The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - April 23, 2026


Liberals BLOW UP Ethics Committee to Protect Corrupt Minister!


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22 minutes

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183.1986

Word count

4,094

Sentence count

147

Harmful content

Misogyny

13

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5

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Hate speech

14

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

It was already bad enough that the Liberals got their majority government not through the ballot box, but through sleazy floor crossing, but now it's even worse that they are using this artificial majority government to not just stack the policy-based committees in Parliament, but also to stack the ethics committee.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
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00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here, and welcome back to the National Telegraph YouTube channel.
00:00:06.400 It was already bad enough that the Mark Carney Liberals got their majority government not through
00:00:12.680 the ballot box, but through sleazy floor crossings. But now it's even worse that they are using this
00:00:19.140 artificial majority government to not just stack the policy-based committees in Parliament,
00:00:24.520 but they are using it to stack the ethics committee. The liberals have been saying that
00:00:30.440 they need to add extra liberal members to all the committees to help get their agenda through
00:00:35.760 faster. But why does that require them to also stack the committee that is meant to hold them
00:00:42.280 accountable? It's because they want no accountability. And the liberals know this is a bad
00:00:47.880 look, and you can tell by watching their press conferences. Watch Steve McKinnon, the liberal
00:00:53.640 House leader, answering this journalist's question as to why it was okay for them to
00:00:59.640 filibuster before to prevent the finance minister from testifying, but why it's bad that the
00:01:05.280 conservatives were quote-unquote filibustering against liberal policy, and he is now required
00:01:11.120 to stack the deck on all of the committees. I mean, the vision is that filibusters are only
00:01:16.820 good if you believe the principle you're defending is good, but if it's the opposition, then it's bad.
00:01:20.820 No, that's not what I just said. What I just said is that in the case that Hélène asked about, the Minister of Finance went above and beyond, and the Ethics Commissioner, in fact, recognized that the Minister had done things that even were not required under the circumstances.
00:01:43.020 so what is happening here is that the reporters had previously asked steve mckinnon about the
00:01:50.900 fact that the liberals before they got their majority had been basically running out the
00:01:55.280 clock for days preventing the opposition the conservatives and the bloc quebecois
00:02:00.200 from requiring francois philippe champaign the finance minister to come and testify in front of
00:02:06.340 them about his conflict of interest with the Alto high-speed rail project. His wife was only hired
00:02:13.400 as the vice president of environment a couple months before he started advocating and hammering
00:02:19.240 through the project in the budget. And then he didn't disclose that he had a conflict of interest
00:02:24.280 until late March, early April, but he claims that he disclosed it back in September, but the ethics
00:02:30.640 commissioner had no record that he did that. Him saying the ethics commissioner said that
00:02:35.040 Champagne went above and beyond is really just a symptom of the fact that many of these watchdogs
00:02:40.940 in government are liberal lackeys. But he's just saying that now Francois-Philippe Champagne is
00:02:46.660 going above and beyond. He didn't, in fact. He's going above and beyond now when it doesn't matter,
00:02:51.600 but he didn't do it before when he was actually hammering through the Alto train projects. So I
00:02:56.380 guess you can be corrupt and then disclose your conflicts of interest after, and then it's all
00:03:01.980 good but they were asking him basically well why was it okay for you guys to obstruct them bringing
00:03:08.940 in champagne for to testify but now you guys are saying you have to stack all the committees because
00:03:14.280 there was too much filibustering going on you yourselves were doing it so that can't be a
00:03:18.460 justification for now stacking all the committees and again why do you need to stack the ethics
00:03:24.020 committee that has nothing to do with policy it just has to do with whether or not they can force
00:03:29.180 a liberal to testify on the way from committee to explain because this this um felt like a deeply
