Liberal MPs move to restrain Mark Carney's power! (Internal FIGHT)
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Summary
In an unexpected yet welcome development in Canadian politics, it looks like there are finally people inside the Liberal Party who have finally learned that unrestrained power is in fact a bad thing. Justin Trudeau was able to do absolutely anything he wanted as Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal party. And it s because the Liberals had never implemented the Reform Act that Michael Chong, a still current Conservative MP, had created back in 2014 and was passed in 2015.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. In an unexpected yet welcome development in Canadian politics,
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it looks like there are people inside the Liberal Party caucus who have finally learned that
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unrestrained power is in fact a bad thing. So Justin Trudeau was able to, for almost 10 years,
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do absolutely anything he wanted as Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Party.
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And it's because the Liberals had never implemented the Reform Act that Michael Chong,
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a still current Conservative MP, had created back in 2014 and was passed in 2015. Basically,
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what the Reform Act is, is something that parties can voluntarily sign on to at the start of a
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parliamentary session, and they can use the powers to restrain what the leader can do. So previously,
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leaders could just kick people out of caucus whenever they wanted, they could deny the ability
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to have a leadership review, and there was really nothing that caucus could do. That's where the
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Liberal Party found themselves stuck over the past 10 years, because they weren't using the Reform Act.
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The Reform Act is passed within caucus at their first caucus meeting, where basically the leader
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and caucus agree that there are going to be certain rules of engagement and certain ways that caucus
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can curb the power of the Prime Minister. Now, we're going to talk a little bit more about how
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this might actually end up playing out in the Liberal Party, because Mark Carney is not happy
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with this. He wants the unrestrained power that Justin Trudeau had, and he is chafing at the idea
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that his caucus may be able to vote for leadership reviews, or if the majority of them want him out,
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that he is forced out as the Liberal leader, and they can choose somebody else or hold their leadership
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race, or even that they can expel caucus members by a majority vote, rather than the leader just saying,
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you're out, they actually must get a vote from the entire caucus. You can already tell why Mark Carney
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probably doesn't like this, because the people leading this are the people he kind of screwed over
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when it came to his new cabinet picks. Nate Erskine-Smith is one of the main people pushing
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for the Reform Act to be implemented. The man who agreed to run again for the Liberals, if they allowed
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him to become Housing Minister, Mark Carney let him be Housing Minister, but after the election,
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he shuffled the cabinet, and Nate Erskine-Smith is out, having been Housing Minister, I believe,
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for like a month. Absolutely pathetic. But I was reading an article earlier from the Toronto Star,
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which I will be linking in the description below and pinned to the top of the comments,
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that were going over how there was like about a dozen Liberal MPs who were willing to talk to the
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Toronto Star saying, yes, we want the Reform Act, we have to get through the era of the leader doing
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absolutely anything they want. And this is a good development. I do not like the Liberal Party.
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I will never vote for them, at least until they just basically become conservatives. If they ever
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choose to do that, I doubt it. But this is at least a good development, that parties are actually
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embracing democracy, that when Justin Trudeau is absolutely destroying the country, there is a
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function within caucus for the rational members to use to call for a leadership review. The Reform Act
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basically makes it that, yes, while a majority of sitting MPs can oust the leader, 20% of them can
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vote that a leadership review must be undertaken where all the members get to vote whether the
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person stays or goes, and they at least need a majority of the membership to stay.
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So this is all very good. This is from a Yahoo News article. I will also be linking this in the
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description below. But it says, Ottawa, Prime Minister Mark Carney didn't have much to say about
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his MPs looking at adopting legislation that would allow them to trigger a leadership review.
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Speaking to reporters at West Block Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Mark Carney shrugged off
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questions about his MPs adopting the Reform Act legislation tabled by Conservative MP Michael
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Chong in 2015 that would easily allow caucus members a variety of powers, including a leadership
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review of the party. Now, I want to cut over to what he actually said, because you can kind of tell
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that Mark Carney isn't super comfortable with this. Again, I think he signed up to be Prime Minister
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to get the sort of powers that Prime Minister Trudeau had. He doesn't want to have to contend with
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actually needing to maintain confidence with his caucus. He wants to be like Justin Trudeau, and he can
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just willy-nilly kick people out and just dare people to all quit the party, because that would be
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really the only way that you can get rid of him, is either quitting the party and sitting as an
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independent, or voting no confidence, in which you may be finished as a Liberal MP if you try and do
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that. This internal mechanism allows you to, in a softer way, challenge the leader, where Mark Carney wants
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it to be that, well, you better stand up and let me slit your throat if you actually want to take me on. He
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doesn't want it to be internal closed-door meetings where people can say, well, you have to, you know, you
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actually have to undergo a leadership review. You've been doing some pretty radical things that
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membership doesn't like. But here's Mark Carney reacting to it.
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In Catherine Levesque, National Post, I wanted to get your opinion on the Reform Act. You might have seen,
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but a few of your MPs say it's nothing against you, but they want to have the power to trigger a leadership
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review if things go south, maybe in a couple of years.
