The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - February 19, 2025


Ford PC's support falls in polls after awful leaders debate! (debate & poll analysis)


Episode Stats

Length

21 minutes

Words per Minute

182.3523

Word Count

3,890

Sentence Count

278

Misogynist Sentences

11

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

Wyatt Claypool talks about the Ontario leaders debate and why Doug Ford should have called a snap election a year and a half early to make sure that no opposition to him shows up to the polls. Also, he gives his thoughts on the polling numbers and why Ford could actually lose this election.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. So I watched the Ontario leaders debate so you don't have to.
00:00:07.800 And man, after watching that thing, I am not shocked that the turnout for this provincial
00:00:13.140 election is going to be extremely low, and that's how Doug Ford likes it. He doesn't want scrutiny,
00:00:19.960 that's why he called a snap election a year and a half early in the bitter cold to make sure that
00:00:26.380 no opposition to him actually shows up. I would urge you if you live in Ontario and you're in one
00:00:32.360 of the 108 ridings where the new blue party of Ontario has a candidate, please show up and please
00:00:38.380 vote for them so that we can register that a lot of Ontarians want principled conservatism back in
00:00:44.340 government. Even if they don't win a seat, it helps grow the party. So I want to take you through a
00:00:50.200 little bit of this Ontario leaders debate, and then I want to talk about the polling. Because despite
00:00:56.240 the fact that Ford is in the lead, he could actually lose a lot in this provincial election.
00:01:01.960 Some polls show that he's going to basically win every seat except for like a couple dozen.
00:01:06.880 Other polls show that it's actually getting kind of tight because why even show up and vote for Ford?
00:01:13.100 There is no difference between the PCs, the Liberals, and the NDP, and I'm really not exaggerating.
00:01:19.200 I'll play some of the clips that Doug Ford and Bonnie Cromby posted after the debate, but I don't want
00:01:24.660 to show you a lot of it because, frankly, nothing really happened. And that's kind of the big story
00:01:30.460 here. Nothing happened. Well, folks, we're going to have a very clear choice in this upcoming election.
00:01:36.460 This is all about leadership. We've seen what Donald Trump is going to do in the White House for the
00:01:42.380 next four years. And no matter if he puts a tariff on us today, tomorrow, next month, next year,
00:01:49.520 you know, it would devastate our economy. There's one person on that stage that's going to protect
00:01:55.360 your families, protect jobs, and protect businesses and protect communities. And that's myself.
00:02:01.340 We're going to reinvest into the economy like we did. And we saw over 850,000 jobs.
00:02:07.160 He creates jobs the way Trudeau creates jobs. He takes taxpayer money and he just craps it into
00:02:13.360 industries that he happens to like. The battery industry, the EV car industry, anything that Doug
00:02:19.280 Ford is in favor of and his lobbyists like, he will give money to. That is exactly how the Trudeau
00:02:24.580 liberals work federally. If it's a green boondoggle, they will give it money. Ford gives money to green
00:02:30.240 boondoggles all over the place, but then he markets it as pro-business to sound conservative. It's ridiculous.
00:02:36.140 The diversified trade around the world, which we did, we saw over $70 billion of investment.
00:02:42.480 But I can't do it without a strong mandate. If I get a strong mandate from the people of Ontario,
00:02:49.200 I will work harder than I've ever worked. I will fight against Donald Trump like you've never seen before.
00:02:55.380 I feel like I'm in, it's a wonderful life. And it's that scene where that guy loses the money. I'm like,
00:03:01.020 what did you do with the first mandate you had? You have a year and a half left in your massive
00:03:06.200 majority mandate. Why did you need another election? And the dirty secret as to why
00:03:12.180 Ford needed an early election is because he's not conservative. And once Pierre Polyev very likely
00:03:18.560 becomes the next prime minister of Canada, Ford's going to look pathetic next to him. He doesn't
00:03:23.820 want to run a provincial election after Polyev gets into office and starts doing actually conservative
00:03:29.260 things. And people look at Ford and say, dude, you're reminding us a lot of Justin Trudeau and how
00:03:34.680 you operate compared to Pierre Polyev. That's why Ford wants this election. But I'll move on and give
00:03:41.600 Bonnie Crombie a chance to speak just so you get the feel of what these closing statements were like.
00:03:47.660 But again, it's so pathetic. Ford's like, I need you to give me another mandate. You had one. What