00:03:35.480 partisan um and uh vexatious uh series of attacks on the finance minister that were completely
00:03:44.420 unwarranted sorry but if it's all untrue it should be so easy for francois philippe champagne to show
00:03:52.520 up and clear himself answer questions easily prove everyone has no clue what they're talking
00:03:58.040 about in fact it would actually raise his profile it'd make him look better than ever if he can show
00:04:02.920 up and disprove all of these claims against him the fact that they say well he's not going to do
00:04:08.040 it because it feels vexatious that's not a reason that's a feeling that's an emotion why can't he
00:04:13.820 come and answer these charges what the heck i just want to move on to the next english question he
00:04:22.920 That doesn't matter really anymore anyways.
00:04:29.520 But I want to move on now to the response from Conservative MPs
00:04:33.620 because very clearly, the Liberals just do not want accountability.
00:04:38.220 They're not doing this because, you know,
00:04:40.800 the Conservatives and the Bloc are being so obstructionist.
00:04:44.420 Everyone always thinks their opposition is being obstructionist.
00:04:47.780 You then have to ask, why is it that you don't just want
00:04:51.340 an extra couple liberals on the finance committee. You don't just want an extra couple of liberals
00:04:56.360 on, you know, the justice committee. You want more liberals on the ethics committee,
00:05:01.340 the oversight committees. And this is what the liberals are also doing with the parliamentary
00:05:04.560 budget officer. They got rid of the excellent Jason Jocks, who is literally rated the best
00:05:10.840 PBO in the world. I thought that sounded fake, like who's out there rating PBOs. But there is
00:05:15.800 a body who is saying that he is the most detailed with the most constructive criticism, who has
00:05:21.180 the best, basically, who has the most stringent oversight. He was rated very well. And he has
00:05:27.800 been replaced by a woman that Mark Carney went to Harvard with. What? I'm not sure if they were
00:05:34.680 in the same classrooms, but it was just some fellow Harvard alumnus, apparently has 25 years
00:05:40.320 of experience in some related finance area or some accounting area. But you're replacing the best
00:05:47.500 with somebody else. Why? It's because he has too many good questions and the Liberals don't like
00:05:53.280 accountability. But here is Conservative MP Andrew Lawton reacting to Steve McKinnon's statement as to
00:06:00.920 why he is stacking the committees and what powers he has to do that. Andrew Lawton correctly points
00:06:06.360 out here, the Liberals got less than 44% of the vote in the last election. Thanks to their
00:06:11.620 aggressive recruitment of floor crossers, they now have 51.4% of the seats in the House of Commons. 1.00
00:06:18.100 They now seek to ram through changes that will give them 58% of the seats on committees. Yes, 1.00
00:06:23.660 because of course committees are not balanced because you need to be an official party to be
00:06:27.520 able to have a seat on the committee. The Greens and the NDP do not have enough seats to be official
00:06:32.920 parties, and so the Liberals end up getting this bigger advantage when it comes to who sits on the
00:06:38.400 different committees. And again, we have to keep asking, why do you need to stack the Ethics
00:06:44.360 Committee? Again, they're going to now fall back on, well, they were being mean to Champaign. Well,
00:06:49.660 I guess it does feel mean when people are asking about corruption. But if you are not guilty,
00:06:54.860 it should be very easy to answer these claims. We're not charging them with anything. They are
00:07:00.400 literally just wanting to ask them questions. Here's Conservative MP Michael Cooper talking
00:07:06.200 about this fiasco with the ethics committee mark carney has just launched an unprecedented
00:07:11.960 parliamentary power grab last night his house leader put on notice a motion that will stack
00:07:18.280 the deck in favor of the liberals at all parliamentary committees liberals will now
00:07:23.560 command a majority on all committees including oversight committees like ethics and public
00:07:28.840 accounts committees that are tasked with holding the liberal government to account as a result
00:07:35.080 Liberals will be able to shut down investigations into government mismanagement, shield Carney from
00:07:42.040 his vast conflicts with respect to Brookfield, and block whistleblowers from testifying publicly.
00:07:49.160 As I said, a total power grab. Look, the Liberals won a minority government in the last election,
00:07:56.920 and consistent with a minority result, no one party controlled parliamentary committees.
00:08:03.160 But in recent months, Mark Carney has done something no Prime Minister has ever done before.
00:08:09.720 As part of a strategy, he has picked off various MPs through undemocratic floor crossings
