The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - January 10, 2026


Liberal admits Carney isn't getting his majority! (Spring Election Time)


Episode Stats

Length

13 minutes

Words per Minute

198.71887

Word Count

2,761

Sentence Count

149

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

Chrystia Freeland resigns her seat in the House of Commons, leaving a gaping hole in Mark Carney's government. What does that mean for the chances of another Liberal floor crosser? And what does it mean for a possible spring election?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here, and happy Chrystia Freeland Resigns Day to everyone who celebrates.
00:00:07.560 Chrystia Freeland finally made one good decision in her political career, and that was to resign her seat in the House of Commons.
00:00:15.480 But now, Mark Carney and his liberal government are in a very awkward position.
00:00:21.280 I think it's right to characterize that around mid-December, it seemed like all of the momentum was on Carney's side.
00:00:28.240 He had just gotten his second Conservative Party floor-crosser to his liberal government,
00:00:33.060 and it seemed very likely that he was going to get a third person to cross, whether from the Conservatives or the NDP,
00:00:39.560 and he would have his majority government.
00:00:42.240 But then everything just kind of stopped, and the momentum started violently shifting away from Mark Carney right now,
00:00:49.480 leading to the fact we're probably going to have a spring election.
00:00:52.960 Carney started having MPs, both from the Conservatives and the NDP,
00:00:57.540 publicly come out and reject the liberals' attempts to try and get them to cross,
00:01:01.380 which really demonstrated that they were scraping the bottom of the barrel of ideas of people to try and approach.
00:01:06.900 And now, Carney's the one having people resign on him, leaving a bigger gap in his government,
00:01:12.380 making it effectively impossible to convince anyone to actually cross the floor and join the government.
00:01:17.580 We now even have liberals on television admitting that Carney's never getting his majority,
00:01:23.400 and yes, we probably are going to see that spring election come around.
00:01:27.240 So I want to play this clip from CBC's Power in Politics,
00:01:31.320 because when you can get the liberal hack Greg McEacherin to agree that Carney's not getting a majority,
00:01:37.540 he's not getting it.
00:01:38.660 The man is a chronic cheerleader.
00:01:41.660 If he's saying it, you can take that to the bank in regards to the Liberal Party.
00:01:45.660 So Greg, you know, Jol-Denis Belavance, well, he sat right in that chair last night on the show,
00:01:52.100 and he was saying that he thinks there's still potential floor crossers out there,
00:01:56.180 that Stephen McKinnon and Tim Hodgson in particular are still having conversations with people on the other side of the floor.
00:02:02.220 But in the last 24 to 48 hours, I've talked to people with connections to the Liberals and the PMO,
00:02:07.180 and I'm not so sure, and thinking more and more maybe a spring election could be.
00:02:12.900 And that's really funny, too, that even David Cochran, the guy who hosts the show,
00:02:17.260 who's supposed to be a neutral moderator, he's obviously very liberal.
00:02:21.280 The fact that he's basically also casting down the fact that the Liberals are going to get another floor crosser
00:02:26.620 means also it's not going to happen.
00:02:28.840 I'm going to get to what Greg McEacherin says in a second,
00:02:31.300 but that's funny when he has people like Steve McKinnon, the House leader,
00:02:34.260 trying to go around and say, no, no, no, we still have people.
00:02:36.480 We still have people that we're going to try and bring over.
00:02:39.040 Earlier in this panel show, David Cochran was saying that they thought their best first-round draft pick person
00:02:47.760 to cross the floor after Michael Ma was the NDP lady from Nunavut,
00:02:53.400 and she just a few days ago said that she's not going to cross.
00:02:56.440 So who else?
00:02:57.560 The fact that they approached someone like Scott Anderson means they were completely out of ideas.
00:03:03.040 There wasn't a hope anywhere that he was going to actually cross.
00:03:07.780 So when you're asking people like him, it's because there was no one better to ask.
00:03:12.020 Scott Anderson is very conservative, so it made it really weird that they were even asking him.
00:03:17.260 But if you've gotten to the point you're asking him,
00:03:19.220 maybe there's only 20 or 30 more conservatives that you haven't asked yet,
00:03:23.160 and those are complete no's, like someone like Arnold Vearson who would never leave.
00:03:27.200 But let's get back to what Greg McEacherin says here.
00:03:29.680 In the air.
