The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - September 17, 2025


Mark Carney may lose 5 Liberal MPs - Liberal infighting begins!


Episode Stats

Length

17 minutes

Words per Minute

179.77441

Word Count

3,092

Sentence Count

163

Misogynist Sentences

6


Summary

In this episode, Wyatt talks about the growing number of Liberal MP resignations, including Bill Blair, Chrystia Freeland, and Stephen Gilbeau. He also talks about a new video from our favourite liberal creator, Laura Babcock.


Transcript

00:00:00.160 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. We need to talk about what is going on inside of Prime Minister Mark Carney's liberal government right now, because things seem to be popping loose.
00:00:12.380 I don't even really know how to characterize what's going down right now. It could just be a bunch of disgruntled individuals thinking about leaving, or it could be the old guard having a fight with Mark Carney's new inner circle.
00:00:25.480 I don't know which, but in this video, I kind of want to detail out the sort of slow-moving wave of resignations that we think is going to be coming.
00:00:36.040 I also want to talk about another video from our favorite liberal creator, Laura Babcock, so if you like whenever I critique some of her clips, wait until the end.
00:00:45.940 We will be doing that, but I mainly today want to be focusing on the potential liberal MP resignations that we're hearing about.
00:00:53.440 But before I get into it, I just want to remind you guys, if you like the show, leave a like on this video, subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber, and comment on what you think about this whole situation.
00:01:05.700 But I want to get to this post that Brian Lilly have made this morning, saying,
00:01:11.200 This is what I'm hearing. Bill Blair will soon depart Ottawa and Toronto to take up a new position at the High Commission in London.
00:01:19.680 Ralph Goodale will resign, the former Chrétien and Trudeau cabinet minister, who is right now the High Commissioner in London.
00:01:28.520 So he'd be stepping down, and then Bill Blair would presumably be stepping into that role.
00:01:33.000 Well, Brian Lilly goes on to say that Stephen Gilbeau will also leave Ottawa, but not until after his pension is vested after October 19th, 2025.
00:01:44.480 Well, I would assume that if anyone's leaving, it's going to be in a wave.
00:01:48.680 And remember, it's not just these three that we're talking about right now.
00:01:52.220 It's not just Bill Blair and Stephen Gilbeau.
00:01:55.620 We are also hearing about, in this other post I'm going to bring up here, Jonathan Wilkinson, if you know him.
00:02:04.780 And some good, I think some good indicators that this is true, is that Jonathan Wilkinson and Bill Blair, despite both being in their 70s, or I think Wilkinson might be like 67, 68,
00:02:17.180 despite their age and presumed experience, despite being incompetent liberals, they don't have cabinet positions right now.
00:02:24.240 They may be on a committee somewhere, but they're not the minister of anything.
00:02:27.920 Stephen Gilbeau is a minister, but he's the minister of official languages.
00:02:32.660 And I think, to put it, I think he's something like the liaison to Quebec.
00:02:38.440 There's not really much going on with Stephen Gilbeau.
00:02:41.120 It's obviously a big drop down since he was the environment minister, which truly was his dream job as a green political fanatic.
00:02:50.560 And so, with those three, combined with the two that we already know are upset and likely to leave,
00:02:57.840 Nate Erskine-Smith, who got dropped as a cabinet minister after only being allowed to be housing minister this year for about two and a half months,
00:03:05.940 as well as Chrystia Freeland, who's going to move on and become the envoy to Ukraine.
00:03:11.160 Now, she could stay on as an MP and be the envoy to Ukraine, but based on how she worded the letter we read yesterday,
00:03:19.740 it doesn't sound like she's likely to actually stick around.
00:03:22.920 She made it pretty clear by thanking her constituency office staff and her electoral district association board