00:03:53.080 did you do? Break it? You need another loan from us? But here is Ms. Crombie.
00:03:59.060 It's time for a change. A vote for Ontario's Liberals is a vote for family doctors. And how am
00:04:05.420 I going to do that? By paying them better, bringing more of them, bringing in those internationally
00:04:10.060 trained doctors that could be your children who are trained in the US or the UK. Let's bring them
00:04:15.200 back home by doubling the residency spaces by paying our nurses and our PSWs a living wage. But none of
00:04:22.740 that can happen while Doug Ford is premier. So it's time for a change.
00:04:26.200 Sorry. I guess that's not a closing statement. But you would have me fooled because literally
00:04:31.680 Doug Ford, Bonnie Crombie, Merritt Stiles, who is a Bonnie Crombie doppelganger, they look
00:04:37.180 the same. And Mike Schreiner there, he kept doing this weird squint every time he started
00:04:41.620 talking. He'd be like, Ontarians, we need communism or whatever he would say. If I'm giving these
00:04:49.240 people letter grades, everyone does not get an A. Nobody gets an A. We are shifting the goalpost
00:04:55.520 down. The best you can do is a B. If I'm giving people letter grades here, let's start off
00:05:02.560 with Doug Ford. He gets a C because he didn't fail. He didn't have a moment where he just
00:05:09.560 flopped onto the ground and died. But he also wasn't conservative at all. Literally, every
00:05:15.780 time someone would question his record from the left, he would just start talking about
00:05:19.500 how much money he has burned. I invested billions into that. I have given subsidies to this.
00:05:25.340 I did blah, blah, blah. And then the other leaders would be like, Well, you didn't subsidize
00:05:29.560 the thing I would subsidize. What the heck, Doug? Literally, the Fraser Institute, which is
00:05:35.160 a conservative slash libertarian think tank, has had to come out and say that Doug Ford is
00:05:41.300 literally worse on spending with inflation added in and without COVID spending being considered.
00:05:47.360 He is worse at spending than Kathleen Wynne was. That is how bad Doug Ford is. That you could say
00:05:53.940 technically good things about Kathleen Wynne in comparison. Obviously, Kathleen Wynne was a disaster
00:05:58.940 and started the problems. The problem is once Ford picked up the football, he didn't do anything
00:06:04.100 with it. He just spiked it. And he just pretends that because he has kept things steady, although
00:06:09.760 everything's steadily increasing and how bad it is, that means he's been doing a good job.
00:06:15.440 Do I have a merit styles thing? So I give Ford a B. Really wasn't anything going on with this guy.
00:06:21.980 Here's another Bonnie Crombie clip to give you a bit of taste of what she was doing.
00:06:26.120 If I'm giving Bonnie Crombie a letter grade, I give her a Bonnie Crombie B. Again, is she good on
00:06:32.880 policy? No. Is Ford good on policy? No. Styles? No. Shriner? No. We're not considering policy in this
00:06:39.640 election debate analysis. We are considering. Did they get the job done? Bonnie Crombie was kind
00:06:46.220 of twitchy. She reminded me of Chrystia Freeland. She landed some punches on Ford, and that's why she
00:06:51.700 gets a B because she wasn't comatose. Styles? I'll get to her later, but I'll let her talk a little bit
00:06:59.420 more. You were promised a tax cut, but you never got it. Here's what I'll do with Ontario Liberals.
00:07:05.060 I'm going to cut your taxes. Yes, your income tax, and you will pay 22% less on the first $75,000.
00:07:13.220 I'll also take the HSD off your home heating and your hydro bills, and I will build homes that are
00:07:19.540 more affordable because we're going to take off those hidden taxes, and there will be no tax on
00:07:24.460 carbon. You can take my word for it. This is the funny thing. Do you know that Bonnie Crombie is,
00:07:31.040 in fact, in certain aspects of this election, running to the right of Doug Ford? She, in fact,
00:07:37.200 at one point had to say, well, Doug's the Trudeau liberal. I'm just an Ontario liberal, but he's the
00:07:43.280 one who keeps working with Trudeau. That's how, you know, cattywampus this entire election is.
00:07:48.920 Doug Ford has a stronger connection to Justin Trudeau than Bonnie Crombie does. That's how ridiculous
00:07:55.280 this whole thing is. Do I trust her that she would actually cut taxes? No, not really. But isn't it
00:08:00.880 funny that she can run on cutting taxes because Ford, in two terms, hasn't cut taxes? 2018,
00:08:08.300 he was supposed to cut income taxes and do a lot of other stuff. In fact, taxes have gone up. He
00:08:13.080 temporarily has reduced the gas tax a little bit, and he said, made some bloated noises about how he's
00:08:19.960 going to get rid of the gas tax this time completely. I don't believe him. You know why I don't believe