00:03:30.440 What do you hear and what do you think is the state of play here?
00:03:33.740 I think that because of the way the speculation probably prevented a floor crossing or two
00:03:41.100 and put a lot of pressure, a lot of unnecessary, perhaps even disgusting tactics were used on people
00:03:47.460 to threaten them, to keep them from crossing.
00:03:50.600 So, you know, we talked about how, what a surprise Michael Ma was.
00:03:54.780 You know, the information cards kept very close to the vest there.
00:03:57.500 So, you know, we have that line about cabinet shuffles and picking cabinet.
00:04:01.900 Those who know don't talk and those who talk don't know.
00:04:04.080 I think it's being applied here.
00:04:06.900 You know, I thought.
00:04:08.320 And the two people talking in this case is people like Steve McKinnon,
00:04:12.120 who's saying, no, no, we still have prospects.
00:04:14.580 They don't have prospects.
00:04:15.820 And notice what Greg McEacherin just did there.
00:04:17.840 Again, he's admitting that Carney's not getting the majority,
00:04:20.440 that there's no floor crosses.
00:04:21.540 But then he tries to turn it into an anti-conservative attack by saying, oh, well, you know,
00:04:26.300 there's probably people who want to cross.
00:04:28.100 But now because of unnecessary and disgusting tactics, people are probably uncomfortable
00:04:33.660 and they don't want to do it anymore.
00:04:35.380 Or is it that you got the two unprincipled petty guys to cross?
00:04:39.880 And there wasn't really anyone else that fit the description.
00:04:42.400 Chris Dontremont left because he didn't get to be deputy speaker.
00:04:45.000 And who knows why Michael Ma left?
00:04:47.140 That was his first seven months, eight months in Parliament.
00:04:50.320 And really, he decided that suddenly Mark Carney is Mr. Unity and Stability.
00:04:54.600 That sounds fake.
00:04:55.920 It frankly sounds like he was bribed to cross because I have no principled reason
00:04:59.940 to actually give you for Michael Ma leaving the Conservatives.
00:05:03.420 We were going to be talking about new Liberal MP, Laurie Idlut,
00:05:06.940 when we were taping our final Christmas shows.
00:05:09.620 When Karina Roman was in your chair, one of the things we did talk about, though,
00:05:13.500 is that there is not a war room in any party that is, you know, putting people on the list
00:05:19.940 and saying go after them.
00:05:20.840 A lot of times it's personal relationships between MPs and somebody is unhappy
00:05:24.720 and they start having, you know, conversations.
00:05:27.900 I know that, you know...
00:05:29.120 And what he's trying to do here as well is he's trying to downplay the idea
00:05:33.040 that the Liberals were trying to actively pursue getting a majority by getting people to cross.
00:05:38.160 Because the survey results came back, the focus groups came back,
00:05:42.200 and it said that people were actually kind of grossed out by Mark Carney going around
00:05:46.260 trying to get people to just give a majority.
00:05:49.080 Not for any principled reasons, not because he proved himself
00:05:51.800 and people naturally wanted to cross and they were upset with Pierre Polyev.
00:05:55.080 He was just trying to basically get people to upturn, overturn the election,
00:05:58.840 and then join his party because, well, I'll give you a position or something like that.
00:06:03.500 And now people like Steve or like Greg McEachern are trying to kind of like roll it back
00:06:07.940 and not like, you know, trying to roll back the idea they were ever actively pursuing people.
00:06:12.400 Oh, it's just personal relationships.
00:06:13.780 They were just friends chatting and trying to get people to cross.
00:06:16.920 Like, no, the fact that Steve McKinnon, he's already contradicting himself.
00:06:20.920 Steve McKinnon was saying that they still have people they're pursuing.
00:06:24.140 So are they actively pursuing people or is it just personal, friendly, cocktail party relationships
00:06:29.460 where you're just chatting about whether or not you should cross or not?
00:06:32.780 It's because it's now failing that they're basically being like, well, this was never our plan.
00:06:37.820 I've talked to a Conservative MP who is not happy but could never, ever see themselves as a Liberal.
00:06:42.880 So there's degrees of that.
00:06:46.780 As for, you know, criticizing the other party and then crossing the floor,
00:06:50.440 I don't think that ever stops anybody.
00:06:52.160 I mean, Leona Alislev said all kinds of things about the Conservatives.
00:06:55.360 Michael Ma said all kinds of things about the Liberals.
00:06:57.560 But at the end of the day, I mean, I think perhaps with Laurie Idlude,
00:07:00.160 she may be able to make the argument that I want more for the North
00:07:05.460 and I'm going to, as a representative of the North in the Liberal caucus,
00:07:09.340 I could get more accomplished.
00:07:10.440 I would push back, though, and say how many of those folks were successful
00:07:13.240 in coming back in the House after they switched over.
00:07:15.200 I think that's the difference.
00:07:15.800 It's a very low return rate.
00:07:17.200 Well, Linda Stronach was elected as a Conservative by about 800 votes
00:07:21.700 and as a Liberal when Paul Martin...
00:07:23.440 None of this really matters anymore.
00:07:25.440 But the whole point is that we now have them admitting that no,
00:07:28.500 Carney is not getting his majority anymore.
00:07:30.560 I actually want to go back to the very beginning of the show
00:07:32.820 when they were first introducing the segment,
00:07:35.580 because that's when Greg McEacher had also said something else
00:07:38.500 that I find is a funny admission.
00:07:40.040 True there.
00:07:40.580 When he says we'll have a by-election,
00:07:42.740 by-elections, very deliberately, plural,
00:07:45.360 because Mark Carney is a very precise man.
00:07:47.000 Does he just mean Chrystia Freeland and, say, Matt Jenneru,
00:07:50.120 or does he mean also Bill Blair and Jonathan Wilkinson?
00:07:53.120 Like, what do you make of that?
00:07:55.440 I think he's leaving options open, which is not a bad thing to do.
00:08:00.200 Like, there's been lots of speculation.
00:08:02.100 It's a bad thing to do when apparently there isn't going to be
00:08:05.640 a bunch of mass resignations.
00:08:07.740 You only leave the door open for the idea there may need to be more by-elections
00:08:12.360 if you know something.
00:08:14.360 And Mark Carney knows something.
00:08:15.360 That's why, instead of just saying a couple,
00:08:17.060 because there's only two that may need to happen, Freeland and Jenneru,
00:08:20.000 but Jenneru's not even leaving until later in the spring.
00:08:23.280 You said a few for a reason, because it's more than two.
00:08:25.660 And I've said this in the last video where I covered the CBC
00:08:28.320 and they're acting really obtuse of whether a few means more than two
00:08:32.080 or it just means two.
00:08:33.860 You'll only leave the door open, like Greg McEachern is saying,
00:08:36.780 because there is internal instability in the Liberal Party.
00:08:40.100 And like I said last episode,
00:08:41.820 they refused to investigate Mark Carney's leadership.
00:08:44.600 They refused to actually admit that this may have something to say
00:08:48.540 about what people think about Mark Carney and his own party.
00:08:51.860 Whenever there was a floor crosser from Polyev,
00:08:54.540 it immediately became an anti-Polyev, this shows Polyev's suck story.
00:08:58.660 But if anyone leaves Mark Carney,
00:09:00.740 oh, it just shows they wanted to go on to bigger and better things
00:09:03.400 or they don't want to be in politics anymore.
00:09:05.800 It was completely innocent.
00:09:07.480 The reasons a Liberal would leave.
00:09:09.020 But it's always like, there's always,
00:09:11.360 it's always demonstrates some nefarious narrative
00:09:13.840 or nefarious truth about Polyev conservatively.
00:09:16.880 It's very maddening.
00:09:18.280 ...about what Bill Blair and Jonathan Wilkinson
00:09:20.960 and Christopher Freeland were going to do.
00:09:22.580 There's been lots of speculation about what Bill Blair
00:09:25.720 and Jonathan Wilkinson and Christopher Freeland were going to do.
00:09:27.940 We've known, like, there has been a slow roll
00:09:30.680 of Christopher Freeland's departure over the last couple of months,
00:09:33.900 over the fall.
00:09:34.460 So I think he's being smart and leaving that open.
00:09:38.960 I also think that, you know, he's done very,
00:09:42.920 the Prime Minister's done very well with, you know,
00:09:44.760 a caucus that he inherited.
00:09:47.140 He was able to recruit some folks.
00:09:50.440 So it's not a new government.
00:09:52.480 This is, I love that.
00:09:53.680 That is, in my mind, a full admission.
00:09:56.000 Because I have seen a lot of CBC power in politics
00:09:59.800 where they talk about this is a new government,
00:10:02.000 Mark Carney's transforming how we do government.
00:10:04.880 This is a new, very different feeling Liberal Party.
00:10:08.040 But as soon as things start, as soon as bad things start happening,
00:10:11.160 as soon as Mark Carney's leadership doesn't seem as stable
00:10:14.160 and unifying as people were claiming,
00:10:16.740 suddenly, well, you have to realize Carney inherited all this
00:10:20.480 from Justin Trudeau and it's many of the same faces
00:10:23.460 and he might not have the same relationship with these people.
00:10:26.880 It's like whenever Justin Trudeau starts screwing up
00:10:29.780 at any point in his government and they said,
00:10:32.080 well, we inherited this thing from Stephen Harper
00:10:34.980 and the Conservatives.
00:10:35.940 It's like, oh, shut up.
00:10:37.700 Oh, shut up.
00:10:38.900 Do you guys have agency or do you not?
00:10:40.960 And then in the case of Mark Carney, it's like,
00:10:43.380 is this a new government or is it not?
00:10:45.500 So whenever something apparently good happens,
00:10:47.720 or at least we're trying to spin something as good,
00:10:49.700 it just demonstrates how new and different
00:10:51.600 this Liberal government is.
00:10:53.100 And every time there's problems, it sounds like,
00:10:54.620 oh, well, you know, Mark Carney didn't have his ideal team
00:10:57.060 because you have to realize this is the old government
00:10:59.460 that he inherited from Justin Trudeau.
00:11:01.900 This is just so tiring.
00:11:03.360 That he wanted to serve with him.
00:11:05.900 And I think, you know, the fact that I'm very cognizant
00:11:10.840 that people like to say that Liberals are arrogant
00:11:13.180 and I want to avoid that.
00:11:14.600 But the reality is right now,
00:11:16.380 he's doing pretty well in the polls,
00:11:19.020 you know, head to head against Polly F.
00:11:21.040 He's literally down in the polls since the election day.
00:11:25.780 Election day, he won by 2.3%,
00:11:28.180 which is actually a pretty big win.
00:11:30.080 I think it actually may have been two and a half,
00:11:31.540 but he still barely won the majority of his minority government
00:11:34.900 because the Conservatives in all of the closest ridings
00:11:37.840 where the Liberals beat them,
00:11:39.240 the Liberals only won in all of the ridings
00:11:41.600 that make up their minority
00:11:42.740 by around 8,000 votes combined in those ridings.
00:11:45.720 That's really, really tiny for a margin of victory
00:11:48.820 when that was like 20 seats or 22 seats or something
00:11:52.000 that the Liberals ended up beating them by for this minority.
00:11:54.960 That should be terrifying
00:11:56.620 that now they're actually closer
00:11:58.980 than just two and a half percent away from each other.
00:12:01.140 You have new nanos polls and new polls from other pollsters
00:12:04.400 showing the Liberals continuing to decline.
00:12:07.440 And even in the polls where the Conservatives
00:12:08.820 are declining to poll to poll,
00:12:11.580 the thing is the Conservatives might fall half a percent,
00:12:13.420 but the Liberals fell 1.7%.
00:12:15.780 The gap is narrowing.
00:12:17.420 And this is in spite of the fact
00:12:19.560 that Mark Carney is in the proverbial driver's seat.
00:12:23.100 He has the ability to pass popular policy
00:12:24.960 or at least pitch popular policy.
00:12:27.120 If he was doing so, he would actually be increasing.
00:12:29.440 It's very easy to increase your popularity
00:12:31.360 or stabilize it if it was already high in your first year.
00:12:35.460 We're not even through a year.
00:12:36.840 And basically, Mark Carney's in a knife fight
00:12:38.840 with the Conservatives that he shouldn't be in
00:12:40.560 if he was doing a good job.
00:12:42.500 So if there are by-elections right now,
00:12:44.660 this may give him the chance
00:12:46.680 to bring some people into government
00:12:48.180 that he'd like to have.
00:12:49.080 Sure.
00:12:49.580 And frankly, I mean,
00:12:50.340 no one would ever give you an allegation of arrogance
00:12:52.240 when you're deliberately reducing your seat counts
00:12:54.420 in a minority parliament, right?
00:12:55.680 There's a confidence there.
00:12:56.880 I mean, we know Christopher Freeland
00:12:58.660 is going to work for a foreign government.
00:13:00.540 So all this, we can always...
00:13:02.120 David Cochran coming in with the save.
00:13:04.520 In fact, you could actually say some good things
00:13:06.240 about Mark Carney,
00:13:06.960 that he's going to be losing multiple MPs.
00:13:09.200 It's actually a very strong
00:13:10.220 and confident thing to be doing
00:13:11.520 to have people resign on you and leave.
00:13:14.960 Make it make sense.
00:13:16.720 But anyways, that should be it for this video, guys.
00:13:19.020 Thank you for waiting for me
00:13:20.780 to make a video today late into the night.
00:13:22.800 I was doing a bunch of meetings in Vancouver today.
00:13:26.180 It was great hanging out
00:13:27.240 with 1BC leader Dallas Brody and the team,
00:13:30.340 just getting some stuff up and running
00:13:31.940 because we're going to start aggressively
00:13:33.600 building the party right now in the year 2026.
00:13:36.880 So if you're in British Columbia,
00:13:38.800 always go check out the 1BC party.
00:13:41.200 We are going to be coming out
00:13:42.020 with a lot of content over this year.
00:13:43.700 Hopefully you guys like it.
00:13:45.340 But with all of that,
00:13:46.380 thank you guys for watching.
00:13:47.660 Like, share, subscribe.
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00:13:51.480 And I'll see you guys all next time.