ever. Not like we like take my
00:08:34.200 magnifying glasses to see if there's any breaks in the ink of your ex, but like we need to make sure
00:08:39.340 that belts are obviously not coming in from the wrong place. So 21 from Argyle Lodge, 22 people
00:08:45.180 who may or may not actually live in the riding, and then we have another instance of somebody
00:08:51.260 double voting, apparently, basically being under a variation, the same name, but they accidentally
00:08:56.040 got registered twice on BC elections, and they were able to cast two ballots. So that's a problem.
00:09:02.620 So, you know, I don't think this is cringe, like David Eby is saying. If anything, this actually seems
00:09:08.480 kind of serious, but the human question mark David Eby thinks that, oh, well, you know, looking into
00:09:14.600 elections, that's like denialism. I literally had somebody already do that to me. It's not even like,
00:09:20.420 I'm just asking questions, like I'm Jesse Vendura here. I'm saying, hey, this is a problem. Can we look
00:09:27.200 into it to see if it's an actual big problem or if it's just an oddity? And they're like, well, that's
00:09:32.180 denialism. No, it's not. It's literally the reverse of election denialism. It is saying, hey,
00:09:39.020 let's fact check the election, these ballots that are in question, because guess what? By the end,
00:09:44.480 nobody can question the result because we have found every problem, and we have solved every problem.
00:09:50.700 That seems about fair to me. And, you know, I wish Hanvi Rondawa good luck in his court case. I think
00:09:57.380 that if you know anything about irregularities in your riding of people voting twice, people sending
00:10:03.300 in ballots that didn't actually want to send in ballots, make sure you contact somebody from the
00:10:07.980 BC Conservatives over that, especially if you live in Surrey, and especially if you live in the riding
00:10:13.860 of Surrey-Guilford, you can probably try and reach out to Hanvi Rondawa yourself. But yeah, this is very
00:10:19.600 important. The Conservatives, to their credit, because I think a lot of parties would have been
00:10:23.800 intimidated by the stupid denialist label, would have been intimidated to basically drop the,
00:10:31.920 not even allegations, not alleging anything. They're just saying, look into this, let's have
00:10:35.380 an inquiry. So the party's not actually a part of the, the party is not actually a part of the
00:10:42.600 call or the court case, but they have been posting stuff and demanding this judicial or this legislative
00:10:49.620 inquiry. And they've actually been posting even graphics to go alongside it of like, you know,
00:10:55.160 yeah, like, and why wouldn't we want a full inquiry until missing ballot boxes and ineligible voters
00:11:00.820 being able to show up and cast ballots? That seems to me like something that, you know, matters? I don't
00:11:08.440 know. Maybe I'm weird for thinking that we should talk about things that matter rather than calling them
00:11:13.500 cringe because your party has the ability to actually lose a seat if we dig down deep enough
00:11:19.240 into this. And again, maybe Gary Begg was one, maybe all the, maybe all the irregularities somehow
00:11:25.660 go towards the NDP. You know, maybe all, maybe that Candola guy at Argyle Lounge was actually filling
00:11:31.240 up ballots for the Conservatives. You know, I doubt it, but, you know, and I think the affidavits probably
00:11:36.800 proved that he was getting people to vote for Gary Begg, but like, you know, there's always the chance.
00:11:41.500 But anyways, that should be it for me today, guys. Remember to like this video, subscribe to the
00:11:47.040 channel, do all that great stuff. And you can also sign up on my website, wyattclaypool.com. If you
00:11:52.760 ever want leadership or nomination recommendations in your local area, you can click on that link in
00:11:58.840 the description and pinned at the top of the comments. You can go and just basically fill in
00:12:03.480 your information and it allows me to reach out to you if I know there's good candidates in your general
00:12:08.260 area. So like, I'm going to try and start naming more people in BC since we're talking about BC
00:12:13.940 and the ride in the federal riding of Malahat. I think Charles Borg is a great candidate in
00:12:19.740 Abbotsford South Langley. I think a really good ballot to fill out. There's multiple candidates,
00:12:24.900 but I would be putting Steve Schaefer number one and Mike Murray number two. So take that for what you
00:12:30.720 will. Those races are still open. You can still buy memberships to vote in them. So if you live in those
00:12:35.120 local areas, make sure to do that and at least vote for somebody. See you guys later.