The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - January 04, 2026


Mark Carney is LOSING a Liberal MP - Erskine-Smith resigning!

Hosted by
Wyatt Claypool
Mentioned
Nate Erskine-Smith Mark Carney Jonathan Wilkinson Justin Trudeau Gregor Robertson Bonnie Crombie Steven Guilbeault Erskine Smith Sean Fraser Wyatt Chrystia Freeland Chris Dontremont Nicolas Maduro Ralph Goodale Melanie Jolie Gilles Duceppe Evan Solomon Donald Trump Michael Ma Aaron Gunn and 2 more
Liberal scramble to create a re-election narrative for Carney in 2026! 2nd Liberal MP Resigning! Freeland quits on Carney for Ukraine!

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

173.23

Word count

2,406

Sentence count

135

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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
00:00:18.300 to cross the floor and join his government.
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,
00:00:38.700 then the Liberals would have a majority.
00:00:40.860 But now everything is starting to pop loose,
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,
00:01:12.180 but not really any massive policy differences.
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. 0.93
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
00:01:30.820 we have confirmed very likely to leave soon.
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,
00:01:52.720 and technically he was 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.
00:02:03.240 But when Carney became prime minister,
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.
00:02:19.560 He's the current attorney general for Canada.
00:02:22.300 But Erskine-Smith was only made housing minister for about three weeks
00:02:26.820 before Carney triggered a new election,
00:02:29.860 and then after the election, swapped him out with Gregor Robertson,
00:02:34.800 which is super funny.
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.
00:02:44.060 He's what I'd call also a greeny Liberal. 0.96
00:02:46.980 But it's kind of embarrassing to be replaced with Gregor Robertson,
00:02:51.400 who is a former failed mayor of Vancouver,
00:02:54.300 did terrible things for housing in Vancouver.
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
00:03:04.600 against some of the Liberal MPs.
00:03:06.660 Carney seems to like to work with people that he identifies with
00:03:10.180 on, like, a personality level.
00:03:11.820 It has nothing to do with confidence.
00:03:14.000 He just likes to work.
00:03:14.680 He likes working with people he likes.
00:03:16.880 He doesn't like working with Erskine-Smith,
00:03:18.760 so he put in Gregor Robertson.
00:03:20.860 And ever since then, Erskine-Smith has been sitting in the Liberal backbenches
00:03:24.880 just complaining.
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.
00:03:33.980 He's criticized them on the budget.
00:03:35.620 He's criticized them on a few other things.
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
00:03:44.540 of the Ontario Liberal Party.
00:03:47.040 As you can see in this report, it's as new as, what is this,
00:03:51.760 a Politico Corner first reported last month.
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
00:04:21.580 Mark Carney.
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
00:04:50.020 against Bonnie Crombie.
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 0.98
00:05:23.700 made it quite easy to win.
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
00:05:40.500 him yet.
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.
00:06:23.040 I think he absolutely will.
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
00:06:42.780 done it.
00:06:43.560 The fact that nobody's done it for a couple months probably just means they're waiting
00:06:47.640 to see what Nate does.
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
00:07:01.140 July.
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.
00:07:12.280 She is not coming back.
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
00:07:30.820 next three years.
00:07:31.820 He's just going to leave.
00:07:32.960 He has nothing left to do in federal politics.
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
00:07:50.760 he first came in.
00:07:51.820 He's ticked off several individuals, including people like Jonathan Wilkinson, because he
00:07:56.680 doesn't really want them around.
00:07:58.680 I think he sees them as Trudeau's people.
00:08:00.700 The only thing that's really new in Mark Carney's government is he's like sidelined, like five,
00:08:06.340 six or seven individuals.
00:08:07.900 And then he's kind of brought in some other outside people who usually were just sitting
00:08:12.120 in the back benches into his new government.
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
00:08:27.240 the AI minister or something like that. 0.90
00:08:29.060 A completely useless ministry.
00:08:31.620 I don't know what he even does, but apparently he does something.
00:08:35.080 So we have Gilboa probably leaving.
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
00:09:02.480 sticking around any longer.
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,
00:09:25.660 conservatives actually have a chance there.
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
00:09:40.600 could still happen again.
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
00:09:57.820 that point.
00:09:58.340 He will keep, maybe he gets a majority still, but he will constantly fall in and out of a
00:10:04.700 majority position.
00:10:05.960 So let's theorize here.
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
00:10:17.680 leadership.
00:10:18.600 We're out of a majority again.
00:10:20.160 Freeland leaves, you're out of a majority.
00:10:22.600 Maybe you end up replacing Erskine-Smith very quickly and then another conservative crosses the
00:10:27.560 floor.
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
00:10:46.000 again.
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. 1.00
00:11:13.180 It's not a great position for Carney to be in.
00:11:16.020 Carney should be very familiar with not being in very good positions since he just put himself 0.98
00:11:20.280 in one yesterday with his extremely stupid remarks about Donald Trump's capturing of 1.00
00:11:26.680 communist dictator Nicolas Maduro. 0.99
00:11:29.340 But that should be it for me today, guys.
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
00:11:44.920 being able to pass votes.
00:11:47.380 By the way, the NDP leadership is going to wrap up sooner or later, I think in the next
00:11:52.480 couple of months.
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.
00:12:16.660 So, of course, Conservatives can't win.
00:12:18.460 But Stephen Gilbose, the Bloc used to have that riding and the NDP used to have that riding
00:12:23.040 before him.
00:12:23.700 He was actually a kind of anomaly.
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
00:12:52.340 to trigger a new election.
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.
00:13:14.440 So I hope I'm talking.
00:13:16.380 But anyways, with that all being said, thank you guys for watching.
00:13:19.400 Like, share, subscribe, leave a comment.
00:13:21.480 And I will see you all later.
00:13:23.340 Thank you.