00:08:24.940 him? At the same time, he was opposing the federal consumer carbon tax in court, a court case that
00:08:31.200 looks like the PCs intentionally scuffed because, in fact, they actually agree with the consumer carbon
00:08:36.620 tax. They passed their own industrial carbon tax on top of the consumer carbon tax. So if you live in
00:08:42.860 Ontario, you pay a double carbon tax, first from the refinery, and then secondly, on your actual
00:08:50.260 consumer side through the gas pump in your home heating bill. It's ridiculous what's going on in
00:08:56.300 Ontario right now. So Bonnie gets a B for having any energy at all. She's now trying to go for NDP
00:09:06.440 votes, which is extremely stupid. She's literally, like, saying, NDP voters, please come and vote for me.
00:09:14.420 Election strategy tip, never vocalize what your strategy is. Never come out and say,
00:09:19.200 I want NDP voters. What you do is you change your messaging to try and get them.
00:09:25.120 You don't just say, I want you guys. It's kind of like a birthday wish. If you say it,
00:09:31.320 you're not going to get it. Just think it and then try and maneuver towards it. But here's a small
00:09:37.780 exchange between Ford and Crombie where you saw a little bit of the fireworks of Doug Ford.
00:09:42.440 Thank you, Doug. Doug, I have one question for you, and one question only. After seven years of lies,
00:09:49.640 why should anyone trust a word you say?
00:09:54.120 Well, first of all, action speaks louder than words. And people have seen us spend over $200 billion
00:09:59.340 on infrastructure, no matter if it's $50 billion worth of hospitals or $28 billion in building roads
00:10:07.840 and highways or $70 billion in building transit. Doug, you put us into an extra $100 billion
00:10:11.080 of debt. How does any one government... Literally, we are having a debate where Ford is the liberal
00:10:17.020 arguing that his spending makes him good. And Bonnie Crombie, the liberal, is having to criticize
00:10:24.820 him for spending too much. Again, would she spend the same amount as him? Probably. But still,
00:10:29.240 my goodness. This is, again, please vote for the new blue party if you're in one of their
00:10:33.880 ridings. They have 108 candidates out of 124. Super short notice election. They were trying to get
00:10:40.400 candidates like three months ago. But obviously, a lot of people were like, obviously, there's not
00:10:43.940 going to be an election, guys. We're still a year and a half away. And the places they're missing
00:10:47.780 candidates are usually places that there's the least amount of conservative voters, like in
00:10:52.400 Parkdale High Park and Spadina and places like that. But please vote for them. Because I think
00:10:58.060 there needs to be this shocking moment on election day that, my goodness, the new blue party actually
00:11:02.500 caught 15% in some of these ridings. And $100 billion. And two and a half million people still
00:11:08.260 don't have a family doctor. Doug, Doug, Doug, a fantasy tunnel. How dumb is that, Doug? 40-year project?
00:11:16.220 Infrastructure. Okay, let's give us a chance to answer. I believe in building infrastructure.
00:11:20.160 Under the Liberals and NDP, there was nothing built. There was no subways. We're building the
00:11:24.160 largest subway extension in all of North America. We're building highways and roads and bridges.
00:11:30.820 By the way, the vast majority of the stuff has not been built. They just have plans or
00:11:34.700 released that they might build it. Because we know one thing. There's $56 billion that's
00:11:40.420 costing our economy every single year. Doug, this tunnel is a fantasy. This is a fantasy project.
00:11:49.700 It is a 40-year project. It won't be built in my lifetime. It will not alleviate any congestion.
00:11:57.000 It will bankrupt the province at $150 billion. There are alternatives. Why don't you invest in
00:12:03.400 the alternatives? Why don't you invest more in public transit? And this is where Bonnie Crombie's
00:12:07.940 ridiculous, too. Even as sometimes she argues to his right, she then swings back to exactly where
00:12:14.140 Ford is on the left and says, well, we need more buses. Like, how about you guys get real? Like,
00:12:18.320 this is one thing I will agree with Ford on. Yeah, it's good to start preventing municipalities from
00:12:23.740 taking up roads with bike lanes that ends up causing congestion. Still, that's a pretty small drop in the
00:12:30.600 bucket when it comes to trying to make it a more livable province. Again, he'll argue,
00:12:35.480 I haven't raised a tax in the entire time I've been premier, which is a lie. They have raised taxes.
00:12:42.400 He's talking about income taxes. I haven't raised income taxes. Well, of course you haven't raised