00:08:15.960 to cobble together a majority government in the House of Commons that he didn't earn at
00:08:21.880 the ballot box. What we have is effectively an illegitimate liberal majority government
00:08:28.440 that is now using its illegitimate majority to rig committees to shut down accountability
00:08:35.560 it's wrong it removes critical checks and balances it's blatantly anti-democratic and
00:08:43.000 conservatives are going to fight this outrageous power grab every step of the way michael cooper
00:08:48.920 i think is one of my favorite mps i think he's very very good he reminds me of like really good
00:08:53.720 congressmen in the united states who when they get onto an issue become like that becomes
00:08:58.200 their big thing that they will grab on to some ethics investigation or some financial fraud issue
00:09:05.160 and they will just fight with for it for like a year i think he's really great and i think that
00:09:10.440 anyone watching this video if you have liberal friends and they start defending the restacking
00:09:15.880 of committees saying well parliament is now a majority liberal why shouldn't the committees
00:09:20.520 be a majority liberal now maybe that's a fine argument that the committee should reflect
00:09:26.280 respect whatever parliament looks like. They at least should at least acknowledge that this is
00:09:32.460 not how the last election actually happened. And I think on many of the committees, they should stay
00:09:36.140 at the original makeup, because if you're crossing the floor, you should at least not be stymieing
00:09:41.440 your previous party by not letting them have the power on committees they used to have.
00:09:45.840 But people like Gladju, while she wished her colleagues well when she left, in fact, she does
00:09:50.440 not wish them well. She's going to make their jobs more difficult by leaving and giving more power to 1.00
00:09:55.640 the liberals in order to stack the committees? And then ask your liberal friends, because they're 1.00
00:10:00.660 going to say, well, of course they can do this. Okay, let's say they can do this. Is it needed
00:10:05.520 for them to stack the ethics committee, public accounts to make sure that conservatives and
00:10:10.740 bloc can ask where the money is going? Why is it that those two committees need to be liberal
00:10:16.160 majorities? Now, they can still ask certain people to testify, but it basically has to be that the
00:10:22.280 liberals allow it you know so uncontroversial speakers will be allowed to speak ones that the
00:10:27.440 liberals are not threatened by but if francois philippe champagne is summoned to speak or another
00:10:33.520 senior member of cabinet up to no good is summoned to speak somebody like gary amasangari or someone
00:10:39.500 else with heavy conflicts of interest or who is incompetent they can just prevent that person from
00:10:45.320 actually having to ask questions and now questions kind of fall back on the media who's not going to
00:10:51.220 ask them. We have seen Rosemary Barton and other members of the media just falling back constantly
00:10:56.780 on the idea, well, that, you know, the liberals are allowed to do this. Don't you know they're
00:11:01.600 allowed to do it? Oh, why is it bad? They're allowed to. No one said anything about them not
00:11:07.740 being technically allowed to. But if politics in Canada turns into what we're technically allowed
00:11:14.220 to do, it's going to become a very dark country very quickly. I always want to
00:11:21.220 get to this last post. I thought it was kind of strange that he was someone to make a post on
00:11:25.640 this, but I thought this was quite good. The food professor, I think, what is his name? I love his
00:11:31.880 last name, but I'm forgetting his first name. But his last name is Charlebois, which I always love
00:11:35.580 to say. But he's very good when it comes to talking about food inflation, taxes, and regulations.
00:11:41.560 He says here, we are learning that the Liberal government, now holding the slimmest of majorities
00:11:46.300 in the House of Commons, intends to assert control over all parliamentary committees,
00:11:51.200 over votes, witness selection, points of order, agendas, and more. Committee work is among the
00:11:56.920 most important responsibilities of parliamentarians, full stop. It is where legislation is thoroughly
00:12:02.480 examined and ensured that decisions made by government serve the best interests of all
00:12:10.140 Canadians. While the Liberals are entitled to seek greater control, what I witnessed firsthand in
00:12:15.580 Ottawa last week was troubling. A ton of arrogance, along with the mistreatment of some witnesses who
00:12:22.700 expressed views not aligned with the party in power. This is what is unfolding, and Canadians
