Mark Carney is LOSING a Liberal MP - Erskine-Smith resigning!
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
173.23477
Summary
Wyatt Claypool talks about the first Liberal MP to leave office, Nate Erskine-Smith, and why he may run for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party in the upcoming leadership election. Also, a new report says that the Ontario Liberals are in the lead in the primary race to become the next party leader.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. I predicted it, and now it's coming true.
00:00:06.320
Mark Carney's Liberal Party is going to start having Liberal MPs resign on them,
00:00:11.600
which is going to throw a big wrench into Carney's scheme to try and entice a couple more Conservative MPs
00:00:21.140
It's far less enticing to cross the floor as a Conservative, even if you're a flaky one,
00:00:26.820
knowing that you're not even joining a majority government.
00:00:30.560
Chris Dontremont left the Conservatives for petty reasons,
00:00:33.740
and Michael Ma probably left knowing that if just one more Conservative crossed,
00:00:43.800
because Liberal MPs are going to just be leaving office entirely,
00:00:48.300
meaning that Carney doesn't just need one more Conservative MP,
00:00:51.740
he'll need two, if not three, and it could be up to five or six,
00:00:56.260
because a lot of Liberals do not like working with Mark Carney.
00:01:00.120
It's not actually much of an ideological schism inside the Liberal Party.
00:01:04.780
The Liberal Party hasn't budged an inch since Justin Trudeau left ideologically.
00:01:09.360
There are stylistic differences between Trudeau and Carney,
00:01:15.260
Yeah, he got rid of the carbon tax, but that was more so
00:01:17.480
Polly have got rid of the carbon tax by pressuring Carney into doing it.
00:01:21.200
But outside of a few small reforms that Carney's made, it's pretty much all the same.
00:01:27.340
But today I want to talk to you guys about the first Liberal MP
00:01:34.760
In fact, even if he doesn't end up doing the thing
00:01:37.400
that will be his excuse to leave office, I think he would have left anyways.
00:01:41.820
That MP is Beaches East York MP, Nate Erskine-Smith.
00:01:47.340
Now, this guy, as you will remember, wanted to be the housing minister,
00:01:55.680
He was one of these Liberal MPs like Sean Fraser,
00:01:58.400
who was planning on not even running in the 2025 election when Trudeau was still around.
00:02:05.320
he brought these guys back to run again, promising them powerful positions.
00:02:10.020
Now, he actually did follow through and kept Sean Fraser in a prominent position.
00:02:14.980
He is actually at his most prominent right now, despite being wildly incompetent.
00:02:22.300
But Erskine-Smith was only made housing minister for about three weeks
00:02:29.860
and then after the election, swapped him out with Gregor Robertson,
00:02:36.360
Like, Erskine-Smith would be an incompetent housing minister.
00:02:39.720
He's a hard-left, hyper-progressive in the Liberal Party.
00:02:46.980
But it's kind of embarrassing to be replaced with Gregor Robertson,
00:02:57.120
That's the guy Carney trusted more than Erskine-Smith.
00:03:00.440
And this is actually where the stylistic stuff with Carney starts to chafe
00:03:06.660
Carney seems to like to work with people that he identifies with
00:03:20.860
And ever since then, Erskine-Smith has been sitting in the Liberal backbenches
00:03:26.180
I can't exactly blame him, but he attacked the Liberals
00:03:30.240
over how they handled the Air Canada flight attendants strike.
00:03:37.780
He's obviously always wanted to just leave and go do something else.
00:03:41.600
And that something else is running for the leadership
00:03:47.040
As you can see in this report, it's as new as, what is this,
00:03:54.800
Nate Erskine-Smith says he's now building a team to run for Liberal leader.
00:04:00.040
Everything depends on the strength of that team,
00:04:02.340
including the decision to join the race, he added.
00:04:05.140
The details don't really matter because it's all just kind of surface-level
00:04:08.620
political maneuvering that Erskine-Smith is doing right now.
00:04:12.580
He's very clearly going to leave because I think he would leave even if this
00:04:16.700
opportunity fell through because he obviously does not like working with
00:04:22.260
He openly takes shots at him, he feels betrayed, even I think specifically said
00:04:27.380
I feel betrayed after he was removed as the Housing Minister.
00:04:31.240
He has a good reason to potentially pursue the Ontario Liberal leadership.