00:12:46.980 income taxes. They are effectively at the ceiling. If you raised income taxes anymore, you would just
00:12:53.020 immediately lose 100,000 actual business owners and wealthy individuals who already paid most of the
00:12:58.400 taxes. That's why he hasn't raised any taxes. It'd be like if Polyev takes over for Trudeau and then
00:13:03.860 four years later says, you know, I never raised a tax. I'm like, well, we elected you to lower them.
00:13:09.200 It's not an achievement that you suck as bad as Trudeau. And I'm very, I'm confident he will lower
00:13:14.880 taxes. But that is the big difference between a Polyev and a Ford is that Ford likes the government
00:13:21.100 revenue because he likes the power that it gives him because you can give up more money to friends
00:13:26.000 and allies and spending to try and buy voters with $200 checks. Whereas Polyev takes the perspective as I
00:13:33.180 would as a provincial, as a principled conservative, and the perspective that Jim and Belinda Kaur-Halios
00:13:38.420 would at the New Blue Party, who, by the way, Jim and Belinda, Jim specifically, are the ones who started
00:13:44.980 the Axe the Carbon Tax movement back in 2018, who opposed Patrick Brown from trying to bring in a carbon tax
00:13:52.300 into the PC Party platform in Ontario. He also started the Take Back movement of Take Back Our PC Party
00:13:58.900 that also was taken by Take Back Alberta and some other people. He's been very effective and not
00:14:04.020 enough people know about him. But those are people, Polyev and the Kaur-Halioses, will actually lower
00:14:08.860 taxes. Ford pretends that just not raising them means he's a fiscally responsible guy.
00:14:14.780 There's an alternative highway parallel. The 427 could be leveraged. Truck only lanes on the 407.
00:14:20.840 Doug, this is a fantasy that would bankrupt our province. No one believes you. You make other
00:14:26.220 promises, and you don't get it done, Doug.
00:14:29.000 Okay, that marks... It was... Yeah, and so, like, those were some of the more heated moments.
00:14:33.480 Again, that's why Crombie gets a B. Ford gets a C because he didn't mess up.
00:14:38.500 Merit Stiles, who, oh my goodness, don't make me play Merit Stiles videos.
00:14:42.380 I guess I have to play one. Okay, I'm going to have to play one. But in the time that it takes me
00:14:50.500 to bring up this video of Merit Stiles, I'm just going to comment on Mike Schreiner. Mike Schreiner's
00:14:58.140 a communist who doesn't deserve any attention or love. He was truly bad every single time he talked.
00:15:04.060 He was like, we need to reduce bureaucracy, but we should also spend more on stuff.
00:15:07.320 It was just... He's just there. It's a typical Green Party sanctimonious politician.
00:15:12.960 Here is NDP leader Merit Stiles, who looks the exact same as Bonnie Crombie, saying some stuff.
00:15:17.940 After seven long years of Doug Ford and his wasteful scandals and his broken promises,
00:15:23.440 rising costs are really hurting a lot of people in this province, and they are weakening us.
00:15:28.240 He has left us weaker than ever before.
00:15:30.820 A few weeks ago, while he was facing, and we were facing, the biggest threat that our country has
00:15:35.960 faced in generations, he decided to quit his job. Now, most people in Ontario, if you quit your job
00:15:42.360 and then you didn't show up for work the next day, you wouldn't expect to be rehired. But Doug thinks
00:15:46.840 that he deserves that. I got to tell you, you don't have to settle for this. You have the power to
00:15:53.200 change things. And I want to offer you that hope. We can fix our schools. We can build truly
00:15:59.580 affordable, permanently affordable homes.
00:16:01.840 For my own health and safety, I'm going to cut that clip off early because who cares?
00:16:06.120 By the way, guys, make sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel, and leave a comment.
00:16:10.520 I'm actually flying out to Ontario tomorrow to help the new blue party out because I put my money where
00:16:15.240 my mouth is when it comes to helping out small parties and large parties. You get a lot of influencers
00:16:20.400 out there who like to tweet online, but they don't actually hit doors. That's why I appreciate
00:16:24.680 Brittany. If you guys know Brittany, she does a lot of videos and she does a lot of podcast type
00:16:28.920 stuff, but she hits doors and leaflets and does all that stuff. It's very effective on the ground.
00:16:33.980 But yeah, Merit Stiles gets a D. She was barely there. Again, typical NDP sanctimonious performance.
00:16:42.400 What did I give Schreiner? Did I give him a D? My goodness, I should give him an F. Yeah,
00:16:46.860 Mike Schreiner gets an F. He doesn't deserve anything. Yeah, and this
00:16:50.340 is why nobody's voting. Everyone was just talking about how much money they want to spend,