00:03:29.660 that she's saying goodbye to people on the riding level, not just the ministerial level.
00:03:35.640 She was the minister of transportation, which is clearly probably not what she wanted,
00:03:39.880 considering that she used to be the minister of finance and the deputy prime minister,
00:03:44.440 and then she was dropped down to a sort of second-tier ministerial role.
00:03:49.040 First tier is like finance, public safety, defense, foreign affairs.
00:03:54.840 It's like the really big functions of government.
00:03:57.900 And then the second tier is going to be like minister of jobs and economy, minister of transportation.
00:04:04.540 And then you have the tertiary ones, which is where Stephen Gilbeau is.
00:04:08.820 It's the minister of official languages, minister of women, and stuff like that.
00:04:13.280 It's the more nebulous ones that don't really touch on a lot of stuff.
00:04:16.400 A second tier one would be like veterans affairs.
00:04:18.800 Obviously, first tier is anything that has large budgets attached to it.
00:04:23.500 Environment, typically.
00:04:25.040 I would say under Trudeau, it's a first tier, and Carney, it's a first tier.
00:04:29.080 Under Harper, rightfully so, it would have been seen more as a second tier
00:04:33.000 sort of ministry to be in charge of.
00:04:35.900 Now, let's kind of discuss, well, why is this all going on now?
00:04:41.660 And notice that none of these people are high-level cabinet ministers.
00:04:46.100 They're all people who have either been downgraded or have no role at all.
00:04:51.280 I think what's probably going on here, when I say I don't want to characterize it at the start,
00:04:56.500 it's not because I don't have opinions.
00:04:58.040 I'm just not going to say it definitely is this.
00:05:00.520 I think that this is very much showing the personality clash between Mark Carney
00:05:06.980 and a lot of the old Justin Trudeau loyalists.
00:05:10.600 These people are very much the old guard, and I think with Mark Carney's new style
00:05:15.600 and the way he tends to pick people based on who he meshes with on a personality basis,
00:05:22.380 these people are on the outs and new people are on the in.
00:05:25.780 And it doesn't even mean that he's getting rid of incompetent people and replacing them
00:05:29.840 with more competent people.
00:05:31.580 I think between Nate Erskine-Smith, the short-lived housing minister, and the current guy, Gregor
00:05:36.600 Robertson, you really probably couldn't say which one would be worse.
00:05:41.300 Nate Erskine-Smith is more of a political radical, but Gregor Robertson, as the former mayor of
00:05:46.680 Vancouver, and having seen a lot of the comments he's made since becoming housing minister,
00:05:51.660 is probably not going to be doing a very good job.
00:05:54.500 In fact, he's basically stated he's not going to do a good job because his goal is to not
00:05:58.860 lower the prices of houses.
00:06:00.780 And you can already see it in the new housing proposal that to build 4,000 affordable homes,
00:06:06.560 they are going to need a departmental budget over $10 billion, which means that each of
00:06:11.620 these units are going to cost $2.5 million to make, to build, based on the entire budget
00:06:18.960 for this program.
00:06:20.540 Now, that might not be all new spending.
00:06:22.940 They could have taken people from the housing ministry and then shifted them over to this
00:06:27.720 new program.
00:06:28.860 And so maybe only, you know, $5 billion of it is actually for the home building.
00:06:33.620 But that still means our affordable housing plan is causing us to spend upwards of $800 to
00:06:40.340 $1.2 million to build each unit.
00:06:44.320 This is perfectly predictable if you understand how government works.
00:06:47.360 There was an outdoor bathroom that was once built in San Francisco that I believe cost
00:06:52.300 $3 million American dollars to build an outdoor washroom facility that only had one actual
00:06:59.640 washroom, like, room in it.
00:07:02.000 It only had actually one facility.