00:12:27.300 should be aware. Parliament will be very different over the next three years, even with only a razor
00:12:32.860 thin majority. And that's the thing. Does this feel deserved? I'm also remembering what his full
00:12:38.340 name is, Sylvian Charlebois. I wish I could change my name to that. It's a brilliant name. It feels
00:12:43.680 like confetti should rain down from the sky every time sylvian charlebois is said but yeah getting
00:12:50.420 to his point though this is a very thin majority that they did not actually win and yet we are
00:12:56.540 having our institutions including the media pretend as if they want it and are not asking
00:13:02.740 a lot of questions about why the ethics committee needs to be shuffled now sometimes the media asks
00:13:08.220 a good question they stumble into it you know someone from the national post is apt to usually
00:13:12.720 ask a good question. But most of the media is not going to drill down on this. In fact, what we have
00:13:17.660 is we have the media grilling people like Andrew Scheer on if there is potential hypocrisy going
00:13:23.560 on right here. I believe this is the clip I wanted. But on an individual level, how is what
00:13:27.820 Chris Dantremont did any different than what Leona Alisleff did? I mean, I was watching in the
00:13:31.860 Question Period Gallery, you were the conservative leader. Melissa Lansman, before she was in
00:13:35.460 Elected Life, was a consultant, and she helped orchestrate the day where Leona Alisleff stood,
00:13:41.860 voiced her displeasure with the direction under Justin Trudeau, and joined your caucus. I mean,
00:13:46.760 that happens in Westminster Parliament. Not like, you know, this, the changing from minority to
00:13:53.320 majority, but how is one floor crossing so fundamentally different from another floor
00:13:57.060 crossing, except who it benefits in these examples? That is an asinine question to ask 0.97
00:14:03.480 to Andrew Scheer, the conservative House leader. I didn't think that the conservative should have 0.93
00:14:08.420 accepted, Leona Alislev. She just watered down the conservative brand. I don't know why she needed 0.66
00:14:13.220 to be part of the conservative camp. It didn't change any standings in parliament. So that's 0.99
00:14:17.540 also why it doesn't really matter. It was a lady going from the majority liberals to the 1.00
00:14:21.900 conservatives. Now, it might have been self-serving. Maybe she thought she could win more easily in 0.94
00:14:25.840 that from that seat. I think she was reelected once and then she got beaten eventually in 2021. 0.98
00:14:31.420 But why is all of the scrutiny from someone like David Cochran on the CBC going towards
00:14:38.140 Andrew Scheer. So intense. But if Steve McKinnon comes on, is he going to hold his feet to the
00:14:43.660 fire and say, this is not what people voted for. Don't you guys think that this looks sleazy?
00:14:48.500 Don't you guys think that these floor crossers should come out and actually give a full interview 1.00
00:14:54.140 about exactly why they left outside of just boilerplate talking points? Can you do that? 1.00
00:14:59.360 But no, we're asking him, what about Leon Ellis left? Maybe the difference here in why we care
00:15:04.980 so much is because a government did not get elected with a majority and they're just being 1.00
00:15:09.380 given a majority because of a ccp puppet like michael ma a greedy moron like chris donchermont 0.99
00:15:16.040 who wanted to be deputy speaker a cell a guy like matt generu who doesn't live in the riding he was 0.98
00:15:22.720 representing and was trying to flee to the riding he currently lives in he wants to run in victoria
00:15:28.040 next time and that's a liberal stronghold so he just happened to cross the floor as the mp for
00:15:34.120 Edmonton Riverbend to the Liberals, setting him up to run for the Liberals in the much easier to
00:15:39.140 win Victoria riding. That's why he left. And then we have Marilyn Gladew, who's a massive attention
00:15:45.520 seeker. She needs to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. And so she crossed 1.00
00:15:50.040 the floor probably for that. And then you have Laurie Idlet from the NDP, who the NDP or the 0.99
00:15:55.680 Liberals basically bribed her to cross the floor by just shoveling as much money towards none of
00:16:00.280 but as humanly possible, building a new Inuit school, shoveling over a bunch of more money
00:16:05.300 for infrastructure projects. They're building a $900 million highway into the province that there
00:16:10.540 was no business case for. The liberals said it, and they're funding it anyways, despite the fact
00:16:15.080 that that is their top reason not to help even deregulate in favor of a pipeline. They always
00:16:20.240 say there's no business case for it. The oil and gas companies aren't looking for a handout.
