The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - May 15, 2025


Liberals "win" riding by 1 vote after Election Canada refuses to correct mistake


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

186.35081

Word Count

1,652

Sentence Count

88

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

The election result in the riding of Terrebonne in Quebec is insane. Elections Canada screwed up and left a ballot in a woman's mailbox, and they refuse to count it. What's one vote between friends when the Liberals are ahead?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here.
00:00:03.100 The way the election result has been handled in the riding of Terrebonne in Quebec is absolutely insane.
00:00:10.760 We had, on election night, the Liberals winning the election, but after special ballots were counted, it swung over to the Bloc Québécois.
00:00:18.720 And then a judicial recount was undertaken because the result was very close.
00:00:22.820 The Bloc Québécois had only won by 44 votes, and after the judicial recount, the Liberals ended up winning by a single vote.
00:00:31.220 But then, there was another ballot found that verifiably shows someone was trying to vote for the Bloc Québécois,
00:00:38.300 and Elections Canada screwed up and gave them the wrong address to mail the ballot into,
00:00:43.200 and they're not going to count that one, because apparently, what's one vote between friends when the Liberals are ahead?
00:00:49.080 So, this is how Elections Canada is currently handling the situation.
00:00:55.280 Global News here, in this headline, says,
00:00:58.300 Elections Canada says the results of a recount in the federal riding of Terrebonne in this final,
00:01:03.440 despite a misprint that led to one special ballot being returned to sender.
00:01:08.580 Now, I'm just going to read an excerpt from the article here.
00:01:11.600 I don't need to bring it up on camera.
00:01:13.900 But it says,
00:01:15.060 Despite the error and questions about the possibility of another recount or a by-election,
00:01:20.120 Elections Canada spokesperson Matthew McKenna said the result of the recount is final.
00:01:25.860 Quote,
00:01:26.600 The Canadian Elections Act does not explicitly provide for the appeal of a judicial recount,
00:01:32.020 and Elections Canada is unaware of any appeals brought to a court following a recount.
00:01:37.140 What?
00:01:38.120 That's stupid.
00:01:39.300 So, just because he doesn't know that there's ever been something like that before,
00:01:44.000 the act doesn't explicitly say we have to do it.
00:01:47.580 So, who cares that this is basically just a subversion of democracy?
00:01:52.220 Somebody had the ballot.
00:01:53.920 They wanted to vote.
00:01:55.420 It shows their ballot sealed.
00:01:57.540 They had mailed it in.
00:01:58.880 But because Elections Canada misprinted the wrong automatic returning address to the ballot,
00:02:03.840 that they would have stuck in their mailbox and hoped it was going to get into Elections Canada,
00:02:07.140 it bounced back, came back to them, and they're like,
00:02:09.240 I was trying to vote bloc, and you guys basically didn't let me.
00:02:12.080 Elections Canada, like, meh.
00:02:14.660 Meh.
00:02:15.760 Like, what?
00:02:17.300 That's insane.
00:02:18.260 Did they do this intentionally?
00:02:20.060 I don't know.
00:02:20.860 I don't think so.
00:02:22.020 But I think at this point, Elections Canada, if they're pro-liberal,
00:02:26.500 maybe they're taking this as a happy accident.
00:02:29.240 Well, it just so happens that we can ignore this ballot and allow our favorite party to win.
00:02:33.980 Do I absolutely know it's their favorite party?
00:02:36.460 I guess not.
00:02:38.140 But, guys, the evidence is kind of there to suggest that they might want the Liberals to win,
00:02:43.000 considering how ridiculous this is.
00:02:44.820 So we see right here from the CBC news headline,
00:02:48.680 Liberals won Terrebonne-Quebec riding by one vote,
00:02:51.400 but this woman's block ballot wasn't counted.