00:16:55.260 and if they went after somebody else for spending too much, it was that they spent too much on this
00:17:00.200 specific project, and that money could have been burned in their favorite burning barrel.
00:17:05.580 And so this is why today's polling, or yesterday's polling, the day after the debate,
00:17:12.560 the conservatives have continued to slump further down from where they used to be just probably about
00:17:18.920 five or six days ago. For five or six days, they were actually polling around 37%, 38%, 39%.
00:17:24.420 And then going towards the debate, I think Ford had another kind of flub, went down to 35. Day after
00:17:30.980 the debate, now he's at 33. Within kind of punching distance of the liberals, this is with undecideds
00:17:37.080 added in on the Main Street poll. If you take out leaners, he does grow his lead a little bit. And then
00:17:43.720 if we go to just leaners and decided voters and we remove undecideds, he's at 39%. But that's not very
00:17:50.900 comfortable because Ford's kind of used to being above 40%. So he might win a majority government
00:17:57.720 with only 39%. Honestly, the ideal outcome, in my opinion, is for nobody to win, to have a hung parliament
00:18:06.620 where nothing gets done because that is where taxpayers are the safest right now. Because all these
00:18:12.820 parties, given a lot of power, are just going to jack up more spending. The thing I find interesting
00:18:17.720 is 6% of Ontarians say that they would vote for another party. That doesn't mean they're actually
00:18:23.300 going to turn out and vote. The other vote is always hard to gauge. Really, it just sounds like 6% of
00:18:28.700 people who even bother taking the poll because a lot of poly of federal conservatives are just going
00:18:34.840 to pick up the phone. Here it's about a provincial election. I'm like, oh goodness, it's Ford
00:18:38.520 and like Stiles and Crombie and hang up. This is, I don't usually like to show the data charts from
00:18:44.540 Main Street because you do have to pay for these polls and they don't want you like splashing around
00:18:48.060 the results everywhere. But I always usually just highlight a couple of things I find particularly
00:18:52.340 interesting. Look at this. When I break it down by region, where this other vote is coming from,
00:18:59.240 Niagara, Hamilton, Niagara, and Waterloo, 14.1% of voters say they would vote for other.
00:19:07.160 And that's with 139 people polled. That's not too bad. 230 people polled southwest and north Ontario,
00:19:14.640 15% of people, almost double what we're voting green, would vote for another party. Maybe that's
00:19:22.840 mostly Ontario. The thing I find interesting is where other doesn't do well, and it's not shockingly
00:19:28.100 where there's not a lot of blue candidates, new blue candidates, is in Toronto. Because right now in
00:19:33.720 the province of Ontario, the voters who, while they might be undecided, they're not unsatisfied with
00:19:40.700 their top three options of the Liberals, NDP, and the PCs. Because each party is a leftist grab bag
00:19:48.660 of different things that they'll throw money at. And so these voters might not know who they're voting
00:19:53.200 for, but they definitely don't want the principled conservative option. But if you go to the conservative
00:19:58.160 parts of the province, that's where people are saying, I'd like to vote for somebody else, because all of
00:20:04.220 these options suck. So that's my last pitch on voting new blue guys. All these options suck, and you've got
00:20:10.800 to indicate it to the political establishment. Especially if turnout is low, you showing up is going to beef
00:20:17.000 up how much your vote adds to the percentage that the new blue party gets. And I think that is important
00:20:22.560 for voters to see that in their riding, an unknown new blue candidate, who is working hard, they're hitting
00:20:28.460 the doors, they're doing as much as they can, could get 10%, could get 12%. And maybe people take notice, and we
00:20:34.940 can get something going in Ontario the same way that the Conservative Party kicked off in BC to have an actual
00:20:41.680 option in the next race. But every election matters. There's no such thing as the election where change isn't going
00:20:47.560 to happen. There are elections where you're preparing for the change to happen, and the election where you
00:20:52.960 cash in on that change actually occurring, but you have to run as hard as you can every single time, or
00:20:59.140 people aren't going to trust that you're actually committed. Anyways, so that's it for me today, guys.
00:21:06.500 My goodness, I couldn't believe having to vote in this Ontario election. So more power to you if you
00:21:11.860 actually show up and vote new blue. But that should be it for me today, guys. Like the video, subscribe to the
00:21:17.340 channel, leave a comment. See you guys later.