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Again, I don't want to, like, be the body language expert here. I did that in a previous video with David Eby
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where he looked really uncomfortable. But even then, when they brought up, when she mentioned
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the words, it's nothing against you, quoting the anonymous MP saying, it's nothing against you.
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We just want a mechanism to be able to, you know, remove a leader if you start doing things we
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dislike. They're not even saying he's doing anything they dislike right now. They're saying in case you
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do anything that we think is egregious, we want the ability to remove you. Just look at the instant
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reaction. Like, I feel like this is a tell that he's really ticked off with the conversations that
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have been happening in the background. They want to have the power to trigger a leadership.
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Like, yeah, like, look at that again. I'll go back a little bit further.
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You might have seen, but a few of your MPs say it's nothing against you, but they want to have
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the power to trigger a leader. That tells me, again, I don't want to go too much into body language
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type stuff, but that felt like to me, the National Post reporter says they say it's nothing against you,
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and he kind of has that instant reaction of, sure, it's nothing against me, because he knows
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Nate Erickson, Erickson Smith, and some of these other people really have it out for him, because
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he's already screwed them over. They might not come at him now, but if he starts messing up, I think
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they feel no loyalty to him, and they've even been saying the guy kind of just swept in here, became
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leader within like a month, and then became prime minister for a full four-year term, or it could end up
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being four years if the government doesn't collapse, and that we maybe want a little bit of a
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veto power over stuff you do, and he does not look like that's, you know, that's something that
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he's interested in in any way, just with the very tight robotic looks he's having during the presser.
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If things go south, maybe in a couple of years, are you comfortable with this idea?
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Is that a prediction? Catherine, I mean, what do you have a little confidence?
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Are you comfortable with that idea so early in your mandate?
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Well, I'll say the following, which is that, you know, the Reform Act, all parties in Parliament,
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all recognized parties in Parliament are bound by the Reform Act. It's the law of the land.
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That's the problem. It's not, it really isn't. The problem in Canada is that parties are run like
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private clubs. You can do whatever. I, again, ran for the Conservative Party federal nomination for the
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riding of Calgary Signal Hill. There were certain people in the party who didn't want me to win,
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and then although I had the most memberships, they can just kick me out and just say, well,
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Wyatt, we had some issues with him, and they'll never explain themselves because they didn't have
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issues with me. They just want me out. The thing is, because parties are run like private clubs,
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the Reform Act exists, but it's a voluntary thing. Caucus has to vote for the Reform Act to be
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implemented. Just recently, Pierre Polyev and his caucus, both basically, they all unanimously agreed,
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let's use the Reform Act like we've been using in the past because it's a good
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accountability measure. The caucus must vote that they are going to recognize the Reform Act
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because there's nothing in law that says that they're actually bound by it. It's more of just
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guiding principles if you agree to it. If you vote to implement it, it must be implemented.
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Like the leader can't just take, takes these backs. He's on, yeah, I said we are going to use
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the Reform Act, but now that you actually are trying to use it, no, not anymore. So that's where he's
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completely wrong. Oh, we all recognize it. You recognize it, but you don't use it. That's,
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that's why Trudeau in December couldn't be ousted by the, the MPs and he had to decide to leave on his
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own. And, and therefore there are these four votes consistent with the Reform Act that will take
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place. They'll take place at the, at the first caucus meeting, which is Sunday. So it's not,
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it's just, well, I, I observed that this will happen. There'll be these votes.
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He's not saying whether he's yes or no on them. And let's be clear, a strong leader who thinks he's
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going to actually be able to please his caucus, who's going to do things that don't put them in a
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tight position when it comes to their reelections or things that the liberal membership is going to
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like, because what you had to understand about the liberal membership is that although they are
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more collectivist, although they believe in more left-wing things generally as members,
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the thing is that at the end of the day, the membership is still expecting, you know,
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inflation to go down and in prices, you know, stabilize, wages to go up, taxes to go down. And
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if Carney starts failing on this, if crime gets out of control, if the drug crisis gets out of
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control, if the housing market crashes, they're also potentially going to want Carney gone. And
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he doesn't want it to be as easy as the Reform Act makes it, that they can immediately call for a
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leadership review that takes place a few months later, or they can oust him if there's truly that
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much dislike of him in caucus. Again, if he actually knew that if he was confident in himself that he's
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not going to run into speed bumps, he would have endorsed it. He would have said, absolutely. And I
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guarantee it's not really, it's never going to have to be used. That would be an actual strong
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leader's position. Polly have allowed for it to happen. And in fact, it's good because there are
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abilities for MPs to say, well, we didn't like how the last election was run. So we do need changes
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made in Conservative Party HQ, or we're going to have to allow for a leadership review. That's actually
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something going on right now. In fact, it's all in a dispute about the person who ended up getting
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me kicked out of Signal Hill. It's not technically her, but everyone kind of knows it's her because
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she has hands on everything that happens in this kind of area of life. But like Jenny Byrne was the
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one who got me kicked out of my nomination and other people. And a lot of Conservative MPs rightfully
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think that she should move on, she should stop being the national campaign director or whatever
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position she's in, because she's frankly not very good at this. She lost in 2015 for Harper against
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Trudeau. And now she's lost in 2025, when the win was easy. We could have won. Let's be very clear,
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the Conservative Party could have won. It's not just, oh, well, boomers were too concerned about
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Trump. And that's why we lost. You can always blame people for voting the wrong way, quote, unquote.