00:07:04.040 It wasn't like a men and women bathroom on either side.
00:07:06.620 It was just like one, anyone can use it, single door bathroom.
00:07:11.260 But yeah, government sucks at stuff.
00:07:13.140 And so we have Nate Erskine-Smith, likely to leave to go run for the Ontario Liberal Leadership
00:07:18.300 Race.
00:07:19.000 He released a video, like, four days ago, which was basically an infomercial on why you should
00:07:23.340 elect Erskine-Smith and how bad of a guy Doug Ford is, which I'm not going to argue with
00:07:27.600 him on.
00:07:28.080 Doug Ford sucks.
00:07:29.400 Nate Erskine-Smith also sucks.
00:07:31.260 They suck equally.
00:07:32.320 But we then have Christy Freeland, who was Transport Minister, but obviously ever since
00:07:38.320 having, like, basically taken shots at Trudeau and left cabinet and basically said he should
00:07:44.060 resign, I think that she's also always been on the wrong side of Mark Carney.
00:07:49.580 Now, he put her back into his cabinet both before the election and after the election
00:07:54.720 because it's Christy Freeland and in liberal circles her name has some weight.
00:07:58.740 But remember, back in December, when she stepped down, they also had a fight.
00:08:05.040 Like, they also were basically fighting because Freeland was also calling out Mark Carney for
00:08:10.160 things Trudeau was doing because he was the one who came up with things like the GST freeze,
00:08:16.180 which Christy Freeland had labeled a gimmick.
00:08:18.880 And with a lot of these other people, Blair, Wilkinson, as well as Stephen Gilbeau, they are
00:08:25.160 very much just what I would consider to be Trudeau-era politicians.
00:08:28.740 Older, maybe were already on their way out, or in the vein of Stephen Gilbeau, I think
00:08:34.760 they wanted to move someone who seemed radical out of the way so that they could technically
00:08:39.420 moderate their environmental policy.
00:08:41.720 Are they really, are they more friendly to the oil and gas industry?
00:08:45.340 I guess technically, relatively speaking to Justin Trudeau in the late Trudeau years,
00:08:51.120 yeah, I guess Carney is more moderate, but they're still not good.
00:08:54.660 Yes, they put a pause on the EV mandate, which probably ticked off Stephen Gilbeau, but they're
00:09:00.380 not walking away from it.
00:09:02.080 They're just pausing an unfeasible, terrible policy, probably because the industry was threatening
00:09:08.760 them because, yeah, of course they're going to threaten you back when you're basically
00:09:12.300 threatening their ability to stay solvent.
00:09:15.160 So I think this is kind of what's going on right now.
00:09:17.820 We're probably going to have a bunch of by-elections, which is very good news for Pierre Polyev and
00:09:22.700 the Conservatives.
00:09:23.460 Many of these are safe Liberal seats, especially Stephen Gilbeau in Montreal.
00:09:28.760 But what it allows Polyev to do is test his mettle against Mark Carney, see if the public
00:09:33.780 is starting to shift away from the Liberals because of how sluggish they've been on achieving
00:09:38.440 much of anything.
00:09:39.260 And also even trying, even like getting a budget pass.
00:09:43.320 There must be some people, even in the Elbows Up crew, who think that things aren't working
00:09:47.880 out so well.
00:09:48.900 We were lied to.
00:09:50.040 He really oversold himself and he's under-delivering.
00:09:53.520 But anyways, now I want to show you guys this Laura Babcock video.
00:09:58.800 It actually does have to do with Pierre Polyev.
00:10:01.980 I love Laura Babcock because she has an inability to not just literally say the, she just gives
00:10:09.140 the party line.
00:10:10.580 It is the most, she doesn't have, she almost does not possess guile.
00:10:15.720 She will free, it doesn't, I'm trying to oversell this right now.
00:10:20.360 This is just a hilarious video.
00:10:22.020 Apparently you're a bad person if you mock Elbows Up.
00:10:25.100 We're not only in a trade war, we might be in real war.
00:10:27.460 The last thing we need is for anybody to take our patriotic battle cry of Elbows Up,