00:02:54.500 And we can see here that the address that they had provided onto the ballots were not the right one.
00:03:02.440 She has the ballot there.
00:03:03.460 It's all still signed and sealed, and they can verify that this was the wrong address for Elections Canada
00:03:09.280 in the Terrebonne riding.
00:03:11.320 But, again, we're not going to do anything about it.
00:03:13.560 By the way, I'm not even saying that they should just count this one lady's vote.
00:03:17.480 I don't even think they should countervote.
00:03:18.840 I think they need a new by-election.
00:03:21.120 How do we know how many people may have sent in a vote, and it was the wrong address,
00:03:24.980 the thing bounced back, but they just didn't complain about it,
00:03:27.600 and it could have caused the Liberal to win or the Bloc to win?
00:03:31.340 You have a by-election in a scenario like this when you really don't know with a gun-to-your-head certainty who won,
00:03:38.400 because at the end of the day, the riding deserves to be represented by the person that the population wanted.
00:03:44.480 In this case, we're just going to have someone represented, just one of the two parties, flip a coin,
00:03:49.160 that person gets to represent it.
00:03:51.040 That's not how democracy works.
00:03:52.880 That's not how our first-past-the-post system works.
00:03:55.880 You don't just keep counting and stop counting after your favorite party wins,
00:04:00.280 and then when the other person finds a ballot, they're like,
00:04:03.000 well, there's no technical way of having an appeal.
00:04:05.720 Figure it out.
00:04:06.580 This is what courts are for.
00:04:08.460 And I think the good thing is that Yves-Francois Blanchet,
00:04:11.540 the leader of the Bloc Capicoat, is not taking this lying down,
00:04:14.340 and I do believe that they will be appealing this in court,
00:04:16.900 because, you know, dang right, they should.
00:04:18.840 You're not just going to, you know, where are you going to go?
00:04:21.100 Just kind of like weakly let the Liberals just take the riding,
00:04:25.100 simply because elections can, they can't get their crap together,
00:04:27.440 and they're too, you know, mentally lazy to figure out
00:04:30.540 if they can actually rectify this.
00:04:32.400 Well, the Act doesn't say we have to rectify it,
00:04:35.040 so we're not going to.
00:04:37.260 Why do you people think?
00:04:39.260 There are people whose trust in the system is undermined.
00:04:42.840 Do I think the election was rigged?
00:04:44.740 No.
00:04:45.080 But I think when small issues like this come up,
00:04:48.440 there are people incentivized to not take it too seriously
00:04:51.080 if not taking it seriously helps the Liberals win.
00:04:54.060 I think that that's what we're seeing.
00:04:55.620 Yeah, we had 800 special ballots get lost in British Columbia,
00:04:59.100 and I think they've now counted them,
00:05:01.100 maybe, I don't actually even know.
00:05:03.000 Probably wouldn't swing anything,
00:05:04.440 because most Conservative or Liberal wins
00:05:07.580 were greater than a few hundred votes,
00:05:10.840 and all those ballots are from various different writings,
00:05:13.020 so it wouldn't have made the difference.
00:05:14.080 But guys, goodness, it's not election denial
00:05:18.380 to say that Elections Canada,
00:05:20.120 and in the BC provincial elections, Elections BC,
00:05:22.500 and in other provinces,
00:05:24.160 they need to get their crap together
00:05:26.520 and figure out how to do this.
00:05:28.380 Or I can't defend them from people
00:05:30.040 who want to say the entire thing is rigged
00:05:32.800 and it's a farce and it's just a show vote,
00:05:34.840 because they're not giving me a lot to work with here.
00:05:37.820 They're not giving me a lot of action
00:05:40.440 to demonstrate that,
00:05:41.820 no, no, no, they take this seriously.
00:05:43.440 Right now in Terribum, they're dragging their feet.
00:05:45.960 They do not care.
00:05:47.000 And this does matter a lot,
00:05:49.900 because it gets Mark Carney closer to a majority government.