00:04:36.020
The Ontario Liberal Party may be second place when it comes to the overall vote
00:04:40.840
count in the province, but they're in third place when it comes to the seats.
00:04:44.720
And Erskine-Smith actually ran for the Ontario Liberal Party leadership race last time
00:04:51.580
And although on first ballot he didn't have that much support, just 25%, although
00:04:55.560
compared to everyone else in the race it was good, he actually came very close on
00:04:59.760
final ballot against Bonnie Crombie, her beating him 53% to 46%.
00:05:05.720
And at the time you can kind of forgive Erskine-Smith for losing because he was just sort of a liberal
00:05:12.140
MP at that point, not really that noteworthy, whereas Bonnie Crombie was the mayor of Mississauga
00:05:18.580
for a few terms, so she had high name recognition and probably a lot of other political connections that
00:05:25.440
Although still, Erskine-Smith gave her a run for her money.
00:05:28.500
And so it's not even just the potential that he might run, he currently has a website up
00:05:34.300
soliciting people to sign up for his leadership race, and nobody else is actually running against
00:05:41.200
This is an open field for him, and if he gets in, I think nobody else bothers running.
00:05:46.000
He's kind of like the Aaron Gunn for the Ontario Liberal Party.
00:05:50.560
Aaron Gunn, of course, having kind of started helping with the BC Conservatives, but then he
00:05:55.420
went Federal Conservative, and he didn't end up, he's not running in the BC Conservative
00:05:59.680
Leadership election, but he's a very prominent figure in BC Conservative politics.
00:06:04.440
I think the only reason nobody else has gotten into this race yet is simply because they know
00:06:09.940
if Nate runs, no one else is going to, no one else is going to win.
00:06:13.940
Plus, nobody really else wants the Ontario Liberal leadership who's a prominent individual.
00:06:18.860
So the entire thing hinges on if Erskine-Smith runs or not.
00:06:24.600
He's saying that this all depends on the strength of his team.
00:06:27.720
You don't even really need a strong team considering nobody else is even opposing him.
00:06:32.880
Like, the race opened up on December 17th, or I think it might have actually been somewhere
00:06:36.900
in November, that it became possible to sign up and run for the leadership, and still nobody's
00:06:43.560
The fact that nobody's done it for a couple months probably just means they're waiting
00:06:49.300
But this is not the only person who is going to leave the Liberals.
00:06:53.720
We also know, guaranteed, Christia Freeland is going to be leaving office in 2026 before
00:07:02.060
Because she is going to become, I believe it's like the CEO and the president of the Rhodes
00:07:06.720
Scholarship, or the Rhodes Society, which requires her to move to Oxford, England.
00:07:13.480
She obviously wants nothing to do with federal liberal politics anymore.
00:07:18.480
Another person who's probably leaving is Stephen Gilbeau.
00:07:21.980
He feels betrayed by Mark Carney, and he's not the personality who is going to sit in the
00:07:26.580
back benches after he resigned from cabinet and just sit there and be curmudgeoned for the
00:07:34.980
Another name that's probably going to be moving on, that is Jonathan Wilkinson, a Vancouver
00:07:41.460
area politician who you would say is kind of part of the old Trudeau guard.
00:07:47.260
And that's kind of a lot of the people who were thrown under the bus by Mark Carney when
00:07:51.820
He's ticked off several individuals, including people like Jonathan Wilkinson, because he
00:08:00.700
The only thing that's really new in Mark Carney's government is he's like sidelined, like five,
00:08:07.900
And then he's kind of brought in some other outside people who usually were just sitting
00:08:14.840
Or he brought in people who had never even run for the liberals before.
00:08:18.960
Like, I don't even know, like Greg Robertson is a good example.
00:08:22.600
And that guy who used to be on CTV News, Evan Solomon, who nobody cares about, he's like
00:08:31.620
I don't know what he even does, but apparently he does something.
00:08:37.820
We have Erskine Smith very, very likely leaving.
00:08:40.760
Christy Freeland is a guaranteed leave in the next few months.
00:08:43.860
Jonathan Wilkinson wants to become Canada's High Commissioner of the United Kingdom because
00:08:48.600
Ralph Goodale is probably going to be stepping down from that role in the UK.