00:10:32.040 these two Canadians, and mock it and put it down.
00:10:34.940 When Pierre Polyev says Elbows Down, he is echoing MAGA talking points and attacks on
00:10:40.100 our country.
00:10:40.980 You can criticize Mark Carney all you want, it's your job, but you don't have to do it
00:10:44.620 by denigrating Canada's sense of power and purpose and patriotism in this critical moment
00:10:51.280 for our sovereignty and our economy.
00:10:52.860 I don't know if Laura actually knows how the internet works, but being whiny and overly
00:11:00.820 earnest about your political beliefs in the face of people's opposition doesn't score
00:11:06.620 you a lot of points.
00:11:07.940 But this is kind of the problem with the inner core of liberal support.
00:11:13.060 People like Laura Babcock are never going to change their mind, nor do we need her to
00:11:17.300 change her mind in order to win an election.
00:11:19.360 If anything, Laura Babcock is a great piece of marketing material for the conservatives.
00:11:23.680 Like, this is what you look like if you're still supporting the Elbows Up stuff.
00:11:27.400 You're the lady whining that people do not take your political slogan seriously.
00:11:31.860 Oh, he's invoking MAGA talking points.
00:11:34.940 MAGA talking points.
00:11:36.420 People in America don't even know about Elbows Up.
00:11:38.660 They frankly don't care, nor should they care.
00:11:40.900 She's like the girl everyone knew in the seventh grade who's overly earnest about stuff, and
00:11:49.980 I'm going to give my book report at the front of the room, and no one better laugh.
00:11:53.600 And if anyone laughs, I'm going to scream cry because I do not have the emotional capacity
00:11:59.340 to take any mockery.
00:12:01.500 I have no emotional capacity for any jabs in my direction.
00:12:05.720 This is who Laura Babcock is.
00:12:07.880 She is the girl who, when the teacher leaves the room, she wants to be in charge of the
00:12:12.340 classroom, and the teacher goes, and she's going to tell you what the teacher said after
00:12:15.320 they leave.
00:12:16.060 Nobody better get up from their desk if the teacher said so.
00:12:18.820 It's like, what is going on?
00:12:20.800 The conservatives should put money on Laura Babcock videos and just play them.
00:12:25.580 And just, this is your brain on Elbows Up.
00:12:27.700 That is all it should be.
00:12:29.060 This is your brain on Elbows Up.
00:12:30.620 And then just plays Laura Babcock freaking out, you know, because she's off of her lithium.
00:12:35.320 The thing is that if you consume politics as social sport, you will end up like this.
00:12:45.940 If you do not engage in politics because you actually care about the policy and you care
00:12:50.080 about the country, don't care about the country in the sense that my team cares about the country
00:12:54.100 and your team doesn't.
00:12:55.220 But if you don't actually care about economic factors of per capita income going up, if you
00:13:00.380 don't care about the immigration rate and trying to keep it lower in order to study
00:13:05.060 the country, if you don't care about driving down crime or any of stuff like that, then
00:13:10.100 don't engage in politics.
00:13:12.080 It's mesmerizing to me to see somebody who, by the way, I believe her husband is a CBC
00:13:16.860 producer.
00:13:17.780 Who could guess that?
00:13:19.020 That her spouse had that sort of a job.
00:13:21.140 But when you are freaking out about stuff, at the same time, she will mock conservatives
00:13:25.200 for taking issue with policies of the liberals.
00:13:28.640 It's like you're not actually in politics.
00:13:30.880 You're in TLC politics.
00:13:33.340 You are in emotionally projecting and saying that person's bad.
00:13:36.840 That person's a fascist mega dictator.
00:13:39.880 We're at war.
00:13:41.340 War with who?
00:13:42.700 War between the last two brain cells that you have?
00:13:46.760 Nobody's at war with Canada, other than, frankly, liberals who don't think that the country
00:13:52.160 apparently should survive in the justification that elbows up.
00:13:57.900 We are literally destroying our own country.