00:05:53.380 And every seat that he gains or loses
00:05:55.660 sort of changes the dynamic in Parliament
00:05:58.760 with how he negotiates with the NDP,
00:06:01.620 with how he negotiates with the Bloc,
00:06:03.180 how likely he is to want to go towards another election.
00:06:06.320 It actually is extremely impactful right now.
00:06:10.140 This, in fact, is probably the number one draft pick scenario
00:06:15.280 where you want to make sure you get the election right,
00:06:18.500 because this getting, gaining them a seat,
00:06:20.880 getting 170 seats means they're only two away from a majority.
00:06:24.200 And then they also need a speaker.
00:06:25.560 And that maybe they can get a couple NDP'd across the floor
00:06:28.820 and give them the majority.
00:06:30.240 If they're three or four seats back,
00:06:33.020 it might be a little bit more difficult
00:06:35.280 to get that many NDP'd across the floor.
00:06:37.280 And maybe no one wants to leave the NDP at that point
00:06:40.240 because you're stronger together in your party.
00:06:42.820 We need properly done elections.
00:06:47.860 Bureaucratic incompetence in other departments in government
00:06:50.520 have obviously bled into Elections Canada.
00:06:53.400 And I hope the federal conservatives,
00:06:55.240 Pierre Polyev, Yves-Francois Blanchet,
00:06:57.440 and Don Davies in the NDP
00:06:58.880 all start calling for there to be an actual review
00:07:03.020 of how Elections Canada does its work.
00:07:05.260 Because this is unacceptable,
00:07:06.900 they actually need to have accountability.
00:07:08.860 And if the liberals start screaming at them
00:07:11.360 that they're election deniers and whatnot,
00:07:13.600 deal with it, just push forward
00:07:15.120 because they're absolutely wrong on this issue.
00:07:17.640 And any normal citizen knowing the details of a case like this
00:07:21.180 does not think that the bureaucrats in Elections Canada are right.
00:07:24.240 And they know they're playing games.
00:07:26.360 They know that they are using the fact
00:07:28.340 that they don't technically have to do anything
00:07:30.300 against the voting public
00:07:32.420 who actually wants the results of the election to be accurate.
00:07:35.320 Not to be accurate within a vote.
00:07:37.900 Because if that vote can decide who's in government
00:07:40.500 or if there's a by-election and the bloc might win,
00:07:43.320 it kind of does matter.
00:07:45.160 But again, I hate when people act like,
00:07:46.980 well, it's just a vote.
00:07:47.940 I've seen people online saying that.
00:07:49.540 Kind of like the Laura Babcock kind of position.
00:07:51.560 Oh, it's just a vote.
00:07:53.600 What the heck?
00:07:55.360 It's just a vote that kind of decides
00:07:57.040 a lot of stuff in this country.
00:07:59.540 But again, these people only consider it democracy when they win.
00:08:02.700 So this is a democratic outcome in their minds.
00:08:04.960 But if it went to a by-election in the bloc one,
00:08:07.200 that's not a democratic outcome
00:08:08.940 because they believe that they represent the will of the people.
00:08:12.360 And so if their candidate doesn't win
00:08:13.740 or they don't win the election,
00:08:14.800 it's because the will of the people was subverted,
00:08:17.340 undermined, or people were confused,
00:08:19.340 lied to, and voted the wrong way.
00:08:21.820 Anyways, so that's it for this video, guys.
00:08:24.240 Just trying to keep it shorter today.
00:08:26.300 I will have more content coming out either later today
00:08:30.020 or I'll try and do something tomorrow.
00:08:33.020 I just did a couple recordings with Candice Malcolm at Juno News,
00:08:37.820 so I encourage you guys to go and subscribe to Juno
00:08:40.880 so you can watch those
00:08:42.080 if you haven't seen any of my appearances with Candice Malcolm yet.
00:08:45.280 But again, until next time, guys,
00:08:47.940 make sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel,
00:08:49.840 leave a comment, and I'll see you guys all later.