00:08:51.900
And then I think I've also heard Melanie Jolie might be leaving and a couple of other individuals
00:08:57.280
who at this point I think are just burnt out and they are not helping their legacies by
00:09:04.660
So Carney's in a bit of a weird position because this kind of guarantees an election is going
00:09:10.420
to happen in 2026 because not only do some of these MPs occupy ridings where the NDP or
00:09:18.060
the Bloc Québécois could actually conceivably beat them.
00:09:20.900
In Jonathan Wilkinson's riding, in a by-election, depending on what the turnout looks like,
00:09:27.660
Before Wilkinson, it was a conservative alliance reform riding.
00:09:31.660
And yes, the demographics and the boundaries have changed a lot since then.
00:09:36.240
But the fact that used to happen means in a by-election, depending on the turnout, it
00:09:42.400
So Carney, even if none of these people get beaten by one of the other parties, it's also
00:09:48.540
possible that the other parties, while a couple of these MPs have resigned their seats, just
00:09:53.580
trigger an election right there and then because Carney will definitely not have a majority at
00:09:58.340
He will keep, maybe he gets a majority still, but he will constantly fall in and out of a
00:10:07.820
If a conservative suddenly crosses the floor tomorrow and Carney technically has a majority,
00:10:13.200
well, in two weeks' time, let's say Erskine-Smith resigns to go run for the Ontario Liberal Party
00:10:22.600
Maybe you end up replacing Erskine-Smith very quickly and then another conservative crosses the
00:10:27.820
I don't know why we're talking about this happening.
00:10:30.220
The two guys who left did it for like purely petty reasons, so I don't actually see, I don't
00:10:34.320
know who else it would be to leave at this point.
00:10:36.420
I've heard really ridiculous names thrown around and usually it gets debunked quite quickly.
00:10:40.940
But even if another conservative ended up joining, okay, I guess they're in a majority
00:10:46.580
But then some Jonathan Wilkinson leaves and you're out of a majority and Stephen Gilbeau leaves
00:10:51.580
and you're two or three seats deficit to a majority.
00:10:54.860
And then the conservatives, NDP and the block can just gang up and force an election.
00:10:59.180
Plus, all of this is going to make Carney's government look very chaotic.
00:11:03.580
Constantly trying to scrounge for new MPs in order to hold on to power, trying to rely
00:11:08.940
on floor crossers that makes them look really sleazy and anti-democratic.
00:11:16.020
Carney should be very familiar with not being in very good positions since he just put himself
00:11:20.280
in one yesterday with his extremely stupid remarks about Donald Trump's capturing of
00:11:31.960
I don't think I need to harp on more about this topic.
00:11:34.640
But all you need to know is that, yes, Carney is actually probably going to start having
00:11:39.300
a very hard time in his government trying to get some sort of a majority together or even
00:11:47.380
By the way, the NDP leadership is going to wrap up sooner or later, I think in the next
00:11:53.860
So depending on when Erskine Smith leaves, he might, as a bit of a screw you to Carney
00:11:59.280
on the way out, is open up a riding that the NDP leader, a new NDP leader, if they're
00:12:05.000
not a current MP, could actually potentially win.
00:12:08.660
Rob Ashton or Avi Lewis could potentially win a riding like Beaches East York.
00:12:13.400
The Conservative has never won that riding in forever.
00:12:18.460
But Stephen Gilbose, the Bloc used to have that riding and the NDP used to have that riding
00:12:26.900
Before him, in 2015, it was an NDP who held the riding for 2011 to 2015 or 2019.
00:12:35.020
And then before that, it was Gilles Decept, the Bloc Québécois leader's seat.
00:12:39.200
And then we've already talked about Jonathan Wilkinson.
00:12:41.000
And then Chrystia Freeland at one point actually was an NDP as well.
00:12:44.700
So again, depending on the news cycle, Carney could lose some of these seats.
00:12:48.900
But again, it doesn't even matter because as these seats open, there's opportunities
00:12:54.420
Anyways, OK, that's truly the end of the video.
00:12:57.300
I keep like, you know, winding myself back up and then having to speak more.
00:13:02.300
But I have to remember, Wyatt, you're allowed to speak less.
00:13:06.380
I remember a comment yesterday said, Wyatt, you seriously talk too much.
00:13:10.620
And I was just thinking in my head at the time, well, I'm like, well, it's a talk show.
00:13:16.380
But anyways, with that all being said, thank you guys for watching.