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But if you don't make a good enough case, you're going to lose those voters. And I think what happened
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with the Conservative Party in the 2025 election is we made really good place for working class Canadians,
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for minority Canadians, especially Asian Canadians who are very concerned about drugs and crime in
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their communities. We did a really good play for people in the Maritimes for fishing, but we didn't
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have a vision for middle class, upper middle class, frankly, white retired voters. They weren't offered
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anything. They weren't really offered higher income bracket tax cuts. They weren't really offered a vision
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about how the Conservatives are going to fight back against the Americans by cutting our corporate taxes
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and getting rid of all these Liberal policies. We kind of just ran on change, and those people
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didn't care about change. They were voting out of anxiety. And we didn't need to become the anti-Trump
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Party, because I don't think that would have worked either, because, you know, the Liberals and the NDP
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were already doing it. I don't think it helps the Conservatives to start doing the same thing.
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We could have taken it from the perspective that, yeah, Trump is potentially threatening our economy
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here. And if you're going to blame someone, blame the Liberals for making us so vulnerable.
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But they only ever ended up making that argument like a month before the election.
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They really didn't, like, the ads they were running were just not very good. But getting back to my
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point, the Reform Act allows the Conservatives to basically say, unless Kalev's going to start
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cleaning house of these people who are just frankly not very good at their jobs, well, he might have to
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go or we might have to check his powers if it feels like we might run into another election with the
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same broken tools, with the same bad advisors. We need to go into it with people who respect the
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grassroots and let our local campaigns run themselves rather than micromanaging them.
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Because we've had 2015 and 2025 that were keystone elections. Improving that micromanagement does not
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work. You've got to let your grassroots campaigns act like grassroots campaigns. Show up to events,
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show up to debates, be able to put together their own literature based on what they're hearing at the
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doors rather than people running around with acts of the tax literature after a month after a month
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after Carney got rid of its carbon tax. Is he probably going to bring it back? Maybe potentially
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he's already increased the industrial carbon tax to compensate for the consumer one going away.
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But it was silly to run against the carbon tax when most Canadians were confused whether it was still
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there or not. And it was too much of a slog of a debate to really convince people, no, you had to
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vote for us. So we really get rid of it. Because to most people who aren't already voting for us,
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they think it's gone. And that's the problem. It's too dumb of a debate to have. But yeah,
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right here, I am very happy to see that the liberals are actually going after Carney on this.
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Again, read that Toronto Star article. It's actually very interesting. I don't usually like
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the Toronto Star, but this is kind of like inside the Beltway type political coverage. That's very
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interesting. Where all these anonymous liberals plus a couple of ones that will allow themselves to be
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named are basically just saying, look, yeah, we're not really sure if Mark Carney's going to be
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the guy he said he was. So we want to be able to have a veto to kick him out if he starts acting
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up. And Carney, in this video, you can tell with his very tight-lipped reactions, he's not very
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happy about it. Again, I go back to the reporter from the National Post saying, it's nothing against
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you. And he's like, he starts making noises like, that's likely. Hilarious. But let's see how this
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develops. Let's see how things develop in the Conservative Party as well. Because if they're
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going to win the next election, got to have better people around. Polioff's a great leader. He's a
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really good leader. I think he was getting bad advice, though, because it's like a good army
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led by the wrong general. And Polioff's not the general. He's like the state leader. But your
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generals are like your advisors, your campaign managers. If the generals suck, it doesn't matter
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how much artillery and how much cavalry and whatnot that you have and how well-trained your ground
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troops are. They're just not going to be able to win the day and take the bridge and whatnot
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if we literally are not going in the right direction. If we're playing too defensive a game,
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how are we ever going to capture territory when all we're doing is defending our boundaries,
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which is what I felt about the 2025 election? We were behind, but so often we were defensive.
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That's where I don't understand where the Conservative Party will run away from being pro-life.
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Most of their MPs are pro-life. Let them be pro-life. Guess what? Their voters in the
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nominations liked that they're pro-life, and that's why they're there. You know what? Most
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people in the general public generally don't like the idea that the Liberals voted against
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increasing criminal sentencing for people who murder pregnant women. That's something they did
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because they're complete goblins. Let their pro-life MPs go on church tours talking about the fact that
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that happened, and they're going to implement that law that the Liberals shut down, and they're going to
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ban sex-selective abortion, and these other things where 90% of Canadians are incensed to think that
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those are legal. Anyway, so turning into a bit of a rant here at the end. Hopefully you guys didn't
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mind this video. I will be back later talking about other stuff. I actually like this kind of like
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news that's coming out right now. The news cycle with all that inside baseball stuff is kind of
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interesting. I'm also going to implement the article where Conservative MPs are kind of putting
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pressure on Polly out to ditch Jenny Burr, and I think that's an interesting development. But
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anyways, until next time, guys, make sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel,