Wyatt Claypool breaks down how the Liberal government barely passed the 2019-2020 budget, and why the opposition parties were complicit with the Liberals in order to set us up for a potential election in the spring or summer of 2020.
00:00:00.000Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. Let's just get right into the news. Prime Minister Mark Carney's liberal government budget barely passed.
00:00:10.280170 votes in favor to 168 votes against. I'm going to show you the tape of it passing in just a second here, but this is as close as you could get.
00:00:22.220But technically one other person could have voted against it, but still, there was only one other party that supported this budget, and that was the Greens.
00:00:32.860It was just the one Green MP, Elizabeth May, who voted in favor of the budget with the Liberals, and even that wasn't a majority of MPs.
00:00:41.840There was just three other opposition MPs who decided not to vote, and so the Liberals were able to pass this budget with the skin of their teeth.
00:00:50.480I believe this is going to be the setup for a 2026 spring or summer election.
00:00:58.120Very clearly, the NDP did not want to pass this thing, the Bloc did not want to pass this thing, and the Conservatives did not want to pass this thing.
00:01:05.220And I think very shortly into the next year, they will be back for their pound of flesh.
00:01:10.500But now, let's just go to the tape, and we will talk a little bit about it afterwards.
00:01:20.480They do display the number wrong on screen.
00:01:37.420They show 177 to 168, but it was 170 to 168.
00:01:41.500I'm actually amazed by how often these things are screwed up during parliamentary streams where they end up entering the wrong numbers in.
00:01:53.420The three, I believe it was three MPs who abstained, it may have been four, but they were NDP and one Conservative, that Conservative being Matt Genereau.
00:02:03.220You will know that that is the one Conservative MP who is going to be resigning sometime in the spring if there isn't already a federal election happening at the same time.
00:02:13.500And so I think that maybe for personal reasons, maybe for strategic reasons, he was not present for the vote.
00:02:19.720But the entirety of the NDP caucus, if they did vote, voted against it.
00:02:26.400The only people who didn't vote against it just didn't vote at all.
00:02:30.080And so the budget ended up sailing through, not because people were endorsing it, but just because the other parties didn't really want to stop it that badly.
00:02:39.260The NDP definitely didn't like the budget, but the problem is they are a combination of broke, and they do not have a permanent leader.
00:02:46.220Their current leader is interim leader Don Davies, and so they didn't exactly want to face an election without actually having a permanent leader installed heading up the party.
00:02:58.120And now, again, Matt Genereau probably skipped it for personal reasons or maybe for strategic reasons, but regardless, this is setting us up for a federal election because, again, the other parties are not happy at all.
00:03:10.300They didn't like the fact that they had to let this budget be passed just simply because it's so early going.
00:03:15.200Because the conventional wisdom is that you don't call an election this early or you're going to look really, really bad.
00:03:21.440I want to jump over now to some of the press conferences that have started to go on with the other parties.
00:03:27.000The CBC has a live stream here where they're talking, the different party leaders are coming out and giving their reaction.
00:03:32.900So let's start off with, in fact, what is the most important party in this scenario, the NDP.
00:03:39.060Standing behind him, about to explain why the NDP just did what they did.
00:03:44.340In the lead-up to budget 2025, New Democrats made it very clear that it needs to address head-on the crises facing Canadian families and invest in the programs that Canadians rely on.
00:04:00.320We have record unemployment, particularly among young people.
00:04:04.320We have a housing shortage and a cost-of-living crisis in communities across the country.
00:04:10.080Our cherished public health care system needs to be expanded, not cut.
00:04:18.700Since the budget was presented almost two weeks ago, we have taken the time to listen to our constituents and to meet with stakeholders.
00:04:25.880It is clear from those conversations that this is a budget that does not address the real needs facing Canadians.
00:04:35.340It fails to meet the moment, deliver transformational change, or address the urgent needs facing Canadians.
00:04:43.600While there are elements of the budget which reflect our concerns on the whole, this is a conservative budget.
00:04:52.200From reducing health care funding to provinces.
00:04:54.900This is all kind of silly overall, because the budget is actually massive.
00:05:00.480It's running a $78 billion deficit, which is the biggest raw dollar deficit that's ever been run in Canadian history.
00:05:08.840But because there may be some slight spending reductions in some areas the NDP cares about, they can't support this thing.
00:05:16.100Now, this is just classic political brinksmanship.
00:05:18.320Really, the reality is that the NDP simply needs to oppose the Liberals.
00:05:24.480That sounds like a very shallow statement, but it's true.
00:05:28.660Jagmeet Singh was so just complicitory with the Liberals.
00:05:33.740He went along with every single vote with them.
00:05:36.020There was no point in the NDP existing with Jagmeet Singh around.
00:05:38.800That the NDP actually needs to artificially complain about everything now in order for them to show their left-wing progressive base that they are somehow better than the Liberals.
00:05:49.100Really, I could see the NDP pretty much passing the same budget with maybe a slightly different balance between infrastructure spending and operating budget expenses.
00:05:57.920They would be blowing out the deficit too.
00:06:00.080The mix of spending would just be slightly different.
00:06:02.520But this is enough for the NDP these days to oppose it simply because they only have seven seats and they need to find an excuse to call an election next year in order for them to at least double it so they can get their official party status back.
00:06:17.080Which is hilarious that he's saying like, oh my goodness, we're moving backwards on climate stuff.
00:06:41.140No, Elizabeth May just confirmed today that the Liberals were going to stick to the Paris Climate Accord and all of their other green initiatives.
00:07:15.680Carney is proposing that he might in the future at some point cut some waste, 15%, at a time when there is more waste than ever to cut.
00:07:25.180The fact that he can only reduce operating budgets by 15%, he's still probably not even going to do it, is ridiculous.
00:07:30.540He could cut way more because the government's size has gone up by more than 50% since Justin Trudeau was in office or since he came to office in 2015.
00:14:04.280Rick Bell's talking, and I like Rick Bell, but I just don't need to go over there right now.
00:14:08.040No doubt we're going to get a reaction to the budget from Pierre Polyev in the next hour or so.
00:14:14.960I can probably cover that in a different video here.
00:14:17.920But what this is probably going to be doing, again, for the 2026 spring election,
00:14:23.460is that the Liberals are going to run on the idea that we have all these achievements,
00:14:27.100we've announced all these projects, projects that were already underway,
00:14:30.280or they were almost done, or their thing's not going to be done for five years.
00:14:33.240And then they're going to say, well, we did all these trade deals, just vague, hollow agreements that they signed in Europe and Asia,
00:14:39.960saying we should maybe trade more together.
00:14:42.400They're going to try and run on all these achievements, run on the things that the budget is supposedly going to do.
00:14:47.680But I think the problem for Carney, despite still having a net favorable approval rating,
00:14:53.620his approval rating is higher than his disapproval rating, and the fact that his government even has a higher approval rating than disapproval rating,
00:15:00.420I think he thinks he has a chance to win a majority in a spring or summer election.
00:15:05.000But the problem is, I think that the emotions are on the side of those who want to get rid of him.
00:15:09.860I don't think a lot of voters who voted Liberal in this last election are going to show up again,
00:15:14.960because Trump is not going to be the top issue anymore, and Carney has objectively broken a lot of promises already.
00:15:21.280And then you're going to have those who want a fiscal restraint, who voted Liberal, who typically vote Conservative,