00:16:24.500 They want you to deregulate, and that's too much of an ask. But you want to build a highway to
00:16:28.640 benefit chinese firms in nunavut perfect 900 million dollars on the way you're seeing the
00:16:34.680 frustration here you're seeing why this is so hypocritical as i said you know none of the floor
00:16:39.360 that particular floor crossing others didn't fundamentally change the nature of the government
00:16:43.840 she was elected as a liberal in in aurora oak hills had a majority yeah they shouldn't have
00:16:48.780 had her come over bad andrew sheer should have not accepted her but again he is missing the
00:16:54.560 fundamental big issue here. I actually, and also, by the way, I actually do think she had a better
00:16:58.940 reason to cross the floor than any of the conservative or NDP floor crossers to the
00:17:04.160 liberals. I believe she was leaving due to corruption, like due to the fact that she 0.99
00:17:09.420 couldn't ethically be in that government. Maybe she should have just gone as sad as an independent. 1.00
00:17:13.620 Maybe she would have. At least she had a more principled reason than I want to be deputy speaker 0.99
00:17:19.140 or I'm not getting enough attention 0.98
00:17:21.260 or Xi Jinping basically told me to do it.
00:17:24.520 Like, come on, can we have a little bit of coherent thought
00:17:27.440 in that large head of David Cochran's?
00:17:29.600 They kept a majority after that.
00:17:31.320 And there's all the difference in the world
00:17:32.720 between someone who kind of had their eyes open
00:17:34.960 about the type of leader that Justin Trudeau was.
00:17:37.500 But is it just the standings in the House
00:17:38.920 or is it the will of the voters in the ridings?
00:17:40.600 No, it's the collective will of the Canadian people
00:17:42.360 at a general election.
00:17:43.540 So a handful of MPs for very specific ridings
00:17:47.480 have fundamentally changed the nature of this parliament from a minority to a majority.
00:17:51.460 That is not what Canadians voted for.
00:17:52.680 Canadians voted for a strong opposition to have a very strong check and balance on this government.
00:17:58.200 We were elected to provide that, and the strongest opposition in Canadian history,
00:18:02.760 elected to provide that oversight, and now they're taking the express will of the Canadian people away. 1.00
00:18:09.540 And the thing that needs to be mentioned as well is that the chances that any of these floor crossers 0.88
00:18:16.680 outside of Matt Jenneru will be re-elected is quite slim. Glad you were said to be retiring 0.99
00:18:21.940 anyways. Probably the same with Michael Ma. He's too scandal plagued. Probably the same with Chris
00:18:28.580 Don Tremont. That is a safe conservative riding. It was with win 1% in the last election, but it's
00:18:34.500 typically much safer. Acadianapolis is a very safe conservative riding. The difference was is that I
00:18:39.940 think the conservatives just did a very poor job in campaigning in Nova Scotia, but he still held
00:18:44.240 onto his camp his seat anyways and he's crossing the floor not only for the deputy speaker role
00:18:49.560 but he thinks he can get re-elected this way but he's probably not going to be re-elected that's
00:18:53.740 the funny thing all of them are going to get wiped out well you know alice love could have actually
00:18:57.600 have said to have been stepping in in line with her voters again i still don't even think the
00:19:02.700 conservative should have taken her but she actually got re-elected the first time despite it being a
00:19:07.160 very uh close swing riding the liberals typically win she was a re-elected as a conservative because
00:19:13.400 they agreed the liberal government was corrupt and we want someone who's not a liberal. Now,
00:19:19.160 we can argue back and forth on whether or not there should be automatic by-elections or there
00:19:23.020 should be some other mechanism controlling how people are able to cross the floor, but can we
00:19:28.120 all agree that if you have no principled reason to do it, you shouldn't? And also that we should
00:19:33.620 be able to have people like the finance minister testify when he has a massive conflict of interest
00:19:39.200 issue? Can we agree that it's unethical to stack the ethics committee? Maybe, possibly, can we agree
00:19:45.960 to that? But whatever, I'm not going to try and reason with liberals. But if you have liberal
00:19:49.880 friends, do ask them that. If they say, well, parliament is a majority liberal, why should the
00:19:54.820 committees not be? And say, okay, I will give you 90% of the committees. What about ethics and public
00:19:59.640 accounts? Can we say that those should stay as they were for proper accountability? And if they
00:20:05.080 say, no, no, no, that one should be liberal too. They're just being a bad actor in both senses of
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