00:14:00.100 And then just tacking on the slogan, elbows up at the end, to pretend that doing things
00:14:04.420 that actually hurt us are good, because it's not what America is doing, flipping elbows
00:14:08.500 up.
00:14:08.960 My goodness.
00:14:10.360 It's actually kind of sad to watch, because imagine how stressed out she is walking around
00:14:16.660 about nothing.
00:14:19.040 Nobody's coming for her.
00:14:20.640 Nothing is...
00:14:21.480 All the things she's supporting are actually harmful, but she's running around concerned
00:14:25.660 someone will stop doing the harmful things.
00:14:29.160 Anyways.
00:14:30.180 Oh, that should be it for me today, guys.
00:14:33.000 Well, hopefully we'll see some of these resignations come in soon.
00:14:35.840 I would like to see how Polyev's conservatives are doing in some of these GTA ridings.
00:14:40.400 I don't expect them to win, but it's one of those things where if the liberals win,
00:14:44.700 but unlike in Pierpaglia's Battle River Cropet by-election, if they can't maintain their support
00:14:50.740 and it drops significantly, that's when you know in a general election, maybe some of the
00:14:55.340 ridings a little bit more outside of the GTA, along the suburbs, those ones could maybe
00:15:00.160 be picked up.
00:15:01.320 And this is a wake-up call towards the conservatives.
00:15:04.020 Pick better candidates.
00:15:06.660 Because that was the big problem in Mississauga and Brampton.
00:15:10.100 When every single Hindu candidate seemed to get whacked out of the nominations, there was
00:15:14.960 an entire group of people who would have showed up no matter who was elected as long as the
00:15:19.280 nomination race went forward and the person that maybe they liked or represent their community
00:15:23.880 in some way got to be put in.
00:15:25.800 It's not that they need the candidate to be Hindu.
00:15:27.780 They just want the idea that, okay, my guy got to compete or even just my community got
00:15:32.060 to compete, even if I was supporting a different guy.
00:15:34.060 If you do that, you actually will be able to dig into these GTA ridings.
00:15:39.400 And even in general, just have open nominations that allow for a local community champion to
00:15:45.220 be elected or else you're going to lose these easy races because on the ground people are
00:15:49.420 going to find out it's just some guy got appointed and he's not even from here.
00:15:53.040 And you're going to lose probably 4% or 5% because of that.
00:15:55.840 And in tight races, you cannot be losing 4% or 5% to appoint some friend of an advisor.
00:16:00.540 But anyway, so that truly is the end of the video now.
00:16:04.260 Thank you for hearing my additional bonus ranting at the end.
00:16:07.640 I will be back probably either later today or tomorrow with a whiteboard video.
00:16:12.180 We are going to be cataloging how all of the polls have been showing the liberal shift over time.
00:16:17.920 Even the bad pollsters can demonstrate if the liberals are becoming weaker or stronger.
00:16:24.240 Because if nanos, and this is true, if nanos used to have them at plus 13% and now they're
00:16:29.920 at plus 7%, what does that tell you about more reasonable pollsters' numbers?
00:16:34.300 And then I can do an explanation for why abacus data went from plus 3 liberal to plus
00:16:39.000 2 conservative to plus 3 liberal again.
00:16:41.340 It felt like I think this last poll they kind of put out because they were trying to do
00:16:44.360 some other polling on issues and they just kind of grabbed whatever sample.
00:16:48.060 And the sample was like 50% people who voted liberal last election, only 34 conservative.
00:16:53.000 And waiting can only do so much for you at the end of the day.
00:16:56.300 And so what we ended up having, I think, is just a sample that was a little bit more liberal
00:17:01.620 than not.
00:17:02.280 But that wasn't like their official national poll.
00:17:04.160 That was just because they were pulling some stuff about Trump or whatever.
00:17:07.360 Anyways, so that should be it for me today, guys.
00:17:10.620 See you all later.